Hi,
for the last couple of months, Wikinews and The World Forum (www.theworldforum.org) have enjoyed a very productive cooperation. TWF reposts Wikinews stories (allowing us to appear on the news.google.com frontpage several times), and the editor, "Drog", has now also started submitting his own stories to Wikinews as public domain.
I've given Drog the go-ahead to link to Wikinews using our logo on the frontpage. I thought that given the recent discussions about logo copyright & licensing, it might be a good idea to report this here.
(On a related note, I feel that David Vasquez has done an excellent job refining the logo. It looks much more optimistic and welcoming than the logos of most news sites.)
All best,
Erik
Yes, M. Vasquez managed to polish a vaguely worrisome logo into a world-class one. And with the wikinews skin redesign approaching... the *fully operational* wikistar will be beautiful as well.
SJ
(On a related note, I feel that David Vasquez has done an excellent job refining the logo. It looks much more optimistic and welcoming than the logos of most news sites.)
Does anyone know of other uses of a globe icon rotated to that longitude?
Sj wrote:
Does anyone know of other uses of a globe icon rotated to that longitude?
An amusing example:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/fe-scidi.htm
"Uncle Joe (Stalin), Churchill, and Roosevelt laid the master plan to bring in the New Age under the United Nations," Johnson discloses with confidence. "The world ruling power was to be right here in this country. After the war, the world would be declared flat and Roosevelt would be elected first president of the world. When the UN Charter was drafted in San Francisco, they took the flat-earth map as their symbol."
Tim Starling wrote:
Sj wrote:
Does anyone know of other uses of a globe icon rotated to that longitude?
An amusing example:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/fe-scidi.htm
"Uncle Joe (Stalin), Churchill, and Roosevelt laid the master plan to bring in the New Age under the United Nations," Johnson discloses with confidence. "The world ruling power was to be right here in this country. After the war, the world would be declared flat and Roosevelt would be elected first president of the world. When the UN Charter was drafted in San Francisco, they took the flat-earth map as their symbol."
LBJ could only wish so much.
Some of his successors still believe that they have been elected leaders of the free world.
Ec
Erik Moeller wrote:
I've given Drog the go-ahead to link to Wikinews using our logo on the frontpage. I thought that given the recent discussions about logo copyright & licensing, it might be a good idea to report this here.
Erik, you had absolutely no right to do this. Please and politely let them know that they do not have authorization to use the logo in this fashion, and please acknowledge to us that you realize that you should not have done this.
--Jimbo
Jimmy,
I have asked Drog to remove the logo box, at least temporarily. I find this very sad and would like to hear your rationale why this is necessary. TWF follows an NPOV/MPOV-style policy and has been very helpful to us, and their additional free advertising is very nice for a still-small site.
I never authorized an "In Association With" heading and am happy to suggest alternatives, and Angela is correct that the "Visit our sponsors" link (which refers to the Google ads above it) was misleading; again, I gave no authorization for that. In any case, as you may recall, you appointed me as "Wikimedia Foundation Content Partnership Co-ordinator" on February 18, 2004, which I (it turns out, wrongly) believed at least gave me some additional leeway to do these things.
Is there any other procedure I should have followed, and if so, where is it documented? http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Logos doesn't say anything. Nor does: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_trademarks
I believe that logos and buttons that people can click on are a natural thing on the web, and that we should be fairly relaxed about people using our logos (especially those of projects which need exposure), unless it's clearly against our interest to do so. Firefox' trademark is not diluted by people putting Firefox buttons on their homepages - it is diluted by another web browser calling itself "Firefox-XP".
A project which prides itself on being free content gains nothing from treating logos as precious intellectual property that needs to be protected from evil.
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
A project which prides itself on being free content gains nothing from treating logos as precious intellectual property that needs to be protected from evil.
I agree with this very much of course -- this is not the issue.
--Jimbo
Erik Moeller a écrit:
I never authorized an "In Association With" heading and am happy to suggest alternatives, and Angela is correct that the "Visit our sponsors" link (which refers to the Google ads above it) was misleading; again, I gave no authorization for that. In any case, as you may recall, you appointed me as "Wikimedia Foundation Content Partnership Co-ordinator" on February 18, 2004, which I (it turns out, wrongly) believed at least gave me some additional leeway to do these things.
If I dare say something here... I do not think this position is mentionned anywhere. At least, it is not cited on meta, nor on the foundation website. As far as I am concerned, this position unfortunately does not exist. But I see where the confusion stands of course. Perhaps it should be discussed by the board as well as which liberty of decision it provides ?
Ant
Anthere wrote:
Erik Moeller a écrit:
I never authorized an "In Association With" heading and am happy to suggest alternatives, and Angela is correct that the "Visit our sponsors" link (which refers to the Google ads above it) was misleading; again, I gave no authorization for that. In any case, as you may recall, you appointed me as "Wikimedia Foundation Content Partnership Co-ordinator" on February 18, 2004, which I (it turns out, wrongly) believed at least gave me some additional leeway to do these things.
If I dare say something here... I do not think this position is mentionned anywhere. At least, it is not cited on meta, nor on the foundation website. As far as I am concerned, this position unfortunately does not exist. But I see where the confusion stands of course. Perhaps it should be discussed by the board as well as which liberty of decision it provides ?
I recall this appointment as well---Jimbo explicitly appointed Erik to the position. Doesn't the Foundation president have the authority to make appointments of that sort? If so, it would seem that someone should update the foundation website.
-Mark
On 4/18/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
If so, it would seem that someone should update the foundation website.
A question came to me; if we have already mentioned other officers as is in a clear way?
As for mav I can found -Two Quarto pages (vol.1 & 2) -His own user page -Some meeting logs
Before update, should we create a brief list of WMF officer(s)? Or it s okay to add a brief note on "Trustees" page? (The latter idea seems however to me a bit confused. One of my friend confused Tim Shell and Tim Starling ...)
Aphaia a écrit:
On 4/18/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
If so, it would seem that someone should update the foundation website.
A question came to me; if we have already mentioned other officers as is in a clear way?
As for mav I can found -Two Quarto pages (vol.1 & 2) -His own user page -Some meeting logs
You are correct Britty; it should be more clearly stated possibly.
Before update, should we create a brief list of WMF officer(s)? Or it s okay to add a brief note on "Trustees" page? (The latter idea seems however to me a bit confused. One of my friend confused Tim Shell and Tim Starling ...)
Currently, the only officer I am aware of is Mav.
Tim resigned when he took his wikibreak. Not sure exactly what the situation is currently on this topic. Practically, I get information from about 4-5 sources, Tim definitly being one of them ;-)
On 4/18/05, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Currently, the only officer I am aware of is Mav.
Tim resigned when he took his wikibreak. Not sure exactly what the situation is currently on this topic.
The moral is: "any statement can make some confused". I can't figure even now what made the confusion I mentined possible .. but there was a confusion actually So I prefer to have a separate page for a list with necessary information in minimum (name, if possible user name, what they concern, and so on)
On 4/17/05, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Currently, the only officer I am aware of is Mav.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Official_position lists three potential positions; * Chief Financial Officer: Daniel Mayer * Developer Liaison: - * Election Officials: Varies with each election
The possible splitting of "Developer Liaison" into Developer Liaison and Server Liaison was discussed recently.
The page only includes positions assigned since the existence of the Board. Other positions were handed out by Jimmy before that. The only ones I remember are Content Partnership Co-ordinator: Erik Möller Spokesperson (just for the French Wikipedia?): Yann Forget
Angela.
Angela a écrit:
On 4/17/05, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Currently, the only officer I am aware of is Mav.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Official_position lists three potential positions; * Chief Financial Officer: Daniel Mayer * Developer Liaison: - * Election Officials: Varies with each election
The possible splitting of "Developer Liaison" into Developer Liaison and Server Liaison was discussed recently.
The page only includes positions assigned since the existence of the Board. Other positions were handed out by Jimmy before that. The only ones I remember are Content Partnership Co-ordinator: Erik Möller Spokesperson (just for the French Wikipedia?): Yann Forget
Angela.
Yes. These were handled before the board was elected and when we discussed official positions, these were not confirmed. Not being discussed, nor listed in any official place, I considered them not valid any more. I am sorry if I misunderstood this.
This said, Yann has continued to believe himself the porte parole of Foundation, in spite of discussion and private mention to him by Jimbo than he was no more. He still considers he is and acts as if he is.
Consequently, I suggest that this be rediscussed again between the 5 of us and that these positions are confirmed or infirmed.
Ihmo, if these positions are still valid, it is so secret that even board members are not aware of it :-)
My biggest point anyway would be that having an official position does not give the right to take a big decision on behalf of the Foundation. I do not feel that right myself.
Le Saturday 23 April 2005 14:07, Anthere a écrit :
Spokesperson (just for the French Wikipedia?): Yann Forget
Angela.
Yes. These were handled before the board was elected and when we discussed official positions, these were not confirmed. Not being discussed, nor listed in any official place, I considered them not valid any more. I am sorry if I misunderstood this.
This said, Yann has continued to believe himself the porte parole of Foundation, in spite of discussion and private mention to him by Jimbo than he was no more. He still considers he is and acts as if he is.
That's completely false. Anthere, please stop spreading false allegations, lies and rumors.
Consequently, I suggest that this be rediscussed again between the 5 of us and that these positions are confirmed or infirmed.
Ihmo, if these positions are still valid, it is so secret that even board members are not aware of it :-)
My biggest point anyway would be that having an official position does not give the right to take a big decision on behalf of the Foundation. I do not feel that right myself.
Yann
Yann Forget a écrit:
Le Saturday 23 April 2005 14:07, Anthere a écrit :
Spokesperson (just for the French Wikipedia?): Yann Forget
Angela.
Yes. These were handled before the board was elected and when we discussed official positions, these were not confirmed. Not being discussed, nor listed in any official place, I considered them not valid any more. I am sorry if I misunderstood this.
This said, Yann has continued to believe himself the porte parole of Foundation, in spite of discussion and private mention to him by Jimbo than he was no more. He still considers he is and acts as if he is.
That's completely false. Anthere, please stop spreading false allegations, lies and rumors.
Le Saturday 23 April 2005 14:51, Anthere a écrit :
Yann Forget a écrit:
Le Saturday 23 April 2005 14:07, Anthere a écrit :
Spokesperson (just for the French Wikipedia?): Yann Forget
Angela.
Yes. These were handled before the board was elected and when we discussed official positions, these were not confirmed. Not being discussed, nor listed in any official place, I considered them not valid any more. I am sorry if I misunderstood this.
This said, Yann has continued to believe himself the porte parole of Foundation, in spite of discussion and private mention to him by Jimbo than he was no more. He still considers he is and acts as if he is.
That's completely false. Anthere, please stop spreading false allegations, lies and rumors.
I never told this journalist that I was the porte-parole of the Foundation. That's a false allegation you continue to spread in spite of the fact that I already told you so several times.
Yann
Yann Forget a écrit:
Le Saturday 23 April 2005 14:51, Anthere a écrit :
Yann Forget a écrit:
Le Saturday 23 April 2005 14:07, Anthere a écrit :
Spokesperson (just for the French Wikipedia?): Yann Forget
Angela.
Yes. These were handled before the board was elected and when we discussed official positions, these were not confirmed. Not being discussed, nor listed in any official place, I considered them not
valid
any more. I am sorry if I misunderstood this.
This said, Yann has continued to believe himself the porte parole of Foundation, in spite of discussion and private mention to him by Jimbo than he was no more. He still considers he is and acts as if he is.
That's completely false. Anthere, please stop spreading false allegations, lies and rumors.
I never told this journalist that I was the porte-parole of the
Foundation.
That's a false allegation you continue to spread in spite of the fact
that I
already told you so several times.
Yann
You have been asked several times to be careful to restore the information and to indicate which role you were holding each time you talked about something. This in particular true for all topics which are related to the Foundation proper.
Typically, no articles about a potential agreement with Google should appear in the press, with comments from you, speaking in the name of the Foundation. This is not correct.
Each time you let such an article go public, you feed the idea you are the porte parole and has more authority to talk about this than anyone else.
It does not make things easier when you send our ***official*** 100 000 article press release and carefully remove the names of all the contacts listed in the press release. You further fuel the idea you are the *only* point of contact for any press relation for wikipedia and the *only* one who has authority to talk about such matters. Anyone has the right to talk about wikipedia. Removing other people names is again incorrect.
So, as much as you told me several times you recognised you were not the porte parole; I would like to ask you again to clarify in which name you talk to any outside person, to remove from you CV the fact you are this porte parole and to avoid sending press release without any of the contacts mentionned but you only.
Other than this, I have little to say on the quality of your participation which is appreciated.
Anthere wrote:
Yann Forget a écrit:
Le Saturday 23 April 2005 14:51, Anthere a écrit :
Yann Forget a écrit:
Le Saturday 23 April 2005 14:07, Anthere a écrit :
Spokesperson (just for the French Wikipedia?): Yann Forget
Angela.
Yes. These were handled before the board was elected and when we discussed official positions, these were not confirmed. Not being discussed, nor listed in any official place, I considered them not
valid
any more. I am sorry if I misunderstood this.
This said, Yann has continued to believe himself the porte parole of Foundation, in spite of discussion and private mention to him by
Jimbo
than he was no more. He still considers he is and acts as if he is.
That's completely false. Anthere, please stop spreading false allegations, lies and rumors.
I never told this journalist that I was the porte-parole of the
Foundation.
That's a false allegation you continue to spread in spite of the
fact that I
already told you so several times.
Yann
You have been asked several times to be careful to restore the information and to indicate which role you were holding each time you talked about something. This in particular true for all topics which are related to the Foundation proper.
Typically, no articles about a potential agreement with Google should appear in the press, with comments from you, speaking in the name of the Foundation. This is not correct.
Each time you let such an article go public, you feed the idea you are the porte parole and has more authority to talk about this than anyone else.
It does not make things easier when you send our ***official*** 100 000 article press release and carefully remove the names of all the contacts listed in the press release. You further fuel the idea you are the *only* point of contact for any press relation for wikipedia and the *only* one who has authority to talk about such matters. Anyone has the right to talk about wikipedia. Removing other people names is again incorrect.
So, as much as you told me several times you recognised you were not the porte parole; I would like to ask you again to clarify in which name you talk to any outside person, to remove from you CV the fact you are this porte parole and to avoid sending press release without any of the contacts mentionned but you only.
Other than this, I have little to say on the quality of your participation which is appreciated.
As this is a squabble between two Wikipedians whose opinions and vision I most deeply respect there are evident misunderstandings involved. I noted the phrase "porte-parole de la fondation Wikipédia pour la France" in the Libération, but I also have enough life experience to know that what appears in newspapers is often quite different from what is said to journalists.
I checked Yann's CV at http://www.forget-me.net/cv.html and the only reference to us there now is "Secrétaire de l'association Wikimédia http://wikimedia.org/ France". I have no problems with this. If erroneous material was there before it is no longer there.
Giuven the high esteem in which I hold both of you, I'm sure that a middle path will be found to reconcile this series of misunderstandings and misstatements. There are more than enough others that do the contrary.
Ec
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
I've given Drog the go-ahead to link to Wikinews using our logo on the frontpage. I thought that given the recent discussions about logo copyright & licensing, it might be a good idea to report this here.
Erik, you had absolutely no right to do this. Please and politely let them know that they do not have authorization to use the logo in this fashion, and please acknowledge to us that you realize that you should not have done this.
While the current placement doesn't qualify, I don't see why they need "authorization" to use the logo to link to Wikipedia. That's a clearly factual use of the logo covered by fair use, and in fact we do the same thing with other companies' logos in thousands of Wikipedia articles.
-Mark
On 4/13/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
While the current placement doesn't qualify, I don't see why they need "authorization" to use the logo to link to Wikipedia. That's a clearly factual use of the logo covered by fair use, and in fact we do the same thing with other companies' logos in thousands of Wikipedia articles.
I would agree with this in terms of their use of the logo, since many other sites, including answers.com (which Jimbo has apparently approved) use the logo on pages where they use Wikipedia content. It is only the wording on TheWorldForum.org which makes the relationship unclear.
A draft trademark and logo policy http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Logo_and_trademark_policy is under discussion on the legal mailing list. It currently states: "You may use the names and logos of Wikimedia projects to refer to us, link to us, credit us, encourage donations, talk about us, label news stories about us and so on. We have particular banners for some of these purposes."
In view of this, I think that Erik was justified in telling The World Forum that they could use the logo, since that use alone is in accordance with the policy. He hasn't approved the part about them claiming to be "in association with Wikinews" and will hopefully be able to ask them to remove this part. If sites make clear what the relationship to Wikimedia is, then I believe this sort of use can be encouraged, which is what the banners and buttons page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Banners_and_buttons) has been doing for years.
Angela.
Thanks, Angela.
On my request, Drog has completely removed the logo box. I can suggest the following to him:
1) to restore the logo box in a location where there is no risk that it looks like Wikinews is an advertiser on theworldforum.org,
2) to change the text "In Association With" to something else, like: - "Using content from:" - "Some content provided by:" - "Some stories provided by:" More suggestions would be appreciated.
In the long term, I think having a standard logo *with* a text like this would be useful for all Wikimedia projects -- then people can use e.g. a "Powered by Wikipedia" logo on a CD or printout without there being a misconception that it is a Wikimedia-approved endeavor. (Note that "Powered by" has the problem that it is frequently used for software.)
I also think there *should* be a process for establishing real partnerships that can be labeled as such, though I'm not sure whether TWF is a candidate for that or not (they're not explicitly free content).
In any case, I won't do anything more on this matter until Jimmy states his point of view.
All best,
Erik
Erik Moeller schrieb:
In the long term, I think having a standard logo *with* a text like this would be useful for all Wikimedia projects -- then people can use e.g. a "Powered by Wikipedia" logo on a CD or printout without there being a misconception that it is a Wikimedia-approved endeavor. (Note that "Powered by" has the problem that it is frequently used for software.)
"Fed by Wikimedia"? :-)
On 4/12/05, Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
I've given Drog the go-ahead to link to Wikinews using our logo on the frontpage.
World Forum is not just using the logo. It is also claiming to be "In Association With Wikinews", which implies a lot more than simply making use of our content.
The logo appears directly underneath a "Visit our advertisers" notice. This needs to be removed to prevent people being misled into thinking that their donations to the Foundation are being wasted on paying for advertising on such sites.
Something stating that _some_ content is from Wikinews would be more appropriate. At the moment, the Wikinews logo appears more prominently than the site's own logo, giving the impression that Wikinews has far more influence over the site than it does.
Angela.
On 4/13/05, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
World Forum is not just using the logo. It is also claiming to be "In Association With Wikinews", which implies a lot more than simply making use of our content.
The logo appears directly underneath a "Visit our advertisers" notice. This needs to be removed to prevent people being misled into thinking that their donations to the Foundation are being wasted on paying for advertising on such sites.
Something stating that _some_ content is from Wikinews would be more appropriate. At the moment, the Wikinews logo appears more prominently than the site's own logo, giving the impression that Wikinews has far more influence over the site than it does.
Angela.
Indeed, i dont mind having the logo on there somewhere, but it has to be clearer that we are not a sponser, and that we are not affiliated with thier POV. Something more like "Wikinews - content porvider" or something.
-[[User:The bellman]]
Something stating that _some_ content is from Wikinews would be more appropriate. At the moment, the Wikinews logo appears more prominently than the site's own logo, giving the impression that Wikinews has far more influence over the site than it does.
Angela.
Indeed, i dont mind having the logo on there somewhere, but it has to be clearer that we are not a sponser, and that we are not affiliated with thier POV. Something more like "Wikinews - content porvider" or something.
We should indeed try and provide those sites with ready-made logos such as (in bulk): -a Wikipedia logo that says : an article from Wikipedia -A Wikinews logo that says "Content provider" -A wikimedia logo that says "Official partner"
etc.
Delphine
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org