With all of the translations of Wikipedia content happening through
Google's Translation Toolkit, we are building up a nice set of
{strings and their translations} in many languages. The data that
comes from translatin Wikimedia content is all theoretically available
under our free license... but I don't believe it is available yet in
practice. This sort of "translation memory" is useful to any
translator working on their own projects, and should be made available
for them to use. It would also be good to have a global project where
translators can upload their personal TM data.
Siebrand / Nike / Sabine / Gerard and others who work with
translatewiki and OmegaT: what are the current sources OmegaT uses for
TM information? Is there currently a freely licensed TM database? If
so, we should make sure they are able to access the new translation
links we are generating. If not, we should consider starting one.
SJ
--
Samuel Klein twitter:metasj w:user:sj
If you want to challenge a takedown notice, the proper (and only) course
of action is to file a counter-notice. I had work that I did on Commons
taken down by a bogus DMCA takedown notice several years ago. Instead of
complaining to the Foundation, which would have been pointless (as they
are bound by the DMCA to comply with even the most bogus takedown
notices), I mailed them a counter-notice and the work was restored in
short order.
There are several handy online guides for how to file DMCA
counter-notices. It is very easy and doesn't require hiring a lawyer.
The only catch is that by filing the counter-notice you are putting your
money where your mouth is and legally asserting that you have the right
to post the work (so make sure that this is correct or you may end up in
a lawsuit).
The current situation is completely different than the NPG situation,
which involved only bogus threats, not a legally binding takedown notice.
Ryan Kaldari
Yann Forget writes:
>
> In addition, I receive a personal letter, as "the main editor" of
> these texts, according to Gallimard. We didn't receive any information
> from the Wikimedia Foundation, and I know the details only because I
> have been personally involved.
>
Yann seems to be suggesting here that the Wikimedia Foundation did not
notify him about the Gallimard takedown, but at the same time Yann
acknowledges that he knew about the Gallimard takedown. It is precisely
because we knew Yann knew about Gallimard's takedown demand (it wasn't a
"request") that we did not send him additional correspondence to inform him
about something he already knew about. I still have in my email storage
correspondence with Yann regarding this event from March of this year -- it
seems odd to have Yann complaining that he didn't know enough about it.
Furthermore, when we noted in the takedown who was demanding the takedown
(Editions Gallimard) *and we further listed their contact information* so
that francophone Wikimedians who disagreed with the takedown demand could
make their feelings known to Gallimard. We did this at the very beginning of
the takedown process, which we are obligated by international law to obey.
>
> Now three months later, we didn't receive any
> information from the Foundation about this, and the texts are still
> deleted.
Yann seems here to say that some unnamed group did not know about the
takedown. We posted the takedown information publicly. Yann in fact knew
about it from the beginning. What's more, we listened to Yann's feedback,
including claims that some of the material Gallimard demanded taken down was
material they had no right to make such demands about. We narrowed
Gallimard's takedown demand accordingly. Yann knows this.
> Many contributors are obviously not very happy, and feel that
> the Foundation submitted to the pressure of a commercial publisher.
> Comparing with the National Portrait Gallery affair on Commons, it
> looks like a double standard was applied.
>
I strongly suspect that any contributors who feel as Yann says they feel are
relying on mistaken information and assumptions. We absolutely did resist
the demands of Gallimard within the full extent that French law allows. We
retained French counsel who represented us in discussions with Gallimard,
and we forced Gallimard to make their demands both more specific and
narrower. The "pressure of a commercial publisher" played no role. (A
noncommercial entity making the same legal demand would be entitled to the
same takedown, assuming that the formalities were met.)
Comparing the National Portrait Gallery affair suggests lack of knowledge
about the underlying copyright issues involved. The NPG dispute involved art
works that unquestionably were no longer protected by copyright according to
the law of most signatories of international copyright treaties. The NPG
actually knows this, and did not press any legal challenge, likely because
of uncertainty whether their anomalous theory of copyright protection for
digitized centuries-old artworks would be upheld even by British courts. The
Gallimard case is fundamentally different, since most of the works they
demanded taken down were asserted to be modern works that are clearly within
the period of French copyright protection.
Just a few days before these texts were deleted, I asked Cary what was
> the official opinion of Wikimedia Foundation about texts which are in
> the public domain in USA, but not in France. I was told that "the
> community is entitled to decide by itself".
>
Cary is correct that the Wikimedia Foundation is not purporting to give you
legal advice about copyright and the public domain. We're not your
lawyers. For that, you are best served by consulting French legal counsel.
--Mike
Hiding interlanguage links will worse the effect of Google search on some
small language projects.
See this previous thread:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-January/056671.html
Present situation isn’t much better because intrelanguage links are at the
end of a long list of things on the left side of the screen. It is not clear
what they do, users only see a list of language names.
>From my point of view the “ideal” situation would be:
1) Hide the interlanguage links.
2) Guess if the user is multilingual and then highlight links to their
languages. Saying clearly: You also can read this article in xxx and yyy
language.
There are several ways to guest the user languages: 1) Using IP address 2)
History about previously visited language projects from same user or same IP
3) Allowing several languages in user preferences 4) Using
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_negotiation …
But if we can’t go to the “ideal “situation I think that for small language
projects it is better left things as they are than hiding interlanguage
links.
Klaus Graf writes:
For me there is no reason to believe that Mr. Godwin is a good lawyer.
>
I certainly don't require that you believe I'm a good lawyer. I'd be a very
poor lawyer indeed, however, if I invited publishers to embroil us in
expensive copyright lawsuits that we might not win when both U.S. and
international law provide a mechanism for sidestepping such lawsuits.
I realize that some people think it would be very thrilling if the Wikimedia
Foundation were to take on such lawsuits to vindicate the views of
contributing editors who themselves are not willing to engage directly in
litigation with overreaching publishers. And it would be thrilling, I
suppose, but not in a very responsible way.
> If he receives a formal (blah-blah) correct take-down-notice he will
> take OFFICE ACTION.
>
Yes, it is correct that I will comply with a DMCA (or equivalent) takedown
notice. In this respect, I'm like just about every lawyer everywhere who
represents a service provider. Perhaps they are all bad lawyers, but at
least I'm in good company if they are.
> It was clearly un-lawful to take down the TU Munich logo which isn't
> protectable according German copyright law but WMF has done so.
>
I'm unaware of any takedown notice regarding "the TU Munich logo." Perhaps
you are referring to some action taken by my predecessor.
> It is a shame that WMF hasn't a policy of TRANSPARENCY regarding
> office actions. The right of the community to get all information
> cannot be overruled by Mr. Godwin's personal opinions about secret
> things.
>
In the world outside this mailing list, the fact that I'm responding to this
extent to these criticisms would itself be taken as proof of transparency,
not disproof.
If WMF or it's god-like counsel (who wasn't able to accept critics
> since I am reading this list) has taken office action - there is no
> way to appeal.
>
I invite informed criticism. In fact, I love it -- it's exceedingly helpful
to receive thoughtful, informed criticism. I'm sure you share my belief in
this, Klaus, and I look to you as a model of how to respond to thoughtful
criticism.
--Mike
Ray Saintonge writes:
An important point; we musn't force the WMF lawyer into a conflict of
> interest
>
The issue is only partly conflict of interest, and it often isn't that. It's
primarily that WMF is not insured to give legal advice to community members.
We run an encyclopedia, not a free legal clinic. (By comparison, when I
worked for EFF, I was actually empowered to give free legal advice to people
who called in for help.)
It really feels good to be able to say "Make my day." More of us should
> try it.
>
You'll be pleased, I know, to know that I do get to say something similar
quite frequently. There are plenty of bogus legal threats directed to WMF.
John Vandenberg writes:
In cases like this, I think it would help if the WMF lawyers would
> tell the community, bluntly, that they can't assist the community in
> the matter, with a quick overview of why they cant assist.
>
See above.
It's also no secret that we have referred community members to lawyers in
the past because we could not represent or counsel those members. This is
what we did with regard to NPG.
> Is that possible without putting WMF lawyers in a tight spot?
>
Sometimes. Sometimes not. (The issue is not so much putting lawyers in a
tight spot as it is one of making WMF more vulnerable, e.g., by revealing
defense strategies.)
Peter Gervai writes:
Or we can reasonably expect them to ask for real legal advice from (or
> paid by) the WMF and _then_ accept the _known_ risk to file a
> counter-notice.
>
What happens if they follow the legal advice from WMF and then face
liability anyway? (This sometimes happens even when the best advice is
given.) WMF is not insured against the malpractice lawsuit that community
members might bring in that case.
John Vandenberg writes:
.. find generic legal advice ... or ...
>
> .. find a lawyer among the community who can help.
>
There is plenty of generic legal advice about how to respond to takedown
notices. A little Googling will turn up some for you.
--Mike
As requested, here's the weekly Pending Changes update.
The big news is that we have picked a date for releasing the new version
of Flagged Revisions and launching the trial of Pending Changes on the
English Wikipedia: June 14.
I'd like to stress that this will be a trial. The goal is to learn,
which means that things will not be perfect at launch. There are many
areas where we hope to verify our current work and see what improvements
can be made:
* the technical underpinnings
* the interface and language as experienced by
* our readers
* casual editors
* serious editors
* reviewers
* admins
* which articles should be covered
* how best to use Pending Changes
We think we have something that is workable as is, and have notions for
possible improvements down the road. To know what improvements are the
right ones, we'll need real use and community feedback. We intend to
respond speedily to community concerns and lessons learned from actual
use. To that end we aim to keep to the same weekly release schedule that
we've been using on labs these last few months.
More mundanely, the work completed this week includes ops documentation,
the completion of the terminology work, and some interface improvements.
We've also had some vigorous testing done by the folks at Calcey, who
discovered a few bugs for us.
If you'd like to see the current condition of things, you can try it out
here:
http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
To see the upcoming work, it's listed in our tracker, under Current and
Backlog:
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/46157
We expect to release to labs again next week, after which we intend to
go live on the English Wikipedia.
William
Hi folks,
Forwarding from the announce list, since it does not yet auto-forward :-)
Thanks,
Sue
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: 2 June 2010 19:08
Subject: Announcing new Chief Global Development Officer and new Chief
Community Officer
To: WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Hi folks,
I am really happy to announce two important new Wikimedia Foundation
hires. Zack Exley will be Wikimedia's new Chief Community Officer,
and Barry Newstead will be our Chief Global Development Officer. Both
will start just before Wikimania, and will join us in Gdansk.
There will be a press release going out tomorrow, but the news isn't
confidential: please feel free to tell whoever you like.
Zack Exley will be our new Chief Community Officer. Zack joins
Wikimedia from the Chicago-based firm Thoughtworks where he oversaw
strategy and technology projects for organizations like Obama For
America, Rock the Vote, and Global Zero.
Zack has a long history of mobilizing people and facilitating them
reaching their goals. During the nineties, he worked as a labour
organizer and software developer. In 2002, he joined MoveOn.org as
director of organizing, where he ran mobilization and fundraising
campaigns – and in the same period, helped the Howard Dean campaign
with its online fundraising. Zack left MoveOn.org to become online
communications and organizing director for the 2004 Kerry-Edwards U.S.
presidential campaign, where he ran the team that raised $125 million
online for Kerry, and also oversaw online-to-offline organizing
efforts responsible for mobilizing hundreds of thousands of field
volunteers. In 2005, he led internet strategy and online fundraising
for the UK Labour Party's 2005 election campaign, and since 2005 he
has acted as a senior strategist and advisor helping many
mission-driven organizations advance their fundraising and
mobilization goals, including the American Civil Liberties Union,
Amnesty International, the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP), the International Rescue Committee and
Greenpeace USA.
Zack grew up in Connecticut and has also lived in Kenya, China and the
United Kingdom. He has an BA in Economics from the University of
Massachusetts.
As Chief Community Officer, Zack will be responsible for developing
the Wikimedia Foundation's relationships with key constituencies
including readers, editors and donors. This will include our work
aimed at recruiting new editors (including the public policy project)
and supporting community health, as well as fundraising. The people
who will report to Zack are Philippe, Cary, Frank, Rand, Rebecca and
Sara, plus their direct reports.
Zack currently lives in Kansas City: he'll be relocating to the Bay
Area in July.
Barry Newstead will be our Chief Global Development Officer. Some of
you know Barry from Buenos Aires or Berlin, where he attended
Wikimania and the chapters meeting, respectively. He comes to us from
the strategy consultancy firm The Bridgespan Group, where he has spent
the past year leading the Bridgespan team supporting Wikimedia with
its strategic planning process. For the past six years, Barry has led
Bridgespan's work in education innovation and social technology, which
mainly consisted of working with CEOs on strategy development,
organizational development and leadership issues. Prior to joining
Bridgespan, he spent eight years at The Boston Consulting Group, where
he worked with global clients in the financial services, media and
energy sectors on global strategy, organizational restructuring,
change management and post-merger integration.
Barry was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and raised in Toronto,
Canada. He has an undergraduate degree from the University of Western
Ontario, and a master's degree in public policy from the John F.
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
In this new role with us, Barry will be our Chief Global Development
Officer (CGDO), the position formerly known as the Chief (Global)
Programs Officer. As CGDO, Barry will be responsible for our
activities focused specifically on increasing readership and
supporting editor self-organization in the Global South, for our
messaging to the general public and the media, and for our activities
aimed at supporting and developing chapters. The people who will
report to him are Jay and his direct report Moka, plus Kul, plus a
number of new hires dedicated to supporting new activities that have
come out of the strategic plan. You'll hear more about that in coming
months, once Barry has joined us.
We are really lucky that Barry got engaged in our work, and is willing
to now join us. His extensive background in organizational
development particularly will be useful to us, as we all collectively
further evolve our thinking about how to structure Wikimedia as an
international movement. He'll also be terrific with the global
development work due to his extensive international background. And,
his background as a consultant has trained him to be a great listener
and facilitator, which is important in our work.
I want to take a minute to offer my thanks to everyone who helped with
the process of bringing in both Zack and Barry, which has been ongoing
for many months. Dozens of people –including board members, advisory
board members, editors, friends and supporters-- helped us source
candidates for these roles. Our board members spoke at length with
the recruiting firm m|Oppenheim, gave me good feedback on potential
candidates, and helped with the interviewing. Several staff
participating in the interviewing as well, including Erik, Veronique,
Daniel, Rebecca, Rand, Sara and Jay.
And of course, a big thanks to m|Oppenheim. In recruiting for these
roles, m|Oppenheim spoke with hundreds of people over a period of
about six months, to develop a midlist of 65 candidates, of whom eight
reached a “final interview” stage. m|Oppenheim did really great work
and I'm very pleased with this outcome.
This completes the C-level hiring, with the exception of the Chief
Human Resources Officer, which we're in the middle of recruiting for.
That's is currently underway with m|Oppenheim, with support from our
friends at Omidyar Network. I expect we'll be able to announce the
new CHRO within six weeks or so.
Before closing – I wanted to talk a little about how these roles have
evolved through the hiring process. Originally, as you may remember,
we had set out to hire a Chief Program Officer and a Chief Development
Officer – however, during the hiring process, those roles morphed into
a Chief Global Development Officer and a Chief Community Officer.
It's not unusual for that kind of thing to happen: it's normal for
thinking to evolve, and it's normal for roles to be customized a
little to suit people's particular skills and experiences. But I did
want to call out one particular aspect of my thinking that might be
interesting for people here on this list.
Setting out to hire a Chief Development Officer is a “normal” thing
for a non-profit organization to do: in most non-profits, fundraising
is structured as a distinct department, separate from the rest of the
work of the organization. As we went through the hiring process
though, it became increasingly obvious to me that that conventional
structure doesn't really suit us. Most non-profits provide special
access and privileges to donors, and pay them special attention,
because they are the fuel that powers the organization. Donors are of
course our fuel too, and we're deeply grateful for their help. But
--unusually in the world of non-profits-- we have an additional group
of supporters without whom the work couldn't be done --- which is you:
the volunteers who build and maintain the projects. And our readers
are another special group, in part because we hope to persuade them to
join us as editors and donors.
Given the importance of all three groups to our work, I believe it
doesn't make sense for us to treat donors as distinct: rather, we
should invite them into our larger community, and treat them as a part
of that greater whole. This means, among other things, speaking with
donors in the same tone and style, and with the same substance and the
same type of information, as we speak with readers and editors.
During the hiring process, Zack pointed out to me that the CDO job as
then-structured didn't support that vision. He argued that by siloing
off donors into a separate department, we were making it more
difficult to achieve the level of authenticity I wanted. That was an
important observation, and I took it seriously. I believe that
restructuring the CDO job to create a department that includes all our
key relationships is an unusual thing to do, and it's arguably a bit
risky. But I think it's the right structure for us, given who we are,
and the unique nature of our work.
I'd be happy to talk further about Zack and Barry, and I'm sure they
–and other staff-- would be too. This is an important moment for
Wikimedia: please join me in welcoming them officially to our world.
Thanks,
Sue
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
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