[Foundation-l] Pre-wikis vs. maturing Wikipedia: taking away dedicated editors?
[ Please excuse me if the subject has already been beaten to death here; I am not a regular visitor to this mailing list I tried to search for this stuff here on strategywiki, but feel free to point me to the archives! ] I researched recently some material related to a recent catastrophic event in Polish railway history[1] and I found out that volunteers who traditionally dealt with railway matters on Polish Wikipedia have virtually disappeared. I remember that community being strong few years ago, and now we found out that even some basic information about infrastructure is left unchanged. Few people who still maintain that stuff on the Polish Wikipedia showed me that at least two other MediaWiki-based projects have been started to fill the gap: [2][3] The latter greets you even with a very nice shot of *the* railway junction that was instrumental in a recent railway crash. One of the projects got started by experienced Wikipedia editors. They still copy some of their content to the Polish Wikipedia, but only after it matures; I asked them about the reasons to go outside of the Wikipedia and they said: * They have to do lots of original research; it is impossible to follow development of the railway infrastructure and operations using only high quality published sources; * They got bitten a bit by the notability discussions in their field; they want to document every track, every junction and every locomotive and they are tired of discussing how notable a particular piece of railway equipment really is. I would have said it's just a single case, but I've seen some successful web portals being launched by people interested in history; what is different from many history research and fan pages is that I've also seen some active members of Wikipedia community becoming more and more active on those independent sites. It might be that (unproven theory) really valuable authors are living on a verge of original research; at some point they might prefer to turn over to indepedent sites. There may be other factors too: smaller, friendlier community; possibility to start anew and so on. As few of those sites are using MediaWiki software I started to call them pre-wikis. Some of them might become a sort of a waiting rooms for the content to be published on mature Wikipedia. To me, analogy to the Wikipedia-Nupedia story is striking. What's interesting is that people are not afraid to use MediaWiki *again* (with all its well-known deficiencies). In general, I think this is nothing new. There are thousands of fan wikis on places like Wikia, where certainly some contributors copy over some mature content to Wikipedia, should licensing allow that. But maybe there is some trend that could probably be better researched, and here are my questions to you: (1) Do you see similar trend in your respective communities (preferably not only English-speaking ones)? (2) Is there a legitimate need for multi-tiered development of the knowledge-related content (test wikis, pre-wikis, sighted revisions) or shall we pursue flat development space ideal? (3) Assuming we find the abovemetioned trend to be generally a good thing, shouldn't we try to research some methodologies to find out whether there is sizeable effort supporting our goals outside of the core Wikimedia movement? (4) Assuming we don't like what's going on, shouldn't we revisit some of Wikipedia core values (like no original research, but not only) and try to address the issue there? (5) Has Wikipedia as a product achieved some maturity in a way that the real growth and innovation needs to go somewhere else, as no product/project lasts forever? Maybe it's something around the question that Kim Bruning asked on strategywiki [4] and also [5]: we need to find some way to infuse new life into wikis that are coming to the end of the WikiLifeCycle. Wiki-communities can, do and will blow up, and we need to learn how to prevent it, or have plans on what to do and how to pick up the pieces. //Marcin Cieślak User:Saper from plwiki [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szczekociny_rail_crash [2] http://enkol.pl/ [3] http://semaforek.pl/wiki/index.php/Strona_g%C5%82%C3%B3wna [4] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=942oldid=931 [5] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prevoldid=1075 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia considering declaring open-season on works from countries lacking US copyright relations
The proposed change would mean all works where the country of origin (as legally defined by US statutes) is a non-treaty state would be declared as public domain for the purpose of Wikipedia and allowed to be freely used. The current discussion features a 9-3 consensus in favor of this outcome [2], and some participants are now pushing for implementation on this basis [3]. If U.S. law (or rather lack thereof) is to prevail because the projects are hosted in the U.S. I have two questions: 1) How would re-use of Wikipedia content look like to users in the respective countries? Wouldn't they be limited in re-using some content if it was obtained from sources under some kind of protection in their countries, but considered public domain in the U.S.? 2) What about projects like Farsi Wikipedia, where we can assume significant amount of editors comes from Iran - are they legally able to license that content to the rest of the world? //Marcin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats
Sydney Poore sydney.po...@gmail.com wrote: Other people want it because of a desire to keep controversial content out of their home. Giving these user control over image selection may bring * more* people to Wikipedia, and an article with controversial content. Intellectual curiosity may entice them to click through and see the image now or later. That is a Good Thing. May or may not. Did you ever live in a politically restrictive country? //Saper ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats
Other people want it because of a desire to keep controversial content out of their home. Giving these user control over image selection may bring * more* people to Wikipedia, and an article with controversial content. Intellectual curiosity may entice them to click through and see the image now or later. That is a Good Thing. May or may not. Did you ever live in a politically restrictive country? //Saper Hello Saper, Could you explain how that you think an user controlled image filter would make a difference to a person who lives on a country politically restricted country? Do you think that it would hurt or help, or make no difference? Can you help me in understanding in why such a user control feature may possibly bring more people to Wikipedia? I am especially interested in countries where access to information is restricted by the environment, for example by governments, whether the same reasoning applies to them as to less restrictive regions. I am asking this because I happened to grow up and have first 8 years of my education in such an environment and I still remember those times and how we approached the limited access to information. //Saper ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced
David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 7 September 2011 22:26, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: Turning off images should be, and can be, done by the user-agent. We have a help page describing how to do this. This is really low-bandwidth usability. I've tried editing Wikipedia on dialup ... it's annoying enough waiting for all the Javascript these days on 1Mbit. Images on Images off in a sidebar, switching the CSS live? Come on, I actually like editing using a text browser (at least I get a much better editor than any browser is offering currently). Images in many such environments can be loaded and displayed on-demand. In some browsers there is an option launch graphical browser for this URL. The only thing that I really miss is a ? after a red link. It got replaced long time ago by the CSS gimmick and it does not work on pure text browsers at all, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5366#c5 //Saper ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Sue Gardener, Wikipedia's leading editor - wikileaks
Jimmy Wales jwa...@wikia-inc.com wrote: I was mentioned in a leaked US diplomatic cable - with my name spelled wrong! http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2008/11/08SANTIAGO1015.html What about this: Reference id: 09TELAVIV982 Origin: Embassy Tel Aviv Time: Mon, 4 May 2009 10:30 UTC Classification: UNCLASSIFIED (...) Ha'aretz reported that Sue Gardner, Wikipedia's leading editor, who attended the Wikipedia Academy 2009 Conference in Israel this week, refuted claims by leading Israeli Internet researchers that WikipediaQs coverage of Israel-related issues is 'problematic. Gardener said that the Web site merely reflected public discourse. 'I know that more or less the same mistakes [on Wikipedia] can be found in The New York Times,' she was quoted as saying. http://www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=09TELAVIV982 //Marcin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2011 announcement
The Wikimania jury has selected Haifa, Israel as the location for Wikimania 2011. Ther was a young jolly man from Haifa Who logged in to get the best airfare The Internet said, At once, you had to stop by in Gdansk but you wouldn't mind that, either? Congratulations from the 2010 team! -- Marcin Cieslak // sa...@saper.info ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Announcement list is active
Dnia 06.05.2010 Tim Landscheidt t...@tim-landscheidt.de napisał/a: Jay Walsh jwa...@wikimedia.org wrote: [...] Please share other thoughts or opportunities - on the meta page or on this list. And please also encourage others to widely subscribe to this list. Post to village pumps, on projects, etc. Could someone see to hooking it up to Gmane, please? Anyone can do it. I just posted a request to create gmane.org.wikimedia.community.announce (gmane.org.wikimedia.announce has been snarfed by Wikizine already). -- Marcin Cieslak // sa...@saper.info ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Wikimania 2010: Call for Participation is there!
Wikimania is an annual global event devoted to Wikimedia projects around the globe (including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wiktionary, Wikispecies, Wikimedia Commons, and MediaWiki). The conference is a community gathering, giving the editors, users and developers of Wikimedia projects an opportunity to meet each other, exchange ideas, report on research and projects, and collaborate on the future of the projects. The conference is open to the public, and is a chance for educators, researchers, programmers and free culture activists who are interested in the Wikimedia projects to learn more and share ideas about the Wikimedia projects. This year's conference will be held JULY 9-11, 2010 in Gdansk, Poland at Polish Baltic Philharmonic. For more information, please visit the official Wikimania 2010 site: http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/ Wikimania 2010 will be a mix of submitted talks, open space meetings, birds of a feather groups, and lightning talks. Submissions will be discussed and selected in an informal process on the wiki. If your submission is not added to the schedule, you will still have many opportunities to bring topics forward on-site. IMPORTANT DATES * Deadline for submitting workshop, tutorial, panel and presentation proposals: May 20 * Notification of acceptance: May 25 (workshops), May 31 (panels, tutorials, presentations) * All proposals and presentations will be welcome in the Open Space track of the conference, whether or not they are accepted in this initial process. PROGRAM COMMITTEE Submissions will be reviewed informally by a team of volunteers. TRACKS This year Wikimania will offer three tracks for submissions for members of wiki communities and interested observers to share their own experiences and thoughts and to present new ideas: People and Community The People and Community track provides a unique forum for discussing topics related to people using/building wikis. Relevant topics include, but are not restricted to, the following: * Wiki Community: Conflict resolution and community dynamics; reputation and identity; * Wiki Outreach: Promotion of wikis and Wikimedia projects among the general public; * North meets south, east meets west: How can people of a different cultural background create an encyclopedia according to common rules? Same subject in the eye of different cultures. * Special: Wikipedia in Central/Eastern Europe: this theme will provide a forum to present and discuss the latest progress of Wikis in the central/eastern European community. Knowledge and Collaboration The Knowledge and Collaboration track aims to promote research and find exciting ideas related to knowledge... * Wiki Content: New ways to improve content quality, credibility; legal issues and copyrights (is free knowledge free?); use of the content in education, journalism, research; * Semantic Wikis: The use of semantic web technologies, linked data; semantic annotation and metadata (in particular manual vs. automated approaches). Infrastructure Track The Infrastructure track at Wikimania will provide a forum where both researchers and practitioners can share new approaches, applications, and explore how to make Wiki access ever more ubiquitous: * MediaWiki development: issues related to MediaWiki development and extensions; * Moving beyond MediaWiki: what other Wiki-like platforms exist; what tools and features do we need for collaboration on different types of knowledge? * Mobile Wikis: The Web is moving off the desktop and into mobile phones, how we use wikis on mobile devices?; wiki-based Augmented Reality (AR) applications, location based services * User Interface Design: Usability and user experience; accessibility, adaptive interfaces and personalization; novel UI designs. WIKISYM 2010 Please note that Wikimania 2010 is co-located with WikiSym, The International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration. More information about WikiSym can be found on the conference website: http://www.wikisym.org/ SUBMIT A PROPOSAL To submit a proposal for a presentation, workshop, panel or tutorial, please visit: http://bit.ly/Submit2010 Thank you for helping make Wikimania 2010 a successful event. :-) See you in Gdansk, July 9-11! -- Marcin Cieslak Wikimania 2010 Gdansk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] A branded copy of Wikipedia lanuched today in Poland
Here: http://wikipedia.wp.pl/ you will find a branded copy of Polish Wikipedia, launched today by Wirtualna Polska (wp.pl), an online portal which is a subsidiary of Telekomunikacja Polska (which in turn is a subsidiary of France Telecom) - a result of the recent Orange - WMF agreement. Visible changes: - skin is obviously different - no editing allowed - no source view - Witamy w Wikipedii WP - the banner says Welcome to WP Wikipedia - article history link points to the plwiki history page - no red links visible - Copyright 1995-2009 Wirtualna Polska notice at the bottom Official press release[1] (excerpts): Wirtualna Polska has developed a special web portal that offers access to the selected information and services of Wirtualna Polska as well as Wikipedia articles in an innovative way. A combination of news articles presented within thematic services of Wirtualna Polska - informational, business, educational, technical, entertainment - with encyclopedic resources of Wikipedia enables Internet users to expand and update their knowledge. Bartłomiej Krawczyk, WP project manager, said [square brackets are mine]: Wirtualna Polska consists of tens of specialised Web portals, cooperating with the most important news outlets countrywide and abroad. This makes Wirtualna Polska a huge source of information. That potential combined with the current offering of Wikipedia, containing over 633 thousand articles enables Internet use to a wholly new extent. (...) We have limited the possibility of accessing editing options [of Wikipedia] because not every Internet user is interested in adding their own articles to the encyclopedia or in updating existing ones. What is important is that all changes and new definitions in [ Polish ] Wikipedia are visible on the Wirtualna Polska website. Wikipedia.wp.pl is an example of a new business model. It combines expansion of the content of [ Wirtualna Polska's ] portal through a direct connection with Wikipedia articles with the financial support for the Wikimedia Foundation, including advertisement revenue. [2] There is also a mention about two-way cross-linking of the WP and Wikipedia content on the WP website. It even goes on to say articles in the free encyclopedia will be linking to the related WP stories. A press release stresses out that all advertising on the site has been specifically approved by the Wikimedia Foundation. One of the news websites has published a note titled Wirtualna Polska has acquired Wikipedia and specifically mentions the lack of editing possibility as well as the advertising that might be put on the site[3]. [1] http://media.netpr.pl/PressOffice/PressRelease.149390.po [2] http://webinside.pl/artykul.php?id=6275 -- Marcin Cieslak // sa...@saper.info signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Licensing update: third party concern
Hello, I'm stuck in transation of the licensing update meta page into the Polish language, and I am pretty sure I will be unable to handle questions from the community regarding understanding of the externally contributed content as used in the proposed terms and conditions. There is some confusion regarding the term third party on the meta page as well. This has been raised on a talk page already: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Licensing_update#Proposed_terms_of_use Specifically, this point from the meta page: 2. to require continued dual-licensing of new community edits in this manner, but allow content from third parties to be under CC-BY-SA only; Reading new terms and conditions one could have impression that we create two categories of contributors: - wikimedia community is bound to dual-license their contributions - some third parties are allowed to use CC-BY-SA only. I find this very confusing and most probably this is not an intended effect. Erik responded with A very good point; I agree that we should try to come up with a good definition of what external means here. I think this point is critical to our understanding how of what is the actual future licensing of the contributed content. If we don't clarify, why we need those two categories of contributions (and contributors!) and, if we need them, we clearly explain the distinction between them - this is going to be a very bad change. I personally find it very disturbing to have it unclear while the vote is underway already and I don't like We'll clarify this later, just do vote now attitude. -- Marcin Cieslak // sa...@system.pl ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
