Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: Building a new Legal and Community Advocacy Department Promotion of Philippe Beaudette
2012/2/10 Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com: With the specifics of is this a political lobbying wing of the WMF or not... I think it is quite clear to everyone that Wikimedians have a hard time agreeing about *anything* but that the two things we all agree on is Free (in the technical sense) and that providing a neutral source of information is itself an inherently non-neutral activity. We spent quite a lot of time talking about the legislative environments where we live (and how that interacts with USA laws), what rules govern freedom of panorama in xyz country, who can request takedown of what content in what circumstances, whether we can provide workaround methods for accessing the content in censoring counties, etc. etc. So, in that light it makes perfect sense to me that there should be a group of people at the WMF dedicated to supporting individuals and Chapters to learn more about those kinds of things and to advocate for a free culture position when appropriate. It is in no way against the WMF's (or Chapter's) mission to advocate in the way it has done in the past, to general community acclaim, with for example, - Mike's brilliant response letter to the CIA takedown notice http://mashable.com/2010/08/03/wikipedia-fbi-seal/ - Geoff's filing of an amicus brief to the Goldman v. Holder case http://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/submissions/domestic/amicus.shtml - Submissions to government policy reviews such as that written by the Research Committee http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Committee/Areas_of_interest/Open-access_policy/EU_Consultation_on_scientific_information_in_the_digital_age To add one more example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/News_and_notes#Wikimedia_Foundation_joins_protest_against_Obama.27s_RIAA_appointments I imagine that it is this kind of thing that would be in the scope of the advocacy aspect of this new department. Certainly, I too do not want to see an overt political lobbying department created, but that is not what is being created. For comparison, the formal job title of Mathias Schindler at WM-DE, if I understand correctly, is project manager - politics and society and it's his job to help write submissions to the German parliament when applicable. He's been doing this task for years. So... vigilance required to make sure we're not losing our way by focusing too much on the politics, but we shouldn't be ignoring it or leaving it to others to sort out either. From what that project page says it looks like this strikes a good balance and we'll see how the department evolves over time. -Liam ___ 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] New project: WikiMake - library of free 3D models?
2012/2/8 Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com: On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 2:10 AM, Leinonen Teemu teemu.leino...@aalto.fiwrote: Hello all, Has there been any attempt to start a Wikimedia project focusing on free 3D models? I think, right now it would be the right timing for it. The prices of 3D printers and other computer controlled machines are coming down [1] and there are growing network of FabLabs around the world providing access for public to design and fabricate their own objects.[2] I have contacts to the European Fablab folks and we probably could start with them a project on an Incubator. Best regards, - Teemu The most popular example of this kind of repository is Thingiverse,[1] run by a small NY-based company that makes 3D printers. Most of the content there is CC. Steven 1. http://www.thingiverse.com/ See also https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Beyondencyclopediawikimania2010-100714133959-phpapp02.pdfpage=5 ___ 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] Cartman Gets an Anal Probe English Wikipedia's featured article today
2012/2/7 Svip svi...@gmail.com: On 7 February 2012 04:49, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Bad_choice_of_featured_article is pretty good reading. The complaints usually sums as 'hey, great work on that article, unfortunately, I am a bit uncomfortable with subject at hand, so let's best not celebrate your contributions'. Actually, the English Wikipedia's Featured Article Director has stated himself that some articles will not be featured on the main page (although he prefers to keep that list short and it currently consists only of the article Jenna Jameson): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654/archive25#Wikipedia:NOTCENSORED_and_the_Main_Page ___ 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] The News Hole
2011/11/26 Bod Notbod bodnot...@gmail.com: On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 5:56 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: There has been some discussion in journalism circles that newspapers, who after all, provide the raw material for many of our topical articles might copy our system of organizing material under a subject heading The Guardian already does this in a way, try clicking on one of the headings here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/list/allnewskeywords The BBC News site also used to put together something akin to our portals for some subjects but perhaps they disappeared in the last redesign since I can't find them now. Bodnotbod Yes, it's an interesting development, but not exactly news in the news industry: http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/02/the-context-based-news-cycle-editor-john-oneil-on-the-future-of-the-new-york-times-topics-pages/ : O’Neil said he had read a statistic that roughly a third of Wikipedia’s traffic came from only about 3,000 of its now more than 17 million pages. “We’re concentrating more on that upper end of the spectrum.” http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/08/how-the-associated-press-will-try-to-rival-wikipedia-in-search-results/ :The document states flatly, “The Wikipedia model of standing, authoritative pages could be challenged.” ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Is random article truly random
2011/10/18 WereSpielChequers werespielchequ...@gmail.com: Hi Fae, I don't know about other projects, but on EN wki random article means just that. There have been a number of proposals to skew things and filter certain things out, but these have foundered on the twin concerns that including everything in Random articles best serves those who want to intersperse some random reading with things that they can easily improve, and that it would be dishonest to tell someone that these were random articles when actually we'd filtered out stubs or the unreferenced. There may well be demand for random Good Article as an additional option, but that would be an extra not something we could describe as random article. There is actually a nice Toolserver tool that can do this, as well as provide random articles filtered by any other category: http://toolserver.org/~erwin85/randomarticle.php The following yields a random Good article on the English Wikipedia: http://toolserver.org/~erwin85/randomarticle.php?lang=enfamily=wikipedianamespaces=-1categories=Good+articlessubcats=1d=0action=1submit=Submit (providing the link to this tool at the risk of enabling teh censorshipz by dark and powerful outside organizations who might abuse it to restrict Wikipedia's own unfiltered, free speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random according to their own world views ;) Regards, HaeB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters
Having followed the recent discussions from the sidelines (and speaking as a longtime volunteer), I found the various appeals to principles such as decentralization and subsidiarity somewhat abstract. Of course BirgitteSB is absolutely correct in that there is a strong consensus that content curation on Wikimedia projects should be a decentralized activity. However, the websites where all these global volunteers scroll through these recent changes are hosted by one central entity, which also concentrates the legal responsibilities that this entails. And there seems to be an equally strong consensus that such a centralized solution is best for this particular problem. It would seem that most other movement activities fall somewhat inbetween these two extremes. Alos, let's not forget that chapters themselves can be perceived as a means to centralize and professionalize certain activities in a country or region. 2011/8/9 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: On 9 August 2011 05:13, Kirill Lokshin kirill.loks...@gmail.com wrote: This is all very true, and very insightful; but what does it have to do with chapters? That the message from WMF is about a decentralisation not working from their perspective, so recentralising fundraising. ___ 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] No tail-lights. What do we do now? (was Call for referendum)
On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 7:35 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 30 June 2011 17:00, Alec Conroy alecmcon...@gmail.com wrote: [a git-like distributed wikisphere] It's not my idea, I believe it's been independently suggested at least five different times that I know of. I have added your postings to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:HaeB/Timeline_of_distributed_Wikipedia_proposals Regards, HaeB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
