Wikimedia-l June 2009

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

112 participants
70 discussions

[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation and Tech blogs down for the interim
by Jay Walsh 26 Jun '09

26 Jun '09

Hi all - just a quick FYI in case you attempt to access the Foundations two official blogs, We've had to shut both blogs down (they live in the same server space) to investigate some tech/patch issues with wordpress. We're hoping to have things back up by the weekend or early next week at the latest. Wanted to let people know in case you were trying to access and were having troubles. Thanks! -- Jay Walsh Head of Communications WikimediaFoundation.org blog.wikimedia.org +1 (415) 839 6885 x 609, @jansonw

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[Foundation-l] WOT? The School of Reform
by Unni Krishnan Kanavillil (HR), TLS, Chennai 26 Jun '09

26 Jun '09

Hello Team, My name is Krishna and outside our corporate robe, we have initiated a Thought Leadership Organization called WOT? (World of Thought). The objective of this Break-Even Organization is to induce and inspire free thinking. The Forum we are creating to be rolled out from August 2009, called the School of Reform, is a Thought Leadership event for Students (from cities across India) to come together under one umbrella to study, research, analyze and expound a Free Thinkers solution to National Concerns. The event is centered around a League of Free thinkers, eminent personalities from india who would form the mentor group for the School of Reform. The League will have representation from personalities of all streams like arts, media, science, politics, religion and Medicine and would emphasize on the Harmony each stream plays in inspiring a thought revolution. Wikimedia as part of Wikipedia can guide and support our cause and vision, which is the forum of Free Thinkers by your expansive knowledge base and collaborative vision we share if you wish to assist and guide us in this regard. Your involvement in this effort would be a great motivation for us to take this forward, Regards Krishna.<http://www.iamtheeyeofgod.blogspot.com> DISCLAIMER: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The contents of this e-mail and any attachment(s) are confidential and intended for the named recipient(s) only. It shall not attach any liability on the originator or HCL or its affiliates. Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of HCL or its affiliates. Any form of reproduction, dissemination, copying, disclosure, modification, distribution and / or publication of this message without the prior written consent of the author of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error please delete it and notify the sender immediately. Before opening any mail and attachments please check them for viruses and defect. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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[Foundation-l] Licensing update roll-out
by Erik Moeller 25 Jun '09

25 Jun '09

As per the licensing update decision by the community and the Board, I've updated the site terms on the English Wikipedia (and the WMF website) today, and posted a reference copy of the site-wide terms of use to: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use The Wikimedia Commons licensing task force has gone ahead and updated the relevant GFDL templates on Commons to indicate that eligible media files may also be available under CC-BY-SA. The English Wikipedia roll-out serves as a reference implementation and may lead to some final tweaks in the terms and language. In the coming days, we'll begin the translation and roll-out in other eligible projects and languages. Communities will be able to customize the messages and terms within limits, as described here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Implementation Our site-wide roll-out will likely override any project-local bottom-up implementation between now and then. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Re: [Foundation-l] Issues about Copyright
by Jimmy Xu 25 Jun '09

25 Jun '09

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 7:28 AM, teun spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote: > IANAL, but I suppose three things must be considered: > - US law, where the servers are based > - the country where a work originates > - the country to which the wikipedian belongs. Thanks, but there is still a problem: If these laws are under conflict, like the local law allows fair-use to some material but the US law doesn't, what should we do. I can't decide whether it should be marked as a copyright violation per US law or just being accepted per local ones? Thanks. Jimmy_xu_wrk@zhwiki 06/25/2009

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[Foundation-l] Issues about Copyright
by Jimmy Xu 25 Jun '09

25 Jun '09

Hello all, These days at the Village Pump of zhwiki, many wikipedians are arguing about whether Wikimedia project should apply to the US Copyright Law that is where the servers were placed, or the local ones, for us, that is the P.R. of China Copyright Law. These thread came from a disagreement of fair-use text of news in article, so I'm willing to find some (kind of) official resolution. Thanks a lot. Jimmy_xu_wrk@zhwiki 06/25/2009

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[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Donation Buttons Upgrade
by Rand Montoya 25 Jun '09

25 Jun '09

(As this email may enact changes that affect the total Wikimedia community, please feel free to forward or post this email on any and all applicable lists. I would like as much feedback as possible.) Wikimedians-- We have begun exploring ideas for enhancing the visibility of the donate button not only within the Wikimedia main skin but also on every page of every Wikimedia project. We hope that enhancement will enable us to better informing our public that we are dependent on their donations as we promote the free and open knowledge movement. We expect that a small change to the Wikimedia main skin will result in big returns in donations--donations we use to keep the Wikimedia movement alive and growing. I expect that in return for a bit of enhanced visibility, we will see a daily increase of up to 20% in donations. Working with the same professional designer that worked on last year's donation page (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/Now/en), we have culled his 30+ button ideas into 6 that represent some of the better designs. We have posted several design options for your comments and input here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Donation_buttons_upgrade I would like your input and advice in figuring out both how to make this buttons look better and how to make the language around the buttons better. In addition, we are exploring adding different language underneath the Title Bar of an article. Design is only half of this change...words are important. What are the simplest words we can use (we are aware that these changes may get translated to numerous other languages) that will convey what we want to convey? You, collectively, have proven to be amazing at using words and communicating with our users. How can we reach them? One of these designs borrows from our look and feel from our previous campaign and another resembles the look and feel of Paypal. What do you think of those? We are curious about how look and feel associated with online payments will increase the need or opportunity to make a donation. The objective here is to take the average Wikimedia user and get them to recognize we are a non-profit and that our future depends on their donations. How can we better show our users that we are a charity? Again, your time and input is appreciated. To see the designs, go here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Donation_buttons_upgrade -Rand -- Rand Montoya Head of Community Giving Wikimedia Foundation www.wikimedia.org Email: rand(a)wikimedia.org Phone: 415.839.6885 x615 Fax: 415.882.0495 Cell: 510.685.7030 “At some future time, I hope to have something witty, intelligent, or funny in this space.”

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[Foundation-l] Fundraising Survey
by Rand Montoya 24 Jun '09

24 Jun '09

(As this email may enact changes that affect the total Wikimedia community, please feel free to forward or post this email on any and all applicable lists. We would like as much feedback as possible.) Wikimedians-- In advance of our Annual Fundraiser (starting in November), Wikimedia is undertaking a survey of donors and potential donors in order to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of fundraising efforts of the Wikimedia Foundation. The results from this survey will help us to better understand donors and potential donors, and ultimately, will help to increase donations to the Wikimedia Foundation. There are several basic questions the survey is intended to answer: * Who donates to the Wikimedia Foundation? What characteristics do donors to the Wikimedia Foundation share? * Are there different types of donors that can be segmented by common characteristics? * What motivates individuals to donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? * What expectations do donors have about how their donations are used? * What would (or how can Wikimedia) motivate current donors to increase their contributions? * Why don't more individuals donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? * What is likely to motivate non-donors to become donors? You can find the survey process, timeline, methodology, & questions here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_Survey_2009 We would appreciate your input on the questions and how to make this survey as effective as possible. -Rand -- Rand Montoya Head of Community Giving Wikimedia Foundation www.wikimedia.org Email: rand(a)wikimedia.org Phone: 415.839.6885 x615 Fax: 415.882.0495 Cell: 510.685.7030 “At some future time, I hope to have something witty, intelligent, or funny in this space.”

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[Foundation-l] What happened to langcom?
by Mark Williamson 24 Jun '09

24 Jun '09

Whatever happened to the language committee? No new languages have been created or even approved for creation in a very long time with only two exceptions for Wikipedias - the Egyptian Arabic WP in November and the Pontic WP in March. There are no list archives posted since January, and the last time a language was even verified as "eligible" was in April. Did people simply stop requesting languages? What is going on? Mark skype: node.ue

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[Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
by David Gerard 23 Jun '09

23 Jun '09

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2009/06/19/using-wikisource-as-an-alte… Interesting. How well does this fit with what Wikisource does? - d.

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[Foundation-l] Public repositories for research dumps
by Felipe Ortega 23 Jun '09

23 Jun '09

Hello. Since just a few hours ago, a new public repository has been created to host WikiXRay database dumps, containing info extracted from public Wikipedia dbdumps. The image is hosted by RedIRIS (in short, the Spanish equivalent of Kennisnet in Netherlands). http://sunsite.rediris.es/mirror/WKP_research ftp://ftp.rediris.es/mirror/WKP_research These new dumps are aimed to save time and effort to other researchers, since they won't need to parse the complete XML dumps to extract all relevant activity metadata. We used mysqldump to create the dumps from our databases.. As of today, only some of the biggest Wikipedias are available. However, in the following days the full set of available languages will be ready for downloading. The files will be updated regularly. The procedure is as follows: 1. Find the research dump of your interest. Download and decompress it in your local system. 2. Create a local DB to import the information. 3. Load the dump file, using a MySQL user with insert privileges: $> mysql -u user -p passw myDB < dumpfile.sql And you're done. Final warning. 3 fields in the revision table are not reliable yet: rev_num_inlinks rev_num_outlinks rev_num_trans All remaining fields/values are trustable (in particular rev_len, rev_num_words, and so forth). Regards, Felipe.

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Wikimedia-l June 2009