Re: [Foundation-l] Call for nominations: chapter-appointed seats on the WMF Board of Trustees
2012/2/2 Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org: Oh, agreed. But what I'm interested in is not should be, but whether the rhetoric in internal chapter elections is usually dominated by, or even includes, mention of the wider governance issues. I think chapters have a crucial role to play in movement governance, and that trustees of each chapter should be at the forefront of that. But are they selected with that role in mind? Well, for WM-IT all assemblies are open to public and we always tried to have them at least audio-streamed if we technically could (but that would be in Italian, though). Anyway, from the results of the least chapter and community seats election my opinion is that the former are *wyyy* more en.wiki-centered than the first. I am surely highly biased, but I think people in the chapters having to confront with their local reality (here included local legislation), with the WMF and the communities of the projects (for events, meetups, etc.) have more opportunities to gain a global governance perspective than others. Both in the sense of the whole Wikimedia world from editors up to the WMF staff and the WMF Board, but also in the sense of a better perception of the diversity of the conditions and characteristics of the different parts of the Wikimedia movement around the world. Cristian WM-IT ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] English Wikipedia to go dark January 18 in opposition to SOPA/PIPA
2012/1/17 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: Wikimedia Serbia also supports English Wikipedians [...] Wikimedia Italia too, see http://www.wikimedia.it Here's the text (in italian): --- Milano, 17 gennaio 2012 Domani, 18 gennaio 2012, l'edizione in lingua inglese di Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org) verrà oscurata tra le 0:00 e le 24:00 (fuso orario di New York, tra le 6:00 del 18 gennaio e le 6.00 del 19 gennaio in Italia) come forma di attenzione e protesta contro due proposte di legge statunitensi, lo Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) e il PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). Tali proposte vengono presentate come iniziative per tutelare il copyright, tuttavia il modo con cui verrebbe esercitata questa tutela porterebbe gravi rischi per la libertà di parola su Internet, oltre a permettere di bloccare l'accesso dagli USA a interi siti stranieri che semplicemente contengano anche un solo collegamento a un sito sospettato di infrangere un copyright protetto negli Stati Uniti. Tutto ciò senza una verifica indipendente dell'eventuale loro coinvolgimento nella presunta violazione. Wikipedia e la Wikimedia Foundation sono in prima linea per quanto riguarda la tutela del diritto d'autore, infatti sulle pagine di Wikipedia e degli altri progetti della Wikimedia Foundation, una qualunque presunta violazione di copyright viene sempre eliminata non appena individuata. La protesta contro SOPA e PIPA è portata avanti poiché rischiano di minacciare la libertà e l'esistenza non solo di Wikipedia, ma dell'intero web. Come ricorda Sue Gardner, direttore esecutivo della Wikimedia Foundation, «Le voci di Wikipedia sono neutrali, ma la sua esistenza no». La comunità che opera su Wikipedia in lingua inglese ha a lungo dibattuto sulla proposta del fondatore di Wikipedia Jimmy Wales di arrivare a una serrata sul modello di quella effettuata dalla Wikipedia in lingua italiana lo scorso ottobre contro il comma 29 del disegno di legge sulle intercettazioni. La proposta che ha alla fine avuto il consenso della comunità è stata quella di unirsi a molti altri siti statunitensi in un'unica giornata di black-out. L'edizione in lingua italiana di Wikipedia non sarà oscurata, ma apparirà un avviso in cima a ogni pagina visualizzata. SOPA e PIPA, infatti, toccano indirettamente anche Wikipedia in lingua italiana, poiché i server che la ospitano sono situati negli Stati Uniti e, se anche la Wikimedia Foundation sopravvivesse agli enormi costi dell'applicazione di una legislazione tanto irragionevole, si potrebbe arrivare all'assurda ipotesi che un utente italiano, cercando su Wikipedia in lingua italiana un'informazione in una voce che riporta un collegamento a un altro sito italiano, potrebbe non trovarla perché negli USA è stato deciso che quest'ultimo viola il copyright, il tutto senza possibilità di difesa. L'intera libertà della rete, che è cosa diversa dall'illegalità, rischia quindi di essere messa in discussione da due provvedimenti statunitensi. Associazione Wikimedia Italia Wikimedia Italia, corrispondente italiana ufficiale di Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, è un'associazione senza fini di lucro che opera nel settore della cultura e del sapere, per la diffusione della conoscenza libera. Nota in Italia principalmente per la sua attività di promozione dei progetti Wikimedia (tra cui il più noto è indubbiamente Wikipedia), organizza e collabora a seminari, eventi ed attività volte a far conoscere e diffondere i contenuti liberi. Ulteriori informazioni Comunicato ufficiale della Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/English_Wikipedia_to_go_dark Comunicato degli amministratori della Wikipedia in lingua inglese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Action Posizione di Sue Gardner http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/16/wikipedias-community-calls-for-anti-sopa-blackout-january-18/ Wikipedia http://it.wikipedia.org Wikimedia Italia http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/10_cose_da_sapere Contatti Wikimedia Italia Presidente: Frieda Brioschi · fbrios...@wikimedia.it · +39 328 0731320 Addetto stampa: Maurizio Codogno · mcodo...@wikimedia.it · +39 02 43835926 --- Cristian WM-IT ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Duolingo, potential way of getting good quality translations?
I found this TEDx presentation by Luis von Ahn (the ideator of the project [and father of CAPTCHAs, btw]) worth watching: TEDxCMU -- Luis von Ahn -- Duolingo: The Next Chapter in Human Computation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQl6jUjFjp4 Cristian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Khan Academy contradictory licensing conditions
I posted a question in the comment group[1] of Khan Academy[2], a great education website. In fact in this page on the wiki of the site[3] under Our Principles: the rules of the game, is said: Openness. [...] Open content means that all content distributed by or through the Khan Academy uses the CC-by-sa license (or a compatible license) [...] but actually in the footer of every page the is indicated a CC-3.0-NC-BY-SA license. So there must be a mistake somewhere, the point being that CC-BY-SA license would be compatible with Wikipedia and the other projects, which I think would be a great, valuable thing. Can somebody help me to clarify this point? I think it's important. Cristian [1]http://groups.google.com/group/khan-academy-comments/browse_thread/thread/41c7276786ab89da [2]www.khanacademy.org [3]https://sites.google.com/a/khanacademy.org/forge/home/mission-principles-and-values ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Con rispetto per questa azione coraggiosa
2011/10/5 Anneke Wolf anneke.w...@gmx.de: Hi folks, the german community made the decision to have a short notice about the issue on the front page as well (see: Wikipedia aktuell) http://de.wikipedia.org In addition there's a support letter you can sign: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Solidarit%C3%A4tserkl%C3%A4rung_mit_dem_italienischen_Wikipedia-Streik Wikimedia Italia official position, * original in Italian[1] * in English[2] Cristian WM-IT [1]http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Pagina_principale [2]http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Press_release_about_the_Wikistrike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia
2011/10/5 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com: On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 1:00 PM, Domas Mituzas midom.li...@gmail.com wrote: Regardless, what's done is done, for the moment. Except that WMF as steward of the open information can roll any of that blackout crap back. Primary mission is spreading the knowledge, and now it.wikipedia obviously fails at it. it.wikipedia is not failing at spreading knowledge. it.wikipedia is taking all steps it can to make sure that it can succeed at that aim in future. This law proposal has been around in Italy for quite a long time. If I'm correct it's about three years. Last year there has been a period when the law was in the mainstream media (while it was also dubbed as legge ammazza-blog, blog-killer law), but then (for other political reasons) the topic was forgot, the law proposal eliminated from discussion in parliament, and nobody discussed it much more. At that time (~ 15 months ago) Wikimedia Italia issued a press communique and asked on it.wiki Village Pump if there were Wikipedians who would like to sign it to show their support. That communique collected circa 300 signatures. There also was a discussion about putting a link to it in the sitenotice, there was a large majority ( 2/3 of many voters) but given the fact that it seemed to be a strong move, and in the meanwhile the topic faded away, nothing was done in the end. In the last few days, though, the law proposal returned in the mainstream and it is going to be discussed in parliament today and in the next days. This time the community itself discussed and autonomously produced the communique you see now. It was put in the village pump and after two days of discussion where an *outstanding* majority (I will say almost unanimous) agreed to lock the site and put the communique in his place, we have arrived to the current situation.So it has not been neither an easy or quick decision. Hope that helps to contextualize the situation. Cristian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Blanking a Wikipedia, a very bad idea
2011/10/5 M. Williamson node...@gmail.com: Editors aren't the only people who use Wikipedia. About that point it's worth noting that in Facebook several autonomous supporting groups have appeared, the most numerous has 215.000 followers and it's now still growing with a 1000 likes/hour rate. Cristian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Umberto Eco's interview
2010/8/4 Pharos pharosofalexand...@gmail.com: I presume the interview with Jimbo was in English? This would probably be a good opportunity for collaboration with English Wikinews... Absolutely. 2010/8/4 Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.rs: Publish the interview in .ogg format, then if needed volunteers can transcribe it? Till now the interviews have usually been done with micro-cassette recorders (you know, tape... old school :P), this is the case for Jimbo's interview. Secondarily, in some case we give the interviewee the possibility to review what they have said before the final publishing. Cristian CristianCantoro Wikimedia Italia ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Umberto Eco's interview
Hi, I'm the coordinator of w...@home in Wikimedia Italia. With this project we have already managed to interview a few notable[1] people. The questions are written collaboratively, opening a page on the italian Wikinews[2]. Then Wikimedia Italia takes contact with the potential interviewee and finds the reporter (usually a WMI member). I have also the recordings of an interview with Jimbo ... I have done it mny months ago, but I really can't find the time to transcribe it. I am really sorry about that and, in my opinion, this is a major problem with volunteer-driven interviews. Usually there are a lot of questions to ask and even if the interviewer make some (arbitrary) selection in my experience this results in long ( 1 h) interviews. We are used to report integrally what the interviewees have said (besides some style corrections to make the text readable), unlike newspapers we don't have problems of space and we think the best thing to do is to report things exactly as they have been said. So the main effort is the transcription and the editing of the interviews and for 1h/2h interviews this can take weeks. I really don't know if there is a solution for this. Cristian CristianCantoro Wikimedia Italia [1] i.e. people having an article about them on (at least the Italian version of) Wikipedia. [2] for Mr. Eco, the page was this http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinotizie:Storie_in_preparazione/Intervista_a_Umberto_Eco ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Push translation
2010/7/24 Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org: On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 4:11 PM, Pavlo Shevelo pavlo.shev...@gmail.com wrote: These days Google and other translate tools are good enough to use as the starting basis for an translated article No, it's far not true - at least for such target language as Ukrainian etc. So any attempt of push translation will be almost the disaster... ...and we need to remember that most articles are *not* translations of the English article, but are home-grown on the wiki and use their own sources in their own language. Also don't forget that the same subject can be treated very differently among different cultures (even if they are not distant, think to French and English). An article in the English Wikipedia can be a very good basis to start a new article, but I don't think that an automated flooding of the other Wikipedias is a good thing in *any* way. Cristian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
