Hello everyone:
Internet Society, OECD and UNESCO have published a report:
The Relationship Between Local Content, Internet Development, and Access Prices
http://www.internetsociety.org/localcontenthttp://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/The%20Relationship%20Bet…
I think the report is worth reading (there are interesting
case studies there as well). Here are the main findings as posted
on the website:
MAIN FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS
1. Societies have a rich heritage and knowledge base that should be
recognised, recorded and shared for the benefit of people throughout
the world.
Much of the world’s content remains inaccessible even to the local
population, not to mention at a broader level. There are many reasons
for the existence of this “content divide”.
2. The content that is most important to people is typically in their
own language and is relevant to the communities in which they live and
work.
These communities may be defined by their location, culture, language,
religion, ethnicity or area of interest and individuals may belong
to many communities at the same time. Further, communities evolve so
what is relevant will change over time. This relevant content is often
referred to as “local content”. The term community is used in a
broad way to include not only local professional communities (public and
private), but also non-professional content creators and users.
3. Technology can help support the recognition, creation, preservation,
dissemination and utilisation of local content and there have
been several important technological advancements in recent
history.
Technological developments such as the printing press, the
phonogram, telephony, radio, television, photocopying machines,
recording media, mobile phones and personal computers, among others,
have greatly increased our ability to create and disseminate content.
4. The Internet represents another historical advancement in the
development and dissemination of content. It has, first and foremost,
helped empower users as content creators.
The Internet has provided a platform for crowd-sourced content creation
and community-developed and peer-reviewed knowledge bases such as
Wikipedia. It has also allowed individuals to exercise greater choice
and control over the content they consume, in contrast to the limited
channels of traditional broadcasting. It plays a key role in all steps
from content creation to its distribution but perhaps its largest
contribution is the potential it gives to creators to disseminate
information their content widely and nearly instantaneously at a very
low cost.
5. Policy makers around the world in ministries of culture look for ways
promote the creation and preservation of cultural heritage, including
element that are tangible, oral and intangible.
At the same time, policy makers in communication ministries focus on
ways to ensure that information and communication technologies and
services, such as Internet access, are available and accessible to the
population. This research confirms that the goals of these two important
government entities are intertwined.
6. This empirical research shows there is a strong correlation
between the development of network infrastructure and the growth of
local content, even after controlling for economic and demographic
factors.
The statistically significant relationship is evident using several
different measures of local content (the number of visible top-level
domains in use per country code, per capita; Wikipedia articles per
language per capita; and blogs per capita) and several measures of
Internet development (broadband penetration rates, autonomous systems
per capita, international bandwidth per capita and routed IPv4 addresses
per capita).
7. In addition, this research finds a significant relationship between
the development of international bandwidth and the price of local
Internet access.
The results indicate that more developed local Internet markets tend to
report lower international prices for bandwidth and vice versa: markets
with more intense international Internet traffic tend to report lower
local prices for Internet access. A similar relationship was detected
between the degree of development of local Internet networks and the
level of international prices in developing economies. In particular,
countries with a more developed local market also tend to report lower
prices for international Internet connections. This relationship is not
visible in developed economies that tend to have much more developed
Internet infrastructure.
--
Marcin Cieślak
Hey all
Just wanted to let you know that we're going to be doing an Office Hours
session on the New Pages Feed (formerly New Page Triage/Page Triage).[1]
This isn't just to discuss progress, so on and so forth - this is because,
as promised,[2] we've deployed a functional prototype on en.wiki! We're
taking this opportunity to run people through using it and get any feedback
we can use to improve the tool.
So, if you're involved in New Page Patrol, or not because you found it too
opaque and want to see if this is any better for you, we'll be in
#wikimedia-office from 21:00 UTC.[3] Hope to see you all then :).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_Pages_Feed
[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_Pages_Feed/Engagement_strategy
[3]
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=21&min=00&sec=0&d…
--
Oliver Keyes
Community Liaison, Product Development
Wikimedia Foundation
Hello,
Here the reports for the national Wikimedia organization of the
Netherlands, March and April, together. See the links at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports#Wikimedia_Nederla…
The most important event is the hiring of the first director of our
organization, Sandra Rientjes. Her work started on May, 1st.
Kind regards
Ziko van Dijk
president
This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for March 2012.
Cultural heritage
Wiki Loves Monuments - NL is starting off again. Volunteers are
being recruited, and a meeting was organized with the Rijksdienst voor
het Cultureel Erfgoed.
Conferences etc.
On March 24th a general assembly took place. Three of the seven
board members were reelected, four people joined the board.
Ziko and Paul participated in the Chapters Meeting in Berlin on 30
March - 1 April. Ziko also attended the Movement Roles meeting on 29
March and was involved in the preparing of a charter for the Wikimedia
Chapters Association.
Press and outreach
The working group around the Wikimedia Conference NL of coming
November takes shape. Most work still ahead.
Other
WikiSaturday on 10 and 24 March
Upcoming
14 & 15 April: Onboarding weekend for the new Board
21 April: WikiSaturday
28 April: Editathon at Teylers Museum
19 May: WikiSaturday
3 June: Members' barbecue
--------------------
This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for April 2012.
Cultural heritage
At Teylers Museum in Haarlem a Edit-a-thon took place on April 28th.
Press and outreach
Ziko talked with an active member about a certain project for
promoting free licences.
Other
The board met on April 14th/15th in Soesterberg. The transition
from the old to the new board took place, and the board spoke to two
candidates for the new position of a director. The board decided on
asking the candidate Sandra Rientjes to become director of WMNL.
WikiSaturday on April 21st
Upcoming
19 May: WikiSaturday
3 June: Members' barbecue
22 September: General Assembly WMNL
-----------------------------------------------------------
Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
http://wmnederland.nl/
Wikimedia Nederland
Postbus 167
3500 AD Utrecht
-----------------------------------------------------------
[ 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
Dear all,
It has come to the attention of the Wikimania 2013 Hong Kong organizing
team that there may be confusion over the situation of internet censorship
in China and whether it affects Hong Kong. [1]
We would like to clarify that, although Hong Kong has been nominally part
of the People's Republic of China since 1997, the city-state of Hong Kong
retains complete independence over civilian affairs. This, of course, means
that internet regulation in Hong Kong is completely separate from that of
Mainland China, and therefore internet censorship in Mainland China (the
"Great Firewall of China", [2]) does not apply to Hong Kong.
We would like to reassure all Wikimedians, especially those considering to
attend Wikimania 2013, that *Wikipedia has never been censored in Hong Kong*.
Visitors to Hong Kong will enjoy, among other things such as exuberant
local cuisine and efficient public transport, uncensored internet
connection and unhindered access to Wikimedia projects.
We hope to see you all at Wikimania 2012 in Washington DC and Wikimania
2013 in Hong Kong.
With best wishes,
Deryck Chan
Global engagement coordinator
Wikimania 2013 organizing team / Wikimedia Hong Kong
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-05-07/N…
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall
(cross-posted to wikimania-l, internal-l and wikimedia-l)
As has been posted here before, CC is working on version 4.0 of their
licenses--in case you haven't seen it, the public draft is up in
several different formats at
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0_Drafts
Right now their focus is on attribution, and they are asking several
specific questions about things to change in the new version.
(A few of the open questions: Is there too much flexibility in
"reasonable manner"? Or not enough? Is there any information people
should be required to provide that they aren't providing? Should you
be able to use a shortcut by just providing a link, and if so, what
should you have to include?)
The questions and space for comment is on the CC wiki here:
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0/Attribution_and_marking#Questions_about…
(Ultimately, we hope to be able to use the 4.0 license version as the
default license version for Wikimedia projects--either BY-SA or BY,
depending on which project you are using. Several Wikimedians are
already participating in these discussions, as well as the legal staff
and myself, but your input on things that have and haven't worked well
in 3.0 would really help the process, especially if you have good
examples.)
I will be posting this message around to some of the wikis as well,
but please pass this message around where it is relevant, especially
if you are active on non-English projects!
Cheers,
Kat
--
Your donations keep Wikipedia free: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Web: http://www.mindspillage.org Email: kat(a)wikimedia.org, kat(a)mindspillage.org
(G)AIM, Freenode, gchat, identi.ca, twitter, various social sites: mindspillage
Dear Chapter Leaders,
My name is Divya Narayanan and I am part of the team at The Bridgespan Group working with Wikimedia to design the Funds Dissemination Committee. We are currently working to define a process for the allocation of movement funds across the community.
We would appreciate your help in answering some questions about your chapter finances today and your thoughts on the future funds dissemination process. This information is essential to help design the FDC so that it can provide for the Wikimedia movements' current and future funding needs.
These questions can be found and answered on: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Chapter_Financ….
We would like all chapters to respond, regardless of budget, so we have a strong understanding of the current state and expectations for the coming financial year.
We need your input by Friday, May 25th, so that it can be considered by the Funds Dissemination Committee Advisory Group and can be used to develop recommendations for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees.
If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out to me or to Asaf Bartov<mailto:abartov@wikimedia.org> at the Foundation.
Many thanks,
Divya
divya.narayanan(a)bridgespan.org<mailto:divya.narayanan@bridgespan.org>
User:Divyanarayanan_tbg
___________________NOTICE____________________________ This electronic mail transmission, including any attachments, contains confidential information of the Bridgespan Group ("Bridgespan") and/or its clients. It is intended only for the person(s) named, and the information in such e-mail shall only be used by the person(s) named for the purpose intended and for no other purpose. Any use, distribution, copying or disclosure by any other persons, or by the person(s) named but for purposes other than the intended purpose, is strictly prohibited. If you received this transmission in error, please notify the sender by reply e-mail and then destroy this e-mail. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of Bridgespan shall be understood to be neither given nor endorsed by Bridgespan. When addressed to Bridgespan clients, any information contained in this e-mail shall be subject to the terms and conditions in the applicable client contract.
This will be happening in a few minutes in #wikimedia-office.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Steven Walling <swalling(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Mon, May 7, 2012 at 11:19 AM
Subject: IRC office hours with Sue Gardner, 5/11 at 17:00 UTC
To: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Hi everyone,
This is just a quick note that Sue will be having her next office hours at
17:00 UTC on Friday. We haven't set a topic yet, but it's been some time
since her last IRC meeting, so I'm sure there will be plenty to talk about.
:)
As usual, docs are on Meta at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours. Also note that if you
have a preference for a better time than morning work hours for us here in
San Francisco, there is a poll that Sue started:
http://doodle.com/hnivrcvz3t5sf2gf#table
Talk to you on Friday!
--
Steven Walling
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
--
Steven Walling
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Thanks for bringing these questions and answers to this list, Florence and
Theo! Fellowships are definitely their own role category at WMF as for
other organizations, and the nuances aren't very clear-cut, so its always
good to see how others view things.
Theo, I'm glad to hear you think the roles are becoming more clearly
fleshed out - thats really nice feedback, thank you! The program pages on
meta are still a work in progress, and I'm hoping to do another run on them
this summer. As the program evolves, we're learning which fellowships are
good models to build on and which ones might be done differently next time.
For this reason, I'm always trying to update my thinking and will point to
the most recent fellowships as probably the best examples of what WMF
fellowships are today.
As I see it, there are 2 angles to consider in discussing fellowships: the
spirit or intent, and the paperwork.
The spirit of a WMF fellowship is a bit different from both traditional
staff roles and contractor roles. Fellowship work is based around a
project and generally a fellow focuses on completing 1 or occasionally a
few projects during their fellowship period. Projects are scoped to be
completed in 12 months or less and designed to be largely worked on
independently and led by fellows themselves, with some support from myself
and other WMF people as needed. Some fellows work in teams to complete a
project, some work by themselves. Fellows do technically report to someone
at WMF - usually that's me, but I'd characterize my management style as
something along the lines of "lets talk about where you want to go and what
help you might need in order to get there." Fellows bring some expertise
with them related to their project, and are also expected to learn
something and professionally develop over the course of their project.
Example: Peter Coombe's fellowship, which began this month, is a 6 month
fellowship to pilot a data-driven method for redesigning Help pages on
EN:WP. Peter is a long-time editor of EN:WP so he brings his community
expertise as well as his experience writing explanatory documentation from
other past work. He's keen to learn more about usability testing and
develop his skills in this area, so that will be where the professional
development aspect comes in for this fellowship.
This is different from a staff role where someone is hired to work more
generally in an area or department where they might contribute to many
different projects going on at the same time and where there isn't a
defined end date for their role. I see this as also different from a
traditional contractor model, where the organization defines the set of
tasks that need to be completed, finds someone who is an expert in those
tasks, and contracts with them to complete these tasks. In the
fee-for-service contractor model there isn't really a sense of professional
development, and there isn't much organizational support or mentorship
built into the model.
There are indeed Research Fellowships and Community Fellowships, but the
distinction between these 2 titles now is mostly in the project focus and
fellow's background. Community Fellowships are intended for members of the
Wikimedia Community, and they generally work on projects that will have
some direct impact on the community (again, Peter's fellowship). Research
Fellowships are titles used for fellows who work on research projects - for
example, in last summer's Wikimedia Summer of Research we engaged a group
of Research Fellows. Some of these research fellows were also active
members of the community though, and some of their work does also have
direct impact on the community (Research Fellow Jonathan Morgan is working
on the Teahouse project with Community Fellow Sarah Stierch, for example),
so these distinctions aren't always very neat and tidy.
We try to bring fellows to visit WMF in person at least once during their
fellowship. Some relocate to work from the San Francisco office, some do
not, and this is mostly decided based on the needs of the project and what
other commitments the fellow has (school, family, etc).
The way the paperwork is structured for each fellowship is done case by
case, though, and this is what I think starts to be confusing when we're
trying to put fellows in any particular bucket of contractor or staff. The
US has very specific regulations for engaging people that WMF must follow,
and so while the intent of all fellowships in the program should be the
same regardless of the paperwork, fellows come from many different
countries and work on many different kinds of projects. Duration and
location varies, so the type of contract or any benefits or liability
varies from case to case, and is determined by what the law says based on
all of these factors. I'm thankful that legal liability issues haven't
come up yet, hoping they never will, and figure that if they do our legal
team will take it on a case by case basis as well.
Sorry for the long email - and now I guess you see why the program pages
are still kind of confusing too :-) Let me know if this sparks other
questions or feedback!
Thanks,
Siko
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 10 May 2012 15:42:09 +0530
> From: Theo10011 <de10011(a)gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fellowship
> Message-ID:
> <CAP9+R95T0PQcEN395TKk69ofNR--gBWd7B8Taveqve1+Rp=YgQ(a)mail.gmail.com
> >
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Hi Florence
>
> I'm sure someone from the staff is going to explain this better later, but
> I will give it a shot until they do. I fielded questions about this last
> year, and did some clean-up work on Meta, so I looked up the information
> about this. I might be wrong on a couple of things, but I will try and
> explain to the best of my knowledge.
>
> Fellows, and their organizational, administrative roles have been fleshed
> out much better now than they were before. I believe Siko deserves a lot of
> the credit, along with other staffers. The delineation are becoming more
> clearer now than they were before.
>
> As it stands, there seem to be 2 types of fellows- one is, Research fellows
> and the other, Community fellows.
>
> Research fellows are usually remotely located, who sign on for a limited
> time and project. Their terms are usually smaller and only for the duration
> of the project which they sign on for. They are signed on for a specific
> task or project and supported through it. They are remote contractors,
> whose purpose is the completion of their research project and WMF supports
> them through it.
>
> Community fellows, which might be more familiar, are usually community
> members. They are usually located at the WMF office, and usually have one
> year terms (in majority of the cases). They may or may not have a specific
> project, or take on more projects during their fellowship. They are usually
> community resources/representatives at the staff with some familiarity with
> the staff and inner-workings. The last 3 community fellows incidentally,
> moved on to staff positions after their terms - Steven, Maryana and James.
> As far as I know, no past fellow exceeded the one year term.
>
> To the best of my knowledge, Community fellows are contractors. They are
> technically separate from staff, and technically not answerable to a direct
> superior. Traditionally, fellows are independent of the organization that
> appoints them. (not sure if that is the same in WMF context)
>
> I answered a couple of your questions in-line also.
>
> On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 2:15 PM, Florence Devouard <anthere9(a)yahoo.com
> >wrote:
>
> > Hello
> >
> > Following a conversation started on another mailing list on the meaning
> of
> > "fellowship", I am forwarding here a question that I hope will be
> answered
> > by someone (I can not help being curious :)).
> >
> > My original question was
> >
> > "I have also been wondering myself what the difference is between a
> fellow
> > and a staff member. The only difference I could personally figure out is
> > that the fellow is there for a very specific mission and for a fixed
> amount
> > of time, whilst the staff person may have his role and tasks change over
> > time and is supposingly on unlimited time (until he leaves or get fired).
> > Am I correct in my interpretation or is a fellow something different than
> > what I think it is ?"
> >
> > I got the following answers
> >
> > "From a communications perspective I have no problem defining what a
> > fellow is, and what they're doing. They are receiving compensation from
> the
> > Foundation to really focus on the work that they do, but I don't believe
> > would we call them 'staff' of the Foundation, nor contractors. Creative
> > Commons has fellows as well, but I've generally seen them communicating
> and
> > carrying out work within their research or area of activity focus:
> > https://creativecommons.org/**fellows<
> https://creativecommons.org/fellows>
> >
> > I do believe in either case a fellow does work on a specific project or
> > initiative for a set period of time."
> >
> >
> > as well as
> >
> > "See also https://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships#**
> > What_a_Fellow_is.<
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships#What_a_Fellow_is.>..
> > (and the following section, "What a Fellow is not...") "
> >
> > and
> >
> > "In other contexts, one of the important reasons why a fellow might not
> be
> > considered "staff" of the organization providing the fellowship is
> because
> > they would remain on the staff of whatever organization they were
> > affiliated with originally. Somebody at a university who receives a
> > fellowship to pursue research while on sabbatical is still primarily seen
> > as part of the university. (Not that Wikimedia fellowships are designed
> for
> > purely academic research, but the principle about affiliation applies
> > nevertheless.)"
> >
> > Which answers partly to my question indeed.
> >
> > I would be interesting to have not only a communication/management
> > perspective, but also an administrative & legal one.
> >
> > Does the fellowship status implies that the WMF pays for health or
> > retirement benefits (as it would for a staff member) or does the fellow
> > receive a lump sum and manages by himself to pay for taxes and benefits
> > depending on the country he lives in (as would a contractor) ?
> >
>
> Depends on the type of fellowship. Research fellows don't get other
> benefits, they are purely contractors. Community fellows are different, the
> exact nature of benefits was going through a change from what I remember
> since last year. Since majority of the community fellows have been located
> in SF, the exact tax and benefit paid, depends on California laws than
> elsewhere.
>
>
> > Does the fellowship status implies that, should the fellow get in
> trouble,
> > he would be considered "staff" (in terms of liability) or is he on his
> own
> > ? (which in my terms would be "if as staff", he is covered by WMF
> > insurrance versus "if as contractor", he has to pay insurrance by
> himself).
> >
>
> They are not staff. Research fellows truly are remote contractors, while
> Community fellows might be considered independent contractors working
> along-side staff. They are technically still not staff. In case of trouble,
> they would be considered as contractors. Perhaps not legally, but they are
> still considered representative of the organization that appoints them. I'm
> guessing, how far WMF takes the relationship or defends a contractor, would
> depend on the nature of the case.
>
> I hope this helps, I'm sure someone will correct me if I missed anything.
>
> Regards
> Theo
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
--
Siko Bouterse
Head of Community Fellowships
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org