Wikimedia-l December 2013

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

141 participants
92 discussions

Readers still love you
by Megan Hernandez 04 Jan '14

04 Jan '14

More love from our readers for you. Enjoy! i feel like i have a new brain bolted on. that's the internet in general, but a few of the gears in there are labeled 'wikipedia' It beautiful how you can get authentic information on almost everything in one place.. you guyz are doing a great job I read a lot of scifi when I was a kid and always dreamed of something like Wikipedia. Of course, I thought a computer would cover the whole wall so maybe the dream wasn't exactly prescient. In a world where 99% of people waste their life on Facebook its great to have a destination where you can go and learn something. I also get a great kick out of seeing some hamster-brained celebrity crow about how inaccurate Wikipedia is because she hasn't bothered to learn how to use it. "If you don't know how to drive stick shift, don't complain about the poor machine design." As with all tireless volunteers, all ya'll inspire me and make me want to contribute more to my community (read: my city, my state, my country, my world) Years ago, I would have to listen to my husband and sister-in-law argue about who was right ALL THE TIME. Now, they just pull out their phones, and Wikipedia has all the answers. The bickering has come to an end. Halleluiah! I cannot remember a day in the last 5 years when I haven't opened a Wikipedia page at least once. Thank you! I'm a med student and use your site daily. There is simply NO REASON to be ignorant about ANYTHING. I've always felt that, but Wikipedia has made it nearly criminally lazy to be so. Game changer. No other way to say it. There was a life before Wikipedia, but it was not nearly as enlightened!!! I think it is one of mankind's greatest achievements. No joke. I am old enough to remember encyclopedias. This is lots better. I use wikipedia every day. I now use it with Siri. I would like it permanently wired into my brain. I was a professional technical/scientific translator (German, French, Spanish to English) and constantly needed information on all sorts of things in different language. You can pick up a lot by comparing the German and English articles. makes my 8 yr old daughter smarter, enriches her, makes her more curious, more empowered, more relevant to the community, and helps shape her relationship to technology, seek truth, and develop a deeper understanding of the world and her day to day life. <3 Elegant searches for truth nourishes the soul. We tour cross country and our iPhones read us the Wiki entries on the histories, demographics and economies of the cities we visit! It's like an endless podcast of fascination and learning! I've always found Wikipedia useful but now, sort of out-of-the blue, I'm helping raise a 14 year old. Do you have any idea how many questions daily whether homework-related or life-related that adds up to? No, neither do I, but it's a lot and it's great to be able to have a knowledge resource against which I can grade my own answers! Brilliant quick reference source to back up ludicrous arguments! don't need a brain anymore, I got Wikipedia. As a father of two school age children, I do not always have the answers to help them with their homework.........but Wikipedia usually does !! Your editors are supremely good. Your online concept has rendered the venerable encyclopedia extinct. You guys are doing a great job - for humanity. I'm jealous ..... Thanks to Wikipedia, I'm a master of all subjects as long as I have an active internet connection. Best thing that ever happened to me since the internet -- Megan Hernandez Director of Online Fundraising Wikimedia Foundation

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01 Jan '14

Can nobody stop the URAA Copyright trolls mass deleting perfect fine files on Commons? I think it would be the best if _all_ URAA affected files would be kept until a DMCA take down notice. But in the case of in the country of origin PD works which are foreign government works it is needed that the WMF clearly speaks out that such works could be accepted on Commons even when a written statement of the foreign government doesn't exist. See for Canada's crown copyright https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Burlingto… Klaus Graf

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Board approval of FDC's 2013-14 Round 1 recommendations
by Bishakha Datta 31 Dec '13

31 Dec '13

Dear members of the Wikimedia community, As you know, on 24 November, 2013, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) made its Round 1 funding recommendations to the WMF Board of Trustees. [1] Eleven proposals were submitted in this round, with requests for funds totaling US$5.9 million. Out of its 2013-2014 annual budget of US$6 million, the FDC recommended allocations totaling US$4,432,000 to these eleven movement entities, leaving US$1,568,000 for Round 2. Two entities appealed to the Board about the recommendations of the FDC. The Board has carefully considered all of the points raised in the appeal, and invited the Ombudsperson to comment as well. After reviewing all of the information, the Board decided not to override the recommendations of the FDC, and has responded to the appeals in more depth. [2] I am pleased to share with you the news that the Board of Trustees has made the decision to approve the FDC's 2012-2013 Round 2 funding recommendations in full. [3] These funding recommendations will now be implemented by the Foundation. We would like to thank the Round 1 applicants themselves, the Funds Dissemination Committee members and staff, the ombudsperson, and the members of the community who participated in the community review period. Again, we thank you all for your dedication and commitment to this funding process. Best, Patricio Lorente and Bishakha Datta, Board Representatives to the FDC [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2013-2014_ro… [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Appeals_to_the_Board_on_the_reco… [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Board_decisions/2013-2014_round1

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Dells are backdored
by James Salsman 31 Dec '13

31 Dec '13

Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance? Ref.: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-door… Best regards, James

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images deletedfrom WikiCommons
by Michal Lester 31 Dec '13

31 Dec '13

Hi, As some of you know, images are been deleted in the past month from WikiCommons due to a change in the ruling of the United States Supreme Court. (The case of Golan v. Holder, confirming the legality of the URAA, has restored copyright status to foreign works that were placed in the public domain after January 1, 1996). Court ruling brought WikiCommons volunteers to delete images that do not meet the new guideline. Consequently, Israeli images were deleted even though the Israeli law releases them into the public domain. We wrote to the legal department of the Foundation to alert about the situation. The department has posted a legal opinion<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Use_of_Foreign_Works_Restored_und…> on the subject following our inquiry. WMIL is going to turn to the Minister of Justice and seek for written statement that confirm that images released by the State of Israel to the public domain may be used freely around the world. We hope that WikiCommons operators rely on the letter and will not delete more images. It will be great if other chapters will update if they encountered the problem and what you intend to do. All the best Michal -- Michal Lester Executive Director Wikimedia Israel http://www.wikimedia.org.il/ 050-8996046 *Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. **That's our commitment.*

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
by James Salsman 30 Dec '13

30 Dec '13

> Maximum 100 Mbps ethernet connection.... We should be using fiber, which also costs less power and is orders of magnitude faster. If the words "enterprise-class" actually mean something more than "much larger markup than purchasing components" then go with something like http://www.marvell.com/company/news/pressDetail.do?releaseID=3576 For example, maybe the http://www.mitac.com/business/gfx_servers.html people have benchmarks representative of our DB/cache usage patterns. It's not like we have anything special (or x86-specific, Jasper!) other than very high bandwidth. At least put out an RFP, please.

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(no subject)
by James Salsman 30 Dec '13

30 Dec '13

> Neither of Calxeda's articles gives a figure for capital cost I think they went under the moment their first competitor charging typical markups (Mitac) started shipping. Get some GFX servers and some of these to do your own tests: http://www.mitac.com/Business/7-Star.html > you can't just plug a fiber cable into an ethernet socket The RADXA Rock includes SPDIF, and it's open source. Spare fiber isn't more expensive than spare Ethernet, but it's far more resistant to eavesdropping. http://wiki.radxa.com/Rock/hardware_revision

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdoored
by James Salsman 30 Dec '13

30 Dec '13

Jasper, if you can't write an email or pick up the phone asking for a hardware quote without supporting the status quo of the Foundation datacenter being a monument to the poster boy of corporate tax abuses, Microsoft OEM bundling abuses, and NSA collaboration, I really can't help you. If you're interested in what the long term savings can look like, see: http://www.cnx-software.com/2010/11/16/arm-based-embedded-servers-marvell-a…

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
by James Salsman 29 Dec '13

29 Dec '13

>... Wikimedia Labs uses x86 hardware virtualization (just one example) How does that tie us to x86? http://www.eweek.com/servers/arm-server-chips-get-xen-virtualization-suppor… >... a conservative $200/server estimate I have been recommending hardware which costs closer to $70 per "server" depending on storage and cache architecture options.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
by James Salsman 29 Dec '13

29 Dec '13

When this came up last time, it turned out that there was some kind of a deal in place, and certainly many if not most published pictures of the Wikimedia data center feature rows of shiny Dell logos. But Dell does support Microsoft and the NSA, obviously, and also supports some very creative accounting methods to avoid paying taxes with tax havens. Dell's corporate structure adventures are not the sort of corporate behavior concordant with a mission to empower anyone other than Dell stockholders. If you don't like Cubietrucks, then how about RADXA? At least with http://dl.radxa.com/rock/docs/hw/RADXA_ROCK_schematic_20130903.pdf you know exactly what you're getting and it doesn't cost a huge power bill. We still failover when machines go out of service, and sure the caches would have different RAM configurations, but the fact is it doesn't cost more money to switch to ARM, and you jettison a bunch of legacy x86 crap that nobody uses but take millions of transistors which need to be powered. Why ask our donors to keep all those useless transistors warm? And as much as I personally appreciate Wikimedia staff, I am inclined to agree with the sentiment that perhaps we should hire more staff until we get some who believe that it wouldn't cost $100,000 to transition to less expensive hardware. And maybe some people who know how to order chassis? Best regards, James

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Wikimedia-l December 2013