( repost from http://techblog.wikimedia.org )
Continuing with the work started last week[1], we plan to deploy 1.17
to more wikis in a couple hours. We had hoped we would be able to
figure out the performance issues in the past week, but unfortunately,
the only practical way we have to see the load problems we witnessed
last week is to put the software into production. We have put a lot
of instrumentation in place to help us diagnose our load issues. We
plan to start the upcoming deployment by rolling out to
nl.wikipedia.org, and do some debugging (rolling back if necessary).
If we’re able to diagnose and fix the problems quickly, we then plan
to roll out 1.17 more widely. If we’re still stumped, we may still
roll out to a few more low-traffic wikis, but leave the high-traffic
sites until we figure this out.
We plan to have more updates and detailed information on the
deployment page on mediawiki.org[2]. Thanks for your patience!
Rob
[1] http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/02/1-17deployment-attempt2/
[2] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.17/Wikimedia_deployment
This re-licensing seems even more legally complex than ours (although
uncontroversial).
Nemo
-------- Messaggio Originale --------
Oggetto: Ubuntu Wiki to be re-licensed to CC BY-SA
Data: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:39:08 +0000 (UTC)
Da: Ubuntu Community Council
A: undisclosed-recipients:;
Dear Contributor to the Ubuntu Wiki,
We are contacting you because you have contributed content to the Ubuntu
wiki at http://wiki.ubuntu.com.
The license of content of the Ubuntu Wiki has always been publically
listed as copyright Canonical Ltd. Working with the Ubuntu Community
Council, Canonical has decided to transition the content in the Ubuntu
Wiki to the the CC-BY-SA license[1]. This license is a free culture
license[2] and is the same license used both by the Ubuntu Documentation
wiki [3] since 2007 [4] and by Wikipedia.
If you are happy with the idea of this transition for the content you
have provided, you do not need to do anything. If you have problems or
issues, please read the feedback section below and contact us.
The rest of this message provides a rationale, details, and information
on providing feedback.
= Decision =
After discussion among the Ubuntu Community Council, it has been decided
that the material on the Ubuntu wiki should be licensed under a free
license, CC-by-SA[1]. The Ubuntu wiki will be changed to make this clear
to those creating or editing pages, and of course external links from
the Wiki to material under other licences will continue to be welcome.
This decision is not intended in any way to underestimate the value of
contributions, but rather to ensure that the material on the wiki
complies with the same standards of openness as the Ubuntu project as a
whole.
= Rationale =
The Ubuntu wiki is a collaborative resource, and the product of the
Ubuntu community as a whole. Its content, put together by many
contributors with different knowledge and points of view, is immensely
valuable to us all. Unfortunately, at the moment, there is no clear
definition of what rights contributors to the content retain over the
material that they post, or the extent to which other persons are
entitled to copy or modify the material. For example, it would be very
useful to ensure that community contributed content may be shared by
many teams without complex licensing issues, ensuring that those working
on content can concentrate on producing the best information possible
rather than legal negotiations.
Furthermore, consistent with Ubuntu's philosophy, it is important that
material created for use on the Ubuntu wiki be available for other
communities outside ours to benefit from. Using an open license on the
Ubuntu wiki allows other communities to re-use material which may be
useful to them under terms which are widely recognised in the free
software community.
= Feedback =
We would again like to make a good-faith attempt to ensure that
contributors of existing material are happy with this change. We invite
any contributors who have any questions or concerns about this plan to
contact us at <community-council(a)lists.ubuntu.com>. Given that the
re-licensing of http://help.ubuntu.com/community was fairly
uncontroversial and since the aim to re-license the Ubuntu wiki at some
point later has not brought up any objections, we hope that contributors
will welcome it.
In the absence of a substantial number of objections, this change will
be made to the Ubuntu wiki after approximately one month.
More details can be found here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WikiLicensing
Many thanks for your contributions to the Ubuntu Wiki, and we hope that
you will continue to help!
= Exceptions =
If you want to license a code snippet on the wiki under another open
source license [5], please specify the relevant license in the snippet
itself. In the event that no license is specified, the license
applicable to the code snippet would be the same as that applicable to
any other material on the wiki.
[1] See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
[2] http://freedomdefined.org/Definition
[3] http://help.ubuntu.com
[4]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2007-April/000275.h…
[5] http://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses
Hoi,
In English the word "User" does not indicate if it is male or female, The
word "Gebruiker" or "Benutzer" do; the female form is "Gebruikster" or
"Benutzerin". It is with pleasure that I learned that Nikerabbit has written
the code that allows for those languages where there is both a male and a
female form the namespace to indicate the sex of a user.
Given that we want to be more welcoming to women, I think it is awesome that
we will be able to address women as women. The fact that we gain some
statistical insight is a fringe benefit.
The only question left is, when can this be implemented..
Thanks,
GerardM
Cross-posting.
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Steven Walling <swalling(a)wikimedia.org>
> Date: February 15, 2011 11:37:54 AM PST
> To: "board and officers coordination (closed subscription) Local Chapters" <internal-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: IRC office hours this Friday on chapters and fundraising
>
> Hi all,
>
> This Friday at 19:00 UTC, Barry Newstead and Moushira Elamrawy will be holding a discussion about chapters and fundraising. In introducing Moushira and Asaf last week, we didn't get to spend much time talking about this issue, and we'd like a chance to have an informal chat with everyone about it.
>
> As usual instructions about when it is and how to join are on Meta at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours. If you have questions you'd like to post in advance, please feel free to use the same page for that purpose.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Steven Walling
> Fellow at the Wikimedia Foundation
> wikimediafoundation.org
>
Hello,
I am very pleased to announce today that Wikimedia France has just concluded
a very nice partnership. A partnership with the Palace of
Versailles<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Versailles>,
which was negotiated very discreetly (at the request of Versailles) and just
publicly announced this morning.
http://www.wikimedia.fr/partenariat-avec-le-ch%C3%A2teau-de-versailles
This partnership is a consequence of the first Glam -partnerships signed by
Wikimedia France in 2010 and glam-wiki Paris in December 2010.
The partnership prompt Wikimedia France and Versailles to work together to
perform "production and dissemination of cultural and scientific data on the
Wikimedia projects". That means working together to release the content from
the cultural riches of Versailles in the projects. This can be taking
pictures, digitization, video, other things, everything is open.
Under this partnership, Versailles therefore allowed a "Wikimedian in
residence". Its mission is:
* Teaching the teams of the Castle and the Centre for Research,
including scientists, about how Wikimedia projects work and how valuable
they are ;
* Increasing the awareness of the Castle audience about Wikimedia
projects, their functioning and value ;
* Identifying existing articles on the Palace of Versailles, its art and
its heritage, people and events etc.
* Improve and facilitate a community of editors to improve these
articles ;
* Working with the education department on similar topics.
Benoit - [[user:Trizek]] - , the "wikimedian in residence", will have a
great leeway to set up projects with the contributors of the projects, with
the public, to publicize the Wikimedia projects, raise awareness even within
Versailles, and enriching the projects. Benoît will work on engaging
Wikimedians from all projects and from all countries in this effort to bring
together Wikimedia and Versailles resources.
This is a great opportunity for Wikimedia France to advance our projects,
and to make both the cultural and general public more aware of our work. The
prestige of Versailles is incomparable and their willingness to open is very
valuable.
Adrienne
--
Adrienne Alix
Présidente | Wikimedia France
adrienne.alix(a)wikimedia.fr | + 33 (0)6 33 40 70 80
http://www.wikimedia.fr
Dear All,
The following mail is about a PDF rendering solution for non-Latin scripts
which is under development. One of the main reason for developing this tool
is that the current *Download to PDF* option (available in the sidebar of
wiki) is useless for Indic language scripts (current Download to PDF
solution might not be useful for all the non-Latin scripts)
I am sharing this here since the below PDF rendering solution is
applicable to all the scripts (not only Indic langauge/non-latin scripts).
Please mail your feedback/comment to santhosh.thottingal(a)gmail.com.
The solution is not limited to wiki. But surely wiki users will be one of
the major cosumers.
Please see the below mail thread for details.
Thanks
Shiju
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Santhosh Thottingal <santhosh.thottingal(a)gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 10:36 PM
Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] PDF rendering of Indian language wiki pages
To: "Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia." <
wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi,
We are working on a Complex script PDF rendering library named
PyPDFLib(https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/pypdflib/). One of its
test case (or use case) is to render a wiki page in complex script(any
Indian Language) to PDF. Currently PDF export feature is not
available(not working) for Indian language wiki projects because of
technical incapability of Python Reportlab library.
Just wanted to give an early preview of this software library through
an online interface : http://silpa.smc.org.in/Render
You can try with a Wikipedia page in your language and verify the generated
PDF.
You can also access this using this URL
http://silpa.smc.org.in/Render?wiki=http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/இலங்கை
(replace that wiki URL with other page addresses too - any Ianguage -
not limited to Indian languages)
There are lot of items not implemented, but your feedback is requested
on the current version.
The library uses Pango for text rendering and Cairo for graphics and
PDF features.
ps: Don't get surprised if you get a 500 Error page for the random
page you are trying. Just try another wiki page ;)
Thanks
Santhosh Thottingal
http://thottingal.in
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l