Re: [Foundation-l] Money, politics and corruption
On 7/14/2010 12:28 AM, Gerard Meijssen wrote: The problem with behaviour that is not good / acceptable is that at some stage it will be recognised and it will kill off the people in a similar way as to Essjay. The best indication that such things can happen is the upset of our capable, competent and upright former chair. I was convinced that he would be re-elected and I would have welcomed his re-election. I am thankful that Gerard thinks well of me, but to disclaim a bit of the context, let me say that I can't imagine that either money or corruption had any impact whatsoever on the process. Politics? Sure, but only in the sense that human interactions in any institutional setting are necessarily political. I prefer his subsequent description of Phoebe as a wonderful person who I expect will be a fine board member. In more general terms, speaking not just of the board selection, I think a highly charged and inflammatory concept like corruption is not well-suited to describing the situation. It's fair to be concerned about it, and the potential distorting influences of money, but the problems I have heard about usually do not fit that description. Both the chapters and the Wikimedia Foundation occasionally must resist undue influences from outside; both could work to improve their relationship with each other; and both still need to mature as organizations. The foundation may be a bit further along on the last point, and hopefully the chapters can learn from those experiences. I know the chapters have sometimes faced their own internal challenges, but they seem typical of young organizations that are just learning how to function appropriately. While I agree with the other comments that whistle-blowing should be protected, from my experience it seems like the need for it is relatively low in this case - by that I mean I've been aware of chapter leaders discussing internal concerns that arise and seeking advice when they need it, rather than dismissing the idea. As the movement grows and develops, we may find better ways of auditing that kind of performance. For now, it seems like the right thing for chapters to focus on figuring out what they should be doing, and learning from mistakes as they come up. --Michael Snow ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Money, politics and corruption
Okay, this thread has intrigued me and I thought the answers would pan out and it seems to have gone in various directions, but it was initiated by Milos so I'll focus on what I perceive to be his problem: Corruption (through careerism, nepotism, political functions) and the have versus have nots. My reading between the lines is that this has to do with how scholarships and other financial assistance allowed some to attend Wikimania and live it up as the slang goes, versus those that attended on their own dime and didn't have the resources to take part in the social, after hours functions that are the lifeblood of networking. If this is the case, the issue that is had is allegations of personal rather than professional reasons that some got to attend and had the resources, based on financing, to party. Being that glib about it may seem like I am making light of the issue, rest assured I am not. Feelings of being an outsider when one is surrounded by like minded people is not very constructive to say the least, and it causes factions. Now, I've never been able to attend Wikimania, and am unlikely ever to be able to. If you'd like factionalization and saying that the has countries have it better than the have nots, it's much more feasible for someone to attend something on their continent no matter the pocket change when you get there. Having attended many, many conferences it sounds like business as usual. Personally, I always found it practical to hang out at the hotel bar instead of going into town for productivity. Without going into details, Milos, am I off base with this as at least part of your concern at Wikimania? -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Money, politics and corruption
2010/7/15 Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.com: Okay, this thread has intrigued me and I thought the answers would pan out and it seems to have gone in various directions, but it was initiated by Milos so I'll focus on what I perceive to be his problem: Corruption (through careerism, nepotism, political functions) and the have versus have nots. My reading between the lines is that this has to do with how scholarships and other financial assistance allowed some to attend Wikimania and live it up as the slang goes, versus those that attended on their own dime and didn't have the resources to take part in the social, after hours functions that are the lifeblood of networking. If this is the case, the issue that is had is allegations of personal rather than professional reasons that some got to attend and had the resources, based on financing, to party. Just about the scholarship. As far as I know there were two scholarships - one provided by WMF and the one combined, provided by Polish and Russian chapters. The WMF scholarship committee was quite international, and at least what I heard from one Polish Wikipedian, who was a member of that committee there were clear and resonable conditions of choosing the best candidates. In case of Polish-Russian scholarship we in fact accepted all candidates who applied and fullfiled basic requirements (language skills and proved commitement to Wikimedia projects). Polish-Russian scholarship was open to all, and except Russians and Polish Wikimedians several Ukrainians and one from Czech Republic took advatange of them. -- Tomek Polimerek Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Money, politics and corruption
Tomasz Ganicz, 15/07/2010 10:11: Just about the scholarship. As far as I know there were two scholarships - one provided by WMF and the one combined, provided by Polish and Russian chapters. The WMF scholarship committee was quite international, and at least what I heard from one Polish Wikipedian, who was a member of that committee there were clear and resonable conditions of choosing the best candidates. I think that nobody doubts about it. Still, I know some people who were not granted the scholarship and didn't actually understand why (and don't complain about that). Can the Scholarships review committee share the chosen criteria? The review process can't be ideal due to the huge number of application (2500!!), and I suppose that editcounts or even user groups had to be used: it's completely fair, but I would like to know some details. It could also be useful for future Wikimania organizers, if the process is currently not documented even in private wikis. In case of Polish-Russian scholarship we in fact accepted all candidates who applied and fullfiled basic requirements (language skills and proved commitement to Wikimedia projects). Polish-Russian scholarship was open to all, and except Russians and Polish Wikimedians several Ukrainians and one from Czech Republic took advatange of them. That's interesting. Nemo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Rand Montoya leaving Wikimedia Foundation
Erik Moeller states: Please join me in thanking Rand for all he has done for Wikimedia, and wishing him the best for his future. Rand, thanks for your work for the Wikimedia Foundation and its movement. Best wishes on your future career elsewhere. Should you ever again initiate a market research survey, I'll again be happy to provide you insights and guidance. Gregory Kohs ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Money, politics and corruption
Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote: I think that nobody doubts about it. Still, I know some people who were not granted the scholarship and didn't actually understand why (and don't complain about that). Can the Scholarships review committee share the chosen criteria? The review process can't be ideal due to the huge number of application (2500!!), and I suppose that editcounts or even user groups had to be used: it's completely fair, but I would like to know some details. It could also be useful for future Wikimania organizers, if the process is currently not documented even in private wikis. For the moment, here are the selection criteria that were applied during the application review process: http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Applicant_Selection_Criteria These were originally on the Wikimania team planning wiki, and not kept private for any specific reason other than that there was no better place to put them. A full report documenting the program, processes, results, and lessons learned will be published on meta in September. The report will be open for anyone's critique and recommendations on how things may be improved going forward. -Sara ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] [TODAY] Office Hour for Thursday, July 15, featuring Frank Schulenburg Pete Forsyth
Hey everyone, and my sincerest apologies for the late notice, I've been recovering from Wikimania this week and only now got a chance to notify you. Today, on Thursday, July 15, the Wikimedia Office Hours will be hosted by Frank Schulenburg, Head of Public Outreach and Pete Forsyth, Public Outreach Officer. Office hours are from 1600 to 1700 UTC (9:00 AM to 10:00 AM PST). If you do not have an IRC client, there are two ways you can come chat using a web browser: First is using the Wikizine chat gateway at http://chatwikizine.memebot.com/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi. Type a nickname, select irc.freenode.net from the top menu and #wikimedia-office from the following menu, then login to join. Also, you can 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, which you can click to accept. Please feel free to forward (and translate!) this email to any other relevant email lists you happen to be on. -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Money, politics and corruption
Sara Crouse, 15/07/2010 17:24: For the moment, here are the selection criteria that were applied during the application review process: http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Applicant_Selection_Criteria These were originally on the Wikimania team planning wiki, and not kept private for any specific reason other than that there was no better place to put them. Thank you. A full report documenting the program, processes, results, and lessons learned will be published on meta in September. The report will be open for anyone's critique and recommendations on how things may be improved going forward. Great! Nemo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Money, politics and corruption
Perhaps in future (for say, Haifa) it would be an idea if any chapter-based scholarships were put on hold until after the Foundation makes its choices? That way the systems could mesh, with people who don't quite meet the Foundation requirements/do but oh dear, we've already used up all our scholarships being forwarded to the chapter for its decision. On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 4:50 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.comwrote: Sara Crouse, 15/07/2010 17:24: For the moment, here are the selection criteria that were applied during the application review process: http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Applicant_Selection_Criteria These were originally on the Wikimania team planning wiki, and not kept private for any specific reason other than that there was no better place to put them. Thank you. A full report documenting the program, processes, results, and lessons learned will be published on meta in September. The report will be open for anyone's critique and recommendations on how things may be improved going forward. Great! Nemo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Money, politics and corruption
Just a quick follow-up on this thread. On the Wikimedia Foundation's Board I currently serve as the Chair of the Audit Committee ( http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Audit_committee). One of the Audit Committee's duties is to ensure appropriate review of fraud, abuse, waste, or other wrongdoing. I encourage anyone with specific concerns to reach out to me directly. I would of course respect the wishes of anyone who wants to remain anonymous. Thanks. -s == Stu West User:Stu stu at wikimedia.org On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 3:30 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: Besides having a great time on Wikimania, I've heard a number of complains which put a shadow on a really great event. At some point of time I was even a bit depressed. I was thinking a lot about should I raise this issue or not; and if yes, then how. After the first issue I thought not to talk about it at all. After the second, I thought that it is better not to talk. After the third, I thought that I should contact some people privately. After the fourth I've realized that I should talk about it publicly. Then a couple of more issues came which convinced me that I have to talk about that publicly. We are open community and serious issues, those which affect many people, should be discussed publicly. I will talk without mentioning names, but I will try to be precise enough. In other words, I don't want to talk about people and organizations, but about problems. Taking care about problems is much more important than making witch hunts. It also should be noted that all of those problems are natural and I don't see that any of them is able to hurt Wikimedia movement, if we put it under control. It also should be noted that there are many successful corrupted organizations, like FIFA and OIC are. However, I hope that we won't go that way. I've heard about two serious corruption issues among chapters. And as I am living in a deeply corrupted country, I am personally very upset with this. However, those two cases are too obvious not to be recognized and fixing is in ongoing phase. However, I am very deeply concerned about what is going with the rest of 20+ chapters. And what will happen with them when they are able to become corrupted. We need an audit system for checking how things are going on in all chapters. In this case I am much more concerned about chapters than about WMF, but it would be good to have a common international body which would audit all of the important issues among chapters and WMF. What I am able to realize a couple of months earlier, everybody are able to realize when those things become public. I've already mentioned privately that I am deeply concerned with the connection with US business interests and present WMF strategy (not to be confused with whole Strategic Planning, but partially yes). It is now a public issue, although my concern has been seen by very limited number of people. And I am quite sure that it was not about spreading my concern via informal channels, but about recognizing the problem by a number of Wikimedians separately. I hope that Strategy Planning will fix those problems -- if properly implemented. There is a split between those who are coming from rich and poor countries. Wikimania social networking was about various groups. I am lucky that I am connected well and that I know where should I ask and what should I ask. However, there are Wikimedians who are not well connected and who don't know where to ask and what to ask. I am also from a country similar to Poland and I had a feeling like I am just in a little bit weird city of my own country. But, many Wikimedians came from very different parts of the world, as well as they were not able to buy their confidence. If we want to be a global movement, we have to think about them. It is not just about Wikimanias, it is about every social interaction in which Wikimedia is involved. Thus, I fully support Wikimedia Israel initiative for helping spreading Wikimedia projects into developing world. And if organizations from Israel are not welcomed everywhere, there are many other Wikimedia chapter which could help. Wikimedia is now a global movement and global culture. It is not anymore a site with cool content, but an organization and movement with worldwide impact. *All* decisions of WMF, chapters and their bodies are now political decisions in the international sense. So, *before* making *any* decision, please consider political impact of your decision. If you need help, you can ask various Wikimedians or hire a professional in international relations. WMF and chapters have enough money now to be attracted by careerists. Persons who try to put themselves as mid-players, between Wikimedia organizations and people and organizations who are working with WM organizations. WMF and chapters should be explicit in noting to everybody that such behavior is not
Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite
Samuel Klein wrote: Every national and regional library should have a local copy of Wikimedia. With a full history dump? ;-) Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite
Now if we only had some kind of mobile device which could be given to such institutions containing a copy! :P. On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Samuel Klein wrote: Every national and regional library should have a local copy of Wikimedia. With a full history dump? ;-) Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite
I have gone trough the report, and immediately noted the extremely strong growth of the foundation in terms of personal (Nearly doubling the amount two years in a row). Generally i am not a fan of such fast growth as it often leads to bloating; but seeing the the rest of the plan looks fine i presume i am just viewing things to black and white. One particular detail in the Top Spending Increases, continued section raised some question marks for me though. There is a 2.6 million dollar increase in the Other tech staffing and stakeholder database category. I can understand the 10 new tech position and the annualization of existing tech salaries paid by this increase, but what role will the stakeholder database have? The description, development of a database to track relationships with all stakeholders including readers, editors, donors, other volunteers, etc. is rather vague and includes no real indication as to its purpose. What exactly will it track, and what will the information be used for? Since there are so many editors on-wiki i doubt that this will be used as a full-fledged CRM (customer relationship management) system used to track literally everything. All i can imagine is that it could track top level community issues such as flagged revisions or OTRS complains. Anyone who has some more information on this system? I'm quite interested to be honest. Kind regards, ~Excirial On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 8:20 PM, Oliver Keyes scire.fac...@gmail.comwrote: Now if we only had some kind of mobile device which could be given to such institutions containing a copy! :P. On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Samuel Klein wrote: Every national and regional library should have a local copy of Wikimedia. With a full history dump? ;-) Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite
Hiya - I asked Danese, who is currently buried under about 20 pounds of stuff after coming back from Wikimania, to further describe the stakeholder database. Her response is: Sue has a vision for a single master database that tracks our interactions with movement participants. It is intended to help us better respond to requests from individuals by joining all the info we have from prior interactions with that person. This will be particularly important as we grow the staff, because current onboarding time requires long buddy system pairings with existing staff to teach how to best interact. So for instance, if you have had a Wikipedia account since 2005, have made enough edits to become, say, an Admin, have uploaded 100 images to Commons, have been a donor every year and have responded helpfully to many OTRS requests, there should be a quick way for a new staffer to learn those facts. All of this information is available to the staff now, just not in an aggregated place. Danese On Jul 15, 2010, at 12:41 PM, Excirial wrote: I have gone trough the report, and immediately noted the extremely strong growth of the foundation in terms of personal (Nearly doubling the amount two years in a row). Generally i am not a fan of such fast growth as it often leads to bloating; but seeing the the rest of the plan looks fine i presume i am just viewing things to black and white. One particular detail in the Top Spending Increases, continued section raised some question marks for me though. There is a 2.6 million dollar increase in the Other tech staffing and stakeholder database category. I can understand the 10 new tech position and the annualization of existing tech salaries paid by this increase, but what role will the stakeholder database have? The description, development of a database to track relationships with all stakeholders including readers, editors, donors, other volunteers, etc. is rather vague and includes no real indication as to its purpose. What exactly will it track, and what will the information be used for? Since there are so many editors on-wiki i doubt that this will be used as a full-fledged CRM (customer relationship management) system used to track literally everything. All i can imagine is that it could track top level community issues such as flagged revisions or OTRS complains. Anyone who has some more information on this system? I'm quite interested to be honest. Kind regards, ~Excirial On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 8:20 PM, Oliver Keyes scire.fac...@gmail.comwrote: Now if we only had some kind of mobile device which could be given to such institutions containing a copy! :P. On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Samuel Klein wrote: Every national and regional library should have a local copy of Wikimedia. With a full history dump? ;-) Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite
On 15 July 2010 22:35, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hiya - I asked Danese, who is currently buried under about 20 pounds of stuff after coming back from Wikimania, to further describe the stakeholder database. Her response is: Sue has a vision for a single master database that tracks our interactions with movement participants. It is intended to help us better respond to requests from individuals by joining all the info we have from prior interactions with that person. This will be particularly important as we grow the staff, because current onboarding time requires long buddy system pairings with existing staff to teach how to best interact. So for instance, if you have had a Wikipedia account since 2005, have made enough edits to become, say, an Admin, have uploaded 100 images to Commons, have been a donor every year and have responded helpfully to many OTRS requests, there should be a quick way for a new staffer to learn those facts. All of this information is available to the staff now, just not in an aggregated place. Danese I had understood that another use-case for such a database is when an external organisation (e.g. a local library in some city where there is no Chapter presence) asks for a local Wikimedian to come and give a presentation or advice on how to get involved. Such a database (IIRC) should be able to produce a list of people who a) live in that local area, b) are happy/able to give public presentations and c) know about the specific subject being requested e.g. Wikisource. -Liam wittylama.com/blog Peace, love metadata ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite
I had understood that another use-case for such a database is when an external organisation (e.g. a local library in some city where there is no Chapter presence) asks for a local Wikimedian to come and give a presentation or advice on how to get involved. Such a database (IIRC) should be able to produce a list of people who a) live in that local area, b) are happy/able to give public presentations and c) know about the specific subject being requested e.g. Wikisource. -Liam wittylama.com/blog Peace, love metadata Sure. There are about a bajillion use cases for it. :) pb ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Wikisource and reCAPTCHA
Perhaps we have competing interfaces / workflows. but I expect we would be glad to share 99.99%-verified high-quality texts-unified-with-images if it were easy for both projects to identify that combination of quality and comprehensive data... and would be glad to share metadata so that a WS editor could quickly check to see if there's a PGDP effort covering an edition of the text she is proofing; and vice-versa. As John was saying, right now there's plenty of stuff to be transcribed and proofread, it is not so easy to duplicate ;-) The issue of metadata is nontheless serious, because it's one of the most important flaws of Wikisource: not applying standards (i.e Dublin Core) and not having a proper tools for export/import and harvest metadata is still make us amateurs, at least for real digital libraries (who focus mainly on the metadata stuff, and sometimes provide either texts or images (it is really rare to have both)). I want us to get better, faster, less held up by the idea of coordinating with other projects, because there are much larger projects out there worthy of coordinating with. The annotators who work on the Perseus Project come to mind... but that's truly a harder problem than this one. The Perseus project is an *amazing* project, but I regard them far more ahead than us. The PP is actually a Virtual Research Environment, with tools for scholars and researcher for studying texts, (concordances and similar stuff). It happens that I just finished my Master thesis about collaborative digital libraries for scholars (in the Italian context), and the outcome is quite clear: researcher do want collaborative tools in DLs, but wiki system are to simple and (right now) too naive to really help scholars in their work (and there's a lot of other issues I'm not going to explain here). I would love to have PP people involved in collaboration with Wikisource, just don't know if this is possible. If the Wikisource projects succeeds in demonstrating the wiki way is a viable approach, the result is different people choosing to work in different workflows/projects, and more reliable etexts being produced. It is interesting because a project similar to PGDP (it is Italian and started in 1993, emulating the glorious PG, just with Italian texts) is, right now, moving to a wiki. Although the scale is way smaller, Wikipedia and Wikisource showed them a system which tends to eliminate bottlenecks, and for them this is becoming crucial. Luckily, the relationships with the Italian Wikisource are really good, and they'll probably share an office with Wikimedia Italy, in October. The interesting fact is that the offices will be within a library ;-), so I really expect a collaboration there. Just one more thing: why this awesome thread has not been linked to the source-l? Probably that would have been the best place to discuss. My regards, Aubrey ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 7:09 PM, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: Sure. There are about a bajillion use cases for it. :) pb conspiracy The foundation just likes to spy on us ;) dirt for later on if we won't protect that page! /conspiracy James [redacted for protection] james.[redacted for protecti...@rochester.edu jameso...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 6:31 PM, James Alexander jameso...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 7:09 PM, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: Sure. There are about a bajillion use cases for it. :) pb conspiracy The foundation just likes to spy on us ;) dirt for later on if we won't protect that page! /conspiracy James [redacted for protection] james.[redacted for protecti...@rochester.edu jameso...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l We're the spies, not the Foundation. -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan Sent from my siPad/s Samsung Moment ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Dublin Core and TEI
On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 9:26 AM, Aubrey zanni.andre...@gmail.com wrote: ... The issue of metadata is nontheless serious, because it's one of the most important flaws of Wikisource: not applying standards (i.e Dublin Core) and not having a proper tools for export/import and harvest metadata is still make us amateurs, at least for real digital libraries (who focus mainly on the metadata stuff, and sometimes provide either texts or images (it is really rare to have both)). This is also a problem with Wikimedia Commons. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Dublin_Core The Perseus project is an *amazing* project, but I regard them far more ahead than us. The PP is actually a Virtual Research Environment, with tools for scholars and researcher for studying texts, (concordances and similar stuff). I agree. I would go further; PP will always be far more advanced than a mediawiki system. They store their data in TEI format, which is an extremely rich standard. Wikisource can incorporate some of the TEI concepts by using templates, but I doubt we could ever be a leader in this area, nor do I think we want to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_Encoding_Initiative It happens that I just finished my Master thesis about collaborative digital libraries for scholars (in the Italian context), and the outcome is quite clear: researcher do want collaborative tools in DLs, but wiki system are to simple and (right now) too naive to really help scholars in their work (and there's a lot of other issues I'm not going to explain here). I would love to have PP people involved in collaboration with Wikisource, just don't know if this is possible. I agree. PP and Wikisource are too different, and have very little to gain from the other. PP wants to improve/increase collaboration community, but not at the expense of loosing the quality of their metadata. Wikisource wants to improve quality and metadata, but not at the expense of the ability to collaboration and our simple editing interface. Again, interoperability is the first step towards useful 'collaboration'. i.e. Wikisource needs to export TEI. Then we could feed our poorly annotated/described sources into PP, where the academic community would then add the metadata. TEI export would also be useful for wiktionary. Just one more thing: why this awesome thread has not been linked to the source-l? Probably that would have been the best place to discuss. ;-) -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
