Wikimedia-l August 2010

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

140 participants
80 discussions

[Foundation-l] Problems using pictures from Commons in Blogger - making it more of a stock photo repository
by Gerard Meijssen 16 Aug '10

16 Aug '10

Hoi, Blogger is the platform I use now for many years to blog about the subjects that are important in my appreciation of a Wiki world. At first I did not illustrate my blogposts but thanks to Pfctdayelise I started to pepper my blog posts with illustrations. At this moment it is no longer possible for me to upload pictures to blogger. The message that I get is that I have to ensure that I have a license for the pictures that I upload. This is true for pictures that I have downloaded from Commons and cropped, it is for screen shots of the interaction with the Blogger user interface.. It is possible for me to get pictures displayed when I refer to the upload page of a Commons picture but that does me no good when it is a svg picture. Obviously I can download the picture and save it as an png ... but that does me no good. There are several "solutions" to this problem. I can upload the png, I can use Wordpress instead. The obvious solution is for Google to get its act together. The solution that I like best is for Commons to become a true repository of images that is not only intended for the illustration of Wikipedia and its sister projects but also for the illustration of blogs like mine. Commons is my first choice for illustrations for my blog but for some topics it just does not provide me with the illustration that I am looking for. I think that Commons has already many images that are usable, what would be needed is just a different kind of pictures or more pictures that are grouped by subject and easier to find. Thanks, GerardM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Farsi.svg The svg I would like to use as a png http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2010/08/big-boost-for-mediawiki-localis… blog post that needs an illustration

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[Foundation-l] Partecipation in Wikimania 2011
by Harel Cain 14 Aug '10

14 Aug '10

Hi all, Thanks for bringing this up - although I think this belongs on wikimania-l and not necessarily here. I believe we'll be posting a FAQ dedicated to these issues quite soon on our website, http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org, as this matter has been brought up a number of times already. I'll try to sum it up quickly for now: * We will be delighted to have as high a participation as possible from the entire Middle East. This is really, really important to us, more than everything else. You can visit our website and see that most of it has already been translated into Arabic. * Unfortunately, ME politics is often plagued by tactics such as banning and boycotting. No matter how good our intentions, I'm sorry to say there will be people there who will still abstain from coming to the conference for their own reasons, and there's not too much we can do about it. If someone doesn't want to come to Israel, well, then, we can only express our regret at his choice (which we think is misinformed). I wish they could all come here and change their minds about Israeli reality. * Wikimedia is not about politics, Wikimedia Israel doesn't represent the Israeli government (or any other political entity), and we're trying to focus this on free knowledge and a way for people to meet and interact, not on politics. * Wikimania 2011 will be held in Haifa, a city which is home to both Jews and Arabs. We'll be promoting it (also) using bilingual posters and brochures, and will try to reach the very large population of Israeli-Arab students in Haifa's academic institutions. * Israeli Arabs can (of course!!) reach the conference like any other Israeli - they just need to get to the venue, on foot, by car, by train or by bus. * Palestinians living in the West Bank enter Israel by the thousands every day. Yes, they need a permit for that. Obtaining that permit is a routine operation. Yes, some difficulties might come up there, we'll use our contacts within Israeli authorities to try to facilitate this as much as possible, including issuing letters of invitation and contacting the authorities well in advance. In fact, Israel might be one of the easier destination for Palestinians to reach. * Palestinians living in Gaza will have a harder time entering Israel. We're looking at various possibilities to make this possible, should there be any real demand for this. One possibility is for them to enter Egypt via the border crossing in Rafah (which Egypt usually closes) and to reach Israel via Egypt. * Having said that, we know of *no* Palestinian (or Israeli-Arab) Wikimedians, despite repeated attempts over the years to locate some. If someone knows any, please let us know! * Citizens of other countries can fly into Israel or enter Israel through the open border crossings with Jordan and Egypt. Israel of course recognizes the passports of countries with which it has diplomatic relations, even only partial relations, such as Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Algiers and others. Please refer to http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Visas. * For some countries which do not recognize Israel like Syria, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia, entry will be more difficult, but there have been sporadic entries from these countries in the past, and should any participant from these countries wish to attend Wikimania, we will do our utmost to assist. We have a letter of support from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and exceptions can always be made at border crossings if approved from on-high. I'd be happy to keep this discussion constructive and not let it deteriorate into a flame war. Of course if anyone has further questions, we'll be happy to answer them. Harel Cain Wikimania 2011 team

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[Foundation-l] Push translation
by stevertigo 14 Aug '10

14 Aug '10

Translation between wikis currently exists as a largely pulling paradigm: Someone on the target wiki finds an article in another language (English for example) and then pulls it to their language wiki. These days Google and other translate tools are good enough to use as the starting basis for an translated article, and we can consider how we make use of them in an active way. What is largely a "pull" paradigm can also be a "push" paradigm - we can use translation tools to "push" articles to other wikis. If there are issues, they can be overcome. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of articles in English can be "pushed" over to other languages, and fill a need for those topics in those languages. -SC

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[Foundation-l] Wiki-Conference NYC August 28-29
by Pharos 13 Aug '10

13 Aug '10

Our 2nd annual Wiki-Conference NYC will be held over the weekend of August 28-29 2010, hosted by ITP at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and also supported by Free Culture @ NYU and Wikimedia New York City. Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner will be giving a keynote, and we will also have a second keynote speaker TBA. There's still plenty of time to join a panel, or to propose a lightning talk or an open space session. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Wiki-Conference Register for the Wiki-Conference here: http://bit.ly/wikinyc Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) Wikimedia New York City http://nyc.wikimedia.org

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[Foundation-l] $20 TV-based en:wp reader
by David Gerard 13 Aug '10

13 Aug '10

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/humane-reader-wikipedia-console,news-7706.html Just a tiny gadget that hooks to your TV to display stuff and holds a copy of en:wp. Nice reuse :-) - d.

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[Foundation-l] [Language committee] New member
by Milos Rancic 13 Aug '10

13 Aug '10

Our new member is Huib Laurens (meta:User:Huib). His main role is to help us in keeping up to date archives of our mailing list [1] and other technical things. However, LangCom doesn't have strictly divided roles, which means that Huib is a also a full member of LangCom, which includes decision making, too. [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Archives

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[Foundation-l] Partecipation in Wikimania 2011
by Andrea Zanni 13 Aug '10

13 Aug '10

DISCLAIMER: this is a delicate issue that could easily generate a flame. So please everybody presume the good faith and stay on topic :-) I don't really know if this issue as been discussed in earlier threads (I subscribed to this list after Gdansk and the only pertinent thing I found is here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2011/Bids/Haifa/Q%26A#Participants), but I would like to know if there are updates about the possibility for Middle East citizens to have permissions to enter Israel for Wikimania 2011. I guess this type of permission is not easy to obtain (I'm thinking for example about citizens of Syria, West Bank or Iran) and I also remember a discussion in Gdansk (with Jan Bart, just after the World Cup Final :-( ) about some initiatives we could support to increase participation. Are there any news or updates? Could I find some information somewhere? Thank you in advance. Aubrey

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Re: [Foundation-l] relocating search servers
by Robert Stojnic 13 Aug '10

13 Aug '10

Hi all, The relocation process took more than we anticipated, so it now looks like the situation is going to continue throughout the day today. Towards the afternoon/evening various wikis are going to be gradually restored to normal. Cheers, Robert On 12/08/10 22:27, Robert Stojnic wrote: > > Hi all, > > We are currently relocating some servers internally in the datacenter. > As a consequence, search snippets, "did you mean..." and interwiki > search are going to be turned off during this time, and only bare > results shown. This will affect all WMF wikis. I expect, if everything > goes well, that in around 4-5h things are going to go back to normal. > > Cheers, Robert >

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[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikitech-l] relocating search servers
by Huib Laurens 12 Aug '10

12 Aug '10

forwarding because this hits more people than just wikitech-l ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Robert Stojnic <rainmansr(a)gmail.com> Date: 2010/8/12 Subject: [Wikitech-l] relocating search servers To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Hi all, We are currently relocating some servers internally in the datacenter. As a consequence, search snippets, "did you mean..." and interwiki search are going to be turned off during this time, and only bare results shown. This will affect all WMF wikis. I expect, if everything goes well, that in around 4-5h things are going to go back to normal. Cheers, Robert _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l -- Huib "Abigor" Laurens Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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[Foundation-l] IRC meeting to discuss fundraiser
by Philippe Beaudette 12 Aug '10

12 Aug '10

Hi all, I'd like to have a meeting on IRC this week to discuss the 2010-2011 annual appeal/fundraiser. This will be an "anyone is welcome" type meeting, open to the broad community. During this, Zack Exley and I will take you through our inital thoughts about the fundraiser and its organization, and ask you to join us in a discussion about the (massive) role of volunteers and chapters in this year's fundraiser. Because of the vagaries of time zones, scheduling live meetings is hard. So, we'll have a couple of potential times, and we'll log and post the meeting for anyone who wasn't able to make it. The meetings will be held Thursday, 12 August at 23:00 UTC (16:00 PDT) and Friday, 13 August at 16:30 UTC (09:30 PDT) in the #wikimedia- fundraising channel on the freenode network on IRC (irc://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-fundraising ). You can access this using freenode's webclient, which is available at http://webchat.freenode.net/ or by using your favorite IRC client. Hope to see you there! Philippe ____________________ Philippe Beaudette Head of Reader Relations Wikimedia Foundation philippe(a)wikimedia.org Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Wikimedia-l August 2010