>
> I agree that the edit restrictions on the WMF wiki are very
> unfortunate and there's still much more that can be done (perhaps one
> day leading toward www.wikimedia.org as a single information,
> collaboration and discussion hub, subsuming both WMF and Meta, and
> possibly other backstage wikis).
>
> --
> Erik Möller
> Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
>
Perhaps have Meta: Strategy:, Outreach: Usability:, Tech:, and Wikimania*:
namespaces to replace the separated sites in existence today. The main
space could cover wikimediafoundation.org content. Wikimedia: for meta-wiki
discussion. Or any variation on that. At the least, there is no need to
keep creating new wikis for Wikimania if you properly tag content for the
year it applies to.
-- Aaron Adrignola
Dear friends,
I have proposed a new platform named
WIKIPLOT<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WIKIPLOT> where
we can share our knowledge, work or idea - all that are important and
original creations of an individual, group or organization (e.g - paintings,
story, short articles, books, poems, lyrics, scientific ideas etc). Please
visit this Link <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WIKIPLOT> to know more about
it.
I would appreciate if you give some thought to my idea and support the
proposal.
Thank you,
A fellow wikipedian
Gyanam Bhartam
Hi all,
As the month draws to a close, I wanted to announce this year's ombudsman commission, and offer my thanks to those who have served on the commission for the past year.
Outgoing commission members are:
Carkuni, of jawiki
DR, of ruwiki
Elian, of dewiki
Lar, of enwiki and commonswiki
Palnatoke, of dawiki.
I know that you join me in thanking them for their service to the community.
The incoming commission is:
User:HerbyThyme, of commonswiki
User:Sir48, of dawiki
User:FloNight, of enwiki, commonswiki and wikiquote
User:Mwpnl, of nlwiki
User:Thogo, of dewiki
They will serve for a term of one year.
Thanks, everyone!
Best,
pb
_______________________
Philippe Beaudette
Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
ofc: +1 415 839 6885 x6643
mobile: +1 918 200 WIKI (9454)
pbeaudette(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://donate.wikimedia.org
The main page of the Usability wiki ( http://usability.wikimedia.org ) says
that it's discontinued and the whole wiki appears to be locked for editing.
I don't remember this being discussed, although i may have missed it.
I understand that after completing the Vector rollout and the using up of
the grant that particular project is over, but it certainly must not mean
that all the usability problems have been solved and that the Foundation
won't work on usability anymore. Quite the contrary, usability should be one
of the Foundation main concerns - it makes sense in general and it is also
directly related to four out of five movement priorities as listed at the
main page of the Strategy wiki ( http://strategy.wikimedia.org/ ; the only
priority to which usability is not directly related is "Focus on quality
content"). I have dozens of ideas for much-needed usability improvements
that will benefit both beginning and experienced editors, even before anyone
mentions WYSIWYG, and dozens of ideas for new rounds of usability testing,
which, without a doubt, will occur one day. And i am sure that i am not the
only one.
I suggest unlocking the Usability wiki and re-opening it as a community hub
for ideas about usability. It should be a completely unlocked wiki, with
anonymous users allowed to edit etc.; if spam becomes a problem, editing can
be allowed for registered users only.
Of course, such discussions can take place on Meta or on the Strategy wiki,
but since the Usability wiki already exists, it can be recycled as a site
focused on these matters.
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
The OLPC community is currently using a custom map mashup to help
volunteers and school projects around the world find one another.[1]
It's not hard to skin.
http://olpcmap.nethttp://code.google.com/p/olpc-map-net/
There was recently a discussion about using this tool on the
cultural-partnerships list. Are there existing collaborative maps of
Wikimedia groups and projects? Is this something worth trying?
SJ
[1] For OLPC this provided a happy medium between mapping "all users"
and mapping "large established regional groups", neither of which
captured the energy of the small innovative projects which drove and
defined local communities. More detail:
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/sj/2011/01/27/mapping-global-communities/
[To WMUK-l for local interest, and foundation-l as the issue's been
discussed there at length.]
Just spoke to a researcher, Charlotte something, for BBC 5 Live
Investigates, Sunday 9pm, this item likely to go out 9:45pm or so.
This was just for her research, it wasn't a recorded piece.
The piece is on Books LLC and similar operations, which sell reprints
of Wikipedia articles as books on Amazon. She was after the Wikipedian
viewpoint.
I said that it's entirely legal - that you can use our stuff without
permission, even commercially, and we like that - "Please, use our
stuff!" - you just have to give credit and let other people reuse your
version: "share and share alike."
So the only issue is that it isn't clear enough these books are just
Wikipedia reprints. For us, the annoyance - I said that "annoyance" is
probably the word - is when a Wikipedian finds one of these books,
goes "aha, a source!", buys it and ... discovers it's just reprints of
stuff they have. "While trademark is an issue, we'd like them or
Amazon to make it a *bit* clearer that these texts are Wikipedia
reprints."
She wasn't clear on the business model. I said these are
print-on-demand books, where *no* copies exist until someone orders
one, at which point a single copy is printed and sent. POD is *very
good* these days - you can send a PDF to a machine, and the machine
will produce an *absolutely beautiful* perfect-bound book for you,
which previously would have been quite pricey. This is enough for them
to have a tiny, tiny niche.
I also pointed out that anyone can make their own PDFs of Wikipedia
articles and some of the projects have partnerships with outside
companies to do nice printed books of Wikipedia reprints. But in such
cases, everyone is very clear on what they're getting: a nice printed
physical copy of content they already have for free on the web.
I tried to answer very descriptively, as I can't speak *for* 160,000
people, but there's been enough foundation-l and related discussion to
get an idea of what people think. My apologies if I missed bits, this
was off the top of my head without referring to nuances of discussion
:-)
- d.
Before Translatewiki existed it was possible for Wikimedia/Wikipedia
users to improve the translation of the Mediawiki software's message
used on their project into their own language.
It is no longer possible now, because Translatewiki exists, and there
is a powerful Translatewiki lobby within the local Wikipedia/Wikimedia
communities which actively fights against the translation of messages
on-wiki, and compells users to open a user account on Translatewiki
(1).
"Translatewiki.net is not part of the Wikimedia Foundation projects" (2).
So users are requested to either
* Let awkward translations go on being displayed on their language
version of Wikipedia
* Or open an account on a non-Wikimedia project, which means providing
non-Wikimedia managers access to your personal data. That means you
are loosing the guarantees of
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy (the guarantee that
your data are accessed only exceptionally and in such exceptional
cases, always handled by people trusted by the Wikimedia Foundation)
A user who wants to remain just that : a Wikimedia user, not a
non-Wikimedia user can no longer work successfully on a
Wikimedia/Wikipedia wiki.
I ask the Wikimedia Foundation to protect its users from the
aggressions of non-Wikimedia projects. And to implement a set of
policies to prevent this sort of non-Wikimedia project lobbying.
I ask the Wikimedia Foundation to support people involved in
translation work, rather than expell them to non-Wikimedia projects.
Symbolically, that means that the Wikimedia Foundation is expelling
internationalisation.
"Internationalisation ? What ? I don't want that to happen in my
house", the Wikimedia Foundation is saying.
(1) http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikip%C3%A9dia%3ADemande_d%27inte…
(2) http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Project:About