Wikimedia-l September 2009

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

123 participants
107 discussions

[Foundation-l] Status of flagged protection (flagged revisions) for English Wikipedia.
by Gregory Maxwell 28 Sep '09

28 Sep '09

Sue, I sent the below included inquiry to wikitech-l regarding http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/. Now almost a month later I still have received no response regarding the status of this test deployment. It is is still not active on the test site, — although this has literally gone on for months. As far as I can tell this is one of the most significant initiatives on English Wikipedia as of lately— in that it has site wide impact and the design and decision of the configuration was the work of hundreds of people, including a reworking after the WMF staff refused to implement the initial decision which only achieved almost a decent majority support, for lack of sufficient community support. Now that the plan has been improved and the support is overwhelming a commitment to roll with this plan was made but no progress appears to be being made. Inquiries have been met with silence. I believe the community expects and deserves a greater level of responsiveness from the staff of Wikimedia. What I'd like to know— What is delaying this deployment? What is a reasonable expectation for the timeline in implement community chosen decisions? How can communication be improved so that the communities high priority implementations aren't ignored for weeks and even months by wikimedia staff? How can the people who care about this help see it through to completion? What does this say about the enormous strategic projects initiate when Wikimedia is already failing to meet its commitments on high impact community initiatives? Thank you for your time and consideration. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> Date: Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 7:21 PM Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org Status? To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 7:17 PM, K. Peachey<p858snake(a)yahoo.com.au> wrote: > On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 7:02 AM, Platonides<Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> You know, when you point to a broken page, people^W wikipedians tend to >> do absurd things like fixing them :) > I was going to fix some up, but import is restricted and i was too > lazy to do copy/paste imports. Ehhh. It don't know that it makes sense to spend effort manually fixing pages on a test project. If the import procedure is not working right it should be improved... In any case, I'm sorry for the tangent. The main intent of my post was to determine the current status: Is the import finished? When will the configuration changes for flagged protection be turned on?

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[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Staff office hours
by Cary Bass 28 Sep '09

28 Sep '09

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello all! This Thursday, October 1, 2009 between 9:00 AM and 10:00 AM PDT (UTC 16:00 and 17:00) Rand Montoya, Wikimedia's fundraiser will be joining us for office hours. Rand will be online to answer your questions and talk about the role of fundraising for the Wikimedia Foundation and the upcoming Fundriaser. The IRC channel that will be hosting Rand's conversation will be #wikimedia-office on the Freenode network. If you do not have an IRC client, you can always access Freenode by going to http://webchat.freenode.net/, typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office as the channel. You may be prompted to click through a security warning. It's fine. - -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate PS: I'll be sending a follow up email to start a thread to discuss the times of the office hours. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkrBK7gACgkQyQg4JSymDYk3PACgzsGGLMJfXKqTETcZI1BW5fZd gnwAn0T+9iH+Jn1p32t3QdnOaCLPaI1K =JMir -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [Foundation-l] Strategic Planning Office Hours
by Philippe Beaudette 28 Sep '09

28 Sep '09

On Sep 28, 2009, at 10:56 AM, Philippe Beaudette wrote: > IRC office hours for the strategy project are upon us again.... Our > next office hours will be: 20:00-21:00 UTC, Tuesday 29 September. > Local timezones can be checked at http://timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=9&day=29&year=2009&h… > > Office hours are on IRC (#wikimedia-strategy at freenode) > > > You can access the chat by going to https://webchat.freenode.net/ and > filling in a username and the channel name (#wikimedia-strategy). You > may be prompted to click through a security warning. It's fine. > Another option is http://chat.wikizine.org. >

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[Foundation-l] Life Long Learning Virtual Conference
by jamesmikedupont＠googlemail.com 28 Sep '09

28 Sep '09

Hello list , Based on the foundation proposals and the other projects that I am working on, I have chosen something that I think mixes in with the wikimedia foundation, creative commons, opencourseware and openstreetmap. it is the goal of life long learning and sharing of knowledge, from your home : Here is a 48 minute talk that I recorded, to cover all these ideas. http://www.archive.org/details/LLLVConf_LifeLongLearningVirtualConferenceDe… http://lllvconf.ning.com/profiles/blogs/dedication-1 you are all invited to participate. all the best, mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the Frenc...
by WJhonson＠aol.com 27 Sep '09

27 Sep '09

In a message dated 9/27/2009 5:51:07 PM Pacific Daylight Time, wiki-lists(a)phizz.demon.co.uk writes: > I disagree. I think the priority is to have the full > resolution pictures of Public Domain works. > > That seems to be a demand to have the highest resolution copies possible.>> > > I was assuming what this meant was, If we find this image on website x and it's a reproduction of a public domain picture/painting, then we could simply copy it. The request (or demand) if you will, is internal, not against the producer of the image. That is, you don't need to *demand* the site owner do anything, you can simply copy the image, without even informing them. W.J.

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[Foundation-l] CheckUser Abuse
by Ferrer 27 Sep '09

27 Sep '09

Checkusers in Russian Wikipedia abused the 'checkuser' rights (for example linked to me unrelated edits from open proxy with marasmic vandalism -- create marasmic attackpages-like topic on «Request for Administrators» about Kalan, obviously with a view to Kalan thought that I was a degenerat-pəderast); also mail send to Wikimedia Foundation. Such decisions are very bad name in the wiki projects.

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Re: [Foundation-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the Frenc...
by WJhonson＠aol.com 27 Sep '09

27 Sep '09

I thought that the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision basically was that a reproduction like this enjoys no new copyright ? W.J.

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[Foundation-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the French cultural authorities
by Yann Forget 27 Sep '09

27 Sep '09

Hello, I think this is worth a larger audience. Yann -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Commons-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the French cultural authorities Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:51:12 +0200 From: David Monniaux <David . Monniaux @ free . fr> To: commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Since its foundation, the French chapter has attempted to reach out to French cultural institutions, such as museums, and incite them to either put their images under free licenses, either allow photographers that contribute freely licensed pictures to take photographs in good conditions. At first, to be frank, we got the cold shoulder. At the time, Wikipedia was demonized by the French media, calling it a cesspool of amateurism, plagiarism, a danger to the youth's intellect, and so on. In addition, certain members of the cultural establishment were at the time attacking Google and other big American sites, pushing their own solutions. Things might be changing though. In 2008, I represented Wikimedia France before a commission tasked with proposing new policies to the Minister of Culture regarding the reuse of public cultural works. The Ministry of Culture is in charge of most national museums and monuments (e.g. the Louvre, the Versailles Castle...) and its agencies have large collections of photographs - but these are copyrighted by the agencies and available under unfree licenses. Our position was as follows: unfree licenses may in the short term allow cash-strapped government agencies to earn some money from selling photographs to publishers, but in the long run they are counter-productive, because media, publishers and important sites such as Wikipedia, worldwide, prefer free and easy to obtain photographs to photographs that they need to purchase from unfamiliar foreign institutions, and thus French cultural institutions would lose visibility. We gave the example of aerospace activities on Wikipedia, which are overwhelmingly illustrated by US government pictures, which somehow convey the impression that countries outside the US do nothing in this field. We pointed out that museums such as the Smithsonian Institution were putting up content on FlickR, and that it was inevitable that publishers and other people that want an illustration from an artist would prefer getting one from FlickR rather than ordering one from the French museums. In contrast, if French museums would release pictures under a free license, they would get free publicity - imagine what it would cost them if they wanted to advertise their exhibitions on Wikipedia (if Wikipedia accepted advertisements), whereas they can get publicity for free simply by the attribution of the photographs! Note that it is not out of ill will that museums and other institutions refuse to release pictures under a free license. There are some legal difficulties involved - sometimes they do not own the rights to the pictures (only in 2006 it was established for sure that rights to works done by civil servants as part of their duties belonged to their employer; also, they sometimes employ private photographers), and besides, there are tricky issues with so-called "moral rights" that may render certain aspects of free content licenses illegal in France. Also, public institutions are pressured to make some money by themselves. I had written a memo, which I gave to the commission. http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/Wikimedia_France_Monniaux_oeuvres_publiqu… This August, I received the report from the commission, with an associated letter from the Minister of Culture, Frédéric Mitterrand, stating that he endorsed the findings in the report. This report advocates many changes that we approve: * stop trying to make insignificant sums of money - instead release as free * cut the red tape - authorizations for reuse of content should be centralized to competent, professional services, rather than be decentralized to many institutions most of whom do not have the technical, legal and financial infrastructure to deal with them * collaborate with free content sites such as Wikipedia - more on this. http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/rapport_culture.pdf (scanned version) http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/rapport_culture_ocr.pdf (OCR version) The cultural services are reluctant to release pictures under free licenses. When I met them, they expected that it would be possible to "negotiate" with Wikipedia and get an exemption from this requirement. I explained to them that freedom was not negotiable. It was, I think, very surprising to them that Wikipedia, an amateurish organization, would dare say that to the Government! I proposed a way out: release lower resolution pictures under free license, keep high resolution pictures (those suitable for art books, posters and so on) proprietary. The suggestion has been retained by the commission - even though they still seem to toy with this idea of "negotiation". In the meantime, the National Library of France (www.bnf.fr) announced it was entering negotiations with Google for digitizing their content. This would announce a sharp change in policies since when Jean-Noël Jeanneney was head of the library - Jeanneney had written a book denouncing Google's hold on the world. I seized the occasion to make our point of view heard. On Wednesday September 16, I published in op-ed column in the national daily Libération, explaining that our cultural policies on were counterproductive - rather than fight the "American cultural invasion" as their proponents suggest, they actually reinforce this invasion by making French content invisible on the Web - because it is kept proprietary. *** This is, I think, the first time such ideas were exposed in the mainstream media. *** Since the report called for renewed contacts between the Ministry and free content sites, I wrote to them thanking the Minister for sending the report and telling them that we are at his disposal for further discussion with his services. We are trying to keep up the "buzz" on these issues - see the Heritage Day email. Just to avoid misconceptions: I do not expect that anything will change soon in the policies of French cultural institutions. It is extremely difficult to change the policies of large, traditional organizations unless there is a strong political will to do so - and I do not think that putting up free content online is a national priority. My foremost goal is to get the ideas of free content and free access across, to the common public and to the people in charge. This is not so easy, because there are many misconceptions about what Wikipedia is about. For instance, contrary to what is often implied by the media, Wikipedia is not a free-for-all where anybody can do anything anytime - but many people believe it and thus are horrified by such a pandemonium, and because of this, they simply won't listen to what we say. Simply overcoming such misinformation is already considerable work. It took us years to be considered respectable enough to be heard by officials, and to get a short op-ed printed in the press. This means that in the meantime, myself and others (Florence Devouard, Pierre Beaudouin, and so on) had to go to many meetings, whose outcome many often just have been that people that did not know us would then see that we are not dangerous anarchist teenagers or raving idealists, but sensible, responsible folks. -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres

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[Foundation-l] Abuse of CheckUser rights
by Ferrer 27 Sep '09

27 Sep '09

Also, checkusers in Russian Wikipedia abused the 'checkuser' rights (for example linked to me unrelated edits from open proxy with marasmic vandalism -- create marasmic attackpages-like topic on «Request for Administrators» about Kalan, obviously with a view to Kalan thought that I was a degenerat-pederast); also mail send to Ombudsman Commission. Such decisions are very bad name in the wiki projects. Ferrer.

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] Abuse of CheckUser rights
by Casey Brown 27 Sep '09

27 Sep '09

This is more of an issue for foundation-l than wikitech-l. On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 12:40 PM, Ferrer <admin(a)some-day.org> wrote: > Also, checkusers in Russian Wikipedia abused the 'checkuser' rights > (for example linked to me unrelated edits from open proxy with > marasmic vandalism -- create marasmic attackpages-like topic on > «Request for Administrators» about Kalan, obviously with a view to > Kalan thought that I was a degenerat-pederast); who can I write about > this? Ombudsmans on Meta? > > Such decisions are very bad name in the wikiprojects. > > Ferrer. > Yes, complains about privacy policy violations or misuse of CheckUser should be addressed to the Ombudsman commission. Information on how to contact them is available on Meta-Wiki: <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission> -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023

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Wikimedia-l September 2009