Re: [Foundation-l] Update on the fund raiser.
It's hidden a bit, deep inside a talk page that isn't read by anyone. I would recommend that relevant posts like that are mailed either to foundation-l, on the WM blog, or somewhere else where there's a little bit more visibility. -- Hay On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 2:45 AM, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote: On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 8:26 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: This is the sort of gem that sometimes appears on Meta that makes me glad one can still browse a day's worth of RecentChanges in a couple of minutes. Be glad that Special:CentralNotice automatically marks edits made through it as bot edits. ;) -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Creative Commons publishes report on defining Non-commercial
This might interest some of you: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Defining_Noncommercial This is the long-awaited study on a large survey on how people interpret the terms non-commercial and commercial, like in the NC-licenses from Creative Commons. Pretty interesting stuff for people interested in free culture in general, although with its 255 pages this might be something that you would rather like to skim through instead of fully read :) For a summary of the findings read: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/17127 -- Hay ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Creative Commons publishes report on defining Non-commercial
On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu wrote: jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote: It is my opinion that we should be careful of people who are using restricted software for contributions because it might be in violation of some licenses. No, we should not. Whatever licenses they are violating, we are not a party to these licenses and we are not violating them. Indeed. Note that this study is about something completely different, namely reuse of NC-licensed CC works and when something like that is 'commercial' or not. -- Hay ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Creative Commons publishes report on defining Non-commercial
On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 6:04 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk wrote: Yeah. Not the most desired outcome for the creator, though. One of the benefits of CC is to encourage worry-free distribution by helping creators be entirely up-front about what they're happy to have happen with their material, but this sort of ambiguity seems to bring us full circle. Just some thoughts. The main problem with NC-licenses is the ambiguity of the term 'non-commercial' when reusing content. This research has shown that the interpretation of 'NC' is pretty much the same with both users and creators, even around the globe. However, that doesn't really resolve the issue of ambiguity, as re-stating the definition in the license itself, or creating more licenses has been shown in this report to be a bad idea. That isn't as big a problem for individual creators though. Reuse of media will probably stay within the 'personal use' or 'redistribute' limits, and the NC license mostly touches upon all cases where people might make money from the content in a commercial way. Modifications to the original media are not very common. This isn't the case however with a project like Wikipedia, where mass collaboration is the _basis_ of the medium and it is really inherent to creating content. Any ambiguity on how 'non-commercial' should be interpreted is likely to much more of a problem than with works created by an individual. That's why it's so important, for projects like ours, to use a license such as BY-SA that it usable by anyone, at anytime, for any purpose without that ambiguity. -- Hay ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Commons reaches 5 million files
Around 11:46 UTC we reached 5 million files on Commons! Not quite sure which file is the 5th million, but this is one of the candidates: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kj%C3%B8benhavnsposten_28_nov_1838_side_1.jpg Thanks everyone for making Commons such as a fantastic project, and creating the world's largest repository of free images! -- Hay ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Commons reaches 5 million files
On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 3:32 PM, Everton Zanella Alvarengaeverton...@gmail.com wrote: How do we know this picture is the 5th million? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#5.000.000 And again, this is just a guess by Platonides. Apparently it could also be: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sollies_Ville_-_Valp_-_P1200358.JPG -- Hay ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Google updates web search
Google has put a preview online of a new version of their search engine, with a new infrastructure: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/08/help-test-some-next-generation.html You can test it here: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ Things are a lot faster, and the results differ from the current version. I'm wondering if this will have any impact on the number of visitors on our projects, because so many of our visitors come through Google links. -- Hay ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] No default codec for video and audio in HTML5
http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-June/020620.html Unfortunately OGG Theora didn't make it as the default codec for the HTML5 video element in the spec. Until one of the two major formats (Theora and H264) is clearly the major format the HTML5 spec will not specify a default codec for the video element. -- Hay ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] No default codec for video and audio in HTML5
On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 1:18 AM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Flash isn't generally available out of the box, though, is it? In theory, no. In practice, yes. Adobe claims around 99% of all web users to have Flash installed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_flash#Installed_user_base -- Hay ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing resolution
On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:25 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net wrote: In light of the vote results announced regarding the proposed licensing update, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has unanimously passed the following resolution: Great news everybody. This is indeed an important day for free culture. I also feel humbled by the fact that you choose my birthday as the date for the transition ;) -- Hay ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Invades La Plata Natural History Museum
It's nice to see initatives like this spring up all over the world! Next month Wikimedia Nederland (together with Creative Commons NL) will organize a month-long 'wiki loves art' project in which 15 museums participate. -- Hay On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 12:51 PM, emijrp emi...@gmail.com wrote: Really nice Patricio. Keep up the good work and tell us about those future events! 2009/5/13 Patricio Lorente patricio.lore...@gmail.com 2009/5/1 Pharos pharosofalexand...@gmail.com: I think this is a good idea too. You can make a pretty template for the images produced that both briefly explains the project and that also includes the Category:Wikipedia_Invades_La Plata_Natural_History_Museum. I can help you with this if you'd like. This event documentation category would be added -in addition- to the encyclopedically-oriented Category:Museo_de_La_Plata. Possibly in the future, with a growing archive of items in the museum's collection, you will even find the need for more specific topical categories, like Category:Dinosaurs_at_Museo_de_La_Plata. Sorry I didn't write any update since the invasion. It was a great experience, with many new volunteers, some of them professional photographers. Many pictures have been already uploaded to Commons, under the category Wikipedia invade el Museo de La Plata, but there are more to come. As you may see, there are photos of different quality, but many of them are really great. See for example, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diplodocus_Carnegii.jpg After this activity, we received many invitations from other museums, and people from the provinces are organizing their own hunts. Patricio -- Patricio Lorente Mensajería Instantánea: patricio_lore...@jabber.org Blog: http://www.patriciolorente.com.ar ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] I'm a creative commoner!!!
Nice write-up Domas. I really feel we are part of a bigger movement, and that is what i usually express towards others who approach me about Wikipedia. It's not just the encyclopaedia, but a whole movement of people who think free licenses and media are an essential part of the 21st century. And i got a picture published as well. It was a pleasant surprise to view my illustration of 'the long tail' in Website Optimization from O'Reilly, complete with a picture attribution even though i released it as public domain. -- Hay On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 5:50 AM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: I was surprised last year to receive an e-mail from the journal Nature Genetics. They put one of my pictures that they found on Commons on the cover of the journal. I've received a couple of other similar but lower profile requests. Commons is definitely a great way to get your work seen. On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Domas Mituzas midom.li...@gmail.comwrote: I got this email back in summer, 2007. Did I just steal a job from professional photographer? Or would they just leave blank book cover? Will this lead to a better bridge in future? Did I join a civil cause? All I know now, is that I’m book cover photographer, albeit quite cheap one. Also, by using CC license I simply used lingua-franca of world I’m in - and now my content can evolve into shapes that I couldn’t expect, and that would be limited by non-portable licenses. Other anecdote is way more internal. I have cheap point-and-shoot camera (same one to shoot book cover pictures :) that I use during my travels. It fits well into my jeans pocket, it doesn’t provide me any self esteem in professional photography. Still, I get to places, I take pictures, I place them on my flickr photostream, and I license them under creative commons. And fascinating things happen - my pictures appear on top of Wikipedia articles (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_buildings_in_the_world ), without any intervention of mine. People just use it, I can sit back, relax, and see how the contribution widens. Of course, there other different stories. My colleague (and manager) runs a wiki about his own town, Bielepedia, and he wants to exchange information with Wikipedia. Now he can’t, as well as quite a lot of other free content community projects. Though of course, some may believe license difference doesn’t mean much, in this case it means that we’re building borders we don’t need nor we have intent to maintain. I live and breathe Wikipedia technology, but I do not feel competent enough to go and push content itself around, and it just shows up there itself (oh, of course, there’s army of committed volunteers who help with that). So, I benefit the project just by being creative commoner, and I may benefit lots of other projects. We at Wikipedia technical team are very open in what we do, and try to spread our know- how in many directions. Documents I wrote about how we do things ended up downloaded hundred thousand times, and I really hope that some of that know-how will end up used and reused. I guess I’m taking this to extremes - I ended up talking to people in government of Lithuania, journalists and non-profit activists. Imagine a government, that would commit to open licensing for produced content. Well, no need to imagine - US federal institutions release information to public domain, but in Europe it is way more restricted. Still, what one has to realize - at government level it is not only a right to be given, it also has to be a right that has to be protected. Nowadays that means going to copyright powerhouses that serve large record labels and movie studios, and will charge for services, that government has to provide for free (and does in other areas, like looking for your stolen car). We have lots and lots of talks about knowledge-societies at government levels, but we never get to the point, that every individual is part of that, and first of all we have to teach those rights, and guard them. But of course, to prove, that our rights have to be guarded, we have to show how great our work is - and how powerful can our sharing be. To achieve that we have to build bridges between license islands, talk same languages, and of course, create. I’m a creative commoner. So should be you. P.S. So should be Wikimedia Foundation. I’m extremely excited about the work being done to make it reality (thanks Erik, Mike, Mako, everyone!), and you know my personal position on the matter by now :) Cheers, -- Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]] ___ 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:
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wiktionary-l] Divergent Wiktionary logos
I couldn't resist the same urge :) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wiktionary_husky.svg This is actually a submission from an earlier proposal for the Wikibooks logo. -- Hay On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 6:48 AM, Stephen Bain stephen.b...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 7:34 AM, Casey Brown cbrown1023...@gmail.com wrote: My own suggestion would be to use individual blocks but to have them be like type pieces from a printing press. Though actual proposals for new logos will be accepted later (once it is decided how things will work), you can leave a comment about how you feel here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/logo/refresh#Begin_from_Scratch :-) I couldn't resist making a prototype: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/logo/refresh#Suggestion -- Stephen Bain stephen.b...@gmail.com ___ 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] Usability study in progress
Ten is a low number indeed, however, if those people are indeed 'typical users' instead of Wikipedians and you given them a few specific tasks (say, searching for an article on a topic they are interested in and editing it to add some information) you will probably encounter lots of problems soon enough. On a different note: i'm not sure if this has been discussed before but will the usability study also take uploading media on Commons in account? Editing text is one thing, but adding media (and hence, using Commons) is almost as common and could also use *lots* of work on increasing usability. -- Hay On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 11:55 AM, John at Darkstar vac...@jeb.no wrote: Wikipedians should not be used to asses usabillity problems with Wikipedia, this is rule number one if you want to get information about why a newbie has problems with a system. A typical wikipedian is simply not a valid newbie. Ten participants are not nearly enough, they can only give you some clue about the real problem. John Naoko Komura skrev: Howdy. (adding wikien-l folks to this thread. my apology for not including wikien-l with my initial email.) The usability study has started today as scheduled. The usability team is monitoring the interviews and how ten test participants interact with Wikipedia when they are asked to edit an article at the lab facility in San Francisco today and tomorrow. The remote usability study on Thursday (March 26 PDT) will be done remotely, which means we recruit participants from Wikipedia through the site notice, and connect with them through web conferencing. Therefore the site notice for recruitment will appear again on Thursday. We expect to compile the results in a few weeks and the findings with you. Naoko Komura Program Manager, Wikimedia Foundation Naoko Komura wrote: One of the important components of the usability initiative is to conduct multiple rounds of usability tests. The plan is to conduct at least three rounds of tests for qualitative usability evaluation over the span of twelve months, i) the initial evaluation, ii) the progress evaluation, and iii) the final evaluation. The initial usability test is scheduled on March 24, 25th and 26th. In-person lab tests are conducted in San Francisco at the first two days, and remote tests will be conducted on the third day. As a preparation for the initial usability test, we incorporated the recruiting tool into English Wikipedia's site notice. You might have encountered site notice inviting for the participation. The target audience of testers are Wikipedia readers who have little or no experience in editing the Wikipedia articles. The banner is displayed within the range of 1:400 to 1:100 page views, and it will continue till early next week. We look forward to learning from the usability tests and sharing the result with you. Thanks. Naoko ... on behalf of the usability team. ___ 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] Usability study in progress
Thanks Erik, and to those who posted links. I'm very glad that Commons is also taken into account with the usability enhancements. -- Hay On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 5:10 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: 2009/3/25 Casey Brown cbrown1023...@gmail.com: However, I do recall Erik saying something about a grant that is being worked on for Commons, see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Case_for_Commons Yep, that's correct. We've submitted a grant proposal specifically with regard to uploading usability (which also involves the complexity of licensing templates and such), and hope to hear back soon. Uploading is not included in these first user tests. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] status of the licensing update
I totally agree that we should know in advance on how attribution should take place when people are going to reuse our content. A good example on how to handle this might be how the Blender Foundation did that with its 'Elephant's Dream' and 'Big Buck Bunny' projects (even though the license there is CC-BY): http://orange.blender.org/blog/creative-commons-license-2/ -- Hay On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 7:27 AM, Robert Rohde raro...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 8:38 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Personally I can't fully agree. Where no new problems are introduced, and old obstacles are removed, the move can be a good thing in itself, irregardless of the ambiguities that were there before, and still remain. snip I disagree quite clearly that it should be a pre-condition. I don't think keeping an ongoing discussion of the issue concurrently would necessarily be counterproductive. But when it comes down to brass tacks, for reasonable people it should be enough that CC-BY-SA is a vastly better license for what we do. Period. snip Relicensing is not free. It adds a new layer of potential confusion, exposes us to various legal uncertainties, and generates non-trivial hassle (not least of which is the sometimes-but-not-always dual licensing scheme that we would have to keep track of). I do not consider those issues insurmountable. However, if we are going to relicense (and ultimately I think we should get away from the GFDL) then it is also important that we get something useful at the end of the day. You say: CC-BY-SA is a vastly better license for what we do, but that is only true if CC-BY-SA is demonstrably useful. The point I am trying to make is that in order for CC-BY-SA to be useful we should be prepared to concretely show examples of how it can and should be used. If we can't do that, then it largely is not useful. It is fine to talk abstractly about all the great CC-BY-SA content in the world, and wanting to remove barriers to use, etc. But let's be concrete. How do we use CC-BY-SA to expand our content (for example, when importing content: who gets attributed, where, and how)? How do others use CC-BY-SA when they want to copy from Wikipedia? I'm hopeful we can answer those questions, but I consider being able to answer them as a clear prerequisite to establishing whether or not CC-BY-SA will actually be useful. Failing that, we would simply be replacing one crummy license that no one knows how to use with another somewhat less crummy license that still no one knows how to use, and that sort of a transaction would be almost entirely a waste of time. Given the hassle and complexities involved, I'd be very disappointed if at the end of the process we still weren't able to tell people the proper way to use the license. -Robert Rohde ___ 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] Wikimedia and public sector involvement, connections
Wikimedia Nederland has: * Participated in the greenbook about copyright reform in the European Union * Written a letter to the government which resulted in the release of portrait photographs of all members of the current cabinet under GFDL * Talked to members of the parliament about copyright reform and free licenses. -- Hay On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Delphine Ménard notafi...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 21:28, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote: Hi,Thank you for your replies. Are there any notable examples you could mention, or point me to?You might be interested in the German initiative of working with a state-funded Institute to write articles in Wikipedia about Sustainable Raw materials: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Nachwachsende_Rohstoffe http://www.nachwachsende-rohstoffe.info/nachricht.php?id=20070626-02 And I believe Wikimedia Israel did some work on influencing the copyright law. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Israeli_new_copyright_law Cheers, Delphine -- ~notafish NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails will get lost. Ceci n'est pas une endive - http://blog.notanendive.org ___ 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] Britannica became free
On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 4:14 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: I checked a larger biography, and it looked complete to me. Note that it uses ajax to load article sections as you scroll to them, so you have to scroll up and down the page to trigger all the ajax loads before you can copy the text out. It even works with Javascript turned off, but then you have to click all the subheadings in the topic box to progress to the next piece of text (which can be just a few lines long). The Javascript version is not very user-friendly too, because you have to stare at the loading animations before you can read the text. -- Hay / Husky ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
