[Foundation-l] alternatives

Fri Jan 5 16:29:11 UTC 2007

hi Anthere,

I just posted you request for a volunteer to email the clones in the pub.

There also have been a number of reactions. User:Taka gave the longest reaction:
1) The legal risk statement raised a question: which legal risks do we
run by publishing data on dvd or in books? (supposing we do a good
check to prevent copyvios)
2) News agents and others: this might raise money if we could offer
them some stable version which has been scanned for vandalism. Call it
premum content.
3) The people considered fanpedia as one of the most promising ideas,
as it would solve several problems at once. First, wikipedia is known
and rightly mocked for its endless series of articles on Star Wars,
The Lord of the Rings, We Just produced Our First Albums bands, and
the favourite soap-of-the-day. The wikis could still have articles on
the major ones, but all articles of the bandmembers, the actors in the
soap, the separate articles of TLotR characters could all be moved to
fanpedia. It would raise the prestige of wikipedia.  Second, most of
the images which get routinely uploaded and removed are fanstuff. The
english wiki is rightly trying to get rid of them, and on the Dutch
wiki they are always listed as a copyvio (though we do have a backlog
of stuff from before 1-9-2005). But there is a desparate need among
the others to illustrate their articles, something which currnetly
simply can not be done. A fanpedia could solve both problems. You did
not comment on this idea, could you please let us know what you think
of it?

kind regards,
teun spaans

On 1/3/07, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Teun Spaans wrote:
> > On 1/2/07, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Teun Spaans wrote:
> >>
> >>>A number of people answered this call. A summary of ideas from the dutch pub:
> >>>* save money on bandwith by symplfying html. - however, I checked and
> >>>html seems already pretty lean.
> >>>* Save discspace by deleting older versions of articles - probably
> >>>contradicts GFDL.
> >>>* Make lists of charities. Foundation board is probably already doing this.
> >>
> >>** I remember seeing such a list from Danny. But yes, that's something
> >>we should work on.
> >>
> >>
> >>>* There were a number of people who suggested running selected commercial ads.
> >>>* Distributed storage - technically probably not yet feasible
> >>>* Grid computing
> >>>* Publish thematical information as commercial books
> >>
> >>** legal risk associated with publishing (same for dvd below), but we
> >>can have others publish or sell them, and get royalties. Hopefully, a
> >>deal will soon be signed up on this matter, which I hope we can generalized.
> >>
> >>
> >>>* Sell dvds, either whole encyclopedia or thematical
> >>>* Make deals with clones or block them
> >>
> >>There are a handful of such deals. Just a handful.
> >
> >
> > Perhaps we can approach the others?
>
> Absolutely !
> Our general approach until now has been not to bug the sites which are
> obviously "non profit" type, dedicated to education.
> As for the obvious mirrors-for-money, yeah, we can approach them and
> propose them a datafeed.
>
> A template for such suggestion has been done a few months ago. It is
> useable on OTRS. Do you have access to OTRS ? If not, OTRS members can
> certainly provide you the template. It would be great someone (a
> community volunteer) take the time to contact all "big" languages and
> try to identify lists of major commercial mirrors. Maybe coordinate
> contact of these mirrors and to suggest them datafeeds.
> If there is a no, contact the developers to get these mirrors blocked.
> The Foundation does have a template contract to propose afterwards, so
> this will be easy to handle (a bit of Brad or Danny time though).
> The datafeed must get activated, which requires more or less work.
> Usually done by Brion (slows down other features development, nothing
> perfect).
>
> But yes, feasible.
> Mostly need coordinators in the biggest languages. Web hunting to
> identify major commercial mirrors. Then contacting them. Foundation can
> take in charge administrative and technical follow up.
>
> Ant
>
> >>>* Same for news agencies
> >>
> >>Not sure I see how it would bring money. How so ?
> >
> > I'll ask the user who posted this. David Gerard is probably right that
> > wikinews has to pick up   a bit more before this will work.
> >
> >
> >>>* Make bio info available for pda's. A lot easier to carry around than
> >>>field guides
> >>
> >>Same question. Making it available only against a payment ?
> >
> > If it requires a special format, we might consider that.
> >
> >
> >>>* Asks subsidies from UN, EU and individual states.
> >>
> >>Some expressed concerns with regards to independance. Limitations on
> >>this very topic is mostly lack of human resources to make the requests.
> >>Volunteers welcome.
> >
> > I admit that these concerns are much more legitimate than when we have
> > a broad array of companies which advertise.
> >
> >>>* Be more selective in accepting articles
> >>>* Much of what we have is fancruft, and it seems fairly popular. Move
> >>>all fanstuff to a separate project, outside wikipedia. Call if
> >>>fanpedia or something. Let this project be more liberal in its
> >>>acceptance of media, and let this project accept advertisements. This
> >>>could probably support all wiki projects.
> >>>* If images cost to much bandwidth, put a limit of 3 images / article.
> >>
> >>I cant estimate the interest of technical suggestions.
> >>thanks for the feedback
> >
> > Neither can I. But in the dutch pub I can ask the user who suggested
> > there was opensource software for grid compunting, if Brion thinks it
> > may be interesting.
> >
> > Thank you for listening and commenting. I'll post a translation in the
> > appropriate thread in the pub of the Dutch wiki.
> >
> > teun
> >
> >
> >>ant
> >>
> >>
> >>>teun
> >>>
> >>>On 12/29/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>Old Chinese proverb:
> >>>>
> >>>>"... no matter how loud the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it ..."
> >>>>
> >>>>mountain = foundation
> >>>>wind = people whining.
> >>>>
> >>>>:-)
> >>>>
> >>>>Jeff
> >>>>
> >>>>effe iets anders wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>Hi all,
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Lots of people are yelling and shouting that the current vision and policy
> >>>>>of the foundation is totally wrong. I would like to invite all these people
> >>>>>and others to think about alternatives. We won't get rid of these ugly
> >>>>>things (everybody agrees upon that, i guess) in the sitenotice without any
> >>>>>serious alternatives. I already asked this in the Dutch Village Pump, I hope
> >>>>>you will bring the question back to all your communities, to the places
> >>>>>where is discussed about the sitenotice. I have myself troubles to come up
> >>>>>with serious alternatives, so I hope you guys have one. And when you have
> >>>>>one, then you can ideed start a discussion about which solution is better. I
> >>>>>look forward to your ideas, and please keep the discussion about how bad the
> >>>>>current solution is for other threads.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Lodewijk / Eia
> >>>>>_______________________________________________
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> >>>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >>>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>_______________________________________________
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> >>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>>>
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
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> >>
>
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