Hello all!
As a result of the success of the Strategy planning office hours and the
recent "meet the board" presentation on the #wikimedia channel on IRC,
we've decided to do regular office hours featuring a Wikimedia
Foundation staff member.
And to kick things off, this Friday, September 25, 2009, between 15:30
and 16:30 PDT (UTC 22:30 to 23:30), Sue Gardner, the Wikimedia
Foundation's Executive Director, will be online to answer your questions
and talk about her role in the Foundation and plans for the future.
The IRC channel that will be hosting Sue's conversation, and all future
WMF staff office hours, 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. It's fine.
--
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hi.
A friend of mine just tried to upload an image to Wikipedia which was
given to him by another friend.
Unfortunately the Upload page only provides the options:
* made by someone else for use on Wikipedia only
* made by someone else for non-commercial use only
and both of these options lead to a speedy-deletion warning. The most
OBVIOUS options are missing:
* made by someone else and licenced as (whatever free/open licence)
* made by someone else and placed in the public domain
Because of this, he is forced to use a lower-quality image or no image
at all (or to lie by claiming to be the author of the work).
I think this should be fixed as soon as possible so that normal,
reasonable people can upload normal, reasonable images.
Very frustrated,
Timwi
If you know of any examples, you can leave them on my blog, or perhaps there's even a wiki page somewhere for this?
[[ http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/social/wikipedia/goldman-labor-squeeze
...
Second, Goldman characterizes Wikipedia as atypical in rejecting contributions from paid/professional content creators. He is conflating the conflict of interest policy with the means of production. Yes, free and open source developers are often paid for their work, and while this hasn't taken off at Wikipedia (the market/incentives are different), I am not aware of any Wikipedia policy that prohibits the adoption of professionally produced content if it is appropriate to the encyclopedia and under a compatible license. However, Wikipedia is rightfully careful about contributors who edit articles about their own financial or reputational interests. This is the difference between incorporating content written by a paid expert on their topic of expertise, and rejecting their edits to their own biography.
So, on this note, what are some examples of content that was produced for pay at the Wikimedia Foundation? I can think of some archival material, such as the use of some material form the 11th edition of Britannica and images now in Commons.
]]
Hello,
We wanted to have a more informal forum for discussing Wikimedia
issues with Board members, so the three new Wikimedia Trustees (Arne,
Matt, and myself) are hosting an open meeting on IRC in #wikimedia
this Friday.
Where : #wikimedia
When : Friday September 11, 1800-1900 UTC
(11:00-12:00 PST / 14:00-15:00EST / 20:00-21:00CEST)
Other Board members will hopefully be there as well; we picked a time
when we knew all of the new members could attend. Please join with
any thoughts or questions you have for the Board or about Wikimedia in
general. If you'd like to see something on the agenda, whether or not
you can attend in person, please add it here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_meetings#September_open_meeti…
Since we only have an hour, we will try to keep to the agenda. New
topics brought up after noon UTC the day of the meeting will be
addressed on-wiki if we run out of time.
I'm looking for someone to help moderate the chat. If interested,
please reply offlist. Thanks!
SJ
I know many of you are interested in how Wikipedia's traditional
competitors are doing, especially the unusual event that new print
editions appear.
The Swedish encyclopedia, Nationalencyklopedin, was produced in 20
volumes in 1989-1996 and has since made many transformations as
CDROM, DVD, and online. The original 20 volumes contained 172,000
articles, which have expanded to 460,000 in the current online
edition, which is only open to paying subscribers.
One year ago, a new printed edition appeared, a compact 3 volumes
with only 64,000 short articles. These volumes have the same 3
columns per page, 25 cm tall, as the original 20 set. At the same
time, the website was revised so that 64,000 short articles (I
assume they are the same ones) were made available for free.
Yesterday, we learned of yet another printed edition, this time in
20 volumes, to be sold in collaboration with two newspapers Dagens
Nyheter and Expressen. It appears that these volumes are rather
thin, maybe 200 pages and set in only 2 columns. Although I don't
have any numbers, it seems that this could be the same 64,000
short articles.
The old print set of 20 big volumes + 3 supplements sells for 700
euro in plain binding or 1100 euro for leather spines (half-calf,
Halblederband). The 3 volumes sell for 190 euro. The new 20
volume compact edition sells for 8 euro/volume (including
shipping) with the first one free, for a total of 150 euro.
The two newspapers belong to the same publisher. Dagens Nyheter
is Sweden's largest morning subscription newspaper, delivering the
volumes with 14 day intervals directly to your home. Expressen is
Sweden's second largest evening newspaper, only sold in stores,
and you get the volume for an extra 8 euro when you buy your
newspaper. Expressen has earlier done this with DVD films and
some minor books, and so has its competitor Aftonbladet. Some
stores might offer a reduced price for the newspaper supplement to
customers who buy other products for more than a certain amount.
My interpretation is that printed encyclopedias and newspapers are
two industries in crisis that are trying to find each other.
Using a highly respected brand for a much smaller new product is a
strategy that has been tried before (e.g. Mercedes-Benz A-Class),
but I'm not convinced it makes any sense in the long run. People
might set their expectations too high and get disappointed. Old
arguments that the Swedish Wikipedia needs to become as good as
Nationalencyklopedin, suddenly got a lot more confused.
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se