http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/16060
Basically, if you cut'n'paste text, it appends a CC credit line to the
pasted text. Obviously the paster can remove it, but it does remind
them this is licensed, not PD.
Worth using for our stuff? A bit obnoxious? What do you think?
- d.
Hi Mike,
Generally, it's people getting in touch with us. We do very little active media outreach -- in fact, we probably do zero.
There is also lots of media contact in addition to that list -- for example Jimmy, and many of the chapters, do interviews that don't show up there. But it's a pretty comprehensive list of who Jay's been talking to, and the level of overall media interest in a given month.
Thanks,
Sue
------Original Message------
From: Mike.lifeguard
Sender: foundation-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
ReplyTo: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Sent: Jul 23, 2009 6:11 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Report To The Board: March 2009
Sue, thanks so much for compiling and sharing these reports, it is
always great to see how much the Foundation is doing as time progresses.
I notice that in each report there has been a list of media with which
the Foundation has had contact - is that generally interviews requested
by the media, or is the Foundation also reaching out to the media? (or
some combination of the two)
Thanks,
-Mike
On Thu, 2009-07-23 at 09:57 -0700, Sue Gardner wrote:
> April will follow shortly; thanks for your patience waiting for these :-)
> The Wikimedia Foundation participated in interviews with the Star
> Tribune newspaper (Minneapolis, Minnesota); the New York Daily News;
> Fox News; Veja Magazine (Sao Paulo, Brazil); the BBC; The National
> (Abu Dhabi); Philosophy Talk, KALW (San Francisco); the New York
> Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
April will follow shortly; thanks for your patience waiting for these :-)
..
Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
Covering: March 2009
Prepared by: Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Prepared for: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
MARCH PRIORITIES
1.Preparation for April Board of Trustees meeting and chapters meeting
2.Recruitment of Chief Program Officer
3.Begin development of 2009-10 Annual Plan and goal-setting process
4.Finalize Strategy Plan Process proposal
5.Preparation of licensing update decision and potential roll-out
6.Bits and pieces: normal fundraising activities, grant proposal
development, etc.
THIS PAST MONTH
ALL STAFF MEETING
On March 12-13, the Wikimedia Foundation held its bi-annual all staff
meeting. During the meeting, WMF staff were given an overview of the
foundation's strong year-to-date financial position, and the
fundraising team was thanked for exceeding its targets in a difficult
global economy. The process for 2009-10 goal-setting and performance
assessment was rolled out, and new projects and priorities for 2009-10
were discussed.
CHAPTERS AND BOARD MEETING PREPARATION
Following consultation with Wikimedia volunteers, individually and on
the foundation-l mailing list, Sue Gardner prepared a presentation for
the Board of Trustees on Biographies of Living People, and drafted a
resolution for the Board's review.
Four workshops were organized for the chapters meeting in Berlin:
Frank Schulenburg prepared a workshop on public outreach; Mike Godwin
prepared a workshop on trademarks; Rand Montoya prepared a workshop on
fundraising, and Erik Moeller prepared a workshop on the Wikimedia
Foundation's new Chapters Funding Request process.
Mike Godwin worked with the Stanford Law Clinic to create a new draft
chapters agreement template, and a trademark policy memorandum for the
Board of Trustees. The trademark materials will be presented at the
April Board of Trustees Meeting.
NEW CHIEF PROGRAM OFFICER
The Wikimedia Foundation hired Jennifer Riggs as its first Chief
Program Officer. Jennifer comes to Wikimedia from the American Red
Cross Bay Area chapter, where, as Manager of Volunteer Resources, she
managed the work of more than a thousand volunteers. Prior to the Red
Cross, she worked at the California School-Age Consortium and with the
Peace Corps. Jennifer speaks French, Sango and some Spanish. She is
scheduled to begin work with Wikimedia April 13. Cary Bass, Frank
Schulenburg and Jay Walsh will report to Jennifer, and Jennifer will
report to Sue.
TECHNOLOGY
The technology team launched a tech-focused blog at
<techblog.wikimedia.org>. It will be used for updates about important
developments as well as background on outages or maintenance
operations.
The usability team completed the first Wikipedia user experience tests
ever organized by the Wikimedia Foundation, with the help of
Bolt|Peters, a usability firm in San Francisco. Videos and analysis of
the results will be released shortly.
The Wikimedia Foundation hired Frederic Vassard as Systems
Administrator, a planned new position. Fred has a background working
with Linux and Unix system administration, and will be responsible for
operations, monitoring, and documentation of the Wikimedia
Foundation's technical infrastructure. He will also help improve our
responses to, and anticipation of, operations issues.
The department continued working on the launch of the new mobile
interface for Wikipedia, and a native application for iPhone and
Android.
Michael Dale continued testing new upload changes that are aimed at
improving the user experience of finding and transferring media
content. A preview was announced in the tech blog:
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/03/add-media-wizard-and-firefogg-on-test…
Several of the Technology Department staff also prepared for an
upcoming trip to Berlin, Germany where they will be taking part in a
wiki technology meeting adjacent to the chapters meeting.
OTHER PROGRAM ACTIVITY
Erik Moeller and Mike Godwin continued preparing the decision for a
potential licensing update for all eligible GFDL content in Wikimedia
Foundation projects. A survey on the issue of author attribution was
presented, and the proposal at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update was finalized and
readied for translation. A licensing update committee was formed to
invite volunteers to help support the decision-making process and
implementation.
Frank Schulenburg created a proposal and built a team of volunteers
for a Wikipedia Academy event with the U.S. National Institutes of
Health. This will be the first-ever Wikipedia Academy to take place
in the United States. Its purpose is two-fold: to coach the National
Institutes of Health staff in how to contribute usefully to Wikipedia,
and to experiment with how the Wikimedia Foundation might work with
volunteers to support the staging of Academies in ways that scale past
one-off events.
Cary Bass organized a merger of Wikipedia Facebook pages, and
supported volunteers self-organizing to form the Board of Trustees
Election Committee. During the month of March, two new OTRS
administrators were recruited and appointed.
The Wikimedia Foundation participated in interviews with the Star
Tribune newspaper (Minneapolis, Minnesota); the New York Daily News;
Fox News; Veja Magazine (Sao Paulo, Brazil); the BBC; The National
(Abu Dhabi); Philosophy Talk, KALW (San Francisco); the New York
Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
An "Inside Wikimedia" video was released showing the Wikimedia
Foundation office and interviews with staff and volunteers:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/03/04/take-a-look-inside-wikimedia/
FUNDRAISING, GRANTS, & PARTNERSHIPS
During March, the Wikimedia Foundation received 1,069 donations, with
a combined total dollar value of USD 57,711. Year-to-date, by the end
of March the Wikimedia Foundation had raised USD 5,417,804 in
donations, 35% above the full-year target of USD 4,000,000.
Rebecca Handler coordinated with the Hellman Family Foundation to
finalize an unrestricted gift of $75,000. Our thanks to the Hellman
Family Foundation for its generous support of the Wikimedia projects.
Sara Crouse travelled to Chicago, where she and Jimmy Wales spoke with
the MacArthur Foundation.
FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION
In March, the Wikimedia Foundation hired Bill Gong as its new
Accounting Manager. Bill will fulfill the duties previously held by
Mary Lou Secoquian, as well as incorporating some new responsibilities
related to financial reporting and analysis. Bill comes to Wikimedia
with several decades of non-profit accounting experience, including
positions at the Catholic Charities of San Francisco, the U.S.
National Hispanic University, the Volunteer Center of Marin, and the
Western Association of Schools and Colleges. He was most recently the
Director of Finance for the Bay Area Discovery Museum.
Veronique completed the Form 990 Tax Return, which was reviewed and
approved by the Audit Committee on March 27. The Form 990 Tax Return
will be presented to the WMF Board of Trustees for final approval
during the April Board Meeting.
James T. Owen began work for the Wikimedia Foundation as the new
Personal Assistant to the Executive Director and Deputy Director.
James recently relocated to San Francisco from Manhattan, where he
worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as Associate Administrator
for Information Systems and
Technology. Prior to joining the Met, James was an Executive/Personal
Assistant and Estate Manager, and held positions helping disadvantaged
children and adults at non-profit organizations in New York,
Minnesota, South Africa and Wisconsin.
During March, the Finance and Administrative department continued
developing the Wikimedia Foundation's new Employee Handbook (to be
released June 30, 2009), and began a process for standardizing
development of budgets for funding proposals.
During March, Kul Takanao Wadhwa spoke at Mobile World Congress in
Barcelona, and had meetings with more than twenty European and Asian
potenial partners. He also started researching markets and business
models in the areas of publishing and Wikipedia branded product.
IN COMING WEEKS
1. Begin on-boarding process with new CPO
2. Release of the 990 Tax Return
3. Berlin Wikimedia Chapters Conference and April Board Meeting
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Relevant to the NPG et al discussion:
"Unless Otherwise Indicated: A Survey of Copyright Statements on
Digital Library Collections", by Melanie Schlosser. published in
"College and Research Libraries", v.70(4), pp371-385 (July 2009).
--------
Unfortunately it's not freely available online, but if you have access
to a good university library you should be able to get it. Here's the
abstract and some excerpts:
Abstract: "This study examines the copyright statements attached to
digital collections created by members of the Digital Library
Federation. A total of 786 collections at twenty-nine institutions
were examined for the presence of statements and their content
evaluated for common themes. Particular attention was paid to whether
the institutions in question are meeting their obligation to educate
users about their rights by including information about fair use and
the public domain. Approximately half the collections surveyed had
copyright statements, and those statements were often difficult to
distinguish from terms of use and were frequently vague or
misleading."
--------
Snippets of interest to our discussions: Of the collections examined,
41% consisted entirely of public domain items; 51% of these had a
copyright statement, but only 10% of the institutions mentioned public
domain implicitly or explicitly in their statement. 86%, however,
mentioned personal or educational use (which is not relevant to public
domain items). Of the collections of copyrighted items, 48% had some
sort of statement; 8% mentioned fair use explicitly while 53%
mentioned personal or educational use. In general, the copyright
status of a collection did not affect whether or not a copyright
statement was present -- only half of the collections had statements
overall, and no institution was consistent in its labeling.
And: "Quite a few public domain and mixed [copyright status]
collections had Creative Commons licenses or specific or vague
ownership statements, implying that the contents are copyrighted in
some way. It was especially common for statements to acknowledge that
the institution does not hold the copyright to the original item
(either because it had passed into the public domain or because the
copyright was held by a third party) but to assert copyright over the
digital image."
Schlosser notes that "The definition of a 'copyright statement' used
by this study was somewhat arbitrary. Many of the statements examined
were buried in collection descriptions or looked more like terms of
use statements than copyright statements." She concludes that "It
seems unlikely that libraries are purposely deceiving users with false
or misleading claims of copyright ownership (copyfraud). However, this
study presents evidence that, far from educating users about copyright
or promoting the public
domain, many libraries engaged in digitization projects are omitting a
key tool for copyright education or using it in ways that undermine
users’ needs for accurate copyright information. Once again, it is
outside the scope of this paper to examine the reasons. It is possible
that working knowledge of copyright law in many libraries is not
sufficient for grappling with the complexities involved or that the
issue has simply slipped through the cracks as libraries embark on
difficult and resource-intensive digitization projects."
Note this article is U.S. institution and law-centric, but gives some
nice background on copyright changes and the actions and position of
libraries. As Schlosser says, "While users push for more content and
functionality at less cost, and copyright holders demand greater
technological and legal protection for their works, libraries are
often caught in the middle."
-- phoebe
The Canadian government has asked for comments on copyright revision at
http://copyright.econsultation.ca/
It will accept comments until September 13. Amazingly this mostly
coincides with the time when most people interested in liberalized
copyright laws are away touring Europe or planting trees. When they
regain access to their electronic lifelines it may be too late to comment.
Promoters of these changes would really like Canada to fall in line with
the WIPO treaty that it signed a decade ago. They might have passed
their changes easily if they had been quick about it, but events over
the last 10 years have made this much more controversial then they would
have hoped.
There do not appear to be any rules that would prohibit comments by
non-Canadians.
Ec
Hi everybody,
We're still in the process of getting up to speed, but I'm anxious to
start interacting with more of you and garnering some feedback as we
prepare to initiate this process. As a way to get to know each other
and talk about the process, Philippe and I will be holding IRC office
hours tomorrow on freenode's #wikimedia channel from 8-10pm UTC. (You
can convert this to your local timezone using: http://bit.ly/1aCw9p ).
It will be informal. We'll be around to chat, hear your ideas, and
tell you what we know thus far. Please join us, and please spread the
word to others who might be interested!
Thanks!
=Eugene
--
======================================================================
Eugene Eric Kim ................................ http://xri.net/=eekim
Blue Oxen Associates ........................ http://www.blueoxen.com/
======================================================================
Dear All,Sorry for bringing up a possibly old and closed issue, but could
someone explain to me that why was the GFDL with a possible migration to
CC-BY-SA 3.0 or later[1[ chosen as the site license for the Hungarian (and
I guess some others as well, created at the same time) Wikinews?
Wasn't the CC-BY used by the older Wikinewses a deliberate decision to give
Wikinews an extra opennes and connectivity with other news outlets (I
personally see a bigger chance for some newsproducer agreeing to license
their work under either CC-BY or less likely CC-BY-SA than GFDL or even GFDL
with a possible migration)?
Is the current license compatible with Wikipedia (I am thinking that the
added migration clause makes the project incompatible with GFDL sites that
are not also double licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 or later)?
Thanks,
Bence Damokos
[1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Licensing_clause_for_new_wikis
Wikimedians--
As many of you know, last month we began work on exploring the
visibility of the donate button on all Wikimedia projects. After a long
comment period, we received many comments and many new ideas. Some of
these ideas we have incorporated into a new set of test buttons. Thank
you to everyone who took the time to evaluate Round 1 buttons. You can
see those discussions here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Donation_buttons_upgrade/Ro…
We have 4 designs that we will be testing on the Wikipedia:EN main skin
during August and the first part of September. We are going to evaluate
each button for one full week. This process will unfold over the next
two months.
You can see the designs and timeline at this link:
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.”