Mr Wales wanted it, so I am going to give him mine...
For me, I see two main areas where the money could be spent:
1- Text books copyright buyouts. Primarily historical reference material.
2- Commisioning original photographic and illustrative content for Wikipedia
(under the SA or GFDL, of course).
Let's face, $100 million can buy a lot of stuff. Certain established text
books being licensed under a SA license would do a world of good.
GerardM wrote:
> Hoi,
> For some of the newly created wikipedias there are reasons why I would not
> create them as languages in WiktionaryZ in this manner
> They are:
>
> http://roa-tara.wikipedia.org/ Tarantino
> http://cbk-zam.wikipedia.org/ Zamboanga Chavacano
> http://zh-classical.wikipedia.org/ Classical Chinese
> http://cu.wikipedia.org/ Old Church Slavonic
> http://ru-sib.wikipedia.org/ Siberian/Nort Russian
>
>
> - Tarantino is supposed to use the roa code. This code does not
> signify anything but that it is a Romance language. The code does
specify
> what is included in the code and Tarantino is not one of them.
> - In ISO-639-3 cbk is the code for Chavacano. Zamboangueño is an
> alternative name..
> - For Classical Chinese there is no specificity as what is meant by
> this. This is also easy to explain as the zh (zho) code itself is
> depreciated in the ISO-639-3 because there are some 10 languages that
are
> included in this code.
> - I might include the Old Church Slavonic as chu. It is used as
> liturgical language of various Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic
churches. It
> is considered extinct.
> - The ru-sib is a created language. It is a bad idea to create a code
> as if it is a dialect of the Russian language when it is not.
>
> Thanks,
> GerardM
Gerard,
Chavacano/Chabacano has different varieties or dialects including
Zamboangueño, the dialect with the largest number of speakers. Although
cbk is the ISO code, we decided to go with cbk-zam to distiguish Chavacano
de Zamboanga from the Caviteño, Ternateño and other varieties which are
almost extinct. cbk alone is ambiguous. Zamboangueño, the alternative name
is also ambiguous because it can mean both the residents of Zamboanga City,
Philippines and the dialect of this creole language. Therefore, cbk-zam is
fit to be the non-standardized ISO for Chavacano de Zamboanga wikipedia
(http://cbk-zam.wikipedia.org)
Muchisimas Gracias.
Weekeejames
--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .
As promised [1], password reminder limits are now effective on all Wikimedia
projects. There is a limit of one password reminder per user per 24-hour
period, and 5 password reminders per IP per hour.
-- Tim Starling
[1] http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-October/039494.html
One long article and a few short essays color the current/upcoming
Chronicle of Higher Education. They draw on Wikimania, interview
academics interested in contributing (notably Alex Halavais of ancient
misinformation-study infamy, and Elijah Meeks), profs on using WP as a
reference, Jimbo and Larry Sanger. Overall, well researched if
sparing of detail.
http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i10/10a03101.htm
"Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?"
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i10/10a03501.htm
"Co-Founder of Wikipedia, Now a Critic, Starts Spinoff With Academic Editors"
If you want to ask any questions of Halavais in person, there will be
a live online chat (CHE 2.0?!) Thursday at 3pm EST:
http://chronicle.com/live/2006/10/halavais/
++SJ
I wonder if $100 million dollars could change the law itself in the US... that could free up a lot of resources especially ones that are orphaned.
_________________________________________________________________
Stay in touch with old friends and meet new ones with Windows Live Spaces
http://spaces.live.com/signup.aspx
Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com wrote:
> I would like to gather from the community some examples of works you
> would like to see made free, works that we are not doing a good job of
> generating free replacements for, works that could in theory be
> purchased and freed.
I'd like to suggest buying Mickey Mouse and Donal Duck, so they'll
finally become public domain and, with some luck, maybe Disney will
stop screwing around with copyright law.
Does anyone else agree?
Best regards,
Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves
Translations of free content. Public domain works are available in many languages, but usually the translation are still copyrighted and no free translation exists. In result, free content would exists in other languages than english, french, german, spanish and some few other languages.
Traroth
----- Message d'origine ----
De : Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com>
À : wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org; commons-l(a)wikimedia.org
Envoyé le : Dimanche, 15 Octobre 2006, 17h27mn 41s
Objet : [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...
I would like to gather from the community some examples of works you
would like to see made free, works that we are not doing a good job of
generating free replacements for, works that could in theory be
purchased and freed.
Dream big. Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase
copyrights to be made available under a free license. What would you
like to see purchased and released under a free license?
Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives? Be bold, be specific,
be general, brainstorm, have fun with it.
I was recently asked this question by someone who is potentially in a
position to make this happen, and he wanted to know what we need, what
we dream of, that we can't accomplish on our own, or that we would
expect to take a long time to accomplish on our own.
--Jimbo
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
___________________________________________________________________________
Découvrez une nouvelle façon d'obtenir des réponses à toutes vos questions !
Demandez à ceux qui savent sur Yahoo! Questions/Réponses
http://fr.answers.yahoo.com
Cooperation from the schools would have to be there. I envision a time where
contributing to free textbooks is a part of college that everyone goes
through. It should be no different then typical classwork that students get
now. What makes typical classwork/homework anymore forced then contributing
to a wiki? Legal hassles would have to be sorted out but I am certain that
it could work. The mistakes that happened in Germany should be learned from,
not forgotten in contempt. They had a great idea going that has unrealised
potential
_________________________________________________________________
Stay in touch with old friends and meet new ones with Windows Live Spaces
http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwsp0070000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://sp…
I think that there is enormous untapped potential in colleges and
universities. With the proper amount of funding, it would be possible to
convince schools to force their students to contribute their collective
knowledge to wikibooks/wikipedia as part of their classwork or homework. It
would have to start out small, a few schools experimenting with the idea
here and there. Students would have to login from a .edu address for
accountability purposes in order to avoid plagarism/idiots. They would have
to be distinct from the rest of the wiki community. Professors should also
get involved somehow but I have not thought out their role yet.
It would also kill many birds with one stone. Students can contribute about
subjects that are fresh in their mind as well as learn more about them as
they write. They will also be able to write their own FREE textbooks that
future students can use instead of paying ridiculous sums of money for the
latest books. Just imagine the potential if we could get every school in the
country (or the world) involved... Text books would constantly evolve over
time. Schools can print out copies for students who prefer something
physical at significantly reduced prices while they make a profit. It's a
win-win situation for all (except publishers, poo on them)
Schools should create their own educational content instead of forcing
students to fill publishers coffers. I believe that this would be the
quickest and cheapest method for freeing educational textbooks.
_________________________________________________________________
Find a local pizza place, music store, museum and more then map the best
route! http://local.live.com?FORM=MGA001
My own thoughts on this, which I also expressed on the meta page:
1. There is plenty of material out that that is already public domain. Part
of the problem is that it can take forever and a day to digitize it all. In
the case of books and magazines, digitization often involves destroying the
hard copies in the process. There are, however, specialized scanners that can do
the work without ruining the books themselves. These are expensive (about US
$30,000 a machine). Ten machines, strategically located around the world,
along with student staff to operate them around the clock could help to
preserve these texts and store them for prosperity. Additional people (paid and
volunteer) will be needed to OCR, proof, and hyperlink the material to ensure
that it doesn't get lost in a glut of material (I have visions of the final
scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Ark was finally stored in some crate
in an army warehouse).
2. While OCR capacities exist for some languages, they do not exist for
other languages, where the material is much more likely to get lost. Manuscripts
in Tibetan monasteries, for example, can be scanend but not OCRed easily. To
make this information available, developers should be paid to create adequate
OCR tools for these languages. Rough cost: $5 million.
3. Music has been recorded around the world for well over a century, yet
many of the early recordings are being lost, especially those on wax cylinders
and porcelain records. Preservation includes locating, identifying, and
remastering. People must be trained to do this. Rough cost: $35 million over two
years.
4. This is true of old films as well. Celluloid copies are extremely rare
and extremely flammable. Restoration is exceedingly costly. For example, [[Theda
Bara]] is a well-known vamp of early Hollywood (the word "vamp" was first
used to describe her), yet none of her films survive, and they were made less
than a hundred years ago. Films are international, they include important
historic documents such as newsreels, and they are being lost every day. Today,
most preservation work is being done by major studios, since it is so costly.
In other words, they are taking important works now in the public domain,
restoring them, and contending that the restoration is an original work, i.e.,
another hundred years at least until some Vigo or Charlie Chaplin films enter
the public domain ... and little attention is being paid to newsreels of
events like the Russian revolution, World War I, etc. Like music, people should
be offered scholarships to learn the art of film restoration and work on these
projects. Until this happens it can be outsourced. Rough cost: $50 million.
5. To ensure all of this remains accessible, we will need a LOT of servers
and bandwidth: Initial outlay: $10 million.
Total $100 million dollars, spent over 5 years. Costs include staffing,
identifying prospective targets, transportation, overhead, etc. Just coordinating
a project of this scope will take a lot of effort.
And there is competition too. As an example,
_http://historical.library.cornell.edu/IWP/_ (http://historical.library.cornell.edu/IWP/) is a collection of
Internation Women's Journals, some of which are very important historically.
They are already scanned, but they are inaccessible because a private
company has (rightfully or wrongfully) copyrighted the scans.
Lots to be done. You will see how quickly $100 million can be spent.
Danny
In a message dated 10/15/2006 11:27:57 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
jwales(a)wikia.com writes:
I would like to gather from the community some examples of works you
would like to see made free, works that we are not doing a good job of
generating free replacements for, works that could in theory be
purchased and freed.
Dream big. Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase
copyrights to be made available under a free license. What would you
like to see purchased and released under a free license?
Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives? Be bold, be specific,
be general, brainstorm, have fun with it.
I was recently asked this question by someone who is potentially in a
position to make this happen, and he wanted to know what we need, what
we dream of, that we can't accomplish on our own, or that we would
expect to take a long time to accomplish on our own.
--Jimbo
_______________________________________________
Commons-l mailing list
Commons-l(a)wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l