Here's an opinion piece, "The Problem with Wikidata", by Mark Graham, who
"is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute," which appears on
The Atlantic's website. I'm not personally supporting or opposing his views
but I found this to be an interesting read.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-problem-with-wiki…
Dear all,
I was the [[:m:User:555]], mainly active on the last years of my volunteers
actions on Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource. I've left the Wikimedia
projects mainly because the lack of energy from my side to keep trying to
get free time to work in projects fully neglected by the Wikimedia staff,
developers team and some volunteers in the core of the Foundaction acts.
A friend told me about the http://labs.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org/ . I've
checked http://labs.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrixand...
surprise! no Wikisource wikis with blue color links! I asked myself
random things about the [[bug:21653]] lasted for 26 months until gets
PARTIALLY fixed and decided to check some 'Recent changes' pages and found
this:
http://pt.wikisource.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=233269
Come on guys! What is the point to run a bot spamming on all wikis if the
tests are only to the Wikipedias? Attempt of a 'politically correct' action
to these worse guys from others projects get's 'socially included'? Like in
the real life, those worse guys aren't in need of assistencialism [1]
actions...
Well, I don't expect any change on the Wikipediocentric actions in short,
medium or long time (in fact the Foundation and some local chapters are
trying to make things for the Wikimedia Commons project, but only because
that project is the central media source for Wikipedias), this was only a
mutter.
Despite my apparently hatred on this message, I really hope that the 3-4
extensions only enabled on Wikisources wikis don't get's any aditional bugs
than the current ones in the new version of MediaWiki in the same intensity
that your guys hopes that focusing in a project that only describes the
knowledge in an encyclopedic way fully meets the
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement
[1] - wow, a concept from social sciences yet not defined neither on
en.wikpedia or en.wiktionary? O_O
As on all of my previous messages, sorry for my limited English skills.
Best regards,
[[:m:User:555|Lugusto]]
Hallo Tilman,
Am 13.04.2012 um 13:01 schrieb wikimedia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org:
>
> please find below the WMF report for March 2012, in plain text.
Thanks for publishing the new report.
> Since a few months, we have been publishing a separate "Highlights"
> summary. Please consider helping non-English-language communities to
> stay updated, by providing a translation:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_March_2012
> Many thanks to those who translated last month's "Highlights" into
> Danish, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch and
> (partially) Arabic.
We have discussed this on the German Chapter's list recently. Most of those taking part in the discussion opined the Wikimedia Foundation provide translations of its documents into the most important languages. We touched upon the subject as WCA announced it will publish its reports in several languages. Translations should not be left to the community. It is not up to the community to get news from the Foundation, but it is rather up to the Foundation to get its message across to the community. Please note that only a minority of Wikipedians are able to understand your documents published in English. I would be quite grateful if we please could change this.
Regards,
Jürgen.
[ Please excuse me if the subject has already been beaten to
death here; I am not a regular visitor to this mailing list
I tried to search for this stuff here & on strategywiki, but
feel free to point me to the archives! ]
I researched recently some material related to a recent catastrophic
event in Polish railway history[1] and I found out that volunteers
who traditionally dealt with railway matters on Polish Wikipedia
have virtually disappeared.
I remember that community being strong few years ago, and now we
found out that even some basic information about infrastructure is
left unchanged.
Few people who still maintain that stuff on the Polish Wikipedia
showed me that at least two other MediaWiki-based projects have been
started to fill the gap: [2][3] The latter greets you even with a very
nice shot of *the* railway junction that was instrumental in a recent
railway crash.
One of the projects got started by experienced Wikipedia
editors. They still copy some of their content to the Polish
Wikipedia, but only after it matures; I asked them about the
reasons to go outside of the Wikipedia and they said:
* They have to do lots of original research; it is impossible
to follow development of the railway infrastructure and
operations using only high quality published sources;
* They got bitten a bit by the "notability" discussions in their
field; they want to document every track, every junction
and every locomotive and they are tired of discussing
how "notable" a particular piece of railway equipment
really is.
I would have said it's just a single case, but I've seen
some successful web portals being launched by people interested
in history; what is different from many history research and
fan pages is that I've also seen some active members of Wikipedia
community becoming more and more active on those independent sites.
It might be that (unproven theory) really valuable authors
are living on a verge of original research; at some point
they might prefer to turn over to indepedent sites.
There may be other factors too: smaller, friendlier community;
possibility to start anew and so on.
As few of those sites are using MediaWiki software I started
to call them "pre-wikis". Some of them might become a sort of
a "waiting rooms" for the content to be published
on "mature" Wikipedia. To me, analogy to the Wikipedia-Nupedia
story is striking.
What's interesting is that people are not afraid to use
MediaWiki *again* (with all its well-known deficiencies).
In general, I think this is nothing new. There are thousands
of fan wikis on places like Wikia, where certainly some
contributors copy over some mature content to Wikipedia,
should licensing allow that.
But maybe there is some trend that could probably be
better researched, and here are my questions to you:
(1) Do you see similar trend in your respective communities
(preferably not only English-speaking ones)?
(2) Is there a legitimate need for multi-tiered
development of the knowledge-related content (test
wikis, "pre-wikis", sighted revisions) or shall we pursue
"flat development space" ideal?
(3) Assuming we find the abovemetioned trend to be
generally a good thing, shouldn't we try to research
some methodologies to find out whether there is sizeable
effort supporting our goals outside of the core Wikimedia
movement?
(4) Assuming we don't like what's going on, shouldn't
we revisit some of Wikipedia core values (like "no
original research", but not only) and try to address
the issue there?
(5) Has Wikipedia as a "product" achieved some
maturity in a way that the real growth and innovation needs
to go somewhere else, as no product/project lasts forever?
Maybe it's something around the question that Kim Bruning
asked on strategywiki [4] and also [5]:
"we need to find some way to infuse new life
into wikis that are coming to the end of the
WikiLifeCycle. Wiki-communities can, do and will
blow up, and we need to learn how to prevent it,
or have plans on what to do and how to pick up the
pieces."
//Marcin Cieślak
User:Saper from plwiki
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szczekociny_rail_crash
[2] http://enkol.pl/
[3] http://semaforek.pl/wiki/index.php/Strona_g%C5%82%C3%B3wna
[4] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=942&oldid=931
[5] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=1075
The voting could be carried out with the global event. Vote eligibility
could be participating in the events for example.
Of course not every country will have an event so not sure if this approach
is a good one.
-- とある白い猫 (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
2012/4/18 Tadija Mileti? <atnimnjin(a)hotmail.com>
> Hmm, and maybe something where we can invite more people to Wikipedia?
> Billboards with :
>
> Join decade of knowledge. Participate! Write new article!
>
> Or something similar. I am also against POT-DEC, poor thing for big global
> event such as this.
>
> --WhiteWriter
>
> *From:* Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, April 18, 2012 9:45 AM
> *To:* Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> *Cc:* smolensk(a)eunet.rs ; Wikimedia Mailing List<wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Commons-l] [Wikimedia-l] [Commons-POTY-l] 10th
> anniversary of Wikimedia Commons
>
> Why not a world wide Wikitakes or a Photowalk day that way everyone
> everywhere can participate in it, no need for big off Commons organisation
>
> 2012/4/18 とある白い猫 <to.aru.shiroi.neko(a)gmail.com>
>
>> I do not think we want to select POT-DEC (lets not call it POTD which is
>> something else :) ) from older POTYs since we don't have a large number to
>> choose from. Also, it would be very boring to re-nominate the same winner
>> again. If anything existing POTY winners perhaps should be disqualified for
>> this reason.
>>
>> I am not too sure about the procedure would be best to be honest. I hope
>> this discussion would determine that very aspect. :)
>>
>> US GLAM is appealing but we do want something global. Certainly US GLAM
>> partnerships should be part of it but they should not be all of it.
>> WikiLoves Monuments was a good precursor to this kind of activity. Perhaps
>> a kind of "lessons learned" assessment may be useful while working on this.
>>
>> -- とある白い猫 (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 07:31, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk(a)eunet.rs>wrote:
>>
>>> > > 2012/4/17 とある白い猫 <to.aru.shiroi.neko(a)gmail.com>:
>>>
>>> > > > We already have POTY as an annual event so perhaps a "decade"
>>> event could
>>> > > > be something interesting to consider.
>>>
>>> The obvious: select POTD from all the POTYs :)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list
>>> Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Commons-l mailing list
>> Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> GN.
> Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com
> Gn. Blogg: http://gnangarra.wordpress.com
>
> ------------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>
2012/4/24 Andrew Cates <andrew.cates(a)soschildren.org>
> I am wondering about releasing many hundreds of Africa educational videos
> under creative commons.
>
> They are the videos currently at www.our-africa.org which is a child
> generated reference site about Africa.
>
> There is a lot of material in the videos which could be edited and used to
> improve Wikipedia article (a solar kettle in operation, a maize plant
> grinding maize, a variety of musical instruments in use, different
> religious festivals, cocoa plantations etc etc)
>
> However at present Wikipedia does not seem to support or want video
> material.
>
Wikipedia supports video with [[Media:]] tag. Also, Wikimedia Commons has a
little collection of them https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Video
>
> Does anyone have a feel whether this is likely to change?
>
>
http://www.videoonwikipedia.com
Also, this message is more related to Wikimedia or Commons mailing lists
(cc:). If you are the owner of those videos and you want to donate them,
some people can help you in the process.
> Andrew
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
--
Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada. E-mail: emijrp AT gmail DOT com
Pre-doctoral student at the University of Cádiz (Spain)
Projects: AVBOT <http://code.google.com/p/avbot/> |
StatMediaWiki<http://statmediawiki.forja.rediris.es>
| WikiEvidens <http://code.google.com/p/wikievidens/> |
WikiPapers<http://wikipapers.referata.com>
| WikiTeam <http://code.google.com/p/wikiteam/>
Personal website: https://sites.google.com/site/emijrp/
Kudos to the community and WMF teams for creating this outstanding document!
I love the brevity, clarity -- and yes, elegance -- of your human-readable summary.
I'm amazed that you managed to fit our most important goals, rights and responsibilities into just 12 bullet points.
It's an inspiring achievement, which I will seek to emulate in my own work.
Well done, everybody!
Fabrice
__________________________________
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager,
Editor Engagement
Wikimedia Foundation
+1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6827 work
fflorin(a)wikimedia.org
On Apr 28, 2012, at 5:00 AM, wikimedia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
> Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 23:43:04 -0700
> From: Philippe Beaudette <philippe(a)wikimedia.org>
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Updated Terms of Use
> Message-ID:
> <CAPb+kY_omSnLpiT3jwHJZsLZZccVmTaHb+g84JOp2WY97_d1rA(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Birgitte, Andrew, thank you for your kind words. True credit on this one
> goes to Maggie, Geoff, and the community members who worked countless hours
> with them and discussed in great detail almost every word of the thing. I
> think everyone involved would tell you that it was a thoughtful,
> deliberative, and truly exhausting process.... but it was amazing in its
> collegiality in the final product.
>
> I'm proud to be part of the team that worked on this, but my role was
> small... my hat is off to Maggie, Geoff, and all the others who
> participated (below, I have listed everyone with more than 15 edits to the
> talk page where it was developed.)
>
>
> Community Members with more than 15 edits to the Talk page:
>
> Geoffbrigham
> Mdennis (WMF)
> WhatamIdoing
> Filceolaire
> FT2
> Peteforsyth
> Michaeldsuarez
> Seth Finkelstein
> Angel54 5
> Seb az86556
> WereSpielChequers
> Steven (WMF)
> Rosenkohl
> Esetzer
> Wnt
> Teofilo
> Philippe (WMF)
> John Vandenberg
> Danhash
> Rich Farmbrough
> Dcoetzee
> 62.140.210.130
> ?????? ?????
>
>
> ___________________
> Philippe Beaudette
> Director, Community Advocacy
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>
> 415-839-6885, x 6643
>
> philippe(a)wikimedia.org
>
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 4:48 PM, <Birgitte_sb(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Apr 27, 2012, at 12:49 AM, Andrew Garrett <agarrett(a)wikimedia.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 2:26 AM, Philippe Beaudette
>>> <philippe(a)wikimedia.org>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi everyone,
>>>>
>>>> As you may be aware, Wikimedia has updated its Terms of Use. This
>> updated
>>>> version will become effective on May 25, 2012, and can be reviewed
>>>> here<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use_%282012%29/en
>>> .[1]
>>>> A short overview of some of the changes is set out
>>>> here<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/New_Terms_of_use>.
>>>> [2]
>>>>
>>>> Best wishes,
>>>> Philippe
>>>>
>>>
>>> Terms of use are boring, and most of us are pretty jaded by how
>>> impenetrable, legalistic and, well, awful, most terms of use are on the
>>> internet.
>>>
>>> I want to congratulate you and your department on NOT doing this. The new
>>> terms of use are written in clear English, well set out, and cover what
>>> seem to be the appropriate bases without being overly verbose and
>> cautious.
>>>
>>> Well done, Philippe, Geoff, and everyone else.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> I am also impressed. It actually ends up being the best one piece
>> introduction to what Wikimedia *is* that I have ever read. A lot of
>> thought and consideration were soundly invested in that document. Clarity
>> on that level is HARD, but well worth the effort. I also am thinking that
>> the staff have just set a rather high bar for the board. Imagine if all
>> board resolutions were written with as just as much focus on clarity and as
>> on circumspection. These terms of use show it is possible.
>>
>> Birgitte SB
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list
>> Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>
>
> End of Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 97, Issue 81
> *******************************************