Re: [Foundation-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the French cultural authorities

2009-09-25 Thread Teofilo
David Monniaux said : release lower resolution pictures under free
license, keep high resolution pictures (those suitable for art books,
posters and so on) proprietary.

I disagree. I think the priority is to have the full resolution
pictures of Public Domain works. Because this is what the French
copyright law is saying. There is no need to negociate anything. There
is no need to change a single word from the current French copyright
law. Simply have the French government's cultural institutions
(museums, archives) recognize that they have been wrong until now, by
adding copyright notices on Public Domain works (in France:
non-poshumous works whose authors have been dead for more than 70
years).

If someone has another opportunity to write an article in Libération
or elsewhere, please denounce the copyright notices added by the Musée
d'Orsay on a picture like the photograph of Louis Blanc by
photographer Etienne Carjat who died in 1906 (1).

Please denounce the copyright notice added by Musée Carnavalet on a
bidimensional work like the Declaration of Human Rights by Le Barbier
(who died in 1826) (2). And don't tell me that a school teacher can
use this work at school with a 400x400 px size, like what is available
to them through the new agreement signed between the French ministry
of Education and authors' representative bodies (3). A teacher needs
to show his pupils every details on the picture.

Negociating small size pictures could be only a lower level priority
concerning truely copyrighted works when the artists are still alive
and need money to buy their bread.

(1) ©photo musée d'Orsay / rmn on
http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/index-of-works/notice.html?no_cache=1zoom=1tx_damzoom_pi1%5Bzoom%5D=0tx_damzoom_pi1%5BxmlId%5D=064037tx_damzoom_pi1%5Bback%5D=%2Fen%2Fcollections%2Findex-of-works%2Fnotice.html%3Fno_cache%3D1%26nnumid%3D064037%26cHash%3D73f82dabb3

(2)  © musée Carnavalet, © direction des musées de France, 2008 Droits
photo © musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet  on
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/public/mistral/joconde_fr?ACTION=CHERCHERFIELD_1=REFVALUE_1=1104384

(3) http://www.education.gouv.fr/cid48874/menj0900756x.html

2009/9/22, Yann Forget y...@forget-me.net:
 Hello, I think this is worth a larger audience. Yann

  Original Message 
 Subject: [Commons-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with
 the French cultural authorities
 Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:51:12 +0200
 From: David Monniaux David . Monniaux @ free . fr
 To: common...@lists.wikimedia.org
  [...]
 I proposed a way out: release lower resolution pictures under free
 license, keep high resolution pictures (those suitable for art books,
 posters and so on) proprietary. The suggestion has been retained by the
 commission - even though they still seem to toy with this idea of
 negotiation.

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[Foundation-l] REMINDER: Wikimedia Staff office hours

2009-09-25 Thread Cary Bass
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Just a reminder about today's office hours with Sue Gardner.  Just as a
note, we're planning alternating the Friday 22:30 UTC office hours with
Thursday 16:00 UTC, which is much easier on our European participants.

Cary

- 

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



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[Foundation-l] Report to the Board July 2009

2009-09-25 Thread Sue Gardner
Hi folks,

I've been holding up release of this report, waiting on comScore data.
 It's still pending, so I will just re-release with it, once it's
available.  Enjoy :-)

Thanks,
Sue

Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

Covering:   July 2009
Prepared by:Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Prepared for:   Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

MILESTONES FROM JULY
   1. Hiring concluded for the Strategic Planning Project
   2. New fiscal year begins
   3. First Wikipedia Academy in the United States

KEY PRIORITIES FOR AUGUST
   1. Prepare for and attend Wikimania 2009 and associated Board
of Trustees meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina
   2. Beta roll-out of first usability improvements
   4. Begin planning process to seek funding for new data center
   5. Meetings with donor prospects

THIS PAST MONTH

STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS

During July, two members of the Wikimedia Advisory Board, Wayne
Mackintosh and Benjamin Mako Hill, separately visited the office to
share their expertise and help influence the strategy planning
project.  Discussions included possibilities for community support
structures, outreach and partnership models as well as sharing of
learnings from the free software and open source movements.  Several
proposals based on these conversations will be posted to the strategic
planning project pages.  Thomas de Souza Buckup, a Brazilian
Wikimedian, also visited the office of the Wikimedia Foundation, and
held meetings with staff.

Eugene Eric Kim and Philippe Beaudette joined the Wikimedia Foundation
staff to fill the Project Manager and Facilitator positions for the
Foundation's collaborative strategy development project.

Eugene was announced as the Project Manager for the strategy project.
Eugene is principal and co-founder of Blue Oxen Associates
http://blueoxen.com/, a San Francisco-based socially-conscious
consulting firm that focuses on understanding and improving how people
collaborate. He's worked at all levels of the collaborative process,
from strategy development to facilitation.  His past clients have
included People for the American Way, NASA, the Institute for
International Education, Socialtext, and the Sierra Club. Eugene is
also a long-time member of the Wiki community. He is the co-author of
PurpleWiki, he spoke at the first Wikimania conference in Frankfurt,
he was a keynote speaker at WikiSym 2006, and he was one of the
instigators of the first RecentChangesCamp.

Philippe Beaudette joined the Wikimeda Foundation as Facilitator for
the strategy project. Philippe is a trusted member of the Wikimedia
volunteer community.  He's a three-year member of the Board of
Trustees Election Committee, a two-year trusted administrator for the
English Wikipedia, and has twice been granted temporary administrator
status for meta for election-related activities.  He has also been a
volunteer for OTRS, and has helped the Wikimedia Foundation in the
development of a grant proposal. Outside Wikimedia, Philippe has a
background in American electoral politics, where he has worked as
Deputy Campaign Manager, Operations Manager and Technology Director on
a number of state and federal campaigns, as well as for the non-profit
Progressive Alliance Foundation.  He has also worked as a technology
consultant in the for-profit sector in the United States, Italy and
the United Kingdom.

The strategy project also intended to hire a Research Analyst and
interviewed a number of candidates, but has since reconsidered that
role, and will rededicate those resources to other work in the
project. That may possibly include efforts to bring in external
expertise of various kinds, and/or to bring in the perspectives of
developing countries.

Eugene and Philippe started working on the strategic planning process
in mid July. They've been working closely with Bridgespan and senior
Foundation staff on the details of the process. They've also been
holding weekly brown bag discussions and IRC office hours. Finally,
they launched the strategic planning Wiki
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/, and they're encouraging people to
submit proposals for what they think the movement should be working on
over the next five years.  The Bridgespan Group worked throughout July
to build the fact base http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fact_base
for the strategic planning process, supported by individual
Wikimedians and Wikimedia Foundation staff.

TECHNOLOGY

MediaWiki contract developer Andrew Garrett worked on modernizing the
LiquidThreads discussion forum extension and solicited feedback from
users and the Usability Initiative team on the user interface. The
Foundation hopes to start deploying LiquidThreads in some isolated
areas in the next couple of months to get real-world usage feedback;
in the long term this should help clear up many of the usability
problems with the current discussion page system. Related tech blog
post: 

Re: [Foundation-l] REMINDER: Wikimedia Staff office hours

2009-09-25 Thread effe iets anders
Thanks for considering Europeans too. However, isn't something like
1800/1900 UTC not more convenient? (since at 1600 UTC, especially during
winter, lots of people will be at work/school?) I guess that also works
better for staff, with regards to getting up early ;-)

Best,

Lodewijk



2009/9/25 Cary Bass c...@wikimedia.org

 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1

 Just a reminder about today's office hours with Sue Gardner.  Just as a
 note, we're planning alternating the Friday 22:30 UTC office hours with
 Thursday 16:00 UTC, which is much easier on our European participants.

 Cary

 - 

 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



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Re: [Foundation-l] REMINDER: Wikimedia Staff office hours

2009-09-25 Thread Thomas Dalton
2009/9/25 effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com:
 Thanks for considering Europeans too. However, isn't something like
 1800/1900 UTC not more convenient? (since at 1600 UTC, especially during
 winter, lots of people will be at work/school?) I guess that also works
 better for staff, with regards to getting up early ;-)

I agree. Early evening is probably the most convenient time, in any time zone.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Report to the Board July 2009

2009-09-25 Thread Samuel Klein
Thank you, Sue.  I always save these to read when I need a pick-me-up,
and it's nice to have them out in time for comments to be relevant to
this current month's plans.  Questions/comments inline.


 I've been holding up release of this report, waiting on comScore data.

That's the least time-critical piece of the reports for me :-)
- Do we send supporters such as comScore things like
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipostcards ?


 MILESTONES FROM JULY
1. Hiring concluded for the Strategic Planning Project
 The strategy project also intended to hire a Research Analyst and
 interviewed a number of candidates, but has since reconsidered that

- Has the perceived need for research changed?
- Wasn't there a discussion about possibly expanding that to a more
stable research position over time?

I'd be interested to see this done scalably through the community, by
defining what valuable reseach needs doing and seeding research
groups.  In the context of Strategic Planning, where are existing
expressed priorities/desires of the Foundation published?


       3. First Wikipedia Academy in the United States
 About 100 NIH employees received live presentations and
 training on Wikimedia mission and culture, as well as editing skills.
 The event was live-streamed to the entire NIH staff of over 350,000.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Academy/NIH_2009

- Has there been any followup?
- Is the idea for this sort of program to be organized by WMF in the
future, or for local groups of Wikimedians to organize similar
efforts?

A friend of mine at the Library of Congress is interested in engaging
local Wikipedians more in their efforts to contribute to Wikipedia.
continuing a first contact with WMF from years ago


 KEY PRIORITIES FOR AUGUST
       5. Meetings with donor prospects

Perhaps community groups should be prioritizing meetings with
content-donor prospects.  This seems to me one of the best arguments
for a better-organized [network of] US chapter[s] -- since there are
so many valuable archives in the US, and we have a national commitment
to the public domain.


 MediaWiki contract developer Andrew Garrett worked on modernizing the
 LiquidThreads discussion forum extension and solicited feedback from

- Are the recent discussions on f-l about how to improve our use of
mailing lists already included in that feedback, or does someone need
to bridge that gap?

 A new 'wmf-deployment' branch was created for MediaWiki which allows

- Are there thoughts about a 'mediawiki-non-wikimedia' branch for
customizations useful to the millions of smaller MWiki users out
there, but not useful to Wikipedia  sibs?


 private offsite mirror hosted by eBart Consulting in Europe.

Hooray!


 Brion attended an Open Educational Research Search Discovery workshop

There was an unanswered question there : whether Wikiversity is
interested in including overviews of the world's notable educational
materials.
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Colloquium#Wikiversity_as_key_OER_site


 Open Translation Tools Conference:
 http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/open-translation-tools-2009-report/

- What tools are being considered for more serious adoption?
- What can people who weren't at the conference do to help?

This seems like a major area for improvement and optimization.
Philippe and Casey have suggested recently that translation as we
currently do it is a real burden for time-sensitive projects such as
strategic planning; and as Ariel notes in that post there is a wealth
of software out there that could make this much easier for us.

 The development for the next release called “Babaco” [2] has started.

( I'm starting to love Babaco. )

 Frank Schulenburg has also been focusing on building Wikimedia
 volunteer capacity by launching the Best Practices series on Meta
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Best_practices_in_public_outreach
 In July, Kathrin Jansen began volunteering in the San Francisco office

This is *fantastic*, and needs more public visibility.  Perhaps even a
site notice at some reasonable milestone.  (As does [[m:public
outreach]] in general.  )

This sort of investment of energy into building our community capacity
is one of the greatest things we can do.


 The Wikimedia Foundation approved 21 funding requests from 11
 chapters, in the pilot year of the chapters funding request process.
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants

I'd  be interested to see discussions by individuals with similar
requests.  Including those who are pursuing supporting grants from
outside bodies.  That set of ideas, some of which may not have been
submitted to the strategy process, are quite valuable.


 During July, the Wikimedia Foundation participated in interviews with [...]

I appreciate these roundups.  Something similar for potential
supporters or partners who have been met or spoken to -- at least
where that information is sharable public knowledge -- would also be
lovely.


 LEGAL

 Mike 

Re: [Foundation-l] Report to the Board July 2009

2009-09-25 Thread Eugene Eric Kim
On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 5:09 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote:
 MILESTONES FROM JULY
        1. Hiring concluded for the Strategic Planning Project
  The strategy project also intended to hire a Research Analyst and
 interviewed a number of candidates, but has since reconsidered that

 - Has the perceived need for research changed?

No.

 - Wasn't there a discussion about possibly expanding that to a more
 stable research position over time?

Yes.

 I'd be interested to see this done scalably through the community, by
 defining what valuable reseach needs doing and seeding research
 groups.

Me too. And I think the strategic planning process would make a great
testbed. I think the research needs have been fairly well captured on
the strategy wiki, and I would love to see folks self-organize to help
fill in the gaps.

=Eugene

-- 
==
Eugene Eric Kim  http://xri.net/=eekim
Blue Oxen Associates  http://www.blueoxen.com/
==

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