cross-posting
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tomer Ashur <tomerashur(a)gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 1:27 PM
Subject: [Internal-l] Israeli Government to Release its images under a free
license for public use
To: "Local Chapters, board and officers coordination (closed subscription)"
<internal-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi all,
I am very proud to announce that Wikimedia Israel just won one of its main
struggles. The Israeli government has announced[1] that all imaged in which
the state is the copyrights holder and that were uploaded to the
government's websites can be freely used with the following restrictions:
1. The image will be attributed to the state of Israel (or the relevant
office)
2. The user cannot change the license (Share-alike)
3. No derivative work.
4. Each office will create a policy about commercial use (i.e., commercial
use is allowed, unless otherwise specified).
Wikimedia Israel has pushed for this change since 2010, when MK Meir
Sheetrit proposed an amendment for the Israeli copyright act. The chapter
pushed for the acceptance of this amendment by the Knesset (the Israeli
parliament). During this time, we were able to make a complete shift in the
paradigms employed by the government and government officials. From being
strong opposers to the bill, they become adopters of the changes, thus
making the bill itself, redundant.
Now, a new struggle begins - Wikimedia Israel will work to remove the ND
clause from the decision, and will make sure that all government offices
publish their policy as required. Nonetheless, this is still a huge
achievement, the government has accepted the importance of free culture in
modern world.
On a personal note, as the leader of this project, I wish to send my many
thanks to all of those who made this miracle happen. A special thanks is
due to the great people of the Israeli Internet society, the (just as
great) people of Creative commons Israel, Adv. Jonathan Klinger, Mathias
Schindler, the awsome volunteers of Wikimedia Israel and the editors of
Hebrew Wikipedia. If there's anyone I forgot by name - my apologies, I'm
still terribly excited of these news.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here or send me a private
email,
Tomer Ashur
Chairman
Wikimedia Israel
[1] http://www.pmo.gov.il/Secretary/GovDecisions/2012/Pages/des5268.aspx
_______________________________________________
Internal-l mailing list
Internal-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/internal-l
Hello all
We are discussing what text should accompany our logo. We have a straw poll
up and running.
The hope is to officially launch on Wikipedia's birthday so a little
pressed for time.
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
You are welcome.
Best,
Tom
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mike Linksvayer <ml(a)gondwanaland.com>
Date: 2012/12/17
Subject: [open-government] Open Definition forges ahead - get involved!
To: od-discuss(a)lists.okfn.org
Cc: Open Government WG List <open-government(a)lists.okfn.org>, Open
Knowledge Foundation discussion list <okfn-discuss(a)lists.okfn.org>
Text below my name copied from
http://opendefinition.org/2012/12/17/open-definition-forges-ahead-get-invol…
2013 will be an important year for Open. If you'd like to get involved
at the meta level, there are a bunch of ways to do so via Open
Definition work.
I encourage sending this call to ought-to-be-interested people. I've
copied okfn-discuss and open-government here for generality and
because many of the licenses we're discussing now and are from
governments.
Look forward to a 2012 in review post.
Mike
http://opendefinition.org (OD) is one of the first projects that the
the Open Knowledge Foundation created. Its purpose has been to
provide, promote -- and protect -- a meaningful Open in Open Data and
Open Content.
It does this primarily through curating the Open Knowledge Definition
(OKD) -- http://opendefinition.org/okd working with license stewards
to ensure new licenses intending to be open are clearly so, and
keeping lists of licenses that conform to the OKD, and those that do
not -- providing any entity intending to create an open project, or
mandate "open" in policy, with a clear reference as to which licenses
will achieve their aims.
With the growth in "open" and especially of open data initiatives in
the last few years there has been an increasing amount for the project
to do especially in terms of reviewing and evaluating licenses. For
2013 we see several important areas of work:
* OKD v1.2 -- https://github.com/okfn/opendefinition/blob/master/source/open-knowledge-de…
-- we've seen license conditions cropping up that are certainly
contrary to the spirit of the definition and implicitly
non-conformant. It ought be possible for anyone with some
understanding of public licenses to do a quick read of the definition
and understand its meaning for a particular license without having to
know all of the history of open definitions and licenses.
* Review important new licenses and license versions for OKD
compliance, e.g. Open Government License Canada, and version 4.0 of
CC-BY and CC-BY-SA.
* Moving linguistic translations into a git repository for better
review and updating.
* Improve explanations and graphics available on the OD site for
anyone who wants to learn about open knowledge and services, and
proudly announce to the world that their projects are open.
* Extend our work on license APIs that provide information about open
licenses at http://licenses.opendefinition.org and integrate with the
main OD site; also look to cooperate with other projects eg
https://spdx.org/licenses/ and https://licensedb.org/ providing Linked
Open Data about licenses.
* Provide regular updates about OD work to the broader OKFN network,
open communities, and general public.
* Develop a version git-based repository of license texts so they can
be tracked over time
* Growing out of discussions from
http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-discuss/2006-October/000177.html
and http://blog.okfn.org/2007/07/18/we-need-an-open-service-definition/
the OD project developed the Open Software Service Definition (OSSD)
-- http://opendefinition.org/software-service/ -- recognizing the
complementarity of open content and data (knowledge) and open source
web platforms and other network services that open knowledge is
created, curated, and distributed on. The OSSD hasn't been touched in
a long time, but software services (some of them called "the cloud")
have become more important than ever, including in domains nearest to
the OKFN community's most active work, such as platforms used by and
for open government. Shall we update the OSSD and revitalize
evangelism for open services, or declare not a core competency, and
look to other groups to take leadership?
If you're a legal or policy expert, software freedom advocate, linked
data hacker, translator, designer, communications maven -- and want to
go "meta" about openness, we could use your help! Join the od-discuss
mailing list -- http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/od-discuss --
and pitch into the discussion, start a new one, or lurk until you're
ready.
Final decisions about license conformance and definition updates are
made by the http://opendefinition.org/advisory-council/ ... this is
not a big time commitment, but it is a big responsibility. If you'd
like to join the AC someday, join od-discuss today.
We're especially keen to have AC members from every continent.
Currently we only have Europe and North America, and recognize that's
a big problem for the long-term impact of the Open Definition project.
Especially if you're from the global South and care about the
fundamentals of openness, please join od-discuss and
http://opendefinition.org/contact/ !
_______________________________________________
open-government mailing list
open-government(a)lists.okfn.org
http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-government
Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-government
Heya :)
On 18 December Denny and I will do the next round of Wikidata office
hours. Everyone with questions about Wikidata is welcome.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata/Events#IRC_office_hours
Cheers
Lydia
--
Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
Community Communications for Wikidata
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Obentrautstr. 72
10963 Berlin
www.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
unter der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das
Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
Hi all,
This Thursday at 18:00 UTC (10 a.m. PST) the mobile development, design,
and product team will be hosting IRC office hours. In addition to general
introductions and Q&A, we'd like to spend some time talking about our
current work – bringing contributory features like editing and image
uploads to mobile devices. Please see
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours#Upcoming_office_hoursformo…
details.
Thanks, and hope to see you in #wikimedia-office on Thursday!
--
Maryana Pinchuk
Associate Product Manager, Wikimedia Foundation
wikimediafoundation.org
On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 11:42 PM,
<sgardner(a)wikimedia.org<wikimedia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
> > Anasuya will be responsible for running all grantmaking processes (for
> > both individuals and entities) and for helping movement entities, like
> > chapters and thematic organizations, to develop and mature. Reporting
> > to Anasuya will be Asaf Bartov, Jessie Wild, Oona Castro and Siko
> > Bouterse, as well as a Senior Program Officer for the FDC (a new
> > position that will be filled within the next month or so).
> > * The Senior Program Officer will be responsible for facilitating the
> > FDC process, which recommends funding allocations for the largest and
> > wealthiest Wikimedia organizations such as Wikimedia Germany and
> > Wikimedia France.
> > * Asaf continues to be responsible for the Wikimedia Grants Program,
> > supporting younger, smaller Wikimedia organizations like Wikimedia
> > Venezuela and Wikimedia Mexico, and for finding non-Wikimedia
> > organizations that we can fund to carry out good programmatic
> > activities in developing countries, particularly where there are no
> > chapters.
> > * Jessie will be responsible for evaluation and learning for all our
> > grantmaking --- both helping us internally optimize our processes, and
> > helping us and the grant recipients assess organizations? development
> > (for Anasuya) and the impact of the programs funded by movement
> > dollars (for Frank).
> > * Oona will continue to run the Brazil program. Consistent with the
> > Narrowing Focus plan, she is actively seeking a partner to continue
> > the work in Brazil within a grants structure similar to the one we
> > recently negotiated with CIS in India.
> > * Siko is taking over responsibility from Asaf for all funding for
> > individuals. This will make it possible for us to grow our individual
> > grant-making, and it will also free up Asaf to do more small
> > organization development. Siko will also be responsible for
> > documentation and analysis of all grants except the ones funded by the
> > FDC. It?s important for us to grow grantmaking to individuals because
> > individuals create 99% of the value in the projects. They do it with
> > practically no funding, but in some cases a little money will be able
> > to make something great happen.
>
Hi all,
As Sue mentioned, we're looking at growing WMF's grant-making to
individuals. This allows us to accomplish the goals of narrowing focus (on
WMF's capacity as grant-makers, in this case), while finding new ways to
support projects led by individual community members. Some more specifics
are on meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Individual_Engagement_Grants
Please share your thoughts on-wiki if possible.
Thanks!
--
Siko Bouterse
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. *
*Donate <https://donate.wikimedia.org> or click the "edit" button today,
and help us make it a reality!*
Hi Zack,
Thanks very much for your updates:
> What saved us was taking text from the personal appeals and putting it into
> the banner itself. These banners did very well. These new message-driven
> banners are what made us split the campaign in two -- because we knew we
> were going to develop a lot of new messages and not have time to translate
> them well....
As you know I've been saying for years that the variance among the
volunteer-supplied messages, originally submitted in 2009 and hundreds
of which have not yet been tested (as far as I know), was large enough
to suggest that some messages would certainly outperform the
traditional banners and appeals. While it's refreshing to be
validated, as you might imagine I feel like Cassandra much of the time
for reasons that have nothing to do with the underlying mathematical
reasoning involved.
The last time I heard from you, you said that you intended to test the
untried messaging from 2009 with multivariate analysis. However,
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2012/We_Need_A_Breakthrough
shows only three very small-N multivariate tests, the last of which
was in October, and no recent testing.
Do you still intend to test the untried volunteer-submitted messages
with multivariate analysis? If so, when? Thank you.
Sincerely,
James Salsman
This week, Wikimedia Argentina published the first edition of "Vikipetã
mbo'eha kotýpe" [1], "Wikipedia in the classroom" in Guarani, an indigenous
language spoken in Northern Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia. It is the
first Wikipedia related publication made in an American indigenous language.
The goal of “Wikipedia in the classroom”, made originally in Spanish, is to
help teachers to understand what is Wikipedia, how it works and how they
can use it in an useful way. Most students already use Wikipedia so it is
really important that teachers know what to do.
“Wikipedia in the classroom” is an initiative launched in 2010 by Wikimedia
Argentina with the support of different institutions, including the
Education portal of the Argentine government, educ.ar. They released an
special website about the project.[2] Wikimedia Argentina will print 500
booklets of the Guarani edition to be distributed in schools and other
educational institutions, and we expect to publish new editions in other
indigenous languages in 2013.
Kind regards,
Osmar Valdebenito G.
Director Ejecutivo
A. C. Wikimedia Argentina
[1]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vikipet%C3%A3_mbo%27eha_kot%C3%BDpe…
[2] http://wikipediaenelaula.educ.ar/
Hi,
Could we get some updates (or that I missed them?) about how the
fundraising goes? WMF and Chapters will be great. Since we only focus on
few countries this year, the discussions regarding it is very low, but it
still very interesting to know how much we collect and how the banners
works (and which one of them).
Thanks,
Itzik
Dear all,
just a brief update from Wikimedia Deutschland on our current fundraising
campaign. It's been running since November 13, involving variations of facts
banners in combination with personal appeals. We're on track to reaching our
campaign goal of around € 5 m. by the end of this year. The personal
appeals appear as drop-down messages along our donation form, once readers
click on the sticking facts banners.The appeals include messages from
Wikipedians,
donors, readers and WMDE staff.
In short, we're combining facts with changing elements. As in past years, a
personal message by Jimmy is one of the personal appeals. Unlike past
years, various other appeals are performing well enough for us to be able
to significantly reduce Jimmy's presence, favoring a more
diverserepresentation of the people behind Wikipedia. Note,
however, that these observations are to be evaluated in the context of
thefacts bannersattracting attention first.
More detailed information will follow as soon as reliable figures are
available.
One more thing: We created a short video clip as a further means
todiversifying our
campaign approach. It's a 2 min. piece that we produced with a small team while
the campaign got off the ground in late November. It features Wikipedia
readers who talk about their favorite Wikipedia word, capped off by
our CEOPavel Richter.
In essence, he points to the fact that we've come to take Wikipedia for
granted and why we all should support it. We've been using the video since last
Wednesday, interchangeably with text appeals. Again, no in-depth evaluation
(not while the campaign is in full swing), but the video seems to be at a
performance level with the most effective of our personal appeals.
Find the video here. It's in German, though!
https://vimeo.com/55612721
Facts and figures to follow.
Regards,
Michael
--
Michael Jahn
Public Relations
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstraße 72 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. (030) 219 158 260
http://wikimedia.de <http://www.wikimedia.de>
Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch freien Zugang zu der
Gesamtheit des Wissens der Menschheit hat. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
*Helfen Sie mit, dass WIKIPEDIA von der UNESCO als erstes digitales
Weltkulturerbe anerkannt wird. Unterzeichnen Sie die Online-Petition:*
http://wikipedia.de/wke/Main_Page?setlang=de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
