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
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
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
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.*
> 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.
> 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
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…
>... 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.
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