http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/personal_tec…
"After taking a brief look, I'm convinced that Firmage [founder of
Digital Universe] still lacks a firm grasp of product development. The
site is confusing to access, ponderous to navigate and sloppily put
together."
In my opinion a rather accurate description of the product as
launched. Note that the encyclopedia portion has not yet been made
available to the public, and that the media (and to some extent even
the Wikipedia article) tends to confuse Digital Universe with the
encyclopedia project.
Poor Larry, he seems to have gotten behind the wrong group. But who
knows, maybe DU will be able to make a 180 once the encyclopedia
launches.
Anthony
Hoi,
The American company BellSouth Corp. wants to have organisations pay
transport fees for the content they deliver over the Internet.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B02432D2D-1EE0-4037-A15F-5…
They have even the affront to say that the Internet end users should
welcome this.
This mail is perhaps a bit off what we typically discuss on our
mailing lists, but it may lead to us having sharks like BellSouth
Corp. knocking on our doors..
Thanks,
GerardM
An addition to the post of Finne Boonen:
For record: to see the complete picture, add:
Chronologically:
- jan 3d: - Gebruiker:Wearth unblocks 47 blocked users (3 registered users
and 44 anonymous IP's) which were blocked before by other sysops, due to
repeated vandalism. Wearth's Description in the block-log: "omdat ik het
gezanik over machtsmisbruik zat ben en de gemeenschap niets doet om vooruit
te komen mbt blokkeren en alleen zanikt over illegale blokkades deblokkeer
ik iedereen. kan de gemeenschap zelf ondervinden of ze alle trollen wil"
(which roughy translates to: because I am fed up with the whining about
misuse of power and because the community does not want to do anything to
move forward on the issue of blocking and only whines about illegal
blockades I deblock everyone. Now the community can find out if it wants all
trolls).
see:
http://nl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speciaal%3ALog&type=block&user=Wa…
Until now, Wearth did not make any statements or explanations about this
action AFAIK.
Tjipke de Vries (Tdevries on nl:, en:, de:, commons:, meta:)
A desysopping procedure against me has started on nl:
A brilliant timing btw my sysopstatus will be taken away on my birthday.
As I have said before. If I get desysopped something breaks in me. As I
have always done a lot for the community. It is ironic that on nl: the
trolls can stay, as they do not even get blocked! And the one who is
constantly trying to keep things going looses his modstatus.
I have tried after a year of discussing to finally get a blockpolicy
going on nl: that allows blocks for more than 24 hours. 7 proposals have
been made by 7 users. But no what do they want on nl: they want to
discuss things further. Meanwhile trolls feast on nl: and multiple users
have left already. Also an arbcom has been discussed for over a year.
And everytime someone has a proposal they discuss further and further
and further. NL: has become a discussionforum in which proposals are
discussed, but never ever implemented. I tried to further it by warning
people on their userpages that wikipedia is not a discussionforum. They
responded with a desysoppingprocedure here:
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Afzetting_moderators
This is the worst birthday gift after over 2 years of hard work. I
defended nl.wikipedia a number of times over the radio as a
presscontact. everyone said I had done a good job. I now feel stupid
sorry for doing such a good job. This community doesn't deserve people
who are willing to work hard.
Waerth/Walter
Hello,
I know that this would never go on 'officially' for Wikipedia, but
if I assembled a Wikipedia on one of my servers for my conlang,
Dasprach, and it had substantial amounts of information (better than
most of the 'real' Wikipedias), do you think it would be allowed for me
to move my user-page for Dasprach
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Antman/Dasprach) (an improved
version) to the main namespace?
Thanks,
M. Kuklinski
Sirs,
so far (14/01/06) the request for a Ligurian wikipedia is approved, nor has it been moved elsewhere by anybody.
So I would like to request a Ligurian wikipedia, with domain
http://lij.wikipedia.org ;
now this is a 'standard' request, since there is no odd story as to this subject. Many thanks.
Yours sincerely,
Claudio Meneghini
---------------------------------
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I am [[es/ko/en:User:Yonghokim]] and I am having a copyright law
interpretation debate (it's a rather silly one) with [[en/ko:User:WonYong]]
at the korean language wikipedia.
In the course of it, I argued that Fair Use is about using the image (e.g.
the Fair Use image or text can be used independent of other textual
context). He then argued that Fair Use is only about "quoting". I need some
advice on this - I am looking for a counterproof that the general academic
practice of quoting up to 5% of a source is NOT what Fair Use stands for.
Something like a portion in the US Copyright Law that mentions academic
quotations.
-------------------
In case my above dispute-solving-approach is mistaken, I'll introduce the
context as I understand it.
WonYong is making the following claims:
1) Uploading images in ko is not using it, we are merely uploading them to
"quote them" in Wikipedia documents.
2) Therefore South Korean Copyright Law regarding academic and media
"quotation" applies to these images - we can use anything as long as it
abides by SK CRL Chapter 6 (Limitations to Intellectual Property Rights),
Art. 25. Said clause states:
제25조 (공표된 저작물의 인용) 공표된 저작물은 보도·비평·교육·연구등을 위하여는 정당한 범위안에서 공정한 관행에 합치되게 이를 인용할
수 있다.
My translation: Art. 25 (Citation/Quotation of copyrighted work accessible
to the public) Copyrighted work accessible to the public can be quoted for
media, criticism, education, and research, within a justified range and in
pursuance to fair custom. http://tinyurl.com/a7frg
My understanding is that under Fair Use you can make copies of a copyrighted
work. For instance, you can photocopy a work of art and distribute it in
class for discussion. SKCRL 25 would not allow this. SKCRL is merely
spelling out the fact that you can quote verbatim up to 5% of a source when
writing a scholarly paper.
3) When I pointed out this to him, he told me that I "misunderstood Fair
Use" and that Fair Use is pretty much the same thing as SKCRL 25. Americans
are doing it, we have the samel law, why can't we do it?
4) Of course then there is the issue of Mr. WonYong thinking that the Korean
Language Wikipedia should abide by South Korean Law. I've had serious NPOV
disputes with him over this - suffice to say that he introduced the idea of
a "South Korea-specific NPOV". I'll post on this on a separate email.
There is some previous discussion that spilled into the English Language
Village Pump at [[Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Lawfully citing
copyrighted images]] ( http://tinyurl.com/7v2pa ) If any of you read korean
and want to check out the current situation, just come to our Village Pump
(사랑방) - there's at least 7 subheadings created by WonYong that pretty much
argue variants of the same thing.
Yongho
At least four poeple have committed to contribute to a Wikipedia in the
constructed language Novial. This language was published in 1928 by
Professor Otto Jespersen followed by a multilingual dictionary in 1930.
In ISO 639-3 Novial has the 3-letter code nov.
The documentation is here:
http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=nov
On the basis of internet information the number of people who write this
language on the internet is in the order of one dozen to twenty. The
language is well known among enthusiasts of international auxiliary
languages and is often said to be one of the best.
You can read our conversation which yesterday confirmed at least four
enthusiastic contributors at the novial-discussion group at Yahoo!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/novial-discussion/
If you wish to learn more about Novial see the Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novial_language
or the Novial Wikibook:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Novial
The voting is on this page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Non-natural
Thanks,
nov_ialiste
In this moment I started to think that we have more then enough
promotion in media ;)
- 11. 1. 2005. I was talking 45 minutes on Radio Belgrade 2 about
Wikipedia, other Wikimedian projects and about WMF and WM SCG.
- 15. 1. 2005. (yesterday) we had usual meeting at Sunday, but with
more then 30 people. Half of them was from Linux User Group of
Belgrade which are willing to help to Wikipedia, too. They found that
we (on sr:) don't have Jimbo's biography and they would do it :) Also,
they would help us in the project "spoken Wikipedia".
- 16. 1. 2005. (today) B92 (the main Internet news portal in Serbia)
made an article about Wikipedia at the top of their culture section.
They promoted our presentation/discussion for Thursday.
(http://www.b92.net/kultura/index.php?view=2&did=14641)
- 17. 1. 2005. (tomorrow) our PR Jovana will talk seven minutes on one
(not so big) television (Art) from Belgrade.
- 19. 1. 2005. (Thursday) we would have presentation/discussion about
Wikipedia in the best place for it in Belgrade (Youth Cultural
Center).
- 28. 1. 2005. we would have projection of the movie Revolution OS in
the cinema of Youth Cultural Center.
- Between 30. 1. 2005. and 9. 2. 2005. I would be in Slovenia and
Croatia and I would talk about Wikipedia with Wikipedians from
Slovenia and Croatia. I would talk about Serbian Wikipedian community
on University of Ljubljana (thanks to Roman Maurer).