Hi,
By popular demand, mediawiki/ cloaks are now available for all
developers with access to commit to svn. There will probably be future
exceptions made if we have lots of artists and translators who want to
get cloaks too but initially we're using this as an indicator of
contributions.
To get such a cloak, make an edit somewhere on mediawiki.org saying "I
am [[User:Xyz]] and my nick on IRC is xyz". Your userpage is a good
choice. You can then revert this edit and then send a link to the diff
to one of the IRC Group Contacts when you request your cloak. This is
anyone of seanw, Rjd0060, kibble or dungodung on IRC. Please check
idle times and contact one who is active. Once they have confirmed
your access and identity (you'll need to state your on-wiki username
on IRC too and be identified to NickServ) you'll be cloaked with
mediawiki/On-Wiki-Username or MediaWiki/On-Wiki-Username (your
choice).
The reason this has taken so long to come through is because we were
waiting on our developer to add features to verify this sort of cloak
automatically to the cloak request system. Unfortunately we seem to
have lost touch with him so are switching to doing all cloaks
manually.
S
--
Sean Whitton / <sean(a)silentflame.com>
OpenPGP KeyID: 0x25F4EAB7
>From Slashdot article [1]:
"The Guardian reports that a study by Ed H Chi demonstrates that the
character of Wikipedia has changed significantly since Wikipedia's
first burst of activity between 2004 and 2007. While the encyclopedia
is still growing overall, the number of articles being added has
reduced from an average of 2,200 a day in July 2007 to around 1,300
today while at the same time, the base of highly active editors has
remained more or less static. Chi's team discovered that the way the
site operates had changed significantly from the early days, when it
ran an open-door policy that allowed in anyone with the time and
energy to dedicate to the project. Today, they discovered, a stable
group of high-level editors has become increasingly responsible for
controlling the encyclopedia, while casual contributors and editors
are falling away. 'We found that if you were an elite editor, the
chance of your edit being reverted was something in the order of 1% —
and that's been very consistent over time from around 2003 or 2004,'
says Chi. 'For editors that make between two and nine edits a month,
the percentage of their edits being reverted had gone from 5% in 2004
all the way up to about 15% by October 2008. And the 'onesies' —
people who only make one edit a month — their edits are now being
reverted at a 25% rate.' While Chi points out that this does not
necessarily imply causation, he suggests it is concrete evidence to
back up what many people have been saying: that it is increasingly
difficult to enjoy contributing to Wikipedia unless you are part of
the site's inner core of editors. Wikipedia's growth pattern suggests
that it is becoming like a community where resources have started to
run out. 'As you run out of food, people start competing for that
food, and that results in a slowdown in population growth and means
that the stronger, more well-adapted part of the population starts to
have more power.'"
I think that this analysis has point and that we should think about
consequences. Today WM RS had meeting in Novi Sad and we talked about
this issue, too: How to attract new contributors to stay at Wikipedia.
[1] - http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/08/13/1310228/Wikipedia-Approaches-Its-Li…
I hope you don't mind my raising this issue here - it's a technical issue affecting all wikimedia email lists so I thought this would be as good a place as any.
When I subscribe to an email list I tend to get emails delivered, but I sometimes find it useful to view older emails on the archive. I know some people like to read all their emails on the archive, so this is also important for them. It is also useful when you have to make a publicly accessible reference to a previous post.
However, the standard interface and formatting in the archives is not particularly professional or up to date. For instance, looking at a recent message I posted to the WikimediaUK list:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediauk-l/2009-August/004565.html
The word wrapping is all over the shop and the formatting has all been stripped from the text. Some third party re-users do a better job, but it's still not all the way there:
The Mail Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org/msg01470.html
Google Mail: http://groups.google.com/group/wmf-wikimediauk-l/browse_thread/thread/a3508…
The line spacing looks funny with the first and you still lose the text formatting with the second.
Has anyone got any tips about how I can either format an email to begin with or view the email afterwards to solve this problem?
Secondly, has this technology been developed recently? Seems it needs a bit of investment, or alternatively, we need to move over to a better third party platform like, perhaps, Yahoo Groups.
Regards,
Andrew
WMID is also using googlegroups. Sorry for top posting.
------Original Message------
From: Michael Peel
Sender: foundation-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
ReplyTo: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Email list archives
Sent: Aug 16, 2009 14:33
On 16 Aug 2009, at 03:58, Pavlo Shevelo wrote:
>> For me Google Groups do a good job and it's enough.
>
> Yes, I would support the proposal to look at Google Groups (as
> alternative mailing list platform) closer.
> As we can see Wikimedia Brasil and Wikimedia UK are using that
> platform and perhaps not only them (I'm pushing this platform for
> Wikimedia Ukraine while we started from Mailman-based list, provided
> by WMF).
WMUK still use the standard mailman platform [1]. As far as I know,
it's just WMBR that are using google groups.
Does Mailman not provide any sort of templating options that make it
more useable? I see that the wikien-l mailing list has a themed front
page which greatly improves how that page looks [2], but that doesn't
seem to extend any further than that page.
Mike
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
[2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
--
Ivan Lanin. http://www.wikimedia.or.id
Dikirim dari BeriHitam® 25704A0F
Lol, Goatse!
- b.
Friday, August 14, 2009, 12:08:01 PM, David Gerard wrote:
DG> Our logo competitions have landed us such excellent trademarks as the
DG> puzzle globe, the WMF logo and the MediaWiki flower. But most entries
DG> are an excellent demonstration of why graphic designers are paid
DG> money.
DG> This one did make the b3ta newsletter, though. Could be a very
DG> profitable bit of visual identity for us.
DG> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikty_no_text_up.png
The main issue is *deception*. There is no disclaimer anywhere (except
inside the book) that this is a copy from Wikipedia or somewhere else.
People are tricked into believing that this is original content by the three
listed editors. It almost got tricked myself... and it came out that I wrote
13 articles out of 48 included in that book. I figured something is fishy
only because I recognized the titles. I would espect average Joe, not
intimately familiar with Wikipedia, to fall for that. Especially when you
see another happy customer rating it five stars for "great collection of
information"...
I am not objecting to publishing Wikipedia. If someone wants to put an
honest effort into producing Wikipedia CDs/DVDs/books -- more power to them.
But please label in big clear letters "copied from Wikipedia" on the cover
for everyone to see. I know German Wikipedia was published on a DVD -- I
have zero objections to that. I also know that the "book extension" to
mediawiki was added exactly for this purpose. But in this particular case I
think it's rather abusive.
Renata
On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 6:22 PM, <wjhonson(a)aol.com> wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Renata St <renatawiki(a)gmail.com>
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>; Wikimedia
> Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Thu, Aug 13, 2009 3:10 pm
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Alphascript Publishing: 1900+ copy&pasted books
> from Wikipedia
>
>
> It was raised before on the Village Pump, but I think this is so
> disturbing
> that we ought to do something.
>
> "Alphascript Publishing" has published over 1900 (and counting) books,
> all
> available on Amazon. Prices range from $31 to $179. All of these books
> are
> simple computer-generated copies from Wikipedia and (at least according
> to
> one Amazon reviewer) couple other public domain websites. Trouble is,
> from
> book description page there is absolutely no way of knowing that the
> book is
> a Wikipedia mirror on paper. At least several Amazon buyers have been
> fooled. What really gets my blood boiling is that Amazon user "VDM
> Verlag
> Dr.Müller" (I think someone exposed him as 100% shareholder of the
> publishing co) goes on rating these products as "five star"....
>
> The publisher seems to observe the copyright (even includes full edit
> history) so legal action seems impossible. Someone already contacted
> Amazon,
> but they "are not responsible for the quality of books sold". In the
> meantime the number of such books grew from 900 in June to almost 2000
> as of
> today... I think we should do something. At the very least publishing
> product reviews wa
> rning that what this is....
>
> See:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PrimeHunter/Alphascript_Publishing_sells_…
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)/Archive…<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28miscellaneous%29/Arc…>
> http://rufftoon.livejournal.com/59337.html
>
> Thanks,
> Renata
>
> P.S. on a happier note: half of Wikipedia editors now can claim to be
> "published authors".>>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Renata I'm not sure to what you're objecting.
> Our contents are republishable. The author is certainly free to rate
> his own work five stars.
> What's the issue here?
>
> Will Johnson
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
Our logo competitions have landed us such excellent trademarks as the
puzzle globe, the WMF logo and the MediaWiki flower. But most entries
are an excellent demonstration of why graphic designers are paid
money.
This one did make the b3ta newsletter, though. Could be a very
profitable bit of visual identity for us.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikty_no_text_up.png
- d.
Wikimedia France and the Wikimedia Foundation are currently
considering the idea of a multimedia-focused workshop and planning
event to take place in October 2009. Rather than an open community
conference like Wikimania, this would be a workshop targeting skilled
practitioners who want to help transform our approach to rich media
throughout the Wikimedia universe.
This event will most likely happen in France, as Wikimedia France will
be providing logistical support and most of the funding, with a goal
to ensure that the most relevant people can be present at the event.
One of the key objective of this meeting would be to help inform the
recently funded Multimedia Usability Project to improve the usability
of Wikimedia Commons. This meeting should help to immerse the project
team in the complex world of multimedia in Wikimedia projects today.
It should also help to start building a core group of volunteers as
well as chapter support for the project.
Beyond the Multimedia Usability Project, we're hoping that useful
practical discussions will lead to outcomes positively driving
approaches to sharing and collaborating multimedia in the Wikimedia
universe forward.
We're thinking of a three-day event with a group of 30 people total,
who could receive travel scholarships if they don't have any other
organizational funding support. The meeting could potentially be
divided into three tracks: technology, content partnerships, and
community practices. Participants would be a combination of people
directly invited because of their known high value contributions, and
people applying or being nominated.
We're currently envisioning that the tracks could be structured as follows:
* Technology track: This would include hammering out specs and code
for key technological improvements deemed necessary for rich media in
WMF projects in areas such as upload usability and workflow, search
and tagging (including multilingual search), permissions workflow,
deletion workflow, and so forth. It could also address next-generation
technologies such as video editing tools, as well as operational
issues associated with large scale content delivery.
* Content partnerships track: This would look at best practices, and
could perhaps be used to hammer out a "content partnerships manual"
for working with institutions as in the case of the German archive
partnerships. It could also be used to prioritize partnership
opportunities.
* Community practices track: Here we would discuss constructive ways
for the Commons and local project communities to interact, existing
deletion and arbitration practices, legal issues with different types
of media, and other day-to-day issues that Commons community members
deal with.
Ideally the outputs of the process would also feed into the Wikimedia
Foundation strategy planning process. This workshop is not designed to
address "content creation" questions, i.e., how to shoot a good photo,
how to restore an image, etc. It's intended to identify practical
solutions and approaches for challenges in the above three areas.
Please give us your feedback
* Does this basic division make sense? Might another track setup be
more helpful?
* In the above tracks, which other issues should be addressed? Which
issues should be avoided?
* Any other comments and suggestions welcome.
Also, if you'd like to participate in such an event, or if you want to
nominate someone else to do so, feel free to send us an initial note.
We may decide to not hold the event, or to alter its shape, but a
provisional expression of interest will help us plan. Currently we're
holding October 9-11 as the dates.
Please leave comments on the talk page here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Usability_Project_Meeting_October…
Or if you want to express interest privately, please e-mail both me
and Delphine Ménard:
erik(a)wikimedia.org
delphine.menard(a)wikimedia.fr
Thanks!
Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
