Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues

[Robin McCain]

On 8/16/2011 2:50 PM, Wjhonson wrote:
> The year of publication applies to published material.  The year you 
> make it public, to the public, for public consumption.
of course, that is the definition of publication

But look at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/303.html

Unpublished works (in the United States at least) have copyright 
protection. If nothing else, the creator(s) has/have moral rights to the 
work. Usually they also have legal rights. (I'm no lawyer, but my 
entertainment attorney told me to assume everything has rights unless 
you find a specific exemption under the law)
> Unpublished material, if it enjoys copyright protection at all, would 
> be based on the year of creation.  That however might be a red herring 
> if it, in fact, does not enjoy any copyright protection.  Does 
> copyright protect material not published?
Yes it can. For example: Members of the Beatles recorded some material 
and did not publish it.  According to the layers of copyright, the 
creator(s) owned it from the moment it was recorded, the recording 
studio and producers (if any) also had rights dated back to that time. 
Since it wasn't published there were no publishers rights. Whoever was 
given a copy of the recording also had the tangible right of ownership 
of a copy.

Many years later it was published as part of Anthology 1. see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles%27_recording_sessions for details.

For the US, also see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

> Plagiarism and copyright are seperate issues and should not be 
> conflated, as different approaches apply to each.
>
>
True. In the case cited below, the Manuscript Story would have had 
copyright protection under current US law but had no such protection 
under the 1790 law. It wasn't until the 1976 law that protection was 
extended to unpublished works. As such, the only litigation possible at 
that time would have been under the rules of plagiarism and such 
litigation was considered.
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Robin McCain 
> To: foundation-l 
> Sent: Tue, Aug 16, 2011 2:36 pm
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues
>
> On 8/16/2011 12:51 PM,wjhon...@aol.com    wrote:
> >  I don't believe your claim that you can take something which is PD, make an
> exact image of it, slap it up in a new work of your own (enjoying copyright
> protection automatically) and then claim copyright over that PD image in your
> work.
> >
> >  Copyright applies to the presentation of your work, showing creativity.  An
> image that you reproduce faithfully shows no creativity and can enjoy no new
> copyright, no matter how hard you push your view.  That's it.  Period.
> >
> >  So I can freely copy any PD image, from any source, and not need to worry
> about copyright violation.  PD doesn't change simply because a PD item is
> republished.  The presentation of the item is copyright, not the item itself.
> I personally agree with that. However, it often costs more to prove your
> right to use something in court than to knuckle under if an aggressive
> rights owner comes after you. This is especially true when you are
> planning to distribute your own work worldwide - just getting a letter
> from the publisher telling you that they either give you the right to
> use an image or have no rights over that image is necessary before your
> work will be accepted by a publisher or distributor.
> >
> >  An additional minor quibble.  At least in the US a person does*not*  need 
> > to
> reapply for copyright each time they revise an item.  Copyright is an 
> automatic
> process, merely by the fact of presenting something in a fixed media.  
> You*can*
> file a copyright.  You do not*need*  to file a copyright, in order to enjoy
> copyright protection under the law.
> I also agree with you - except that the registered version has an
> ironclad protection you can protect in court while revised versions
> afterwards may not be so easy to protect unless they are also
> registered.  It becomes a kind of "chain of custody" issue. If I were to
> create something original and show it to no one else for 50 years until
> I published it and died 5 years later, which would apply to the
> copyright expiration date  - date of author's death, date of creation or
> date of publication?
>
>In the real world there are many examples of published books and
> screenplays that could clearly be seen as derivative - even plagiarized
> works from one or more unpublished sources.  This is a big deal within
> the Writer's Guild and the reason for their online system of protecting
> manuscripts by registering before a work is shown to others.
>
> One of the most (in)famous books in American Religion is "The Book of
> Mormon", parts of the first edition of which were (alleged to be)
> plagiarized from the "Manuscript Story" and arguably violated the 1790
> Copyright Act.http

[Foundation-l] a5f6c6b7e22485666d84ba3b04e18f1f577b4cae

[Geary Mcdonald Bean-Forbes]

Sent from my iPhone

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[Foundation-l] IRC office hours with Sue Gardner, Thursday 8/18

[Steven Walling]

Greetings all,

Just a quick notice that this Thursday the 18th at 17:00 UTC there will be
an IRC office hours with Sue Gardner. We haven't set a specific topic, so
feel free to come with your burning questions in mind. ;-)

As usual, instructions and other notes are available on Meta.[1]

Thank you,

-- 
Steven Walling
Fellow at Wikimedia Foundation
wikimediafoundation.org

1. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/IRC_office_hours
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Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues

[Wjhonson]

The year of publication applies to published material.  The year you make it 
public, to the public, for public consumption.


Unpublished material, if it enjoys copyright protection at all, would be based 
on the year of creation.  That however might be a red herring if it, in fact, 
does not enjoy any copyright protection.  Does copyright protect material not 
published?

Plagiarism and copyright are seperate issues and should not be conflated, as 
different approaches apply to each.






-Original Message-
From: Robin McCain 
To: foundation-l 
Sent: Tue, Aug 16, 2011 2:36 pm
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues


On 8/16/2011 12:51 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote:
 I don't believe your claim that you can take something which is PD, make an 
xact image of it, slap it up in a new work of your own (enjoying copyright 
rotection automatically) and then claim copyright over that PD image in your 
ork.

 Copyright applies to the presentation of your work, showing creativity.  An 
mage that you reproduce faithfully shows no creativity and can enjoy no new 
opyright, no matter how hard you push your view.  That's it.  Period.

 So I can freely copy any PD image, from any source, and not need to worry 
bout copyright violation.  PD doesn't change simply because a PD item is 
epublished.  The presentation of the item is copyright, not the item itself.
 personally agree with that. However, it often costs more to prove your 
ight to use something in court than to knuckle under if an aggressive 
ights owner comes after you. This is especially true when you are 
lanning to distribute your own work worldwide - just getting a letter 
rom the publisher telling you that they either give you the right to 
se an image or have no rights over that image is necessary before your 
ork will be accepted by a publisher or distributor.

 An additional minor quibble.  At least in the US a person does*not*  need to 
eapply for copyright each time they revise an item.  Copyright is an automatic 
rocess, merely by the fact of presenting something in a fixed media.  You*can*  
ile a copyright.  You do not*need*  to file a copyright, in order to enjoy 
opyright protection under the law.
 also agree with you - except that the registered version has an 
ronclad protection you can protect in court while revised versions 
fterwards may not be so easy to protect unless they are also 
egistered.  It becomes a kind of "chain of custody" issue. If I were to 
reate something original and show it to no one else for 50 years until 
 published it and died 5 years later, which would apply to the 
opyright expiration date  - date of author's death, date of creation or 
ate of publication?
  In the real world there are many examples of published books and 
creenplays that could clearly be seen as derivative - even plagiarized 
orks from one or more unpublished sources.  This is a big deal within 
he Writer's Guild and the reason for their online system of protecting 
anuscripts by registering before a work is shown to others.
One of the most (in)famous books in American Religion is "The Book of 
ormon", parts of the first edition of which were (alleged to be) 
lagiarized from the "Manuscript Story" and arguably violated the 1790 
opyright Act. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Spalding The work 
as been revised at least nine times (not counting translations) to make 
t "fit" the theology of the modern day church. 
ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Mormon
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Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues

[Robin McCain]

On 8/16/2011 12:51 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote:
> I don't believe your claim that you can take something which is PD, make an 
> exact image of it, slap it up in a new work of your own (enjoying copyright 
> protection automatically) and then claim copyright over that PD image in your 
> work.
>
> Copyright applies to the presentation of your work, showing creativity.  An 
> image that you reproduce faithfully shows no creativity and can enjoy no new 
> copyright, no matter how hard you push your view.  That's it.  Period.
>
> So I can freely copy any PD image, from any source, and not need to worry 
> about copyright violation.  PD doesn't change simply because a PD item is 
> republished.  The presentation of the item is copyright, not the item itself.
I personally agree with that. However, it often costs more to prove your 
right to use something in court than to knuckle under if an aggressive 
rights owner comes after you. This is especially true when you are 
planning to distribute your own work worldwide - just getting a letter 
from the publisher telling you that they either give you the right to 
use an image or have no rights over that image is necessary before your 
work will be accepted by a publisher or distributor.
>
> An additional minor quibble.  At least in the US a person does*not*  need to 
> reapply for copyright each time they revise an item.  Copyright is an 
> automatic process, merely by the fact of presenting something in a fixed 
> media.  You*can*  file a copyright.  You do not*need*  to file a copyright, 
> in order to enjoy copyright protection under the law.
I also agree with you - except that the registered version has an 
ironclad protection you can protect in court while revised versions 
afterwards may not be so easy to protect unless they are also 
registered.  It becomes a kind of "chain of custody" issue. If I were to 
create something original and show it to no one else for 50 years until 
I published it and died 5 years later, which would apply to the 
copyright expiration date  - date of author's death, date of creation or 
date of publication?

  In the real world there are many examples of published books and 
screenplays that could clearly be seen as derivative - even plagiarized 
works from one or more unpublished sources.  This is a big deal within 
the Writer's Guild and the reason for their online system of protecting 
manuscripts by registering before a work is shown to others.

One of the most (in)famous books in American Religion is "The Book of 
Mormon", parts of the first edition of which were (alleged to be) 
plagiarized from the "Manuscript Story" and arguably violated the 1790 
Copyright Act. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Spalding The work 
has been revised at least nine times (not counting translations) to make 
it "fit" the theology of the modern day church. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Mormon
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Re: [Foundation-l] Movement Roles: my suggestion of "Language Contact Persons"

[Milos Rancic]

On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 22:16, Ziko van Dijk  wrote:
> == Language Contact Person (LCP) ==
> I would like to suggest a small solution to solve a part of the
> problems. Every language version of Wikipedia should designate a
> "Language Contact Person" for relations with the Foundation (and
> national Wikimedia organizations). This LCP is to be elected by a poll
>  with the same requirements as for admins.
> [...]

I remember now discussion at Serbian Wikipedia from 2004. While admin
and bureaucrat permissions were not big deal at that time (one month
of activity for admin; two months for bureaucrat permissions), we
realized that we have to elect our ambassadors to Meta [1]. So, the
first three persons on the list were actually elected. Unfortunately,
the idea of Embassy was never really alive.

For some time I was thinking about opposite: Ambassadors of global
community at particular projects. Such persons would be responsible
for taking care about communication between global and local
community, to ask local community if they need something, to rely
important information and so on. I think that something like that
could work. Besides that, if we make it semi-formal (let's say,
contributor would have to pass elections at Meta), I think that it
would bring new momentum in participation of local communities in
global issues.

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Embassy#S

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter referendum

[Philippe Beaudette]

Yeah, we're troubleshooting now... thanks.

Philippe Beaudette Head of Reader Relations
Tel: (415) 839-6885 | x 6643
phili...@wikimedia.org | www.wikimediafoundation.org


On Aug 16, 2011, at 1:23 PM, J Alexandr Ledbury-Romanov wrote:

> 2011/8/16 Bence Damokos 
> 
>> [...]
>> 
>> While the eligibility rules would encourage wide participation, the 1)
>> click
>> on sitenotice 2) read wall of text 3) go back to your own wiki, but
>> remember
>> the arbitrary string "Securepoll/230" that doesn't mean anything in
>> languages other than English 4) find and use the search function 5) click
>> the "go to vote" link sequence is not very user friendly or usable even for
>> the more experienced of editors.
>> 
>> [...]
>> 
>> 
> 6) get told "Error fetching your account information from the server." (five
> times in a row, just to be sure)
> 
> AD
> ___
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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter referendum

[Philippe Beaudette]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 1:23 PM, J Alexandr Ledbury-Romanov <
alexandrdmitriroma...@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2011/8/16 Bence Damokos 
>
> > [...]
> >
> > While the eligibility rules would encourage wide participation, the 1)
> > click
> > on sitenotice 2) read wall of text 3) go back to your own wiki, but
> > remember
> > the arbitrary string "Securepoll/230" that doesn't mean anything in
> > languages other than English 4) find and use the search function 5) click
> > the "go to vote" link sequence is not very user friendly or usable even
> for
> > the more experienced of editors.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> >
> 6) get told "Error fetching your account information from the server."
> (five
> times in a row, just to be sure)
>
> AD
> ___
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Re: [Foundation-l] Movement Roles: my suggestion of "Language Contact Persons"

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 22:05:37 +0200, Ziko van Dijk

wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> The name is not so important, of course, but I think that the old
> "Ambassador" is a little bit a big word.
> 
> Why do the "ambassadors" not work? Because they don't feel
> responsible, if they can simply put themselves on a list and then
> forget about. It is important that they feel an obligation to fulfill
> some well defined tasks.
> 
> Yes, one can go to the village pumps and ask people to do something.
> And that is a lot of work, and that's why we need those Language
> Contact Persons. It is always better when they can post in their own
> language. Reports about the language version (monthly, yearly) are
> only written when there is a person who knows that that his exactly
> *his task*.
> 
> Kind regards
> Ziko
> 

I have some experience (and continue to be involved) in some Wikipedias in
languages spoken in Russia. These projects are typically run by a small
number of users, one to five., doing an excellent job. They would typically
only speak Russian, though the would be able to understand an English
message. I guess if there is understanding they may get some help from
someone as a consequence of posting reports, they would post reports,
otherwise this is just an extra hassle. 

In contrast, I also have some experience with Russian Wikipedia, and I
just can not imagine there would be such an ambassador - for instance, my
reports would be drastically different from the reports of some other
users, and any reports would be taken extremely negatively by the
community, which would feel that somebody is doing smth behing their backs.
To continue, imagine such an ambassador representing English Wikipedia.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter referendum

[J Alexandr Ledbury-Romanov]

2011/8/16 Bence Damokos 

> [...]
>
> While the eligibility rules would encourage wide participation, the 1)
> click
> on sitenotice 2) read wall of text 3) go back to your own wiki, but
> remember
> the arbitrary string "Securepoll/230" that doesn't mean anything in
> languages other than English 4) find and use the search function 5) click
> the "go to vote" link sequence is not very user friendly or usable even for
> the more experienced of editors.
>
> [...]
>
>
6) get told "Error fetching your account information from the server." (five
times in a row, just to be sure)

AD
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Re: [Foundation-l] Forkability, its problems and our problems

[David Richfield]

You say that we exclude significant material on the basis of notability?
That seems almost contradictory. If it has been the subject of non-trivial,
reliable, 3rd party coverage, it's notable. If it hasn't, how 'significant'
is it really?

As for childish, trivial, offensive stuff: is it an encyclopedic topic and
notable? If so, it's hardly trivial. If not, it should go. If we chuck out
everything which offends some significant group, we lose NPOV and balanced
coverage. That doesn't mean I don't believe we have non-notable offensive
articles, just that we should use our policies effectively to get rid of
them.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter referendum

[Thomas Dalton]

On 16 August 2011 20:32, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> I have to say that I was thinking to give vote in favor. However,
> after this kind of gaming community's opinion, on the line of many
> infamous referendums in totalitarian regimes and banana republics, I
> will boycott it.

I concur. I do support the principle of this feature, but I don't
intend to answer leading questions.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Movement Roles: my suggestion of "Language Contact Persons"

[Ziko van Dijk]

Hello,

The name is not so important, of course, but I think that the old
"Ambassador" is a little bit a big word.

Why do the "ambassadors" not work? Because they don't feel
responsible, if they can simply put themselves on a list and then
forget about. It is important that they feel an obligation to fulfill
some well defined tasks.

Yes, one can go to the village pumps and ask people to do something.
And that is a lot of work, and that's why we need those Language
Contact Persons. It is always better when they can post in their own
language. Reports about the language version (monthly, yearly) are
only written when there is a person who knows that that his exactly
*his task*.

Kind regards
Ziko



2011/8/16 Yaroslav M. Blanter :
>> Let's do it! What's the best way to encourage embassies, especially on
>> small
>> projects that may have never had them before?
>>
>
> Obviously, to let a message in a relevant language (which is expected to
> be understood by many of the users) on the village pump of the
> corresponding project. The message should clearly explain what and why is
> expected from these users.
>
> Langcom is another good starting point.
>
> For big projects, I believe, this approcah is hopeless, but I do not think
> the embassies as designed are needed for the big projects.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
> ___
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-- 
Ziko van Dijk
The Netherlands
http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image file referendum Banners

[Casey Brown]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 3:48 PM, Theo10011  wrote:
> it is affecting local geo-tagged banners on a lot of projects.

No, it's not, actually. It used to be kicking the WikiConference India
banner out, but we tweaked it so that it's sharing space with it.

-- 
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023

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[Foundation-l] The Signpost – Volume 7, Issue 33 – 15 August 2011

[Wikipedia Signpost]

Women and Wikipedia: New Research, WikiChix
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-08-15/Women_and_Wikipedia

News and notes: Chapter funding and what skeptics and Latter Day
Saints have in common
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-08-15/News_and_notes

In the news: Wikipedia a "sausage fest", Chicago Wikipedians ("the
people you've probably plagiarized"), and other silly season stories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-08-15/In_the_news

WikiProject report: The Oregonians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-08-15/WikiProject_report

Featured content: The best of the week
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-08-15/Featured_content

Arbitration report: Abortion case opened, two more still in progress
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-08-15/Arbitration_report

Technology report: Forks, upload slowness and mobile redirection
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-08-15/Technology_report


Single page view
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost/Single

PDF version
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-08-15


http://identi.ca/wikisignpost / https://twitter.com/wikisignpost

-- 
Wikipedia Signpost Staff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost

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Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 89, Issue 44

[David Gerard]

On 16 August 2011 20:39, Wjhonson  wrote:

> I don't believe your claim that you can take something which is PD, make an 
> exact image of it, slap it up in a new work of your own (enjoying copyright 
> protection automatically) and then claim copyright over that PD image in your 
> work.


Indeed. This is precisely the scenario addressed by Bridgeman v. Corel:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp.

A slavish reproduction of a public-domain work is not copyrightable in the US.

This is an undecided legal question in many jurisdictions outside the
US, which is why the National Portrait Gallery thought they could
claim a new copyright. That they (a) claimed it against a US citizen
acting in the US doing something completely legal under established US
law. (b) not realising that the first thing digital natives do when
they get a legal threat is to publicly post the threat, (c) every
other museum we've dealt with everywhere is way saner, (d) WMF has
politely but firmly declared that they are following US law on the
matter, didn't really help their assertions any.


- d.

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[Foundation-l] Image file referendum Banners

[Theo10011]

Hi

The Image file referendum banners are currently running at 100% globally[1],
on all projects (correct me if I'm wrong). It seems rather excessive
considering the banner's size and the subject.

I have no idea, if this issue really needs such an exposure. The scheduled
service outage notice a few months ago, in comparison which led to complete
project outage for more than an hour, had a much smaller banner which didn't
even run at 100%.

Can someone please tell me if this issue requires this much urgency and
exposure? it is affecting local geo-tagged banners on a lot of projects.


Thanks

Theo


[1
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CentralNotice&method=listNoticeDetail¬ice=pif+referendum
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Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 89, Issue 44

[Wjhonson]

I don't believe your claim that you can take something which is PD, make an 
exact image of it, slap it up in a new work of your own (enjoying copyright 
protection automatically) and then claim copyright over that PD image in your 
work.

Copyright applies to the presentation of your work, showing creativity.  An 
image that you reproduce faithfully shows no creativity and can enjoy no new 
copyright, no matter how hard you push your view.  That's it.  Period.

So I can freely copy any PD image, from any source, and not need to worry about 
copyright violation.  PD doesn't change simply because a PD item is 
republished.  The presentation of the item is copyright, not the item itself.

An additional minor quibble.  At least in the US a person does *not* need to 
reapply for copyright each time they revise an item.  Copyright is an automatic 
process, merely by the fact of presenting something in a fixed media.  You 
*can* file a copyright.  You do not *need* to file a copyright, in order to 
enjoy copyright protection under the law.

W.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter referendum

[Milos Rancic]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 20:57, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> I've just been looking at the image filter referendum. Could someone
> from the Foundation please explain what you hope to gain by holding
> it? The questions are extremely leading, so I doubt you will learn
> anything useful from it (is anyone really going to say that they don't
> think it's important to be culturally neutral?). Are you hoping to
> determine people's priorities by seeing which ones they rate as 10 and
> which as merely 8 or 9? If so, why? Can you not just implement them
> all?
>
> My understanding was that this referendum was intended to give the
> community some say in what happened with this proposed feature. The
> questions you are asking don't do that in the slightest. If you want
> to be able to say the feature has community support, you need to
> actually ask the community whether or not they support it.

Ah, that reminds me on Milosevic's referendum from 1998. ... Actually,
after searching for the precise question, I've realized that the
question itself was neutral ("Do you accept involvement of foreign
representatives in the process of solving problems on Kosovo?"). At
the other side, need for justification of already made decision and
propaganda around it makes them very comparable. In other words, this
referendum is worse than Milosevic's one.

I have to say that I was thinking to give vote in favor. However,
after this kind of gaming community's opinion, on the line of many
infamous referendums in totalitarian regimes and banana republics, I
will boycott it.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter referendum

[Bence Damokos]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 8:57 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> I've just been looking at the image filter referendum. Could someone
> from the Foundation please explain what you hope to gain by holding
> it? The questions are extremely leading, so I doubt you will learn
> anything useful from it (is anyone really going to say that they don't
> think it's important to be culturally neutral?). Are you hoping to
> determine people's priorities by seeing which ones they rate as 10 and
> which as merely 8 or 9? If so, why? Can you not just implement them
> all?
>
Aside from the definition of culturally-neutral (does it mean it should
include anything that any culture would consider controversial or only
things that most cultures would consider such) and the general phrasing of
the questions, it seems that getting to the referendum is made quite
complicated.

While the eligibility rules would encourage wide participation, the 1) click
on sitenotice 2) read wall of text 3) go back to your own wiki, but remember
the arbitrary string "Securepoll/230" that doesn't mean anything in
languages other than English 4) find and use the search function 5) click
the "go to vote" link sequence is not very user friendly or usable even for
the more experienced of editors.

Given the prominence it is given with the sitenotice, things could be made
easier for the users (e.g. move the wall of text to the securepoll server –
even if it makes localization a bit more difficult; and make the sitenotice
point to the voting server directly or at least to the on-wiki redirects)
with relatively little effort.

Best regards,
Bence



> My understanding was that this referendum was intended to give the
> community some say in what happened with this proposed feature. The
> questions you are asking don't do that in the slightest. If you want
> to be able to say the feature has community support, you need to
> actually ask the community whether or not they support it.
>
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[Foundation-l] Image filter referendum

[Thomas Dalton]

I've just been looking at the image filter referendum. Could someone
from the Foundation please explain what you hope to gain by holding
it? The questions are extremely leading, so I doubt you will learn
anything useful from it (is anyone really going to say that they don't
think it's important to be culturally neutral?). Are you hoping to
determine people's priorities by seeing which ones they rate as 10 and
which as merely 8 or 9? If so, why? Can you not just implement them
all?

My understanding was that this referendum was intended to give the
community some say in what happened with this proposed feature. The
questions you are asking don't do that in the slightest. If you want
to be able to say the feature has community support, you need to
actually ask the community whether or not they support it.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Forkability, its problems and our problems

[Milos Rancic]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 12:55, emijrp  wrote:
> Wikimedia Foundation wants to increase the participation and readers numbers
> just because the capitalist mind of forcing steady growing. They don't know
> how to reach that, just want to do it, and the participation growing is flat
> since 2007. They tried to improve usability, and nothing happened. Now, they
> are working in the gender issue. Tomorrow in the Global South. All them are
> great news headlines for the politically correct western world, but, as the
> Internet meme, they are doing it wrong.
>
> Wikipedia grew exponentially in the first years, and no Wikimedia Foundation
> was needed. Why? Because people easily saw which pages were needed. The
> encyclopedia was a blank page. Today, Wikipedia is showed as the most
> complete encyclopedia ever written. That is possible true, but that doesn't
> mean it is complete. We don't have to ask for new users, we have to show
> which stuff need to be written, and people will come. Really, users are
> coming, in hordes, visiting numbers are growing but they don't know where
> their help is needed.

After the revolution we will abandon capitalism and Wikimedia projects
would be able to flourish without rushing anywhere.

Until then, we are living in capitalism and we have to compete for
attention with other internet entities in capitalist world. In such
circumstances, keeping attention at some level is much harder task
than increasing attention. Simply, losing attention is natural. People
come and leave after some moment. So, you have to be able to get new
people and you need a strategy for getting that in wild. Scaling it
not to have growth is much harder task than working simply on getting
attention.

Against us are very large and very professional entities which want to
get more attention for their products. So, every new Facebook, Google,
Twitter or even Zynga feature is going directly against our ability to
keep attention. Fred, say whatever you want about dumbness of forums,
groups and games, but although I have no games in my Facebook stream
-- as I've blocked all of them and just once in a couple of weeks I
see one -- I am there because many people in my surroundings are there
and many of them because of games, forums and similar, for sure. If I
have them on Wikimedia projects, I would probably edit and wouldn't
limit my activity on bureaucratic and strategic tasks. In other words,
thanks to those features, they took my attention from Wikimedia
projects.

In ideal society editing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia and other free
knowledge projects would be a part of any scientific and educational
position. But, we are far from such society. We have to fight for
every attention aspect.

And we are doing that badly. Participation is just approximately flat
since 2007 just because our core is consisted of geeks, which are
stubborn by default. Their retention is easier, but influx of new
editors is lowering at that scale from month to month that it is just
a matter of time when active and very active editors would start to
shrink at more obvious rates.

Here are some statistics for English Wikipedia [1]. June 2011 was:
* The worst June since 2005 by very active editors. Shrink since 2010: ~5%.
* The worst June since 2005 by active editors. Shrink since 2010: ~1.5%
* The worst June since 2005 by new editors. Shrink since 2010: ~8%.

And similar for all Wikipedias [2]. June 2011 was:
* The worst June since 2006 by very active editors. Shrink since 2010: ~0.9%.
* The worst June since 2006 by active editors. Shrink since 2010: ~1.2%
* The worst June since 2006 by new editors. Shrink since 2010: ~8%.

Good thing is that changes from 2009 to 2010 were two times worse. In
other words, we are still shrinking, but not so quickly.

> Furthermore, offering trustworthy text and image dumps is not seductive.
> Making forks easy is not seductive. That means re-using content but also
> losing contributors which go to other communities. Don't expect much effort
> in that.

I object, actually, on the line that too little has been done to
seduce people to edit Wikimedia projects. Mobile Wikipedia is
necessary, but it is not possible to edit from that interface. The
only structural thing which would allow more seductive features is
ongoing rewriting of Parser. Everything else is too insignificant.

And while engaging more women and going to developing countries are
noble causes, from the point of general trends, they are just [not so
successful] tries to buy some time.

[1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm
[2] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaZZ.htm

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Re: [Foundation-l] Movement Roles: my suggestion of "Language Contact Persons"

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

> Let's do it! What's the best way to encourage embassies, especially on
> small
> projects that may have never had them before?
> 

Obviously, to let a message in a relevant language (which is expected to
be understood by many of the users) on the village pump of the
corresponding project. The message should clearly explain what and why is
expected from these users.

Langcom is another good starting point.

For big projects, I believe, this approcah is hopeless, but I do not think
the embassies as designed are needed for the big projects.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 89, Issue 44

[Keegan Peterzell]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 11:35 AM, Robin McCain  wrote:
>
>
> Now the fun part - I buy a copy of that "new work". It has a new
> copyright. Exactly what is covered here? Only the "image" in the book.
> So if I went to the National Archives, found the negative of that print
> and made my own copy I could use my copy without restriction. However if
> I used a scanner or camera to copy the image from the "new work" itself
> then the new copyright would apply and I would need to obtain permission
> from the publisher.
>
>
I believe this was the the issue behind the National Portrait Gallery
kerfluffle.

-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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Re: [Foundation-l] Movement Roles: my suggestion of "Language Contact Persons"

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 7:58 AM, church.of.emacs.ml <
church.of.emacs...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> On 08/14/2011 11:41 PM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
> > I support the idea of language contact persons, or ambassadors, but
> > their appointment shouldn't be as rigidly regulated as the appointment
> > of administrators.
>
> I agree, instead of only two responsible persons there should be a group
> of people who are A) in intense communication with each other, B) post
> WMF/foundation-l news on their wiki, C) summarize and post to
> WMF/foundation-l what's bothering the local community (also positive
> feedback).
>
> If they are volunteers, you can't force them to post monthly reports on
> foundation-l (encourage them instead) or demand too much of them. And
> you shouldn't put them through an elaborate voting process, since anyone
> can help and afaik not much harm has been done in that area.
>
> There are already ambassadors, originally for the monobook->vector
> switch, but not much has happened since then. The mailing list is inactive:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors
>
> The ideas of wiki ambassadors (general, not restricted to usability or
> technical matters) should be revived. I think it worked okay for the
> usability initiative with much room for improvement.
>
> Regards,
> Tobias
>
>
I love this idea, and of reviving the Wikipedia ambassadors/embassies idea.
One good focus point for reviving them might be to create a language report
the way Ziko suggests -- another idea I love.

Let's do it! What's the best way to encourage embassies, especially on small
projects that may have never had them before?

best,
phoebe
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Re: [Foundation-l] Global Wikipedian of the year 2011

[Daniel Mietchen]

Hi Ziko,

try http://kz.linkedin.com/pub/rauan-kenzhekhanuly/24/8b7/b16 .

Cheers,

Daniel

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 5:08 PM, Ziko van Dijk  wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Is there anywhere more information about the Global Wikipedian,
> introduced at Haifa? By chance, I got the business card of Rauan at
> the chapters meeting.
>
> Kind regards
> Ziko
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2011-08_Wikimania_ZVD_10.jpg
> --
> Ziko van Dijk
> The Netherlands
> http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/
>
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[Foundation-l] Forkability, its problems and our problems

[Robin McCain]

On 8/16/2011 5:00 AM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
> A couple of months ago three admins of Aceh Wikipedia decided that it
> is not acceptable that they participate in the project which holds
> Muhammad depictions. By the project, they mean Wikimedia in general,
> including Wikimedia Commons. It was just a matter of time when they
> would create their own wiki. And they created that moth or two after
> leaving Wikimedia. And what do you think which project has more
> chances for success: the one without editors or the other with three
> editors? So, while the reason for leaving couldn't be counted among
> reasonable ones, the product is the same as if they had a valid
> reason. And there are plenty of valid reasons, among them almost
> universal problem of highly bureaucratic structures on Wikimedia
> projects.
Politics and religion are the two areas where this problem usually 
occurs. It is perfectly acceptable to present differing POVs if the 
parties involved can find no common ground. They must be respected for 
their differences as much for their similarities. That means that a 
neutral platform such as Wikipedia must be able to host differing 
opinions. This problem was popped up long ago when people of differing 
opinions began altering pages and deleting the work of others. It was 
addressed with implementation of the "edit lock" and frequent monitoring.

An Encyclopedia must be free to present all sides of this kind of issue 
so third parties can come to understand the reasons behind the 
differences.  Refusal to do so moves the platform away from the mission 
statement of neutrality.

Anyone who cannot support this commitment to neutrality is free to leave 
and present their own POV - but they lose that neutral credibility in 
the process of doing so.

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave

[Sumana Harihareswara]

On 08/15/2011 06:29 PM, emijrp wrote:

> The mankind is compiling all human knowledge in an encyclopedia, which is
> hosted in faulty metal plates spinning thousand times per minute, managed by
> faulty humans and located only in one or two locations in the world
> (Florida, the land of hurricanes and San Francisco, the land of
> earthquakes).

Reminder: Florida, northern California, and Virginia.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMF_Projects/Data_Center_Virginia &
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/07/01/engineering-june-2011-report/

-- 
Sumana Harihareswara
Volunteer Development Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 89, Issue 44

[Robin McCain]

On 8/16/2011 2:13 AM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
> One suggestion for archiving would be to have a complete set of projects
> filed with the copyright office and other key depositories quarterly.
>
> This could also address a potential long-term copyright problem.  This
> has less to do with Wikipedia infringing on the copyrights of others
> than with the reverse.  It already happens that others use Wikipedia
> material without credit in works on which they claim copyright.  Re-use
> of that material on-wiki at a later date will inevitably result in a
> copyvio squabble, especially if the originally plundered version is no
> longer recognizable. This could be many years hence.  What other means
> are available to protect the viral nature of freely licensed material?
>
> Forks could also be helpful in this regard.  They would need to respect
> free licences, and, as a by-product, add evidence favouring the freeness
> of the material.  A person creating a fork based on some topic area is
> unlikely to significantly alter all the articles imported, preferring to
> draw different conclusions from the same underlying facts.  This is
> bound to leave an identifiable residue that will protect the licence.
Anything filed with the copyright office is a static slice in time.

Copyright is such a sticky issue - If you publish something, copyright 
it , then go back and revise the original then you must copyright the 
whole thing over again - because copyright is based on an "image" of 
something. There is a limit to which you can use material that has a 
copyright by others - it is called plagiarism and is well defined in 
law.  However - If you take material that is old enough to be out of 
copyright and publish a new edition of that material - you can copyright 
the new edition - but (as I understand it) only the image thereof - not 
the actual material.

I may well be wrong, but a rather involved example might be in order.  
Someone has an original photographic print of Adolf Hitler. Originally 
the rights to that image had to be cleared by 1. the subject (however he 
was a public figure so his rights were automatically "released" unless 
otherwise stated) 2. the photographer 3. the rights-holder (originally 
NSDAP) and 4. the possessor of the print.  However point 1 was cleared 
upon the subject's death (since he had no estate exercising control at 
the time of death other than 3), Point 2 was cleared when the assets 
were seized by the Allies. Point 3 reverted to the state of Bavaria 
since the NSDAP was chartered under their laws and has been dissolved by 
that agency. In this special case the state will not contest use by 
others unless the purpose is to further the goals of the NSDAP ie. 
Nazism and/or fascism. So the first three are covered and only point 4 
applies to use in new work.

Now the fun part - I buy a copy of that "new work". It has a new 
copyright. Exactly what is covered here? Only the "image" in the book. 
So if I went to the National Archives, found the negative of that print 
and made my own copy I could use my copy without restriction. However if 
I used a scanner or camera to copy the image from the "new work" itself 
then the new copyright would apply and I would need to obtain permission 
from the publisher.

So if someone used material "as-is" from Wikipedia in a new work, they 
could not "own" the material that came from Wikipedia, only the "image" 
represented by their own publication. Since the material is likely just 
text, I'm guessing that the "as-is" material could be freely copied by 
others. This could get to be tricky as it is like the government 
document that is stamped "Secret" because of one word. Obscure that word 
and the document can be released under FOIA.

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[Foundation-l] Global Wikipedian of the year 2011

[Ziko van Dijk]

Hello,

Is there anywhere more information about the Global Wikipedian,
introduced at Haifa? By chance, I got the business card of Rauan at
the chapters meeting.

Kind regards
Ziko

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2011-08_Wikimania_ZVD_10.jpg
-- 
Ziko van Dijk
The Netherlands
http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/

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Re: [Foundation-l] Forkability, its problems and our problems

[David Gerard]

On 16 August 2011 14:37, Tim Starling  wrote:

> I think that we should have some other reason for being attractive to
> our editors apart from fear of forking. Say, some sort of goal or
> mission statement, which is helped by having a strong WMF.
> One problem with using fear of forking as your primary motivation for


I didn't say or mean "primary".


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Forkability, its problems and our problems

[Tim Starling]

On 16/08/11 20:11, David Gerard wrote:
> Precis: annoy a subcommunity sufficiently, they leave in a group. Try
> to stop them from leaving (as opposed to trying to attract them back),
> they leave faster and take others with them.
> 
> This is what I mean when I say "forkability will keep us honest."

I think that we should have some other reason for being attractive to
our editors apart from fear of forking. Say, some sort of goal or
mission statement, which is helped by having a strong WMF.

One problem with using fear of forking as your primary motivation for
doing things well is that forking is not as bad as some other
scenarios. For example, our editor community could go back to playing
computer games and watching TV, instead of doing something useful, and
people could pay for their encyclopedias. Indeed, it's hard to
understand why you want us to simultaneously be afraid of it and to
make it easier.

Another problem is that forking of a large Wikipedia edition has
proven to be extremely difficult, regardless of the availability of
image dumps, so the threat is very weak. The Chinese experience should
tell us how hard it is: Baidu Baike and Hudong were able to thrive
only with the Chinese Wikipedia completely blocked in Mainland China.

-- Tim Starling


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Re: [Foundation-l] Forkability, its problems and our problems

[Fred Bauder]

> Furthermore, offering trustworthy text and image dumps is not seductive.
> Making forks easy is not seductive. That means re-using content but also
> losing contributors which go to other communities. Don't expect much
> effort
> in that.

Forking is hard nasty work. I'd much rather the Wikimedia projects got up
to speed. However there are a lot of countervailing factors at work. On
the one hand we exclude interesting and significant material, on the
other we include childish and trivial material whose only purpose seems
to be to offend. In wiki speak "notability" and "no censorship".

Fred


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Re: [Foundation-l] Forkability, its problems and our problems

[emijrp]

Here is a bigger problem.

Wikimedia Foundation wants to increase the participation and readers numbers
just because the capitalist mind of forcing steady growing. They don't know
how to reach that, just want to do it, and the participation growing is flat
since 2007. They tried to improve usability, and nothing happened. Now, they
are working in the gender issue. Tomorrow in the Global South. All them are
great news headlines for the politically correct western world, but, as the
Internet meme, they are doing it wrong.

Wikipedia grew exponentially in the first years, and no Wikimedia Foundation
was needed. Why? Because people easily saw which pages were needed. The
encyclopedia was a blank page. Today, Wikipedia is showed as the most
complete encyclopedia ever written. That is possible true, but that doesn't
mean it is complete. We don't have to ask for new users, we have to show
which stuff need to be written, and people will come. Really, users are
coming, in hordes, visiting numbers are growing but they don't know where
their help is needed.

Furthermore, offering trustworthy text and image dumps is not seductive.
Making forks easy is not seductive. That means re-using content but also
losing contributors which go to other communities. Don't expect much effort
in that.

2011/8/16 Milos Rancic 

> On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 22:43, Ray Saintonge  wrote:
> > On 08/15/11 12:25 PM, Gustavo Carrancio wrote:
> >> Fred: easy to fork vs hard to understand other cultures. Think a minute.
> >> ¿Are we making an Encyclopedia? Must we struggle to split or to get
> >> togeather?
> >
> > At some point we need to ask ourselves: Is our mission to make the sum
> > of all human knowledge freely available, or is it to create a monopoly
> > on knowledge.
>
> While I agree with necessity of being able to make a fork easily,
> there is important message which Gustavo wanted to say, but didn't
> express well.
>
> Under the present circumstance, any attempt to create English
> Wikipedia fork could be successful just if WMF makes
> very-ultra-serious shit and it is not likely that it would happen.
>
> We also know how the case Encyclopedia Libre vs. Spanish Wikipedia
> finished. That's, again, thanks to the fact that Spanish is
> multinational language and if someone wants to get significant
> official support, it would require significant time.
>
> However, the opposite example is Hudong encyclopedia. It is obviously
> that Hudong is much more relevant to Chinese people just because of
> the fact that we still have more Taiwanese Wikipedians than Mainland
> China ones.
>
> A couple of months ago three admins of Aceh Wikipedia decided that it
> is not acceptable that they participate in the project which holds
> Muhammad depictions. By the project, they mean Wikimedia in general,
> including Wikimedia Commons. It was just a matter of time when they
> would create their own wiki. And they created that moth or two after
> leaving Wikimedia. And what do you think which project has more
> chances for success: the one without editors or the other with three
> editors? So, while the reason for leaving couldn't be counted among
> reasonable ones, the product is the same as if they had a valid
> reason. And there are plenty of valid reasons, among them almost
> universal problem of highly bureaucratic structures on Wikimedia
> projects.
>
> I can imagine even very successful fork of Wikipedia in any Balkan
> language. We are also more or less on the edge of successful fork of
> any language whose community has any kind of problem with the rest of
> the movement. And at some point we could have serious problem.
> Projects could even start without license compatibility with Wikimedia
> content. Yes, as I don't think that anyone would bother -- which would
> be the right decision because of a number of reasons -- with GFDL and
> CC-BY-SA violations of the encyclopedia in a language with not so much
> speakers.
>
> That leads us to the serious dead end: We want forkability because of
> our principles. We could potentially lose parts of our movement.
> According to our principles, the only way to protect the movement is
> to be attractive to editors more than potential forks could be. And
> that's our structural problem: we are losing that battle since ~2007
> and changes which we are making are too slow and too small.
>
> And that opens the space for even worse scenario. The last hope for
> societies in such decline is to impose martial law and try to fix
> things by not so pleasant methods. The only problem is that we are not
> society. Nobody would be killed because of Wikimedia fall and no
> economy would be destructed. More importantly, when people see harsh
> methods imposed (and one of them would be forbidding [easy]
> forkability), they would start to leave the project, which would just
> catalyze the fall.
>
> Fortunate moment is that we are driving on organizational expansion
> and that we bought some time. There are a couple of oth

Re: [Foundation-l] Forkability, its problems and our problems

[David Gerard]

On 16 August 2011 10:59, Milos Rancic  wrote:

> That leads us to the serious dead end: We want forkability because of
> our principles. We could potentially lose parts of our movement.
> According to our principles, the only way to protect the movement is
> to be attractive to editors more than potential forks could be. And
> that's our structural problem: we are losing that battle since ~2007
> and changes which we are making are too slow and too small.
> And that opens the space for even worse scenario. The last hope for
> societies in such decline is to impose martial law and try to fix
> things by not so pleasant methods. The only problem is that we are not
> society. Nobody would be killed because of Wikimedia fall and no
> economy would be destructed. More importantly, when people see harsh
> methods imposed (and one of them would be forbidding [easy]
> forkability), they would start to leave the project, which would just
> catalyze the fall.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_%28software_development%29

Precis: annoy a subcommunity sufficiently, they leave in a group. Try
to stop them from leaving (as opposed to trying to attract them back),
they leave faster and take others with them.

This is what I mean when I say "forkability will keep us honest."


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Forkability, its problems and our problems

[Fred Bauder]

> Our competitors
> are not millions of MediaWiki installations; our competitor is Hudong
> (note the features [1]), but also Google and Facebook. I am not saying
> that they are against us, but that we have to catch their
> technological development if we want to survive.
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudong#Features
>

"The system has some social networking-like interactive features, such as
user profile, friends and groups."

A no-brainer

Fred



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[Foundation-l] Forkability, its problems and our problems

[Milos Rancic]

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 22:43, Ray Saintonge  wrote:
> On 08/15/11 12:25 PM, Gustavo Carrancio wrote:
>> Fred: easy to fork vs hard to understand other cultures. Think a minute.
>> ¿Are we making an Encyclopedia? Must we struggle to split or to get
>> togeather?
>
> At some point we need to ask ourselves: Is our mission to make the sum
> of all human knowledge freely available, or is it to create a monopoly
> on knowledge.

While I agree with necessity of being able to make a fork easily,
there is important message which Gustavo wanted to say, but didn't
express well.

Under the present circumstance, any attempt to create English
Wikipedia fork could be successful just if WMF makes
very-ultra-serious shit and it is not likely that it would happen.

We also know how the case Encyclopedia Libre vs. Spanish Wikipedia
finished. That's, again, thanks to the fact that Spanish is
multinational language and if someone wants to get significant
official support, it would require significant time.

However, the opposite example is Hudong encyclopedia. It is obviously
that Hudong is much more relevant to Chinese people just because of
the fact that we still have more Taiwanese Wikipedians than Mainland
China ones.

A couple of months ago three admins of Aceh Wikipedia decided that it
is not acceptable that they participate in the project which holds
Muhammad depictions. By the project, they mean Wikimedia in general,
including Wikimedia Commons. It was just a matter of time when they
would create their own wiki. And they created that moth or two after
leaving Wikimedia. And what do you think which project has more
chances for success: the one without editors or the other with three
editors? So, while the reason for leaving couldn't be counted among
reasonable ones, the product is the same as if they had a valid
reason. And there are plenty of valid reasons, among them almost
universal problem of highly bureaucratic structures on Wikimedia
projects.

I can imagine even very successful fork of Wikipedia in any Balkan
language. We are also more or less on the edge of successful fork of
any language whose community has any kind of problem with the rest of
the movement. And at some point we could have serious problem.
Projects could even start without license compatibility with Wikimedia
content. Yes, as I don't think that anyone would bother -- which would
be the right decision because of a number of reasons -- with GFDL and
CC-BY-SA violations of the encyclopedia in a language with not so much
speakers.

That leads us to the serious dead end: We want forkability because of
our principles. We could potentially lose parts of our movement.
According to our principles, the only way to protect the movement is
to be attractive to editors more than potential forks could be. And
that's our structural problem: we are losing that battle since ~2007
and changes which we are making are too slow and too small.

And that opens the space for even worse scenario. The last hope for
societies in such decline is to impose martial law and try to fix
things by not so pleasant methods. The only problem is that we are not
society. Nobody would be killed because of Wikimedia fall and no
economy would be destructed. More importantly, when people see harsh
methods imposed (and one of them would be forbidding [easy]
forkability), they would start to leave the project, which would just
catalyze the fall.

Fortunate moment is that we are driving on organizational expansion
and that we bought some time. There are a couple of other methods for
buying time. But, if we don't use that time to fix things, at some
point we would deplete available options. We would eventually have the
same problems in India which we have in US; we would have the same
problems on a project which would be opened in 2012 as we have today
with many other projects.

Note that Wikipedia wasn't a hype because it is free and open online
encyclopedia. It was a hype because such thing didn't exist before. It
exists now all over the Internet. And without qualitative
breakthroughs, we have to do things regularly. And models exist: IBM
lives, Microsoft lives, Apple lives; Sinclair is dead, SGI is dead,
Sun is dead; Netscape lives as Mozilla, Amsword lives as Libre Office,
Ingres lives as PostgreSQL. Hi-tech organizations -- and we are
hi-tech organization -- which survived were able to catch the
technological development of their competitors. And our competitors
are not millions of MediaWiki installations; our competitor is Hudong
(note the features [1]), but also Google and Facebook. I am not saying
that they are against us, but that we have to catch their
technological development if we want to survive.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudong#Features

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Re: [Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave

[emijrp]

2011/8/16 David Gerard 

> On 16 August 2011 09:06, Domas Mituzas  wrote:
>
> > Anyway, we should definitely build something like that, just don't pay
> attention to suicide rate.
>
>
> :-) I am quite cognisant that the likely number of people wanting to
> build a full fork of Wikipedia may well be *zero*. I apologise if I
> have given any of this the sound of urgency. I am saying, however,
> that forkability is an important right thing, a guard against
> disasters and a good way to keep ourselves honest. And a lot (if not
> all) of what it requires is stuff we really should be doing anyway.
>
> (BTW - we *do* have someone making sure the Internet Archive - or a
> similar organisation,


I heard Internet Archive downloads dumps every 3 months (but no images).

Also, some time ago I heard about a contact with Library of Congress to host
dumps duplicates. No more news about that.


> if there are any similar organisations - has a
> full collection of all our backups, so if Florida was hit by a meteor
> tomorrow people would have something to start from?)
>
>
Instead of a meteor, maybe a hurricane. Instead of a hurricane, maybe a
faulty RAID. Did you hear about the RAID problem some months ago?

Regards,
emijrp


> - d.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave

[Ray Saintonge]

On 08/15/11 7:52 PM, Fred Bauder wrote:
> The emphasis needs to
> be on content, not on trying to figure out extensions and templates.

A key feature of forks!!!

Ray

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Re: [Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave

[Ray Saintonge]

On 08/16/11 1:20 AM, David Gerard wrote:
> On 16 August 2011 09:18, David Gerard  wrote
>> (BTW - we *do* have someone making sure the Internet Archive - or a
>> similar organisation, if there are any similar organisations - has a
>> full collection of all our backups, so if Florida was hit by a meteor
>> tomorrow people would have something to start from?)
> argh. That's a question, not a statement. Do we have some third party
> with copies of everything? I suggest the IA as they have the disk
> space and, as a library, rabidly archive everything they can get their
> hands on.
>
One suggestion for archiving would be to have a complete set of projects 
filed with the copyright office and other key depositories quarterly.

This could also address a potential long-term copyright problem.  This 
has less to do with Wikipedia infringing on the copyrights of others 
than with the reverse.  It already happens that others use Wikipedia 
material without credit in works on which they claim copyright.  Re-use 
of that material on-wiki at a later date will inevitably result in a 
copyvio squabble, especially if the originally plundered version is no 
longer recognizable. This could be many years hence.  What other means 
are available to protect the viral nature of freely licensed material?

Forks could also be helpful in this regard.  They would need to respect 
free licences, and, as a by-product, add evidence favouring the freeness 
of the material.  A person creating a fork based on some topic area is 
unlikely to significantly alter all the articles imported, preferring to 
draw different conclusions from the same underlying facts.  This is 
bound to leave an identifiable residue that will protect the licence.

Ray

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Re: [Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave

[David Gerard]

On 16 August 2011 09:18, David Gerard  wrote:

> (BTW - we *do* have someone making sure the Internet Archive - or a
> similar organisation, if there are any similar organisations - has a
> full collection of all our backups, so if Florida was hit by a meteor
> tomorrow people would have something to start from?)


argh. That's a question, not a statement. Do we have some third party
with copies of everything? I suggest the IA as they have the disk
space and, as a library, rabidly archive everything they can get their
hands on.

(Would anyone from IA happen to be on the list?)


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave

[David Gerard]

On 16 August 2011 09:06, Domas Mituzas  wrote:

> Anyway, we should definitely build something like that, just don't pay 
> attention to suicide rate.


:-) I am quite cognisant that the likely number of people wanting to
build a full fork of Wikipedia may well be *zero*. I apologise if I
have given any of this the sound of urgency. I am saying, however,
that forkability is an important right thing, a guard against
disasters and a good way to keep ourselves honest. And a lot (if not
all) of what it requires is stuff we really should be doing anyway.

(BTW - we *do* have someone making sure the Internet Archive - or a
similar organisation, if there are any similar organisations - has a
full collection of all our backups, so if Florida was hit by a meteor
tomorrow people would have something to start from?)


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave

[Domas Mituzas]

Hi!

> Here's the conclusion I've come to though. We need to get the software
> good enough, and simple enough, that it is firmly in the background.

OK!

> Mediawiki is like an old DOS computer that constantly drags you into
> programing mode, particularly if you fork.

Yes, especially if you actually are running it, all you do is sit in some black 
and white text screens, that definitely sucks. 

> We need the equivalent of a
> Macintosh that almost anyone can use effortlessly. The emphasis needs to
> be on content, not on trying to figure out extensions and templates.

Yup, we need drag&drop forking support. With clouds nowadays that should be 
easy - you enter cloud account information (it may auto-detect password), and 
drag the website you want to fork onto a "drag here" target. 
We should definitely work on this kind of functionality.  Then you click on it, 
and it runs, in a cloud!

Emphasis needs to be on content and DRM, so that people don't copy articles 
without leaving 30% of their revenue to your fork. 
ArticleStore is going to be core essence of all content distribution, after it 
has been previewed on the website, of course, seamlessly integrated with 
reading devices, like computers. 

It is easy to resolve templates and extensions iOS-development way, charge 
community for being able to write them, that will make the remaining ones truly 
useful, because someone was motivated to do that. 
Of course, you need an approval process, but it is nothing technical, you can 
approve that stuff solely on moon phase or peyote effects :)

Anyway, we should definitely build something like that, just don't pay 
attention to suicide rate. 

Cheers,
Domas


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