Hi everyone,
This Friday's office hours will feature Mike Godwin, the Wikimedia
Foundation's Legal Counsel. If you don't know Mike Godwin, you can
read about him at <http://enwp.org/Mike_Godwin>.
Office hours this Friday are from 2230 to 2330 UTC (3:30PM to 4:30PM
PDT). Mike will also be taking the following Thursday from 1600 to
1700 UTC (9:00AM to 10:00AM PDT).
The IRC channel that will be hosting Mike's conversation will be
#wikimedia-office on the Freenode network. If you do not have an IRC
client, you can always access Freenode by going to
http://webchat.freenode.net/, typing in the nickname of your choice and
choosing wikimedia-office as the channel. You may be prompted to click
through a security warning. Go ahead.
--
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
This is a reminder about this evening's Wikivoices.
Mike Peel of WMUK is a participant and from following him on twitter has
only recently submitted his PhD thesis.
This looks like today's biggest physics story[1]. I'm sending the link
to Mike as he'd possibly be persuadable to write an article on this and
can give it more from a physicists' perspective.
One point I do want to touch on related to that is the wiki community
having people like Mike. Most likely everyone remembers the mess that
was the "Balloon Boy" story/hoax. If I recall correctly it was 3-4 days
after this was top news non-stop that someone bothered to find out from
a physicist that, in all probability, the balloon was incapable of
carrying the child's weight. *That* would have been a very nice bot of
OR to include early-on and avoid getting sucked into a media
circus/publicity stunt.
I'm still looking for Wackynews. If anyone has seen some truly silly
stories (with two or more independent sources) let me know ASAP.
[1]
http://news.google.ca/news/story?pz=1&cf=all&ned=ca&hl=en&ncl=di5wulnPbEPvG…
--
Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org>
Wikinewsie.org
This is, well, sorta sad.
-------- Forwarded Message --------
> From: JUS-G-MAG-CSD-Civil and Family Policy and Programs
> <CSD.CivilFamilyPP(a)ontario.ca>
> To: brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org
> Subject: Civil Matter - Our Reference: M09-09495
> Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:44:40 -0500
>
> Dear Mr. McNeil,
>
> Re: Court File # 08-CV-00360651-00CP The Estate of Chesney Henry
> "Chet" Baker Junior et al;
>
> Thank you for your e-mail sent 15th December, 2009 to the Ministry of
> the Attorney General regarding the above court file. Your e-mail has
> been forwarded to this office for response.
>
> The court file to which you refer was commenced in the Superior Court
> of Justice in Toronto, Ontario, under the Class Proceedings Act.
>
> Each court has jurisdiction over its own files. For the prescribed
> fee(s), a search for information about a file can be made at the court
> of origin and, subject to a judicial order to the contrary,
> a photocopy of a document can be obtained. If you wish, you could
> arrange for a local law firm to act as your agent, attend at the
> Toronto court house, review the file, and make photocopies of any
> documents your require. Those photocopies could then be faxed, or
> scanned and e-mailed to you by your agent
>
> .
>
>
> If you wish to retain an Ontario lawyer, you may contact the Lawyer
> Referral Service operated by the Law Society of Upper Canada. The
> Lawyer Referral Service will provide you with the names of lawyers who
> practice in Ontario in the relevant area of law. You can contact the
> Service at (416) 947-3330, choose your language and then press 1 to
> speak to an operator. Advise the operator that you are calling from
> outside Ontario. The Law Society of Upper Canada also maintains a
> list of lawyers in Ontario which may be viewed at the LSUC website at
>
> http://www1.lsuc.on.ca/LawyerParalegalDirectory/index.jsp .
>
>
>
> You may also wish to visit Justice Ontario, a Ministry website which
> provides answers to basic questions about Ontario’s justice system.
> Justice Ontario provides information on many aspects of Ontario’s
> justice system, including lawsuits and disputes, family law, criminal
> law, going to court, human rights, wills and estate planning, tickets
> and fines, and how to find a lawyer. To access Justice Ontario
> on-line, visit:
> http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/justice-ont/ . For
> access to legal information in over 170 languages, you can also reach
> Justice Ontario by toll-free telephone at 1-866-252-0104.
>
>
>
> I trust the above will be of assistance,
>
>
>
>
>
> Civil Policy and Programs Branch
>
> Court Services Division
>
> Ministry of the Attorney General
>
>
--
Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org>
Wikinewsie.org
The next strategic planning office hours are:
Wednesday from 04:00-05:00 UTC, which is:
Tuesday, 8-9pm PST
Tuesday, 11pm-12am EST
As always, You can access the chat by going to https://webchat.freenode.net
and filling in a username and the channel name (#wikimedia-
strategy). You may be prompted to click through a security warning.
It's fine.
Hope to see you there!
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Facilitator, Strategy Project
Wikimedia Foundation
philippe(a)wikimedia.org
mobile: 918 200-WIKI (9454)
Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Question_of_the_week
Last week's Question of the week focused on how Wikimedia could change
its technology to enable a friendlier and more welcoming environment.
Certainly new technology and increasing the friendliness is one tactic
that Wikipedia might use to increase participation. The following
graph shows that there are some key countries with a large online
populations where Wikipedia still has significant room to increase the
number of users and active participants. Specifically, in China,
Brazil, France, South Korea, Turkey and Indonesia, Wikipedia.org
ranking is below 10. What tactics do you think could be used to
increase participation in a specific country?
<Graph and link to participate are at http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Question_of_the_week
>
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Facilitator, Strategy Project
Wikimedia Foundation
philippe(a)wikimedia.org
mobile: 918 200-WIKI (9454)
Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
The next strategic planning office hours are Tuesday from 20:00-21:00
UTC (12-1PM PST, 3-4PM EST).
Office hours are on #wikimedia-strategy on freenode. You can access
the chat by going to https://webchat.freenode.net/ and filling in a
username and the channel name (#wikimedia-strategy). You may be
prompted to click through a security warning. It's fine. Another
option is http://chat.wikizine.org. You can also, of course, use your
favorite IRC chat client.
See you there!
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Facilitator, Strategy Project
Wikimedia Foundation
philippe(a)wikimedia.org
mobile: 918 200-WIKI (9454)
Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Thanks, Brian!
Sounds like the best thing we could do to serve your needs (and those of many other sites) would be to offer an API for NewsTrust.
We will put this on our to-do list for 2010, and see if we can schedule it early next year.
For now, let's focus on the services we already offer, and build our relationship from there. We have a lot on our plate in the next few weeks, so this will probably not be in a position to start new technology development on this until January.
I really appreciate your excellent recommendations, and will definitely want to involve you in our next steps for the API.
We will also get back to you by the end of next week about a co-promotion of the Wikinews contest at the end of January.
Thanks again, and speak with you soon!
Fabrice
On Dec 12, 2009, at 8:26 PM, Brian McNeil wrote:
> [Erik Moeller dropped from CC list; no response to any emails over past
> week on these issues.]
>
> On Sat, 2009-12-12 at 18:39 -0800, Fabrice Florin wrote:
>> Hi guys,
>>
>> I have added our web engineer Subbu Sastry to this thread, as he would know whether or not it's feasible for us to give you this data.
>
> Hi Subbu!
>
> Wikinews has a few techies who hack things together for the site.
> Bawolff specialises in Javascript with unusual exception errors
> containing creative spelling mistakes. I'm going to suggest one of his
> widgets for NewsTrust (later), I think you and Fabrice will both quite
> like it.
>
> We've also Jon (ShakataGaNai) who helps with a number of other coding
> things. Some less-noticeable people also help with other bits and
> pieces.
>
> Personally I've little experience with developing server-side things
> like a web API; but, does 20+ years as a systems analyst help? Mostly
> working on Billing Systems and Enterprise Resource Planning, I did do
> some XML-spewing designs for that. I'd probably have no problems with
> looking at your database structures and identifying the information I
> think most useful to expose in an API. Happy to drop Fabrice and some of
> the other CC'd people from that discussion. If there's a need for a
> non-disclosure agreement to get at such data it won't be the first time
> I've signed one.
>
>> We don't yet have a full API, though our widgets function a bit like an API.
>
>> One new widget we have been considering is a rating widget which a third-party could put on their site, to show the NT story rating for a particular story on that site. It might also be possible to show the source rating we have for that source, if known. We hadn't planned on doing this right away, but it's in the queue of things we would consider doing, if requested by one of our partners.
>
> I'd say the advantage of an API is the scripts for your widgets should
> be greatly simplified, and you can freely license examples of them.
>
> The drawback is you'll want to do various logs and analyses on API usage
> so you can block any particularly abusive sites; just like web spiders
> that don't respect robots.txt end up blocked everywhere except SEO
> linkbuilder sites.
>
>> Your request seems a bit different, if I understand it correctly: you would want to display the ratings for sources cited by your articles, is that right? if that's the case, it may be sufficient for us to get just the URL. We would then look up that URL in our DB, and if we have it on file, that would allow us to provide the story rating and number of reviews. We may also be able to provide the source rating and number of reviews for the source associated with that story at the same time. Lastly, it may be possible to provide the source rating and reviews for the source typically associated with that domain name, though this is a risky proposition, because often a story featured on a site is not really from that site. So it would be best to ask for source ratings by specifying a source name, but you would need to request the exact name we use for that source, which could be prone to human error.
>
> Yes. At the moment there's a significant percentage of Wikinews articles
> are what we call "synthesis" articles. They contain no original
> research, but are constructed through using multiple independent sources
> which must be listed at the foot of the article.
>
> Within the Wikicode this looks as follows:
>
> *{{source|url=http://news.example.com/articleurl
> |title=Name of story, as given by publisher
> |author=the article's author(s), if specified by the publisher
> |pub=The name of the publisher. This *should* be as listed on Wikipedia
> |date=Monthname daynumber, year - as specified by the publisher}}
>
> This was one point another contributor raised off-list; we currently
> list all used sources with no regard to their reliability or reputation.
> That can see Fox News listed and "supposedly" on a par with the BBC,
> Reuters, or PBS. Your own critique of Iain's article on the Garuda
> pilot's conviction noted we'd not had contact with some key primary
> sources; as independents, with zero financial backing for our reporting
> activities, getting that can be challenging. International phone calls
> can soon mount up if you're looking for comment from the other side of
> the globe. Personally, I've sunk between €500-€1,000 into setting up our
> wikinewsie.org domain, mostly used so we're not emailing people with
> addresses like "fluffykitteh1024(a)hotspace.com".
>
>> In any case, we should probably prioritize the tasks you are considering, so we know which is most important to you from an editorial standpoint.
>
> I don't want to end up pushing NewsTrust to develop something that would
> have limited use outside that of Wikinews. However, I do think that the
> elimination of cross-server scripting vulnerabilities would be a big
> selling point for a published API.
>
>> Is it more important for you to have your own articles display a story rating? or to give a rating to the third-party articles cited as sources for your own articles?
>
> Both, I think. But, that's the beauty of doing it with an API; anyone
> could do either.
>
>> If it's the latter, how often would you need this information to be updated? If it's an old story, its story rating is unlikely to change much after a month or two after its release, so maybe you could settle for a one-time rating -- the source rating is more likely to change over time, but not by much. So maybe a once-a-month or less frequent update might be fine.
>
> Bawolff's input on this suggests the volume of requests to NewsTrust
> would naturally tail off as articles age. Thus:
>
> * Someone request a Wikinews article.
> * Javascript on Wikinews activates, parses required parameters from the
> source template, and sends them to our back end (the ToolServer).
> * If less than 10-15 minutes since NewsTrust last queried, back end
> returns cached data.
> * Else the back end submits a new request
> * If NewsTrust returns updated data (instead of an "unchanged" response)
> the back end updates its stats and sends that on to the reader via the
> Javascript invoked above
>
>> Either way, we would need to figure out how important all this is to you, and if we can squeeze in some simple technology that addresses most of your needs.
>
> As you've mentioned, and one of the other headaches we have, something
> from AP, Reuters, or AFP can end up on dozens - if not hundreds - of
> newspaper sites. Wikinews tends to push for people to go back to the
> wire site or, say, Google News' hosting of these. We also push for the
> wire to be cited as the author (eg Reuters); that *might* help NewsTrust
> consolidate the different URLs because the article title is generally
> only changed if the site publishing it applies a house style for
> capitalisation.
>
> If, perhaps as a more long-term goal for NewsTrust, you were getting
> that data you could tie up all the different URLs for a Reuters or AP
> story, group under a unique article identifier, and expose that in the
> API so, once you've queried with a URL, the API asks for future requests
> to use a much shorter identifier.
>
>> But this is a good conversation to have, and we appreciate your thinking about these creative uses of NewsTrust for your site.
>
> I did warn you Wikinewsies will steal anything that isn't nailed down
> and watched by armed guards. :-P
>
> Oh, and the widget I said I'd suggest:
>
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-dictionaryLookupHover.js
>
> Subbu will likely follow this most quickly; it's a freely licensed piece
> of Javascript that uses Wiktionary (another WMF project) to do a
> dictionary lookup of any work a user double clicks on.
>
> It is multilingual, so if NewsTrust account holders could set a "Mother
> tongue" option they wouldn't get definitions in an English default, but
> their chosen language. (The gadget looks up "example" in Wiktionary,
> tracks down the link to the definition in "Mother tongue", and displays
> it in a small pop-up window.)
>
> If you'd like to try it out on Wikinews, sign up for an account, log in,
> select your preferences at the top of the page, go to the gadgets tab,
> and look for and enable Wiktionary Hover.
>
> Here endeth another shameless plug for Bawolff's Javascript-fu.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org>|http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil
> Content of this message in no way represents the opinions or official position
> of the Wikimedia Foundation or any of its projects.
>
>
>
> --
> Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org>|http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil
> Content of this message in no way represents the opinions or official position
> of the Wikimedia Foundation or any of its projects.
> * Problems replying? Forward bounces to brianmc(a)skynet.be to raise with Godaddy Hosting.
>
I just got off of an hour long Skype chat with Fabrice Floren, founder
of http://newstrust.net. Jimmy suggested to him it might be interesting
if there are ways Wikinews can work with them. I think there are, but to
some extent we need to check we're all within WMF rules, and we might
want to kick a few more people about Amgine's MediaWiki extension for
XML feeds.
NewsTrust is a non-profit, ostensibly a news aggregator, but they
challenge people to review news and become more critical of it. They're
a hell of a lot more clued up about reviewing and being critical of news
than the feeble review widget in MediaWiki.
I was up-front with Fabrice, Wikinewsies will look at their site and
say, "what can we steal?" Well, unless we run into the privacy policy,
we're welcome to steal all their gadgets, and get them reviewing our
stuff.
My thoughts on this at the moment are there is room for collaboration;
feeding Wikinews stories into NewsTrust and putting the NewsTrust
review/rating widget on each Wikinews article. This could be
incorporated into the publish template.
Second, they have pretty good background on the sources they follow and
are crowdsourcing "credibility ratings" for them. Could we pull that
data into the {{source}} template on Wikinews? By this I mean someone
reading one of Wikinews' articles scrolls down to the sources, it says
"The Guardian", gives the WikiTrust rating for the source, and the cited
article.
Fabrice had not had a lot of time to look at Wikinews articles, but will
be sticking a couple up for the NewsTrust community to review. Cirt will
be pleased to know that at a semi-casual read his "Glenn Beck" coverage
was deemed comprehensive and well-researched.
I'm going to sign up on the site and have a real dig round in the
morning. For now, there's the following links that might interest people
like, ooh, I don't know ;-) Bawolff?
http://newstrust.net/tools/buttonshttp://newstrust.net/sources/the_guardianhttp://newstrust.net/widgetshttp://newstrust.net/feeds/todays_feeds
I also have a PDF of a NewsTrust presentation (~6Mb) if you want a copy
let me know a suitably well-endowed email address.
--
Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org>|http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil
Content of this message in no way represents the opinions or official position
of the Wikimedia Foundation or any of its projects.