Hi all,
Lots of people are yelling and shouting that the current vision and policy of the foundation is totally wrong. I would like to invite all these people and others to think about alternatives. We won't get rid of these ugly things (everybody agrees upon that, i guess) in the sitenotice without any serious alternatives. I already asked this in the Dutch Village Pump, I hope you will bring the question back to all your communities, to the places where is discussed about the sitenotice. I have myself troubles to come up with serious alternatives, so I hope you guys have one. And when you have one, then you can ideed start a discussion about which solution is better. I look forward to your ideas, and please keep the discussion about how bad the current solution is for other threads.
Lodewijk / Eia
Old Chinese proverb:
"... no matter how loud the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it ..."
mountain = foundation wind = people whining.
:-)
Jeff
effe iets anders wrote:
Hi all,
Lots of people are yelling and shouting that the current vision and policy of the foundation is totally wrong. I would like to invite all these people and others to think about alternatives. We won't get rid of these ugly things (everybody agrees upon that, i guess) in the sitenotice without any serious alternatives. I already asked this in the Dutch Village Pump, I hope you will bring the question back to all your communities, to the places where is discussed about the sitenotice. I have myself troubles to come up with serious alternatives, so I hope you guys have one. And when you have one, then you can ideed start a discussion about which solution is better. I look forward to your ideas, and please keep the discussion about how bad the current solution is for other threads.
Lodewijk / Eia _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
A number of people answered this call. A summary of ideas from the dutch pub: * save money on bandwith by symplfying html. - however, I checked and html seems already pretty lean. * Save discspace by deleting older versions of articles - probably contradicts GFDL. * Make lists of charities. Foundation board is probably already doing this. * There were a number of people who suggested running selected commercial ads. * Distributed storage - technically probably not yet feasible * Grid computing * Publish thematical information as commercial books * Sell dvds, either whole encyclopedia or thematical * Make deals with clones or block them * Same for news agencies * Make bio info available for pda's. A lot easier to carry around than field guides * Asks subsidies from UN, EU and individual states. * Be more selective in accepting articles * Much of what we have is fancruft, and it seems fairly popular. Move all fanstuff to a separate project, outside wikipedia. Call if fanpedia or something. Let this project be more liberal in its acceptance of media, and let this project accept advertisements. This could probably support all wiki projects. * If images cost to much bandwidth, put a limit of 3 images / article.
teun
On 12/29/06, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Old Chinese proverb:
"... no matter how loud the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it ..."
mountain = foundation wind = people whining.
:-)
Jeff
effe iets anders wrote:
Hi all,
Lots of people are yelling and shouting that the current vision and policy of the foundation is totally wrong. I would like to invite all these people and others to think about alternatives. We won't get rid of these ugly things (everybody agrees upon that, i guess) in the sitenotice without any serious alternatives. I already asked this in the Dutch Village Pump, I hope you will bring the question back to all your communities, to the places where is discussed about the sitenotice. I have myself troubles to come up with serious alternatives, so I hope you guys have one. And when you have one, then you can ideed start a discussion about which solution is better. I look forward to your ideas, and please keep the discussion about how bad the current solution is for other threads.
Lodewijk / Eia _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Storing Wikipedia is not the problem:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/What_we_need_the_money_for
Teun Spaans wrote:
A number of people answered this call. A summary of ideas from the dutch pub:
- save money on bandwith by symplfying html. - however, I checked and
html seems already pretty lean.
- Save discspace by deleting older versions of articles - probably
contradicts GFDL.
- Make lists of charities. Foundation board is probably already doing this.
- There were a number of people who suggested running selected commercial ads.
- Distributed storage - technically probably not yet feasible
- Grid computing
- Publish thematical information as commercial books
- Sell dvds, either whole encyclopedia or thematical
- Make deals with clones or block them
- Same for news agencies
- Make bio info available for pda's. A lot easier to carry around than
field guides
- Asks subsidies from UN, EU and individual states.
- Be more selective in accepting articles
- Much of what we have is fancruft, and it seems fairly popular. Move
all fanstuff to a separate project, outside wikipedia. Call if fanpedia or something. Let this project be more liberal in its acceptance of media, and let this project accept advertisements. This could probably support all wiki projects.
- If images cost to much bandwidth, put a limit of 3 images / article.
teun
On 12/29/06, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Old Chinese proverb:
"... no matter how loud the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it ..."
mountain = foundation wind = people whining.
:-)
Jeff
effe iets anders wrote:
Hi all,
Lots of people are yelling and shouting that the current vision and policy of the foundation is totally wrong. I would like to invite all these people and others to think about alternatives. We won't get rid of these ugly things (everybody agrees upon that, i guess) in the sitenotice without any serious alternatives. I already asked this in the Dutch Village Pump, I hope you will bring the question back to all your communities, to the places where is discussed about the sitenotice. I have myself troubles to come up with serious alternatives, so I hope you guys have one. And when you have one, then you can ideed start a discussion about which solution is better. I look forward to your ideas, and please keep the discussion about how bad the current solution is for other threads.
Lodewijk / Eia _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
2007/1/2, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com:
Storing Wikipedia is not the problem:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/What_we_need_the_money_for
I think this says little about what part is paid on storage. In particular, there is a 'goal for hardware' section which does not say to what extent it is storage that we need the hardware for. More informative I find http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers - Wikimedia currently runs 240 computers. Of these, 14 are in use to store data on, and of those 14, 12 are 'slave' database servers. And the only reason we have two masters, is for geographical reasons: One is in Florida, the other in Korea. In short, it still fits all on a single computer, although we have that one computer a dozen times over for easier database access. There's however almost 20 times as many computers working to get this data out to the world.
Andre Engels wrote:
2007/1/2, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com:
Storing Wikipedia is not the problem:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/What_we_need_the_money_for
I think this says little about what part is paid on storage. In particular, there is a 'goal for hardware' section which does not say to what extent it is storage that we need the hardware for. More informative I find http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers - Wikimedia currently runs 240 computers. Of these, 14 are in use to store data on, and of those 14, 12 are 'slave' database servers. And the only reason we have two masters, is for geographical reasons: One is in Florida, the other in Korea. In short, it still fits all on a single computer, although we have that one computer a dozen times over for easier database access. There's however almost 20 times as many computers working to get this data out to the world.
Yes. General outcome correct.
But... I fear this page is outdated... if I remember well, there is no more master in Korea and I am pretty sure we purchased db servers recently (nov or december). The general resolution to approve this purchase is here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Hardware_sept_2006
Unless I am wrong, part 1, 2 and 3 have been purchased. Part 4 is waiting for cash to flow in. Unless it was recently ordered. Brion should know that and correct me if necessary.
I do not know if db servers are installed yet. Are they ?
It would be real nice Brion, if some one could give it a couple of minutes to update the meta page. Can you put that on yours or Mark agenda please ?
Ant
Andre Engels wrote:
2007/1/2, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com:
Storing Wikipedia is not the problem:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/What_we_need_the_money_for
I think this says little about what part is paid on storage. In particular, there is a 'goal for hardware' section which does not say to what extent it is storage that we need the hardware for. More informative I find http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers - Wikimedia currently runs 240 computers. Of these, 14 are in use to store data on, and of those 14, 12 are 'slave' database servers. And the only reason we have two masters, is for geographical reasons: One is in Florida, the other in Korea. In short, it still fits all on a single computer, although we have that one computer a dozen times over for easier database access. There's however almost 20 times as many computers working to get this data out to the world.
Please see the posts Domas made on 2006-12-28 with the subject "Re: [Foundation-l] new site notice now ready." They discuss how the cost of storage relates to other costs. Summary: storage is cheap.
Teun Spaans wrote:
A number of people answered this call. A summary of ideas from the dutch pub:
- save money on bandwith by symplfying html. - however, I checked and
html seems already pretty lean.
- Save discspace by deleting older versions of articles - probably
contradicts GFDL.
- Make lists of charities. Foundation board is probably already doing this.
** I remember seeing such a list from Danny. But yes, that's something we should work on.
- There were a number of people who suggested running selected commercial ads.
- Distributed storage - technically probably not yet feasible
- Grid computing
- Publish thematical information as commercial books
** legal risk associated with publishing (same for dvd below), but we can have others publish or sell them, and get royalties. Hopefully, a deal will soon be signed up on this matter, which I hope we can generalized.
- Sell dvds, either whole encyclopedia or thematical
- Make deals with clones or block them
There are a handful of such deals. Just a handful.
- Same for news agencies
Not sure I see how it would bring money. How so ?
- Make bio info available for pda's. A lot easier to carry around than
field guides
Same question. Making it available only against a payment ?
- Asks subsidies from UN, EU and individual states.
Some expressed concerns with regards to independance. Limitations on this very topic is mostly lack of human resources to make the requests. Volunteers welcome.
- Be more selective in accepting articles
- Much of what we have is fancruft, and it seems fairly popular. Move
all fanstuff to a separate project, outside wikipedia. Call if fanpedia or something. Let this project be more liberal in its acceptance of media, and let this project accept advertisements. This could probably support all wiki projects.
- If images cost to much bandwidth, put a limit of 3 images / article.
I cant estimate the interest of technical suggestions. thanks for the feedback
ant
teun
On 12/29/06, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Old Chinese proverb:
"... no matter how loud the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it ..."
mountain = foundation wind = people whining.
:-)
Jeff
effe iets anders wrote:
Hi all,
Lots of people are yelling and shouting that the current vision and policy of the foundation is totally wrong. I would like to invite all these people and others to think about alternatives. We won't get rid of these ugly things (everybody agrees upon that, i guess) in the sitenotice without any serious alternatives. I already asked this in the Dutch Village Pump, I hope you will bring the question back to all your communities, to the places where is discussed about the sitenotice. I have myself troubles to come up with serious alternatives, so I hope you guys have one. And when you have one, then you can ideed start a discussion about which solution is better. I look forward to your ideas, and please keep the discussion about how bad the current solution is for other threads.
Lodewijk / Eia _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 02/01/07, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Teun Spaans wrote:
- Same for news agencies
Not sure I see how it would bring money. How so ?
I'm not sure what we have to sell them. en.wikinews has maybe a few articles a day. Maybe as and when it picks up a bit.
- Asks subsidies from UN, EU and individual states.
Some expressed concerns with regards to independance. Limitations on this very topic is mostly lack of human resources to make the requests. Volunteers welcome.
I was just thinking we should get a special tax to pay for us. But just imagine the pressure from *that* sponsor ...
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 02/01/07, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Teun Spaans wrote:
- Asks subsidies from UN, EU and individual states.
Some expressed concerns with regards to independance. Limitations on this very topic is mostly lack of human resources to make the requests. Volunteers welcome.
I was just thinking we should get a special tax to pay for us. But just imagine the pressure from *that* sponsor ...
Considering that Brits pay a tax for having a TV, a separate tax for WikiService would be an improvement. Or better still, you should be able to designate whether the tax goes to pay for the BBC or Wikipedia. :-)
Ec
On 1/2/07, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Teun Spaans wrote:
A number of people answered this call. A summary of ideas from the dutch pub:
- save money on bandwith by symplfying html. - however, I checked and
html seems already pretty lean.
- Save discspace by deleting older versions of articles - probably
contradicts GFDL.
- Make lists of charities. Foundation board is probably already doing this.
** I remember seeing such a list from Danny. But yes, that's something we should work on.
- There were a number of people who suggested running selected commercial ads.
- Distributed storage - technically probably not yet feasible
- Grid computing
- Publish thematical information as commercial books
** legal risk associated with publishing (same for dvd below), but we can have others publish or sell them, and get royalties. Hopefully, a deal will soon be signed up on this matter, which I hope we can generalized.
- Sell dvds, either whole encyclopedia or thematical
- Make deals with clones or block them
There are a handful of such deals. Just a handful.
Perhaps we can approach the others?
- Same for news agencies
Not sure I see how it would bring money. How so ?
I'll ask the user who posted this. David Gerard is probably right that wikinews has to pick up a bit more before this will work.
- Make bio info available for pda's. A lot easier to carry around than
field guides
Same question. Making it available only against a payment ?
If it requires a special format, we might consider that.
- Asks subsidies from UN, EU and individual states.
Some expressed concerns with regards to independance. Limitations on this very topic is mostly lack of human resources to make the requests. Volunteers welcome.
I admit that these concerns are much more legitimate than when we have a broad array of companies which advertise.
- Be more selective in accepting articles
- Much of what we have is fancruft, and it seems fairly popular. Move
all fanstuff to a separate project, outside wikipedia. Call if fanpedia or something. Let this project be more liberal in its acceptance of media, and let this project accept advertisements. This could probably support all wiki projects.
- If images cost to much bandwidth, put a limit of 3 images / article.
I cant estimate the interest of technical suggestions. thanks for the feedback
Neither can I. But in the dutch pub I can ask the user who suggested there was opensource software for grid compunting, if Brion thinks it may be interesting.
Thank you for listening and commenting. I'll post a translation in the appropriate thread in the pub of the Dutch wiki.
teun
ant
teun
On 12/29/06, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Old Chinese proverb:
"... no matter how loud the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it ..."
mountain = foundation wind = people whining.
:-)
Jeff
effe iets anders wrote:
Hi all,
Lots of people are yelling and shouting that the current vision and policy of the foundation is totally wrong. I would like to invite all these people and others to think about alternatives. We won't get rid of these ugly things (everybody agrees upon that, i guess) in the sitenotice without any serious alternatives. I already asked this in the Dutch Village Pump, I hope you will bring the question back to all your communities, to the places where is discussed about the sitenotice. I have myself troubles to come up with serious alternatives, so I hope you guys have one. And when you have one, then you can ideed start a discussion about which solution is better. I look forward to your ideas, and please keep the discussion about how bad the current solution is for other threads.
Lodewijk / Eia _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Teun Spaans wrote:
On 1/2/07, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Teun Spaans wrote:
A number of people answered this call. A summary of ideas from the dutch pub:
- save money on bandwith by symplfying html. - however, I checked and
html seems already pretty lean.
- Save discspace by deleting older versions of articles - probably
contradicts GFDL.
- Make lists of charities. Foundation board is probably already doing this.
** I remember seeing such a list from Danny. But yes, that's something we should work on.
- There were a number of people who suggested running selected commercial ads.
- Distributed storage - technically probably not yet feasible
- Grid computing
- Publish thematical information as commercial books
** legal risk associated with publishing (same for dvd below), but we can have others publish or sell them, and get royalties. Hopefully, a deal will soon be signed up on this matter, which I hope we can generalized.
- Sell dvds, either whole encyclopedia or thematical
- Make deals with clones or block them
There are a handful of such deals. Just a handful.
Perhaps we can approach the others?
Absolutely ! Our general approach until now has been not to bug the sites which are obviously "non profit" type, dedicated to education. As for the obvious mirrors-for-money, yeah, we can approach them and propose them a datafeed.
A template for such suggestion has been done a few months ago. It is useable on OTRS. Do you have access to OTRS ? If not, OTRS members can certainly provide you the template. It would be great someone (a community volunteer) take the time to contact all "big" languages and try to identify lists of major commercial mirrors. Maybe coordinate contact of these mirrors and to suggest them datafeeds. If there is a no, contact the developers to get these mirrors blocked. The Foundation does have a template contract to propose afterwards, so this will be easy to handle (a bit of Brad or Danny time though). The datafeed must get activated, which requires more or less work. Usually done by Brion (slows down other features development, nothing perfect).
But yes, feasible. Mostly need coordinators in the biggest languages. Web hunting to identify major commercial mirrors. Then contacting them. Foundation can take in charge administrative and technical follow up.
Ant
- Same for news agencies
Not sure I see how it would bring money. How so ?
I'll ask the user who posted this. David Gerard is probably right that wikinews has to pick up a bit more before this will work.
- Make bio info available for pda's. A lot easier to carry around than
field guides
Same question. Making it available only against a payment ?
If it requires a special format, we might consider that.
- Asks subsidies from UN, EU and individual states.
Some expressed concerns with regards to independance. Limitations on this very topic is mostly lack of human resources to make the requests. Volunteers welcome.
I admit that these concerns are much more legitimate than when we have a broad array of companies which advertise.
- Be more selective in accepting articles
- Much of what we have is fancruft, and it seems fairly popular. Move
all fanstuff to a separate project, outside wikipedia. Call if fanpedia or something. Let this project be more liberal in its acceptance of media, and let this project accept advertisements. This could probably support all wiki projects.
- If images cost to much bandwidth, put a limit of 3 images / article.
I cant estimate the interest of technical suggestions. thanks for the feedback
Neither can I. But in the dutch pub I can ask the user who suggested there was opensource software for grid compunting, if Brion thinks it may be interesting.
Thank you for listening and commenting. I'll post a translation in the appropriate thread in the pub of the Dutch wiki.
teun
ant
teun
On 12/29/06, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Old Chinese proverb:
"... no matter how loud the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it ..."
mountain = foundation wind = people whining.
:-)
Jeff
effe iets anders wrote:
Hi all,
Lots of people are yelling and shouting that the current vision and policy of the foundation is totally wrong. I would like to invite all these people and others to think about alternatives. We won't get rid of these ugly things (everybody agrees upon that, i guess) in the sitenotice without any serious alternatives. I already asked this in the Dutch Village Pump, I hope you will bring the question back to all your communities, to the places where is discussed about the sitenotice. I have myself troubles to come up with serious alternatives, so I hope you guys have one. And when you have one, then you can ideed start a discussion about which solution is better. I look forward to your ideas, and please keep the discussion about how bad the current solution is for other threads.
Lodewijk / Eia _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
hi Anthere,
I just posted you request for a volunteer to email the clones in the pub.
There also have been a number of reactions. User:Taka gave the longest reaction: 1) The legal risk statement raised a question: which legal risks do we run by publishing data on dvd or in books? (supposing we do a good check to prevent copyvios) 2) News agents and others: this might raise money if we could offer them some stable version which has been scanned for vandalism. Call it premum content. 3) The people considered fanpedia as one of the most promising ideas, as it would solve several problems at once. First, wikipedia is known and rightly mocked for its endless series of articles on Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, We Just produced Our First Albums bands, and the favourite soap-of-the-day. The wikis could still have articles on the major ones, but all articles of the bandmembers, the actors in the soap, the separate articles of TLotR characters could all be moved to fanpedia. It would raise the prestige of wikipedia. Second, most of the images which get routinely uploaded and removed are fanstuff. The english wiki is rightly trying to get rid of them, and on the Dutch wiki they are always listed as a copyvio (though we do have a backlog of stuff from before 1-9-2005). But there is a desparate need among the others to illustrate their articles, something which currnetly simply can not be done. A fanpedia could solve both problems. You did not comment on this idea, could you please let us know what you think of it?
kind regards, teun spaans
On 1/3/07, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Teun Spaans wrote:
On 1/2/07, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Teun Spaans wrote:
A number of people answered this call. A summary of ideas from the dutch pub:
- save money on bandwith by symplfying html. - however, I checked and
html seems already pretty lean.
- Save discspace by deleting older versions of articles - probably
contradicts GFDL.
- Make lists of charities. Foundation board is probably already doing this.
** I remember seeing such a list from Danny. But yes, that's something we should work on.
- There were a number of people who suggested running selected commercial ads.
- Distributed storage - technically probably not yet feasible
- Grid computing
- Publish thematical information as commercial books
** legal risk associated with publishing (same for dvd below), but we can have others publish or sell them, and get royalties. Hopefully, a deal will soon be signed up on this matter, which I hope we can generalized.
- Sell dvds, either whole encyclopedia or thematical
- Make deals with clones or block them
There are a handful of such deals. Just a handful.
Perhaps we can approach the others?
Absolutely ! Our general approach until now has been not to bug the sites which are obviously "non profit" type, dedicated to education. As for the obvious mirrors-for-money, yeah, we can approach them and propose them a datafeed.
A template for such suggestion has been done a few months ago. It is useable on OTRS. Do you have access to OTRS ? If not, OTRS members can certainly provide you the template. It would be great someone (a community volunteer) take the time to contact all "big" languages and try to identify lists of major commercial mirrors. Maybe coordinate contact of these mirrors and to suggest them datafeeds. If there is a no, contact the developers to get these mirrors blocked. The Foundation does have a template contract to propose afterwards, so this will be easy to handle (a bit of Brad or Danny time though). The datafeed must get activated, which requires more or less work. Usually done by Brion (slows down other features development, nothing perfect).
But yes, feasible. Mostly need coordinators in the biggest languages. Web hunting to identify major commercial mirrors. Then contacting them. Foundation can take in charge administrative and technical follow up.
Ant
- Same for news agencies
Not sure I see how it would bring money. How so ?
I'll ask the user who posted this. David Gerard is probably right that wikinews has to pick up a bit more before this will work.
- Make bio info available for pda's. A lot easier to carry around than
field guides
Same question. Making it available only against a payment ?
If it requires a special format, we might consider that.
- Asks subsidies from UN, EU and individual states.
Some expressed concerns with regards to independance. Limitations on this very topic is mostly lack of human resources to make the requests. Volunteers welcome.
I admit that these concerns are much more legitimate than when we have a broad array of companies which advertise.
- Be more selective in accepting articles
- Much of what we have is fancruft, and it seems fairly popular. Move
all fanstuff to a separate project, outside wikipedia. Call if fanpedia or something. Let this project be more liberal in its acceptance of media, and let this project accept advertisements. This could probably support all wiki projects.
- If images cost to much bandwidth, put a limit of 3 images / article.
I cant estimate the interest of technical suggestions. thanks for the feedback
Neither can I. But in the dutch pub I can ask the user who suggested there was opensource software for grid compunting, if Brion thinks it may be interesting.
Thank you for listening and commenting. I'll post a translation in the appropriate thread in the pub of the Dutch wiki.
teun
ant
teun
On 12/29/06, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Old Chinese proverb:
"... no matter how loud the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it ..."
mountain = foundation wind = people whining.
:-)
Jeff
effe iets anders wrote:
Hi all,
Lots of people are yelling and shouting that the current vision and policy of the foundation is totally wrong. I would like to invite all these people and others to think about alternatives. We won't get rid of these ugly things (everybody agrees upon that, i guess) in the sitenotice without any serious alternatives. I already asked this in the Dutch Village Pump, I hope you will bring the question back to all your communities, to the places where is discussed about the sitenotice. I have myself troubles to come up with serious alternatives, so I hope you guys have one. And when you have one, then you can ideed start a discussion about which solution is better. I look forward to your ideas, and please keep the discussion about how bad the current solution is for other threads.
Lodewijk / Eia _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Teun Spaans wrote:
hi Anthere,
I just posted you request for a volunteer to email the clones in the pub.
There also have been a number of reactions. User:Taka gave the longest reaction:
- The legal risk statement raised a question: which legal risks do we
run by publishing data on dvd or in books? (supposing we do a good check to prevent copyvios)
Well, doing a good check on 2000 articles is okay. Doing the same on 500 000 articles is a little bit more challenging. Aside from copyvios, there are also other reasons why we could get sued. Most typically, complaints for defaming comments. Such complaints made online are not a big problem to deal with; we can immediately remove problematic content. Not on DVDs or books. If some one really want to get after us, he could get wikipedia down. So, the Foundation itself should imho, not take such a risk.
Perhaps an organisation slightly separated from the Foundation ?
- News agents and others: this might raise money if we could offer
them some stable version which has been scanned for vandalism. Call it premum content.
Hmmmm. Though I am not so sure the idea of selling scanned-for-vandalism version, whilst letting non scan for free, will be widely accepted. People may request free AND checked. Or maybe I did not exactly understood your proposal.
- The people considered fanpedia as one of the most promising ideas,
as it would solve several problems at once. First, wikipedia is known and rightly mocked for its endless series of articles on Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, We Just produced Our First Albums bands, and the favourite soap-of-the-day. The wikis could still have articles on the major ones, but all articles of the bandmembers, the actors in the soap, the separate articles of TLotR characters could all be moved to fanpedia. It would raise the prestige of wikipedia. Second, most of the images which get routinely uploaded and removed are fanstuff. The english wiki is rightly trying to get rid of them, and on the Dutch wiki they are always listed as a copyvio (though we do have a backlog of stuff from before 1-9-2005). But there is a desparate need among the others to illustrate their articles, something which currnetly simply can not be done. A fanpedia could solve both problems. You did not comment on this idea, could you please let us know what you think of it?
* Much of what we have is fancruft, and it seems fairly popular. Move all fanstuff to a separate project, outside wikipedia. Call if fanpedia or something. Let this project be more liberal in its acceptance of media, and let this project accept advertisements. This could probably support all wiki projects.
So... what you suggest is that the Foundation set up a website, primarily constituted of fan-oriented information, with mostly copyrighted images under fair-use doctrine, and put advertisement on this web site, and use the income generated by this mean to support other projects ?
Errrrr. What do other think of that idea ???
Ant
kind regards, teun spaans
On 1/3/07, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Teun Spaans wrote:
On 1/2/07, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Teun Spaans wrote:
A number of people answered this call. A summary of ideas from the dutch pub:
- save money on bandwith by symplfying html. - however, I checked and
html seems already pretty lean.
- Save discspace by deleting older versions of articles - probably
contradicts GFDL.
- Make lists of charities. Foundation board is probably already doing this.
** I remember seeing such a list from Danny. But yes, that's something we should work on.
- There were a number of people who suggested running selected commercial ads.
- Distributed storage - technically probably not yet feasible
- Grid computing
- Publish thematical information as commercial books
** legal risk associated with publishing (same for dvd below), but we can have others publish or sell them, and get royalties. Hopefully, a deal will soon be signed up on this matter, which I hope we can generalized.
- Sell dvds, either whole encyclopedia or thematical
- Make deals with clones or block them
There are a handful of such deals. Just a handful.
Perhaps we can approach the others?
Absolutely ! Our general approach until now has been not to bug the sites which are obviously "non profit" type, dedicated to education. As for the obvious mirrors-for-money, yeah, we can approach them and propose them a datafeed.
A template for such suggestion has been done a few months ago. It is useable on OTRS. Do you have access to OTRS ? If not, OTRS members can certainly provide you the template. It would be great someone (a community volunteer) take the time to contact all "big" languages and try to identify lists of major commercial mirrors. Maybe coordinate contact of these mirrors and to suggest them datafeeds. If there is a no, contact the developers to get these mirrors blocked. The Foundation does have a template contract to propose afterwards, so this will be easy to handle (a bit of Brad or Danny time though). The datafeed must get activated, which requires more or less work. Usually done by Brion (slows down other features development, nothing perfect).
But yes, feasible. Mostly need coordinators in the biggest languages. Web hunting to identify major commercial mirrors. Then contacting them. Foundation can take in charge administrative and technical follow up.
Ant
- Same for news agencies
Not sure I see how it would bring money. How so ?
I'll ask the user who posted this. David Gerard is probably right that wikinews has to pick up a bit more before this will work.
- Make bio info available for pda's. A lot easier to carry around than
field guides
Same question. Making it available only against a payment ?
If it requires a special format, we might consider that.
- Asks subsidies from UN, EU and individual states.
Some expressed concerns with regards to independance. Limitations on this very topic is mostly lack of human resources to make the requests. Volunteers welcome.
I admit that these concerns are much more legitimate than when we have a broad array of companies which advertise.
- Be more selective in accepting articles
- Much of what we have is fancruft, and it seems fairly popular. Move
all fanstuff to a separate project, outside wikipedia. Call if fanpedia or something. Let this project be more liberal in its acceptance of media, and let this project accept advertisements. This could probably support all wiki projects.
- If images cost to much bandwidth, put a limit of 3 images / article.
I cant estimate the interest of technical suggestions. thanks for the feedback
Neither can I. But in the dutch pub I can ask the user who suggested there was opensource software for grid compunting, if Brion thinks it may be interesting.
Thank you for listening and commenting. I'll post a translation in the appropriate thread in the pub of the Dutch wiki.
teun
ant
teun
On 12/29/06, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Old Chinese proverb:
"... no matter how loud the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it ..."
mountain = foundation wind = people whining.
:-)
Jeff
effe iets anders wrote:
>Hi all, > >Lots of people are yelling and shouting that the current vision and policy >of the foundation is totally wrong. I would like to invite all these people >and others to think about alternatives. We won't get rid of these ugly >things (everybody agrees upon that, i guess) in the sitenotice without any >serious alternatives. I already asked this in the Dutch Village Pump, I hope >you will bring the question back to all your communities, to the places >where is discussed about the sitenotice. I have myself troubles to come up >with serious alternatives, so I hope you guys have one. And when you have >one, then you can ideed start a discussion about which solution is better. I >look forward to your ideas, and please keep the discussion about how bad the >current solution is for other threads. > >Lodewijk / Eia >_______________________________________________ >foundation-l mailing list >foundation-l@wikimedia.org >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > > >
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Anthere ha scritto:
So... what you suggest is that the Foundation set up a website, primarily constituted of fan-oriented information, with mostly copyrighted images under fair-use doctrine, and put advertisement on this web site, and use the income generated by this mean to support other projects ? Errrrr. What do other think of that idea ???
The only trouble I see is in defining where to trace the boundary between fan-oriented information and "encyclopedical" information. There are borderline cases that the community will have to discuss, but the same process is happening now when communities decide whether to keep or reject an article. Which project do all the series of articles dedicated to "the Lord of the Rings", as example, might belong? Certainly, such a project can help the existing ones to fight against self-promotion, gossip and various vanities.
How successful can such a project be? If being a Wikimedia-project is enough to capture the attention of the many already existing fan communities (in and out of Wiki-world), chances are good. But editors might dislike the idea of not being allowed to write on the main projects about their idols and being directed to what might be perceived as a "stepchild" project...
Sorry for not being much clear, it's just aloud thiking. G.
2007/1/6, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com:
Teun Spaans wrote:
- The people considered fanpedia as one of the most promising ideas,
as it would solve several problems at once. First, wikipedia is known and rightly mocked for its endless series of articles on Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, We Just produced Our First Albums bands, and the favourite soap-of-the-day. The wikis could still have articles on the major ones, but all articles of the bandmembers, the actors in the soap, the separate articles of TLotR characters could all be moved to fanpedia. It would raise the prestige of wikipedia. Second, most of the images which get routinely uploaded and removed are fanstuff. The english wiki is rightly trying to get rid of them, and on the Dutch wiki they are always listed as a copyvio (though we do have a backlog of stuff from before 1-9-2005). But there is a desparate need among the others to illustrate their articles, something which currnetly simply can not be done. A fanpedia could solve both problems. You did not comment on this idea, could you please let us know what you think of it?
- Much of what we have is fancruft, and it seems fairly popular. Move
all fanstuff to a separate project, outside wikipedia. Call if fanpedia or something. Let this project be more liberal in its acceptance of media, and let this project accept advertisements. This could probably support all wiki projects.
So... what you suggest is that the Foundation set up a website, primarily constituted of fan-oriented information, with mostly copyrighted images under fair-use doctrine, and put advertisement on this web site, and use the income generated by this mean to support other projects ?
Errrrr. What do other think of that idea ???
Ant
Some minor changes: 1) Not set-up a different website, but Fanpedia would be a wiki, sister project of Wikipedia, Wikiquote and so on, it will also benefit from a high google-ranking as have all wikimedia projects. 2) Fair use images: I hope not; I certainly hope that we get the fair use matter solved for all wikimedia projects. 3) Advertisements on fanpedia will subsidize all other projects (there will be a lot of trafic diverted to Fanpedia, so money will flow).
The thing is that a lot of people work on the fancruft, imho non-encyclopedian, part of Wikipedia and that is OK. Prison Break is one of the most visited articles on dutch Wikipedia. Most nl-Wikipedians are uneasy with this kind of articles, which evoluate to a encyclopedia inside the wikipedia in itself, and would be happy to move them to a different project.
I think you what you are saying is that you are afraid that the sysops of this project would not be able to manage the project enough, as it will certainly be people which might have a different view on wikimedia ideals?
This proposal will certainly help solve the money-problems, with an acceptable compromise for adds on one of the Wikimedia projects.
Kind regards Londenp
Peter van Londen wrote:
Some minor changes:
- Not set-up a different website, but Fanpedia would be a wiki, sister
project of Wikipedia, Wikiquote and so on, it will also benefit from a high google-ranking as have all wikimedia projects. 2) Fair use images: I hope not; I certainly hope that we get the fair use matter solved for all wikimedia projects. 3) Advertisements on fanpedia will subsidize all other projects (there will be a lot of trafic diverted to Fanpedia, so money will flow).
The thing is that a lot of people work on the fancruft, imho non-encyclopedian, part of Wikipedia and that is OK. Prison Break is one of the most visited articles on dutch Wikipedia. Most nl-Wikipedians are uneasy with this kind of articles, which evoluate to a encyclopedia inside the wikipedia in itself, and would be happy to move them to a different project.
I think you what you are saying is that you are afraid that the sysops of this project would not be able to manage the project enough, as it will certainly be people which might have a different view on wikimedia ideals?
This proposal will certainly help solve the money-problems, with an acceptable compromise for adds on one of the Wikimedia projects.
Kind regards Londenp
This sounds very similar to Wikicities/Wikia. Do you care to elaborate how this would be any different (other than direct control by the WMF)?
Fan websites are very common, indeed could be called a "killer app" for Wikia. Note especially Memory Alpha and the Stargate Wikias that fit in particularly with what you are saying here with fansites, in addition to explicit advertising that appears. Fair use images have been decided by each Wikia community independently.
Now what the exact relationship bewteen Wikia and WMF is right now, I'm not entirely sure. Two (is it three?) former members of the WMF board of trustees are still involved with Wikia, and there was some talk once upon a time that Wikia would help sponsor the WMF through some sort of cash contributions. I havn't seen anything explicitly mentioned in fundraisers about this, however, or in any of the currently published financial reports. There are several participants on this mailing list that could certainly elaborate on this point authoritatively. I do know there is no legal relationship between Wikia and the WMF at the moment.
Quite a bit of material from Wikibooks has been transwikied to Wikia projects where, based on sentiment within the Wikibooks community, it was felt that it was most appropriate to those projects. As a general principle, I try to encourage this action only between Wikimedia projects, but there are some obvious holes in Wikimedia project coverage that keeps this from being a perfect fit with information that otherwise would be a general part of the Wikimedia charter. "Fancruft", as you have tried to suggest, certainly is one of these areas.
On 1/6/07, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
Now what the exact relationship bewteen Wikia and WMF is right now...
The relationship is described at http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikimedia and http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/FAQ#What_is_Wikia.3F_Is_it_part_of_Wikip...
Angela
The thing is that a lot of people work on the fancruft, imho non-encyclopedian, part of Wikipedia and that is OK. Prison Break is one of the most visited articles on dutch Wikipedia. Most nl-Wikipedians are uneasy with this kind of articles, which evoluate to a encyclopedia inside the wikipedia in itself, and would be happy to move them to a different project.
Most ?????? That is a very bold statement. I would say a minority. Currently in the Dutch wikipedia it is only 4 or 5 people who bring this up every 2 weeks or so. Including you. That is definately not most wikipedians!!!
Waerth
Waerth I would appreciate if you could stay with the subject, which is alternative funding of Wikimedia projects by a add-driven fanpedia. The fanpedia was brought up some days ago (and not reoccurring every two weeks). There are definitely more people than you mention; might not be the most, as I have written, because most people on nl-wp don't care about how the projects are being funded. I wished that you had commented on the subject, in stead of flaming.
I would like some comments about the feasibility of doing such a project. We give up "add-freeness" for one project so that the other projects can be funded add-free. Is that compatible with the Mission/Vision? Are there other points: like for instance legal liabilities as of the probable nature of the content on a Fanpedia?
Robert Scott Horning: I don't know Wikia, so I don't have any idea of a fanpedia under the wings of the Wikimedia Foundation would conflict with Wikia's interests or vice versa. Anyhow by transporting content to Wikia does not help much with funding of the Wikimedia Foundation, if I understand that correctly.
SJKlein: any comments why you don't think it is a good idea?
A lot of people involved in Wikipedia don't like adds or even sponsoring if a sitenotice mentions the name of logo of the sponsor. We could keep advertising away of the "more-serious" project if we had an add-driven sisterproject. (It doesn't have to be a fanpedia, it can be a different project, but fancruft is popular!). It would be a compromise.
Kind regards Londenp
2007/1/6, Walter van Kalken walter@vankalken.net:
The thing is that a lot of people work on the fancruft, imho non-encyclopedian, part of Wikipedia and that is OK. Prison Break is one
of
the most visited articles on dutch Wikipedia. Most nl-Wikipedians are
uneasy with this kind of articles, which evoluate to a encyclopedia inside the wikipedia in itself, and would be happy to move them to a different project.
Most ?????? That is a very bold statement. I would say a minority. Currently in the Dutch wikipedia it is only 4 or 5 people who bring this up every 2 weeks or so. Including you. That is definately not most wikipedians!!!
Waerth
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Sat, 6 Jan 2007, Anthere wrote:
- News agents and others: this might raise money if we could offer
them some stable version which has been scanned for vandalism. Call it premum content.
Hmmmm. Though I am not so sure the idea of selling scanned-for-vandalism version, whilst letting non scan for free, will be widely accepted. People may request free AND checked. Or maybe I did not exactly understood your proposal.
Once we have a way to generate a scanned-for-vandalism flag, I imagine that all communities will move to take advantage of this, and it will be available to all.
- Much of what we have is fancruft, and it seems fairly popular. Move
all fanstuff to a separate project, outside wikipedia. Call if fanpedia or something. Let this project be more liberal in its acceptance of media, and let this project accept advertisements. This could probably support all wiki projects.
So... what you suggest is that the Foundation set up a website, primarily constituted of fan-oriented information, with mostly copyrighted images under fair-use doctrine, and put advertisement on this web site, and use the income generated by this mean to support other projects ?
Errrrr. What do other think of that idea ???
This sounds like a mistake.
SJ
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org