Greetings!
The Wikimedia Foundation's multimedia team (1) seeks your guidance on a proposal to support the MP4 video format. As you know, this digital video standard is used widely around the world to record, edit and watch videos on mobile phones, desktop computers and home video devices. It is also known as H.264/MPEG-4 or AVC. (2)
Supporting the MP4 format would make it much easier for our users to view and contribute video on Wikimedia projects -- and video files could be offered in dual formats on our sites, so we could continue to support current open formats (WebM and Ogg Theora).
However, MP4 is a patent-encumbered format, and using a proprietary format would be a departure from our current practice of only supporting open formats on our sites -- even though the licenses appear to have acceptable legal terms, with only a small fee required.
We would appreciate your guidance on whether or not we should support MP4 on our sites. The Request for Comments presents views both in favor and against MP4 support, based on opinions we’ve heard in our discussions with community and team members.
What do you think? We would be grateful for your comments here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/MP4_Video
All users are welcome to participate, whether you are active on Commons, Wikipedia, other Wikimedia project -- or any site that uses content from our free media repository.
We also invite you to join our Office Hours Chat on IRC this Thursday, January 16, at 19:00 UTC, if you would like to discuss this project with our team and other community members:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours#Upcoming_office_hours
We look forward to a constructive discussion with you and other community members, so we can make a more informed decision together about this important question.
All the best,
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager, Multimedia
Wikimedia Foundation
(1) Multimedia Team Hub:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia
(2) About MP4:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP4
This morning I tried to run some unit tests, and to my surprise it failed
with an error that PHPUnit 3.7.0 is now required. This was apparently done
in Gerrit change 105920[1] in response to bug 59759.[2]
Grepping through 1.23wmf10 finds the PHPUnit function complained about in
that bug in only a few extensions (Diff, EducationProgram, DataTypes). I
ran unit tests against various extensions that I have locally installed,
and core, AntiSpoof, cldr, FlaggedRevs, Gadgets, GeoData, Math, OAuth,
ParserFunctions, Scribunto, and TitleBlacklist all appear to work fine in
3.6.10. TemplateData uses another 3.7-only function
(assertJsonStringEqualsJsonString), which is also used in one test in
EventLogging.
The problem here is that Ubuntu's upcoming 14.04 Trusty Tahr, as well as
Debian unstable (sid), currently contain PHPUnit 3.6.10.[3][4] It seems to
me that requiring our developers to manually install a different version of
phpunit is instead going to make it even less likely for developers to
write or run tests, and will make it that much more difficult to fix tests
if they break.
Is there anything in 3.7 that we actually need? The problematic functions
seem to just be additional asserts that could probably be worked around. Or
is there any hope that Debian and/or Ubuntu will upgrade PHPUnit any time
soon?[5]
[1]: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/105920/
[2]: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59759
[3]: http://packages.debian.org/phpunit
[4]: http://packages.ubuntu.com/phpunit
[5]: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=697343
--
Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
Software Engineer
Wikimedia Foundation
TLDR: I seek fellow developers with whom to collaborate on creating the
largest and most inclusive wiki in the world, Inclupedia.
http://meta.inclumedia.org/wiki/Inclupedia
Inclupedia is a project to make available, on an
OpenEdit<http://wikiindex.org/Category:OpenEdit>wiki, pages deleted
from Wikipedia for notability reasons, as well as
articles created from scratch on Inclupedia. Thus, it will combine elements
of Deletionpedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionpedia> and
Wikinfo<http://wikiindex.org/Wikinfo>as well as the various Wikipedia
mirrors <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks>. It
will be, in other words, a supplement to, and an up-to-date mirror of,
Wikipedia content.
Inclupedia seeks to accomplish the entire
inclusionist<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia>agenda
through technical means, rather than through a political solution
that would require persuading deletionists and moderates to change their
wiki-philosophies. Inclupedia will have no notability requirements for
articles, and will let people post (almost) whatever they want in
userspace. It will also, however, learn from the failures of the various
Wikipedia forks that could not sustain much activity because they had no
way of becoming a comprehensive encyclopedia without duplicating
Wikipedians' labor.
Complete, seamless, and continuous integration with Wikipedia is required.
That is what will enable Inclupedia to be different from those ill-fated
aspirants to the throne whose abandoned, rotting carcasses now litter the
wikisphere. Inclupedia aspires to be the largest and most inclusive wiki in
the world, since the set of Inclupedia pages (and revisions) will always be
a superset <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/superset> of the set of
Wikipedia pages (and revisions).
People sometimes ask, "Hasn't this already been done?" It would seem that
it hasn't, which is why so much of the implementing code has to be designed
and developed rather than borrowed or reverse-engineered. In some ways, the
closest project to this one may have been been the various proprietary
sites that used the Wikimedia update feed
service<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_update_feed_service>to
stay continuously up-to-date with Wikipedia, but to my knowledge none
of
them used MediaWiki as their engine, and their inner workings are a
mystery. Those also tended to be read-only rather than mass collaborative
sites.
The core of what needs to be done is (1) developing a bot(s) to pull
post-dump data from Wikipedia and push it to Inclupedia, (2) developing
capability to merge received data into Inclupedia without losing any data
or suffering inconsistencies, e.g. resulting from collisions with existing
content (as might happen, e.g. in mirrored page moves involving
destinations that already exist on Inclupedia), and (3) developing all the
other capabilities involved in running a site that's both a mirror and a
supplement, e.g. locking mirrored pages from editing by Inclupedians
(unless there will be forking/overriding capability).
I can't exactly post a bug to MediaZilla saying "Create Inclupedia" and
then have a bunch of different bugs it depends on, because non-WMF projects
are beyond the scope of MediaZilla. Some bugs (e.g. bug
59618<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59618>)
concerning Inclupedia-reliant functionality are already in MediaZilla, but
there will inevitably arise completely Inclupedia-specific matters that
need to be dealt with in a different venue. Presumably, it'll be necessary
to create a whole new infrastructure of bug reporting, mailing lists, IRC
channels, etc. But, I want to get it right from the beginning, since this
is an opportunity to start from scratch (e.g. maybe there is a better code
review tool than Gerrit?) I have created Meta-Inclu as a venue for project
coordination.
Mostly, I would like help with design decisions, code review, etc. It's
such a big project, it seems almost overwhelming to contemplate doing
singlehandedly, but it's probably doable if there are a few people involved
who can bounce ideas off one another, provide moral support, etc. So, if
you are interested, feel free to email back or create an account at
Meta-Inclu, and we can begin discussing the details of implementation.
http://meta.inclumedia.org/
If there were to be insufficient volunteer support for implementing this
wiki, then the next step might be to try to get funding to pay developers.
There's no guarantee that such funding would be obtainable, though, or that
it wouldn't come with significant strings attached, that would conflict
with the basic principles and vision of the site, or lead to a lot of (what
I might consider) undesirable technical decisions being made. But we do
what we have to do to make what we are passionate about a reality, to the
extent that's possible given the resources at hand. Thanks,
--
Nathan Larson <https://mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Leucosticte>
On the RFC Process talk page, I'm presenting some questions about our RFC
process and suggesting *my* answers:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Requests_for_comment/Process#Process_qu…
may find this super boring and I will not blame you if you skip the
whole discussion, but I may ask some of you personally to give your
thoughts on specific questions.
Big questions include:
Should we just have one RFC process, or a few different processes (to
fast-track some proposals, divide them up by core/mobile/language/UX/apps
or something like that, etc.)?
Should we add time limits to any part of the process?
How do we ensure that WMF does not do all the decision-making?
I'd love to keep discussion on that talkpage - please feel free to
rearrange into sections if you think it makes sense!
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
It looks like this annoucement didn't make it to this list before.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [MediaWiki-l] Wikimania 2014 scholarship now accepting application
Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2014 17:43:31 +0000
From: Katie Chan <ktc(a)ktchan.info>
Reply-To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
<mediawiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
To: wikivoyage-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, mediawiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Hi all,
Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2014 in London are now being
accepted. Applications are open until the end of the day UTC on 17 February.
Wikimania 2014 scholarships is an award given to an individual to enable
them to attend Wikimania in London from 6-10 August, 2014.
Only a single type of scholarship will be available from the Wikimedia
Foundation for Wikimania 2014. A Wikimedia Foundation scholarship will
cover the cost of an individual's round-trip travel costs as arranged by
the Wikimedia Foundation travel agency, shared accommodation as arranged
by the Wikimedia Foundation, and registration for Wikimania.
Applicants will be rated using a pre-determined selection process and
selection criteria by the Scholarship Committee, who will determine
which are successful. To learn more about Wikimania 2014 scholarships,
please visit <https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships>.
To apply for a scholarship, fill out the application form on
<http://scholarships.wikimedia.org/apply>. It is highly recommended that
applicants review all of the material on the Scholarships page and the
associated FAQ before submitting an application.
If you have any question, please contact
<wikimania-scholarships(a)wikimedia.org> or leave a message on
<https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Scholarships>.
Katie Chan
Chair, Scholarship Committee
--
Katie Chan
Any views or opinions presented in this e-mail are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily represent the view of any organisation the
author is associated with or employed by.
Experience is a good school but the fees are high.
- Heinrich Heine
_______________________________________________
MediaWiki-l mailing list
MediaWiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Dear Gerard,
Thank you so much for your kind words about the proposed Multimedia Vision for Wikimedia sites by 2016. (1)
I am glad that our first user stories resonate with you. They intentionally focus on ways that our community may interact through multimedia -- and we view these types of productive collaborations between different user groups as a key objective for our work.
We really appreciate your thoughtful blog post about this vision (2) and fully agree with you that more user stories will be needed to illustrate the scope of possible interactions between different communities around the world -- from schools to professional or personal sites around the world. We aim to identify more user stories like these to inform our next steps.
We are actively working with Lydia, Daniel and the Wikidata team to implement structured data on Commons and integrate it with Wikidata later this year, in collaboration with our community. We expect this work will improve a range of multimedia workflows as a result, from curation to search and beyond. We will definitely address the points you raise.
I would also like to thank all the community members who have joined our discussion about this multimedia vision (3). We are grateful for your feedback, and very glad to see a partnership develop between our community and the foundation around these goals, so we may better serve our users together.
If you haven’t commented yet, please share your feedback here, after viewing the video:
http://ur1.ca/gdljy
You are all invited to join our office hours IRC chat about multimedia this Thursday, January 16 at 19:00 UTC (4) — we look forward to discussing this vision and other media projects with you then. More on this later.
Thanks again for everyone’s wonderful work in helping share free knowledge through multimedia.
All the best,
Fabrice
(1) Multimedia Vision 2016:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Multimedia_Features/Vision_2016
(2) Blog Post by Gerard:
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.nl/2014/01/wikimedia-multimedia-featuresvis…
(3) Discuss the Multimedia Vision:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Multimedia_Features/Vision_…
(4) Multimedia Office Hours chat on IRC: Thursday at 19:00 UTC
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours#Upcoming_office_hours
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager, Multimedia
Wikimedia Foundation
Multimedia Hub:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia
Profile:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
On Jan 10, 2014, at 4:01 AM, wikimedia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
> Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2014 09:33:30 +0100
> From: Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, WikiData-l
> <wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia Commons Discussion List
> <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia Mailing List
> <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] A Multimedia Vision for 2016
> Message-ID:
> <CAO53wxUXYcNbFOe6fKugohVVopGb+mC+H9kBHk4bTm74fQoYkg(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Hoi,
> Fabrice, I very much love the two stories described in the vision. It
> describes not only a functionality that is technical, it also describes how
> our community may interact. That is great.
>
> What I missed are the consequences of the planned integration of Commons
> with Wikidata. I blogged about it [1] and I suggest three more stories that
> could be told because they are enabled by this integration. What I do not
> fully understand is how the community aspects will integrate in an
> environment that will be more multi lingual and multi cultural as a
> consequence.
>
> I have confidence that the three stories that I suggest will be realised by
> 2016. Not only that, I am pretty sure that as a consequence the amount of
> traffic that our servers will have to handle will grow enormously to the
> extend that I am convinced that our current capacity will not be able to
> cope. Then again, they are the luxury problems that make us appreciate how
> much room we still have for growth.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
>
> [1]
> http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.nl/2014/01/wikimedia-multimedia-featuresvis…
>
>
> On 10 January 2014 01:39, Fabrice Florin <fflorin(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> Happy new year, everyone!
>>
>> Many thanks to all of you who contributed to our multimedia programs last
>> year! Now that we have a new multimedia team at WMF, we look forward to
>> making some good progress together this year.
>>
>> To kick off the new year, here is a proposed multimedia vision for 2016,
>> which was prepared by our multimedia and design teams, with guidance from
>> community members:
>>
>> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/01/09/multimedia-vision-2016/
>>
>> This possible scenario is intended for discussion purposes, to help us
>> visualize how we could improve our user experience over the next three
>> years. We hope that it will spark useful community feedback on some of the
>> goals we are considering.
>>
>> After you’ve viewed the video, we would be grateful if you could let us
>> know what you think in this discussion:
>>
>>
>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Multimedia_Features/Vision_…
>>
>> We are looking for feedback from all users who benefit from Commons, even
>> if their work takes place on other sites. This vision explores ways to
>> integrate Wikimedia Commons more closely with Wikipedia and other MediaWiki
>> projects, to help users contribute more easily to our free media repository
>> -- wherever they are.
>>
>> In coming weeks, we will start more focused discussions on some key
>> features outlined in this presentation. If you would like to join those
>> conversations and keep up with our work, we invite you to subscribe to our
>> multimedia mailing list:
>>
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/multimedia
>>
>> We look forward to more great collaborations in the new year!
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>>
>> Fabrice
>> on behalf of the Multimedia team
>>
>> _______________________________
>>
>> Fabrice Florin
>> Product Manager, Multimedia
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>> Wikipedia Profile:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
>>
>> Multimedia Project Hub:
>> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2014 12:16:01 +0100
> From: Delphine Ménard <notafishz(a)gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement Sarah Stierch
> Message-ID:
> <CAHppPBeZzLr9idyLsUAWANuA1hYQnnmgT=3a+U7_uNGrjBO9gQ(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Oh wow, this is so... well, random.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Delphine
>
> On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 1:07 AM, Frank Schulenburg
> <fschulenburg(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I'm writing to let you know that Sarah Stierch is no longer an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation.
>>
>> The Wikimedia Foundation has recently learned that Sarah has been editing Wikipedia on behalf of paying clients, as recently as a few weeks ago. She did that even though it is widely known that paid editing is frowned upon by many in the editing community and by the Wikimedia Foundation.
>>
>> The Wikimedia Foundation values Sarah a great deal. She has been an active Wikipedian since 2006. She is committed to increasing dialogue between cultural institutions and our projects. She has worked hard to increase the presence and voices of women and other minorities in our projects, and she is a warm welcomer of new Wikipedians. Her work in Program Evaluation has been important and necessary. She is a good friend of many of us.
>>
>> Everybody makes mistakes, and I would like to believe that the Wikimedia movement is a place of forgiveness and compassion. And so I ask you to respect Sarah's privacy at what is surely a difficult time for her, and to join me in wishing her every future success.
>>
>> I sincerely hope that Sarah will continue her important work as a Wikipedian and member of the GLAM community, and I thank her for the commitment and energy and thoughtfulness she has brought to her work at the Foundation.
>>
>> Frank Schulenburg
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>> Frank Schulenburg
>> Senior Director of Programs
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>> Cell: +1 (415) 517-0453
>> Email: frank(a)wikimedia.org
>>
>> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
>>
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list
>> Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
>
>
>
> --
> @notafish
>
> NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails will get lost.
> Intercultural musings: Ceci n'est pas une endive - http://blog.notanendive.org
> Photos with simple eyes: notaphoto - http://photo.notafish.org
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>
>
> End of Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 118, Issue 27
> ********************************************
______________________________________________
Fabrice Florin
Multimedia creator | Product manager | Social entrepreneur
(415) 388-6688 office
fabriceflorin(a)gmail.com
Flickr | Twitter | Wikipedia
The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP
5.4.24. About 14 bugs were fixed. All PHP 5.4 users are encouraged to
upgrade to this version.
The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP
5.5.8. This release fixes about 20 bugs against PHP 5.5.7 components.
See http://www.php.net/archive/2014.php#id2014-01-10-1 .
Be reminded, that PHP 5.5.x versions include the bytecode cache Zend
Optimizer+ which usually let your mediawiki run quicker.