Tim Starling wrote:
> According to ru.wp Arbcom member DR, the danger to Wikipedia was
> overstated, and the text of the proposed law was misrepresented.
I think that the interpretation to the bill given by DR is incorrect. In fact the proposed bill was not only about child pornography and extremism, but also about drugs and, about “information, prompting children to commit actions, making threat to their life and health”. That was a very loose clause, that could ban virtually anything. After the blackout this clause was removed from the bill and it is a clear achievement of the strike. On the other hand the final version of the bill contains another clause, that is even more hazardous to us. It is about “information of methods of producing and use of narcotic substances, … of methods and places of cultivation of narcotic plants”. We do have information of drug synthesis on Wikipedia, ways of its use (e.g. marijuana) and we do have thorough instructions of marijuana cultivation on wikibooks. That is why our achievements are ambiguous. On the one hand we have a removal of a loose clause about information harmful to children, but on the otherwe now have another clause that is even more dangerous. That is why we are still trying to do what we can via our contacts within the authorities to revise the passed bill.
But that is not all. The most important issue is extremism. According to the bill, the materials, that are banned for distribution in Russia should be included to the register of banned information on the ground of the court decision, banning the distribution of that information in Russia. We already have such court decisions and a list of extremist materials, distribution of which is prohibited in Russia. That list contains some really nasty materials, as e.g. nazi propaganda, but also Islamic texts (including those of famous non-terrorist Islamic authors e.g. Said Nursî), Saentologist, Jehova’s witnesses , Falun Gong, letters and materials of opposition in Russia, works of contemporary art, etc.
We *do have* banned extremist materials in Wikipedia. E.g. this image:
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Файл:Александр_Савко_Путешествия_Микки_Мауса_п… искусства.jpeg
is considered extremist and is banned for distribution in Russia. (Hopefully it was uploaded two years before it was regulated as banned by the court).
This letter in wikisource is also considered extremist:
http://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/Всем,_кто_сочувствует_жертвам_бесланского_тер…!
This is enough for banning the IPs of Wikimedia projects in Russia. And I am really afraid of this.
I guess DR is aware of discussion on this list, but anyway I will inform him of it. Maybe he has something to add.
> According to Levg in his Arbcom application, again via Google
> Translate, "It should be noted that there are no objective reasons for
> such a 'sprint survey' did not exist, to discuss the bill on second
> reading has been known since at least last Friday."
That is our fault that we could not manage to get the information in time. The first hearing was on Friday, but the community and myself got to know about the problem only on Monday, 9th. What for me personally I haven’t read the news on the weekend (yes, it is bad, that I relaxed on the weekend and haven’t read the news), and I failed to get to know about the problem in time. I guess it is also true for others. If we start to organize on Friday, the result would be better. It is a fault, but anyway it was not a deliberate fault, as nobody has informed the community earlier.
*Hi everyone,
It's been a bit since I last emailed this list (or any list, for that
matter!)... you may remember me, I worked at the Foundation last year in
the Community Department, working with Philippe on any number of issues,
as well as with the OTRS team. I've come back to work on a short term
project with the Foundation, and I have to say it's great to be back!
(and a great break from my Master's thesis!)
We're getting ready to run the next version of the Editor Survey, for
August 2012. This will be the third incarnation we've run since 2011.
As with the prior incarnations of the survey, we'll be looking at a
variety of topics, this time with the goal of not only understanding
your needs and pressing issues while interacting with fellow editors,
but also focusing on editors' satisfaction with the work of the Foundation.
The last time we ran an editor survey, it was completed by over 6,000
respondents. When you break that down, it means that each minute of
time demanded by the survey corresponds to 100 hours of Wikipedians'
time. We want to make sure that this time is spent wisely, ensuring
that the questions we have are worded clearly, don't cause confusion,
and will generate meaningful answers. So we'd like to ask you to take a
look at the survey, and give us feedback on the questions. You can find
them here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_August_201…
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Surv…>
... and please leave your feedback on the talk page there so we can keep
the discussion in one place :)
You can find out more information about the survey here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_August_2012
Also, we are planning an IRC Office Hour on the survey, this **Tuesday,
July 31 at 1700 UTC.** (See
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hoursfor general information
about IRC Office hours)
I know there has been some discussion about offering Office Hours in a
broader range of times, and I know this time may not be the greatest for
some... but this was the best time we could find currently.
Thanks everyone!!
-Christine
Wikimedia Foundation*
Hi.
How is the fund-raising goal determined each year?
Is there a fund-raising goal set for the upcoming fund-raiser (the one
beginning in November 2012)?
Is there a guideline or policy regarding what happens once the fund-raising
goal is met?
MZMcBride
On 7/28/12 5:58 AM, Tilman Bayer wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> the Wikimedia Foundation's 2012-13 Annual Plan has just been published at
>
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:2012-13_Wikimedia_Foundation_Plan…
>
> accompanied by a Q&A:
>
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2012-2013_Annual_Plan_Questions_and_An…
>
> The plan was approved by the Board of Trustees at its meeting in
> Washington, DC, at Wikimania, and previously outlined to the
> Foundation staff and interested community members at the monthly staff
> meeting on July 5, 2012. We were planning to publish the video
> recording of that meeting at this point, but encountered technical
> difficulties; the video will hopefully become available soon.
>
Slide 8 : "How are we doing against the 2012 targets"
I was stopped by
"The Global Education Program is now the largest-ever systematic effort
of the Wikimedia mouvement to boost high quality content creation, with
a projected addition of 19 million characters to Wikipedia through
student assignements 2011-2012"
OF COURSE, we all know that WMF needs to glorify what it is actually
initiating/in charge of. And that's fair enough.
But seriously... I would feel fine with us trying to claim that the GEP
is the largest system effort to INCREASE the number of articles. It is
probably true.
But we all know that the result is... so and so. Possibly good content,
but also lot's of crap being reverted and deleted afterwards. Claiming
it is the largest effort to boost high quality content is not only
disingenous... but I actually find it counter productive and a tiny bit
offensive toward the actual community.
High quality content simply does NOT come from newbie students.
Florence
Hi,
In the 2012-13 WMF plan document I saw an interesting thing:
"We’ve hosted key community stakeholders such as English Wikipedia’s
ArbCom and Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors, in an effort to
better understand and respond to issues they're facing." (page 41).
I was very happy to read this. In general, I hope that such focused
meetings will be held with more language communities. I don't think
that I need to explain why :)
I don't know how did the meeting with the Portuguese Wikipedians go; I
suppose that it was good. I don't remember that I read anything about
it in blogs or mailing lists, but I may have missed it. Maybe what I'm
about to write is known already, but I'll say it anyway.
An important thing in such meetings is to have a community member who
contributes to the Wikipedia in that language AND to the English
Wikipedia. This is needed because the Foundation people are probably
familiar with policies, customs and jargon in the English Wikipedia.
Even simple terms, like "Village Pump", are not necessarily familiar
to people who primarily edit in other languages; not all Wikipedias
have ArbComs; not all Wikipedias prohibit voting; etc. Such a person
will be able to "translate" between the English Wikipedia terms and
the local Wikipedia terms. Without such a person misunderstandings
will definitely happen, even if everybody knows the English language
well.
That's it, hope it helps.
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
Hi all,
the Wikimedia Foundation's 2012-13 Annual Plan has just been published at
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:2012-13_Wikimedia_Foundation_Plan…
accompanied by a Q&A:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2012-2013_Annual_Plan_Questions_and_An…
The plan was approved by the Board of Trustees at its meeting in
Washington, DC, at Wikimania, and previously outlined to the
Foundation staff and interested community members at the monthly staff
meeting on July 5, 2012. We were planning to publish the video
recording of that meeting at this point, but encountered technical
difficulties; the video will hopefully become available soon.
--
Tilman Bayer
Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
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Hi,
The Olympic games are beginning soon. Apparently, ticket holders
cannot use photo equipment longer than 30cm and cannot use the photos
and videos for commercial purposes without accreditation.
Practically everything that happens at the Olympics is notable and
should be on Wikipedia, Commons, etc. Does anybody know whether there
are professional accredited photographers who are Wikimedia-friendly
and plan to upload their photos? If there aren't any, does anybody
know whether a Wikipedian can obtain such accreditation?
This doesn't concern me directly, but there are many, many people who
write Wikipedia articles about sports in all languages and it may be
interesting to them. Also, it may be a frequent issue in sports and
I'm just not aware of it because I rarely follow sports.
Sources for the restrictions:
* http://www.tickets.london2012.com/purchaseterms.html
* PDF: http://j.mp/london2012prohibited
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
Hello,
There are many projects in small languages. People want to develop
them, but are often not sure what should they do. Even something basic
like "improve existing pages and write new ones" may not be obvious.
Is there something like a "task list for new projects"? Something like:
* Write new articles about your own culture
* Translate articles about worldwide topics from big Wikipedias
* Create useful templates, like {{welcome}, {{citation needed}},
{{infobox}}, {{delete}} etc.
* Write content policies
* Write help pages about MediaWiki (that's a big topic for its own thread)
* Complete and maintain the translation of MediaWiki and extensions in
translatewiki.net
* Create pages for Village pump, Administrator notice board, Help desk etc.
* Watch Recent changes
* Periodically delete articles that were marked for speedy deletion
etc.
(Of course, for Wikisource, Wikibooks etc. the task list would
somewhat different.)
I was about to write such page for the Punjabi Wikipedia, which I
kinda adopted in the last few months, but then thought that something
like this may exist already. Is anybody familiar with anything?
Thank you.
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
The Language Committee (Langcom) report for July 2012 was published. The
Langcom reports used to be published on this list too for some time, but
that has stopped and they were only put on Meta.
I would now like to resume putting the monthly report here.
See the wiki version on
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Reports/2012-07
===Committee===
*The Langcom has discussed to join the ''Alliance for Linguistic
Diversity'' of Google's Endangered languages project
http://www.endangeredlanguages.com . In the wish to act as a connection
between the Wikimedia community and the project, we have applied on 25
July, mentioning Wikimedia's significant resources related to preserving
languages, e.g. Wikisource, Wiktionary and Incubator.
===Requests and approvals===
*Following a question from one of the contributors, the status of the Oriya
Wikiquote[1] was discussed, but more activity and message translation work
is required there before approval can be considered.
*The request for a Wikipedia in Gorkha [2] has been withdrawn by the
proposer. It is also not eligible per our policies.
*Assamese Wikisource [3] (cf. last month's report) was brought up again:
Translations are now finished, but the activity is not high/steady enough
yet.
*The request to close Lojban Wiktionary [4] has been rejected.
*The request to close Basa Sunda Wikibooks [5] is currently undergoing
Board review and will probably be accepted.
===Other===
*It has been discussed whether it could be allowed to use another code for
the URL of the Wikipedia in Mapundungun [6] (test project [7]), for example
of the codes that is reserved for "private use" in the ISO 639-3 scheme (it
would e.g. be qmp.wikipedia.org instead of arn.wikipedia.org then); because
the ISO code "arn" derives from a word which is claimed to be seen as
offensive by the speakers of the language. No decision was taken, but
**Some members tended to accept such a thing, others tended to rule out
such a deviation from the ISO standard. The general importance of the
standard was highlighted.
**Most members would like organizations/speakers of the language to try to
get the ISO code changed first, but it was also noted that such a change
would be very unlikely to be accepted.
**The details of why/how the code is considered offensive by the speakers
were discussed. It is generally agreed that the code will not be changed
for political reasons. Currently, the president of Wikimedia Chile has been
contacted and will try to get statements from these NGOs and Universities.
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikiquote_Oriya
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Gorkha
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikisource_Assam…
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_L…
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_B…
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639:arn
[7] https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/arn