When you're running an event, sometimes you want to help lots of people
create accounts on Wikimedia sites. To prevent spamming/vandalism,
ordinarily there's a cap on the number of accounts that can be created
from one IP address in a single day. But there's a way to ask for a
temporary removal of that restriction. The Foundation's Maggie Dennis
has written a quick HOWTO:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_request_lift_of_an_IP_cap
and so please feel free to link to it in your outreach HOWTOs, event
planning checklists, and so on. Thanks, Maggie!
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi,
I have launched speedydeletion.wika.com , it is updated every 30 minutes
with the proposed deletions and speedy deletion articles (not notable and
hoaxes, not others).
it is running on the en.wikipedia.org. the sources for the script are all
on git hub and are a merger of pywikipediabot and the wikiteam codebases.
hope you enjoy it,
thanks,
mike
--
James Michael DuPont
Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova http://flossk.org
Contributor FOSM, the CC-BY-SA map of the world http://fosm.org
Mozilla Rep https://reps.mozilla.org/u/h4ck3rm1k3
Date: 2012-07-18
Time: 16.30 UTC
Venue: #wikimedia-office
You are invited to a Wikimedia Foundation IRC Offfice Hours in Wednesday
July 18, 2012 at 16:30 UTC (time zone information: http://hexm.de/j6).
The Wikimedia Foundation features, product, design and legal teams want to
discuss with the community how they see they use of e-mail in the future,
as development of new features will increasingly make more use of e-mail as
a way to contact and engage new, current and previously active users.
Please mark this date in your calendar if you wish to participate in the
discussion. We will send a reminder a few days before the meeting.
--
Siebrand Mazeland
Product Manager Localisation
Wikimedia Foundation
M: +31 6 50 69 1239
Skype: siebrand
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hi all,
The second IRC office hours with the Foundation's editor engagement
experiments team will be on Saturday July 7th at 18:00 UTC. We've just
completed our first feature experiment on English Wikipedia, and others are
set for deployment in the next couple weeks, so there's lots to discuss!
As usual, docs about office hours are on Meta.[1] There is also material
documenting our experimental work there,[2] and on English Wikipedia at
WP:E3.
Talk to you then,
--
Steven Walling
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours
2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_engagement_experiments
Further to Jimbo's championing O'Dwyer, here is the court document from
O'Dwyer's January extradition trial:
http://www.europeanrights.eu/public/sentenze/WMC13gen2012.pdf
Some quotes:
---o0o---
O’Dwyer did not charge users of TVShack.net to download or stream content.
Instead he earned money from hosting advertisements on various portions of
the TVShack.net website.
[...]
According to Alexa.com, an organisation that ranks website popularity based
on frequency of visits, as of on or about June 28, 2010, TVShack.net was
the 1779th most popular website in the world and the 1419th in the United
States”. Following seizure of the original domain name on 29th June 2010
“within one day O’Dwyer and one of his co conspirators… registered a new
domain name, TVShack.net to TVShack.cc which was hosted on a server located
at an ISP either in Germany or the Netherlands.
[...]
TVShack.cc continued to offer copyrighted movies and television programs
under the new domain name without authorisation from the copyright
holders… Also posted on the homepage of this new website was the photograph
of a rap music group and the title of one of their songs “F*ck the Police”.
In interview, relied on in the U.S. Request, he is said to have accepted
owning TVShack.net and TVShack.cc “earning approximately £15,000 per month”
from online advertisements hosted on those sites.
[...]
[The US prosecutor argued] there was no attempt to protect copyright, he,
Richard O’Dwyer, knew materials were subject to copyright and actively
taunted already cited efforts in June 2010 to seize TVShack.net.
---o0o---
So Jimbo is saying that a chap who, according to statements in this court
document, made well over 20,000 advertising dollars a month from copyright
infringement (under the motto "fuck the police") reminds him "of many great
Internet entrepreneurs".
It looks like these – rather than NPOV – are the values that Wikipedia has
been co-opted to support.
Wow, thank goodness we never had advertising. The TV-Tropes wiki has been forced to censor a
number of pages due to advertiser pressure.
http://www.themarysue.com/tv-tropes-rape-articles/
In the mean time, the discussed tropes *do* exist in our culture and in our movies. It
somehow feels soviet. :-/
sincerely,
Kim Bruning
--
Cross-posting.
-greg
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Gregory Varnum <gregory.varnum(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: New, lower traffic, announcements only email list for Wikimedia developers
> Date: 30 June, 2012 1:23:11 AM EDT
> To: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> Greetings,
>
> Following discussions with Wikimedia developers more on the "fringe" and not as engaged in frequent IRC or mailing list conversations, the request for an announcements only mailing list came up. I wanted to let folks know that this list has been created and is ready for membership: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-announce - wikitech-announce(a)lists.wikimedia.org There will also be a signup list for this and other lists at Wikimania Hackathon.
>
> Unlike this list, which allows for discussion, or the MediaWiki-announce list, which focuses exclusively on MediaWiki release announcements, wikitech-announce will be used for occasional announcements on both MediaWiki and broader Wikimedia developer related news items. This includes an announcement when monthly tech or engineering reports are posted, important news updates on git or developer related tools, and information on upcoming sprints, events or other major developer collaborations.
>
> Having presented this idea a few times, there are some common questions I will get out of the way now.
>
> Why not just send these out on MediaWiki-announce? There was quick reaction from several of these less-engaged developers that some really did want JUST MediaWiki release info sent out on that list. In other words, the audience of that list did not like the idea.
>
> Will this duplicate emails sent to wikitech-l? Probably, but it is not designed for folks already utilizing wikitech-l - it is designed for folks who would like less email traffic and want announcements - not conversations.
>
> Is this really going to save folks that many emails? In June, the wikitech-l list had 639 individual messages (so far). It is unlikely that this list would exceed 12 a month. For reference, MediaWiki-announce has sent out 3 messages this month and mediawiki-l had 121 messages. This list presents a middle ground between the two extremes.
>
> Do we not already have enough lists? Yes, but as our developer community grows, so too must our means of communicating. Many individuals, myself included, have been intentionally trying to engage developers generally less present, but just as important to our community. Such as corporate developers with an interest in sharing extensions who can benefit from announcements about git. Similarly, some students would prefer to get basic info that helps them stay on top of the latest developments.
>
> Generally, if you find yourself having a concern about this list, it is probably not the list for you to join. However, if you find yourself excited at the idea of less development chatter while remaining informed, this might just be the list for you.
>
> Thank you to Sumana and TheHelpfulOne for supporting this effort and to Daniel Renfro for proposing this idea and getting the discussion started.
>
> I have volunteered to moderate the list at its start, but will be interested in recruiting others that are willing to help. Anyone with an announcement can submit one, and a moderator will approve messages which fit within the list's scope.
>
> Finally, like any new tool, I anticipate its usage will evolve over time - so please do engage in discussion on any ideas you may have for its future.
>
> Thank you!
> -greg aka varnent
Hi -
I want to introduce Anasuya Sengupta as the new Director, Global Learning
and Grantmaking at the Wikimedia Foundation. She will be starting on
Monday, July 2. In this role, Anasuya will lead our work in support of the
Funds Dissemination Committee, work with Asaf Bartov on grant-making and
with Jessie Wild in helping us to plan, monitor, evaluate and learn from
our programmatic work in a new team area, Global Learning and Evaluation
that Jessie will be leading (more soon on this). She will also serve as a
close thought-partner for me and the rest of the GD team in the leadership
of our work.
I am thrilled that Anasuya is joining us. She brings a deep passion for
social justice and an understanding of the power of free knowledge as an
enabler of opportunity for everyone. She will help us hold to our
commitments to increase the diversity of our community and has great
experience working collaboratively to change communities for the better.
She is also a really interesting person who I think we will all enjoy being
around and learning from.
Below is an introduction that Anasuya prepared.
For those of you who will be at Wikimania, I know Anasuya is excited to
meet with all of you there.
Please join me in welcoming Anasuya to our team.
Best,
Barry
************************
*Life will be measured *
*by notability test?*
*My secrets are mine!* ;-)
...but until we meet in person:
I am an activist turned grant-maker, who has worked nationally, regionally,
and internationally, to build and strengthen multi-generational feminist
leadership and networks, and to amplify voices from the margins – whether
across gender, sexuality, class, caste, race, age, geography or language. I
grew up in north Karnataka (southern India), and returned to work in this
part of the world after my undergraduate degree in Economics, as a
Programme Officer at Samuha, a rural development organisation. I took its
lessons with me into an M.Phil. in Development Studies at Oxford, where I
studied as a Rhodes Scholar. I led a UNICEF initiative with the Karnataka
police from 2001-2007, designing and implementing a state wide system of
response to issues of violence against women and children. Over the same
period, I served as Associate and researcher with Gender at Work, an
international knowledge network for gender equality. I co-edited and wrote
for the Association of Women's Rights in Development (AWID)
publication, *Defending
Our Dreams: global feminist voices for a new generation* (AWID and Zed
Books, 2006), arguably the first international anthology of young feminist
analyses and experience. I have founded campaigns, and been involved with
national and international networks against religious and cultural
fundamentalisms, and for sexual and reproductive rights and women's health.
In 2007, I moved from Bangalore to Berkeley, as a Visiting Scholar at UC
Berkeley and the Managing Trustee of a small Stanford-based family
foundation funding in South India. Over the past three years, I have been
Regional Program Director for Asia and Oceania at the Global Fund for
Women, one of the world's largest grant-making organisations exclusively
for women's human rights. In this capacity, I have overseen over 300 grants
to women-led organisations in the region – from Afghanistan to Kiribati -
and helped develop a framework for evaluating and learning our impact on
organisational growth and movement sustainability. My interest in the
politics of technology has been from the point of view of a women’s rights
activist, academic, and grant-maker. With Bangalore as home, surrounded by
friends and family who are progressive technologists, I started questioning
the politics of the software and hardware that is ubiquitous in our lives –
and ended up using Ubuntu Linux on my laptop. However, the Free/Libre and
Open Source Movement is not simply about technologies; at its heart is the
feminist principle that governs my politics: if knowledge is power, then
the empowerment of the marginalised is through a democratisation of
knowledge, and the equality of the future is through a deconstruction of
the privileging powers of access, voice, representation and participation.
I am passionate about poetry (a haiku a day keeps my blues away), theatre,
and music, and challenge myself with yoga. I tend to stick with my
post-colonial British form of spelling and punctuation ('s' over 'z' and a
nuanced use of the Oxford comma) unless explicitly asked not to do so.
--
Barry Newstead
Chief Global Development Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
Donate to Wikimedia <https://donate.wikimedia.org/>
_______________________________________________
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
_______________________________________________
WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list
WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
Greetings,
I am pleased to announce that the Midwest region of the United States now has our own email list!
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-us-mw - wikimedia-us-mw(a)lists.wikimedia.org.
This discussion list allows for individuals in the Midwest US to discuss Wikimedia related collaborations and events. It will also be used to discuss the possible formation of a Midwest US Wikimedia Chapter, already in discussion at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Midwest
The list will also house information on the upcoming Midwest US Meetup at Wikimania 2012: https://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Midwest_US_Meetup
I have volunteered to moderate the list at its start. Hopefully as leaders step up for the Midwest, they can be added and take that task on in the future.
I look forward to engaging with folks in discussion there on the future of Wikimedia involvement in the great Midwest!
-greg aka varnent
Recently, the Wikimedia Foundation was approached by the founders of an
organization called the Internet Defense League, which is soon to be
launched. The founders would like the Foundation to join the League.
However, the online community as a whole is the heart of this proposed
grassroots movement and therefore, the Foundation would like guidance from
the community as to whether or not the community feels the Foundation
should join this effort. Please let the Foundation know how you feel at <
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Internet_Defense_League>.
Thanks!
pb
___________________
Philippe Beaudette
Director, Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
415-839-6885, x 6643
philippe(a)wikimedia.org