Re: [Foundation-l] Commons reaches 5 million files

[Pharos]

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Cary Bass wrote:
>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: foundation-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org
>> [mailto:foundation-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf
>> Of Nikola Smolenski
>> Sent: Wednesday, September 02, 2009 6:33 AM
>> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Commons reaches 5 million files
>>
>> Mathias Schindler wrote:
>> >>From a PR perspective, taking this image as the 5millionth one is a
>> > desaster, the only positive aspect is that it is "honest"
>> to take that
>> > one instead of a shiny picture.
>>
>> Perhaps not so much, as it happened to be a first page of the
>> newspaper.
>>
>> And I guess it is still better than the 2millionth file ;)
>>
>
> I would also like to note, this image is a shiny example of the new
> annotations feature!

I agree, the scroll-over annotation and translation looks brilliant to my taste.

Thanks,
Pharos

> Cary
>
>
> ___
> 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] Report to the Board of Trustees June 2009

[Pharos]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 1:41 PM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> 2009/9/10 Sue Gardner :
>> Hi Thomas!
>>
>> Sorry to top-post, and to be late replying. I believe that all 26
>> proposals are up now on the meta page. Let me know if you can't find
>> it, and I can post the link tonight when I'm back on my laptop.
>
> The proposals are up, but not the details of which were accepted and
> which weren't. It would be useful to have that information when
> considering what to request funding for in future.

There are 21 accepted proposals listed on this page:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants/Reporting_Guidance

Since 26 were accepted in total, I guess this list in not quite
complete yet; but still it makes for very useful reading.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)
Wikimedia NYC-personal view

> ___
> 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] [Wikimania-l] Thank you!

[Pharos]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 3:54 AM, Michael Peel  wrote:
>
> On 14 Sep 2009, at 22:47, Tim Landscheidt wrote:
>
>> At another conference, the video switched from the camera
>> viewpoint to the slides back and forth (I do not know wheth-
>> er that was done while recording or in post-production). Ob-
>> viously, this requires more manpower but the result was
>> worth it.
>>
>> Tim
>
> The easiest way to do this is to create images of the powerpoint
> slides, and add them into the recordings post-production. I believe
> that adding images into videos (with fading in/out) is fairly
> standard in video editing software. It's something that could be done
> by the community a) if they want, and b) if they have the software.
>
> Mike

In an ideal world, it might be nice to have a video of the speaker and
a slideshow of the presentation available side-by-side in the same
window.

Thanks,
Pharos

> ___
> 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] Do we have a complete set of WMF projects?

[Pharos]

On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 11:31 PM, Michael Snow  wrote:
> John Vandenberg wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 10:33 AM, Brian wrote:
>>
>>> I propose expanding the notion of the Wikimedia Incubator to include
>>> entirely new projects that are very, very easy to create. They don't need to
>>> be approved by the WMF - they just need to demonstrate their value by
>>> attracting a community and creating great content. This would be more like
>>> the Apache Incubator, but even more open. This gives people an easy way to
>>> prototype their ideas for new projects, to advertise them, and over time
>>> will give an overview of what kinds of projects and approaches to projects
>>> are likely to succeed and likely to fail.
>>>
>> Brilliant idea.
>>
>> Currently new projects proposed on meta have buckley's chance of ever
>> starting.  Wikiversity wasn't a new project - it was split from
>> wikibooks.
>>
>> We would need a bit of infrastructure around new concepts before they
>> land on the incubator, such as a detailed description of the purpose,
>> and an experienced admin willing to monitor that area of the
>> incubator.
>>
> This sounds like a good idea to me. One difference is immediately
> obvious from the way the incubator works presently, though. Rather than
> having these projects move out of the incubator based on the decision of
> the language committee, that issue would have to be considered by the
> board directly in consultation with the broader community.
>
> --Michael Snow

This is a brilliant and much-needed idea, on many many levels.

I suggest that we start to work developing such a new system for the
Incubator at the strategy wiki.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

>
> ___
> 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] Fwd: [openmoko-announce] WikiReader

[Pharos]

On a side note, this looks interesting:

"For Parents: WikiReader offers an easy way to protect your child from
adult-oriented content."

This is the first time I've heard of a adult filter designed for all
of the 3 million+ articles, as opposed to a schools selection that
only includes a small subset of pre-approved articles.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 11:33 AM, Gregory Maxwell  wrote:
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Sean Moss-Pultz 
> Date: Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 1:51 AM
> Subject: [openmoko-announce] WikiReader
> To: annou...@lists.openmoko.org, List for Openmoko community
> discussion 
>
>
> Dear Community!
>
> Today, with the greatest of pleasure, I am ready to share with you the
> birth of our third product -- WikiReader. Three simple buttons put
> three million Wikipedia articles in the palm of your hand. Accessible
> immediately, anytime, anywhere without requiring an Internet
> connection. No strings attached. With WikiReader you'll be prepared
> for those unexpected moments when curiosity strikes. And once you have
> it, you'll realize how often you ask yourself questions during the
> day.
>
> WikiReader takes our original ideas of openness and accessibility to
> an even greater realm. WikiReader is so amazingly simple. There really
> is no interface. You turn it on and instantly become immersed in the
> rich world of reading specific topics or the serendipitous pleasure of
> discovering something by chance. It's perfect for all ages.
>
> From the "Aha!" moment when we held our first prototypes, to the last
> few months as we worked around the clock to polish every last detail,
> this product was a joy to make and even more fun to experience. We are
> head-over-heels in love with WikiReader. Never have I found so much
> fun in the little moments of curiosity life offers us. Try one and I'm
> sure you'll agree that we've delivered the essence of reading
> Wikipedia in an addictively simple form factor.
>
> Sales start today at http://thewikireader.com. Enjoy. Tell your
> friends. And let us know what you think!
>
>
> Sincerely
>
> Sean Moss-Pultz
>
> ___
> 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] Recent firing?

[Pharos]

I can think of approximately 500,000 other issues that it would
perhaps be more productive for us to argue about on this list.

[general comment]

Thanks,
Pharos

On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 6:34 PM, Ray Saintonge  wrote:
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> 2009/11/1 Anthony:
>>
>>> Here in the US, if a company doesn't mind its unemployment tax rate
>>> going up, they can do pretty much whatever they want.
>>>
>>> In the UK, what, if anything, can a company do if they want to
>>> redefine a position altogether?
>>>
>>
>> If you are genuinely redefining the position so the existing job will
>> no longer exist then you can make the employee redundant (you have to
>> pay at least the statutory redundancy pay, which depends on length of
>> service). If you are just using it as an excuse to get rid of someone
>> you don't like, you'll get sued. If you want to fire someone they have
>> to have done something either really seriously wrong or have received
>> lots of warnings and not improved.
>
>
> Employee protection an union rights are significantly weaker in the U.S.
> than in most developed country. Some states are significantly worse than
> others. Protecting the rights of workers is on the slippery slope to
> socialism, and that would damage the ideological purity of free enterprise.
>
> Employers in other countries need to be more creative in offering
> undesirables solutions that they can't refuse.
>
> Ec
>
> ___
> 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] Recent firing?

[Pharos]

FYI my comment was on the whole thread, not about any particular response.

Hence the "[general comment]" disclaimer.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 4:28 AM, Chad  wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 2:56 AM, Ray Saintonge  wrote:
>> Pharos wrote:
>>> I can think of approximately 500,000 other issues that it would
>>> perhaps be more productive for us to argue about on this list.
>>>
>>
>> So just because you have a personal dislike for a comment you want to
>> call it arguing. You're making far too big a deal of a casual response
>> to Thomas.
>>
>> Ec
>>
>
> I agree with Pharos on this one. I don't take issue with one particular
> response, it's the whole thread. There are *much* better things we
> could argue about. Whether or not the sky is blue sounds like a better
> debate, even.
>
> -Chad
>
> ___
> 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] Proposal: Fan History joining the WMF family

[Pharos]

Why the heck not?

My only concern would be that the topic of fan history might be a bit
specialized by itself.

Why not call it "Wikitribes" and extend the concept to other
subcultures and microhistories of small communities?

I know of someone working with the oral history of Philadelphia jazz
musicians, for example, who would probably be quite interested in
contributing to a wiki project such as this.

I think for too long we have shunted off some of our more interesting
proposals to Wikia, and a commercial environment that may not be
appropriately conducive for these projects.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 1:53 PM, Laura Hale  wrote:
> Erik suggested I post this to the list for further discussion.
>
> Sincerely,
> Laura Hale
>
>
>
>
>
> *Introduction*
> Fan History Wiki is a project dedicated to documenting the history of fan
> communities, and to a lesser extent, documenting the history of online
> communities, popular culture and the tools that go to support these. The
> purpose of this document is to provide a general overview of Fan History,
> and to explain why this project would be a good fit for the Wikimedia
> Foundation.
>
>
> *Proposal*
> *About Fan History*
> Fan History is a wiki that runs on Mediawiki.  It currently gets about
> 60,000 visitors a month, has over 820,000 articles, and a small but
> dedicated contributor base.  Laura Hale created it in May 2006 as a means of
> centralizing existing information, and getting more people involved in the
> process of documenting the history of fandom.
>
> Current objectives for the project include:
>
> * Document the history of fan communities.
> * Preserve the history of fandom, especially in areas that are deemed at
> risk like Geocities.
> * Provide academics operating in fandom starting points for additional
> research and to provide academics with comprehensive data sets.
> * Provide members of fandom a resource to find links to communities in
> fandom, and explain parts of the culture in those communities to help them
> adapt to them.
> *  Provide members of fandom a tool to promote their work, their projects,
> charity efforts by fans.
> * Provide members of fandom a platform to share stories about what happened
> in fandom so that important incidents won't be forgotten.
> * Provide a comprehensive directory for fandom that anyone can edit. This is
> necessary because of increased fragmentation in a web 2.0 world, and as
> members of fandom transition away from various services because of downtime,
> problems with policy, etc. It is also necessary because a lot of time in
> fandom trying to track down authors and artists who disappeared and in
> trying to locate fanworks that have disappeared.
> *  Provide companies that deal with fandom a source to locate fandom
> communities, understand how fandom functions, identify current issues in
> certain fandoms, give examples of how certain issues were dealt with, etc.
> By knowing that information, they can better interact with and cater to
> fandom's specific needs.
>
> * Reasons why Fan History Wiki would be a good fit for WMF:*
>
> * WMF is trying to be more female friendly in terms of developing its
> contributor base. Fan History's primary contributor base and audience is
> female.
>            * A largely female audience is a historical truth for popular
> culture fandom based around movies, and television. The audience around
> manga and anime is becoming increasingly female.  In most areas, the
> academics entering the field are female. Major popular culture obsession
> items at the moment where there is a large female base include Twilight,
> Harry Potter, Star Trek.
>              * Fan History’s inclusion amongst foundation projects can be a
> selling point for outreach in that area.  If needing to point to a similar
> female dominated group doing similar work, the Organization for
> Transformative Works can be cited.
>
> * Our scope allows for more esoteric information that could not be included
> in Wikipedia, Wikiversity or Wikinews that would still help work towards a
> greater good.
>             * The WMF Foundation supports quality resources that anyone can
> edit. Fan History is primarily a cultural historical anthropology project
> dedicated to documenting the history of fandom.
>              * People have tried to do such research on Wikipedia in the
> past but it frequently gets deleted because of the lack of research, it is
> original research or it isn’t notable.  In terms of popular culture studies,
> Fan History provides a place to do that.
>
> * Fan History being part of the Foundation would allow closer relationships
> with the science fiction community, the academic community and other

Re: [Foundation-l] Follow up: Fan History joining the WMF family

[Pharos]

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 12:04 AM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Laura Hale  wrote:
>> This is a follow up to my proposal that Fan History Wiki join the wMF
>> family, based on my experiences via e-mail, on the list and on strategy
>> wiki.
>
> 
>
>> As some one who has proposed a new project for the WMF (which would really
>> probably be an acquisition if it happened), some changes need to be made:
>>
>> 1) Clear procedure for what happens step by step in making such a proposal.
>> Post proposal.  Contact people who support your position to vote in favor of
>> it using talk pages on Strategy wiki.  After one hundred votes vast in favor
>> with no more than half that total in opposition, project moves to
>> development stages where WMF staff will be in contact with the person making
>> the proposal.  Something like that.
>> 2) Clear timeline of what happens and when so that people can plan
>> accordingly
>> 3) Expectations regarding exclusivity of proposal to the WMF during the
>> proposal process.  Can people propose it elsewhere or seek acquisition by
>> others while there is an open proposal on Strategy Wiki?
>
> 
>
> Regardless of the merits of FanHistory itself -- and I agree with the
> criticisms others have brought forth for whether the project should
> join the WMF -- Laura's criticisms of process are legitimate. For all
> intents and purposes, there is no process for proposing new projects,
> whether home-grown or brought in from outside.
>
> Yes, Wikiversity was created in 2006; it was also pushed through by
> some extraordinarily dedicated editors (especially user:Cormaggio) who
> were willing to take part in meta-discussions for *years*. It was also
> created under the aegis of the Special Projects Committee
> ([[meta:SPC]] for those who don't remember), which worked with the
> Wikiversity editors and brought forth a proposal to the Board after
> much back-and-forth.
>
> The SPC doesn't exist anymore, and there's not really anything to take
> its place (such as it was) that I'm aware of. Even with an expanded
> Foundation staff, it's unclear what area such proposals would fall
> under: new projects aren't business development, and they're not
> really outreach either. High-level strategic development? But clearly
> not all proposals are created equal, and not all are of potential
> interest, and not all are fully developed. And it's not at all clear
> to me that this kind of discussion/decision should even go through the
> office or board, at least initially; it's really undefined what "the
> community" (whatever that means) wants in terms of WMF projects.
>
> To my knowledge, there hasn't been a good discussion on the topic of
> new projects in the community in a long while; I don't know if there
> has been in board or staff discussions. Questions that I'd like to see
> discussed on a large scale are:
>
> * Do we want any new projects? Right now? In the future? Ever?
> * If so, do we only want projects that follow traditional reference
> book models of organizing information? (e.g. Wikiquote, which follows
> the model of books of quotations)
> * or perhaps only educational projects?
> * do all projects have to follow NPOV? What about the other guidelines: NOR, 
> V?
> * do we only want projects we start ourselves, or would we consider
> projects started by other organizations?
>
> And yes, this could go on the strategy wiki -- but I don't know of a
> good, unstructured place to have a discussion about such things there
> (that isn't a specific proposal or strategic objective or whatever).
> To that end, I'd like to try and revive this meta page:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects/process
>
> which was started last summer then faded out.

I find myself very much in agreement with Phoebe's call for a renewed
look at developing a process for new WMF projects.

I think that in considering future steps, one middle option that may
be considered is the "virtual wiki", the namespace-specific subproject
that may be hosted at a larger project while still developing its own
specific norms.

Consider the Wikiversity and Wikijunior projects, both started as
"virtual wikis" on Wikibooks.  Wikiversity eventually took its own
path, while Wikijunior after some discussion was still felt to be best
as part of the mother wiki.

I feel that this Wikiversity/Wikijunior model could prove valuable
again in the development of new types of WMF reference works, whether
they may be also hosted as subprojects of Wikibooks or perhaps of
another project.

Thanks,
Pharos

> And yes, Laura, to you

Re: [Foundation-l] Assume Good Faith and Don't Bite Newbees

[Pharos]

I believe that a "verified" account system for GLAMs specifically
doing encyclopedic work (not for businesses, etc) would not be too
difficult to work out, and would be well worth any such effort.

Such systems, though nothing is 100%, have worked quite well for many
other websites.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 6:38 AM, Gerard Meijssen
 wrote:
> Hoi,
> When they are blocked like it happened with the Tropenmuseum, I will ask the
> person who did this to reconsider... There has to be a reason for a block
> and these organisations do what they do and they do it very well. The notion
> that a block on sight is always good is  not reasonable.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
>
>
> 2009/12/5 John Vandenberg 
>
>> On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Gerard Meijssen
>>  wrote:
>> > Hoi,
>> > I want to give you two different group / company accounts that I think
>> are
>> > valuable..
>> >
>> > Tropenmuseum... If you do not know about it, read the Tropenmuseum
>> article
>> > on Commons
>> > Calcey - a company from Sri Lanka has adopted the localisation of the
>> > Sinhala language. We are really grateful for their work.
>> >
>> > There are more great examples of companies, groups that make a difference
>> > ... I would like to know more good examples..
>>
>> You say that now, but what happens when they are blocked.
>>
>> Or maybe they say something that sounds like a legal threat; are they
>> speaking for the company?
>>
>> --
>> John Vandenberg
>>
>> ___
>> 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] Assume Good Faith and Don't Bite Newbees

[Pharos]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 12:28 AM, Liam Wyatt  wrote:
> Practically speaking, how would such a verification system work? Would it be
> a specific OTRS queue (similar to the way we get proof that a photo's
> copyright release is correct) or would it be an email to Cary at the WMF
> (similar to the way we make sure people with specific tools are over a
> certain age)? Or, would it be a different thing altogether (e.g. the
> verification process is via the local chapter who "vouches" for the GLAM)?
>
> -Liam [[witty lama]]

Perhaps we could start out modestly with just a handful of GLAMs, run
through a chapters "vouching" system, and move on from there.

If Wikimedia Australia were able to take the initiative on this and
start a pilot project, I personally think that would be fantastic.

Thanks,
Pharos

>
> wittylama.com/blog
> Peace, love & metadata
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
>
>> The spirit of the one person per account policy was to prevent people from
>> disclaiming responsibility by claiming another person did it. I feel that
>> allowing accounts for GLAMs would not violate the intent of the policy, but
>> suggest that the account be required to verify, maintain a valid email and
>> provide the Foundation with the identities of the authorized users.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 
>> From: Pharos 
>> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 
>> Sent: Wed, December 9, 2009 4:16:54 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Assume Good Faith and Don't Bite Newbees
>>
>> I believe that a "verified" account system for GLAMs specifically
>> doing encyclopedic work (not for businesses, etc) would not be too
>> difficult to work out, and would be well worth any such effort.
>>
>> Such systems, though nothing is 100%, have worked quite well for many
>> other websites.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Pharos
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 6:38 AM, Gerard Meijssen
>>  wrote:
>> > Hoi,
>> > When they are blocked like it happened with the Tropenmuseum, I will ask
>> the
>> > person who did this to reconsider... There has to be a reason for a block
>> > and these organisations do what they do and they do it very well. The
>> notion
>> > that a block on sight is always good is  not reasonable.
>> > Thanks,
>> >     GerardM
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > 2009/12/5 John Vandenberg 
>> >
>> >> On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Gerard Meijssen
>> >>  wrote:
>> >> > Hoi,
>> >> > I want to give you two different group / company accounts that I think
>> >> are
>> >> > valuable..
>> >> >
>> >> > Tropenmuseum... If you do not know about it, read the Tropenmuseum
>> >> article
>> >> > on Commons
>> >> > Calcey - a company from Sri Lanka has adopted the localisation of the
>> >> > Sinhala language. We are really grateful for their work.
>> >> >
>> >> > There are more great examples of companies, groups that make a
>> difference
>> >> > ... I would like to know more good examples..
>> >>
>> >> You say that now, but what happens when they are blocked.
>> >>
>> >> Or maybe they say something that sounds like a legal threat; are they
>> >> speaking for the company?
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> John Vandenberg
>> >>
>> >> ___
>> >> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ___
>> 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] Wikimedia and Environment

[Pharos]

Might I suggest that we're getting a bit off-track here with these
broad debates on climate change issues?

I think if we're considering spending $20k/yr on environmental
initiatives, then the most effective way for us and the path most in
line with Wikimedia's core mission would be to spend that money
directly on special efforts to increase high-quality free content
about environmental topics on Wikipedia and the other projects.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Aryeh Gregor
 wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Tim Starling  wrote:
>> It's a big deal already, and by the time it becomes an even bigger
>> deal, it will be too late to act. The global climate takes decades to
>> respond to changes in forcing factors. Even if we stopped all
>> greenhouse gas emissions now, the earth would continue to warm for
>> decades because the heat capacity of the ocean slows down the lower
>> atmosphere's response to increased radiation.
>
> Then we agree that cutting greenhouse gases is not a very effective solution?
>
>> The World Health Organisation disagrees:
>>
>> http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/
>> <http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2007/9789241595674_eng.pdf>
>
> I said "directly".  Militaries kill people directly.  Global warming
> kills people indirectly.
>
>> You just sound gullible when you recycle such claims without showing
>> any awareness the opposing viewpoint.
>
> I don't think I'm recycling claims.  I have a fairly unusual view on
> global warming, actually.
>
>> Like what? Nuclear fusion? Talk about pie in the sky.
>
> Or just more effective photovoltaic cells.  Or, well, anything other
> than fossil fuels.  Solar and wind power, for instance, are much more
> viable now than they were thirty years ago.  Wikipedia says global
> photovoltaic power production was 500 kW in 1977.  It's not a stretch
> to suppose that they or other energy sources will be much more viable
> thirty years from now.  In fact, it would be very surprising if we
> didn't have much better alternatives to fossil fuels by then than we
> have now.
>
>> And cause famine due to a reduction in tropical rainfall?
>>
>> http://edoc.mpg.de/376757
>
> Sure, maybe.  Maybe not.  Everything has costs and benefits.  Blocking
> sunlight is a scheme that can be deployed very quickly and cheaply,
> and could not just completely stop future warming, but reverse warming
> that's already occurred before deployment.  Cutting CO2 is immensely
> more expensive, slower, and less effective.  You were just telling me
> how cutting carbon will never stop warming, and many people will die
> to famine if warming doesn't stop.  Doesn't that imply people will die
> of famine either way?  The costs need to be weighed against the
> benefits.
>
> Of course, the experts at large-scale cost-benefit analysis are
> economists, not climatologists.  One panel of economists that set out
> to systematically examine the issue based on data provided by
> climatologists is the Copenhagen Consensus:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Consensus
> http://fixtheclimate.com/
>
> The Copenhagen Consensus' Climate Change Project asked a panel of five
> economists (three of them Nobel laureates) to consider the costs and
> benefits of various schemes to mitigate or prevent global warming.
> They took climatologists' predictions for granted, and all agreed that
> anthropogenic global warming is occurring.  The number one solution
> was to reflect more sunlight (by cloud whitening).  Seven of the
> fifteen schemes involved carbon-cutting; they placed at positions nine
> through fifteen.
>
> The Copenhagen Consensus was and is controversial, of course.  But the
> issue is far from open-and-shut.  Even if cutting GHG emission is part
> of the solution, it's not at all clear that it makes sense to spend
> money on it now, rather than invest in alternative energy so we can
> make larger-scale cuts later.
>
> Are you aware of any groups of experts that have done a systematic
> cost-benefit analysis on the various options, and reached opposite
> conclusions to the Copenhagen Consensus?  "Experts" here means, say,
> economists, not climatologists.  (And preferably not political
> appointees either.)  Climatologists are experts at predicting climate
> outcomes, not evaluating the quality-of-life effects of those
> outcomes.  They have no expertise in that.  Economics is the
> discipline concerned with welfare assessment.
>
>
> By the way, you didn't actually address the point of my last post.  If
> involuntarily releasing greenhouse g

Re: [Foundation-l] I'm here to request a new Wikimedia project

[Pharos]

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 11:12 AM, Casey Brown  wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 11:02 AM, Tyler  wrote:
>>  I was just wondering, how would you like to start an almanac, guys? That 
>> would be neat, a wiki almanac.
>>
>
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects> :-)

Our friends at the allied project OpenStreetMap ("The Free Wiki World
Map") have gone a long way in this direction, and you probably want to
check their project out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap
http://www.openstreetmap.org/

Here's a great recent feature from the BBC about 'The volunteer
mappers who helped Haiti':

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8517057.stm

Thanks,
Pharos

> --
> 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

Re: [Foundation-l] I'm here to request a new Wikimedia project

[Pharos]

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 12:45 PM, Bod Notbod  wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 5:42 PM, Pharos  wrote:
>
>>>>  I was just wondering, how would you like to start an almanac, guys? That 
>>>> would be neat, a wiki
>
>> Our friends at the allied project OpenStreetMap ("The Free Wiki World
>> Map") have gone a long way in this direction, and you probably want to
>> check their project out.
>
> You've baffled me there. What's the overlap between a map and an almanac?

If one has just gotten up after oversleeping on a snowed-in Saturday
morning, the distinction between "atlas" and almanac" tends to get
blurred :)

Still, OpenStreetMap is a fantastic project, I wonder if they would
like to join the Wikimedia family one day.

Thanks,
Pharos

> ___
> 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] Discussion about proposal for multilingual Wiktionary

[Pharos]

OmegaWiki was originally intended to be a multilingual Wiktionary project...

http://www.omegawiki.org

Has there been any thought on bringing it back somehow into the Wikimedia fold?

Thanks,
Pharos

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 12:32 PM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> I am cleaning Requests for new languages [1] at Meta. Some of the
> requests are clearly out of the Language committee scope, and they
> need wider discussion for concluding them.
>
> One of such requests is for multilingual Wiktionary [2]. Please,
> discuss here (at foundation-l; I am sending this message to
> wiktionary-l to poke those who are not at foundation-l) or on wiki at
> the page [2].
>
> [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
> [2] - 
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wiktionary_multilingual
>
> ___
> 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] Discussion about proposal for multilingual Wikibooks

[Pharos]

A multilingual Wikibooks would be valuable to the extent that it would
focus on smaller languages which don't have their own language project
yet.

This makes perhaps more sense with Wikibooks than other projects
because each "book" is relatively autonomous and of significant
educational value in its own right, and even if someone were to donate
a textbook in a rather obscure language I don't think that we should
turn such a gift away.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 12:32 PM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> I am cleaning Requests for new languages [1] at Meta. Some of the
> requests are clearly out of the Language committee scope, and they
> need wider discussion for concluding them.
>
> One of such requests is for multilingual Wikibooks [2]. Please,
> discuss here (at foundation-l; I am sending this message to textbook-l
> to poke those who are not at foundation-l) or on wiki at the page [2].
>
> [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
> [2] - 
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikibooks_Multilingual
>
> ___
> 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] Discussion about proposal for multilingual Wikinews

[Pharos]

The proposal in this instance seems to be for merging all of the
Wikinews language editions into one mega-project, which seems to me an
exceedingly radical and perhaps counterproductive step.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 12:32 PM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> I am cleaning Requests for new languages [1] at Meta. Some of the
> requests are clearly out of the Language committee scope, and they
> need wider discussion for concluding them.
>
> One of such requests is for multilingual Wikinews [2]. Please, discuss
> here (at foundation-l; I am sending this message to wikinews-l to poke
> those who are not at foundation-l) or on wiki at the page [2].
>
> [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
> [2] - 
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikinews_multilingual
>
> ___
> 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 name "Old Wikisource"

[Pharos]

On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 3:16 AM, Amir E. Aharoni
 wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 08:20, Milos Rancic  wrote:
>
>> (Please, continue to discuss at foundation-l.)
>>
>> I think that the term "Old Wikisource" and wiki abbreviation
>> "oldwikisource" is really bad for the purpose of Wikisource (hosting
>> "the rest" of material). Something like "Multilingual Wikisource"
>> would be better (or whatever).
>>
>> So, may I ask fold from Wikisource to find a better name, and fill the
>> but at Bugzilla for changing the abbreviation?
>>
>>
> You are right. I just noticed this name a couple of days ago and i also
> think that it's unfortunate.
>
> Be bold: raise this issue at
> http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Scriptorium and open the bug at
> bugzilla without waiting for too long.

I agree, "Multilingual Wikisource" would be quite an improvement.

Thanks,
Pharos

> --
> אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> Amir Elisha Aharoni
>
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
>
> "We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
> ___
> 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] Chinese languages (was: Changes in Language committee practice: ancient and constructed languages)

[Pharos]

On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 7:56 AM, Aphaia  wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 9:42 PM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
>> On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 5:18 AM, Aphaia  wrote:
>>> I find here a wrong assupmtion.
>>> First wrong assumption is "Written Chinese is not very different for
>>> millenniums", they aren't same, and consequently Edo period Japanese
>>> who were taught Classical Chinese already found difficulty to
>>> understand the contemporary which was similar to the modern one.
>>> Second wrong assumption is "person who knows Classical Chinese has to
>>> know modern Chinese." In East Asia, Classical Chinese had been lingua
>>> franca of the literate for millenniums, and there are many written
>>> sources, the earliest of them are dated at mid 19th C. And it is still
>>> taught in some countries including Japan. I, as a highly educated
>>> Japanese, read Classical Chinese to some extent, but I don't
>>> understand modern Chinese beyond the tourist level. I know many people
>>> who can enjoy zh-classical-Wikipedia but cannot (modern) zhwiki.
>>> So I object your statement and it wouldn't be just a fork of ZhWS but
>>> preferable to be a multilingual project.
>>
>> Yes, we have problems with Chinese languages and it is not just about
>> Classical Chinese. And if you have some good sinologist around, please
>> connect me with him or her.
>>
>> The logic behind rejecting Classical Chinese Wikisource is:
>>
>> 1) Wikisource can have sources in various languages. It is useful not
>> to duplicate efforts with living languages (and put Japanese text on
>> French Wikisource), but, for example, the logical place for texts in
>> Slavenoserbian [1] is Serbian Wikisource. Relation between Anglo-Saxon
>> and English is similar. According to this premise, Classical Chinese
>> should go to Chinese Wikisource.
>>
>> 2) Just those ancient languages which are significantly different
>> structurally in *written form* (as Wikimedia projects are still about
>> written language) should be considered for having a separate
>> Wikisource. According to this, Slavenoserbian and Anglo-Saxon would
>> get projects, while it will be problematic for Classical Chinese: it
>> looks to me that native Chinese speakers treat Classical Chinese as
>> not so different, while other East Asians treat it so.
>>
>> 3) Just those ancient languages which don't have modern language which
>> speakers consist approximately a superset of those who know that
>> classical language -- should be considered for having a separate
>> project. Every single person who knows Slavoserbian knows Serbian,
>> which is true for Anglo-Saxon, too. But, it is not true for Classical
>> Chinese.
>>
>> 4) Just those ancient languages which had significant productions
>> should be considered to have separate Wikisource. Anglo-Saxon had
>> significant production, Slavoserbian had, and, of course, Classical
>> Chinese had, too.
>>
>> 5) We need [default] interface in a living language. The most logical
>> choice for Classical Chinese is modern Chinese written in Traditional
>> Hanji. In conjunction with (1) and (2), it would create a subset-fork
>> of Chinese Wikisource.
>
>> BTW, we are in a wiki world. Everything is changeable, but we need
>> good reasons for changes. I would like to hear answers/confirmations
>> on the next questions/claims:
>>
>> a) For Chinese speakers: Do you consider Classical Chinese as a
>> language different from your native one or you are fully able to read
>> Classical Chinese texts? Probably, it is somewhere in the middle, but,
>> please, explain it.
>>
>> b) I suppose that it is not so hard to make a link from Japanese
>> Wikipedia to some text on Chinese Wikisource. Actually, it would be
>> similar if it would be about a separate Classical Chinese Wikisource.
>>
>> c) Are Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean etc. Wikimedian are able to
>> contribute to Chinese Wikisource. If not, what is the problem?
>
> Orthography is a big problem. I think you have known it already on
> Serbian language - two different scripts are used and what it evoked.
> We are in a similar situation.
>
> At this moment Classical Chinese sources are hosted on zhwikisource
> whose default is simplified Chinese. Formerly some of them were in
> traditional and then we at Japanese wikis had no problem, since it is
> quasi similar the orthography we were educated in. But with simplified
> we have a big problem.

Co

Re: [Foundation-l] list o' image donations?

[Pharos]

I believe this is the page that Phoebe is looking for:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Batch_uploading

Thanks,
Pharos

On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 8:28 PM, Michael Peel  wrote:
> Also see the 'content partnerships' page on the Wikimedia UK wiki
> that I've put together:
>
> http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cultural_partnerships/Content_partnerships
>
> Additions are welcome.
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>
> On 16 Mar 2010, at 23:33, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> They are not "donations" they are images shared as part of a
>> partnership.
>> The partnership part expresses that care is expected of us to
>> handle this
>> material. It is vital that we produce the wonderful statistics as
>> created by
>> Magnus Manske. We have to refer back to the GLAM not only as a
>> courtesy but
>> also to provide provenance for the material that we show. Check out
>> the info
>> it produces for the Tropenmuseum.. Actually we should provide such
>> courtesy
>> if they are our partner or not ..
>>
>> http://toolserver.org/%7Emagnus/glamorous.php?doit=1&category=Images
>> +from+the+Tropenmuseum&use_globalusage=1&ns0=1
>> Thanks,
>>      GerardM
>>
>> On 16 March 2010 23:30, Ziko van Dijk  wrote:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>> Thanks for the question, Phoebe. Indeed, maybe it is better to
>>> begin a
>>> new page like "Commons:Donations" and have there a list in
>>> chronological order.
>>> Kind regards
>>> Ziko
>>>
>>>
>>> 2010/3/16 phoebe ayers :
>>>> On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Casey Brown 
>>> wrote:
>>>>> On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 4:04 PM, phoebe ayers
>>>>> 
>>> wrote:
>>>>>> Is there an list somewhere of major image donations/collections
>>>>>> that
>>>>>> have been uploaded to Commons in the last few years? E.g., the
>>>>>> Bundesarchiv donation, Antweb, etc.
>>>>>
>>>>> It looks there's a list, but it's not updated.
>>>>> <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Commons_partnerships>
>>>>> (That's the category, also see the first page in it.)
>>>>
>>>> Thanks Casey. I wonder if "partnerships" is really the right
>>>> all-encompassing term for that kind of large donation to Commons?
>>>> Anyway, that's the kind of page I was looking for -- it just
>>>> needs to
>>>> be updated! Thanks.
>>>>
>>>> -- Phoebe
>>>>
>>>> ___
>>>> foundation-l mailing list
>>>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/
>>>> foundation-l
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Ziko van Dijk
>>> NL-Silvolde
>>>
>>> ___
>>> 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
>

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] MMORPG and Wikimedia

[Pharos]

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 3:08 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 7 May 2010 16:08, teun spaans  wrote:
>
>> this statement surprises me.
>> Why was the foundation involved in the localization of Freecol, a game with
>> little or no historic information (compared with other historic games such
>> as europa universalis)?
>
>
> translatewiki is not a WMF project, but it does have strong
> associations with Wikimedia in its inspiration and volunteer base. It
> does translations for a lot more projects than MediaWiki.

I would maybe say that translatewiki is part of the "wiki knowledge movement" :)

Thanks,
Pharos

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] On Wikimania locations

[Pharos]

I don't think I agree with Greg's idea, but let me make an alternate suggestion:

That to avoid efforts being wasted on failed bids, we ask bidders to
include plans for a downsized-budget version of each Wikimania
proposal that could serve for a regional-scale Wikimedia conference.

Then, worthy bids that do not win Wikimania could still be funded and
supported by the Wikimedia Foundation as regional conferences.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 8:32 PM, Gregory Maxwell  wrote:
> Wikimania 2011 has come, yet again another location in the middle-east.
>
> It seems to me that every major populated geographic region has a
> multitude of sites which could create viable wikimania candidacies—
> and this has certainly been supported by the past applications.
>
> A leading application takes an enormous amount of work, expenditure of
> political energy, etc. on the part of the proposing team— work that
> could perhaps be applied to advancing the Wikimedia mission in other
> ways for candidacies which are ultimately fruitless.
>
> I believe that if you were to take the best candidate from each region
> and compare among them you'd find them all to be excellent options and
> ultimately end up choosing based little details and preferences, often
> ones mostly outside of the control of the applicants.
>
> Accordingly I believe it would be better if we pre-announced a
> preferred geography for the candidacies each year.
>
> Effort could then be conserved for producing really excellent
> proposals in those years when a candidacy is most likely to be
> successful. This could also be expected to result in better
> applications.
>
> ___
> 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] Renaming "Flagged Protections"

[Pharos]

On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Philippe Beaudette
 wrote:
> tbh, I'm very fond of "Double check".  It seems to imply exactly what
> we want: the edit isn't being accepted automatically, nor rejected,
> but simply getting a second look.  It's fairly neutral in tone, and
> understandable to the average person.

I agree.  Simple words are good.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

> Philippe
> (speaking in my capacity as a volunteer, and not as an employee of the
> Foundation)
>
> On May 23, 2010, at 9:14 AM, Still Waterising wrote:
>
>> I think "Pending Revisions" is an excellent name. No need to look
>> further.
>>
>> ___
>> 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] "The problem with Wikipedia..."

[Pharos]

This is the best source of the "zeroth law" of Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654/Raul%27s_laws#Laws_by_others

I believe people have tried to track down the original coiner, but
noone really knows.

Thanks,
Pharos

2010/6/17 Jon Harald Søby :
> Yes, it's communism that works in theory but not in practice. :-)
>
> 2010/6/17 Dan Rosenthal 
>
>> Isn't the quote backwards? "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only
>> works in practice. It could never work in theory"?
>>
>> -Dan
>> On Jun 17, 2010, at 4:03 PM, Sue Gardner wrote:
>>
>> > "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could
>> > never work in practice."
>> >
>> > I've seen that quote attributed to Jimmy, and also to Miikka Ryokas,
>> > quoted by Noam Cohen in his NY Times story about Virginia Tech. But
>> > neither of them, I think, originated it.
>> >
>> > Does anyone have a good attribution for first use of that quote?  (I'm
>> > using it in a presentation and want to attribute if I can.)
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> > Sue
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Sue Gardner
>> > Executive Director
>> > Wikimedia Foundation
>> >
>> > 415 839 6885 office
>> > 415 816 9967 cell
>> >
>> > Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
>> > the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!
>> >
>> > 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
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Jon Harald Søby
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by
> ___
> 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] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia"

[Pharos]

What about wikipediajr.org ?

And so we would have en.wikipediajr.org, fr.wikipediajr.org etc.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 10:04 AM, Ziko van Dijk  wrote:
> Thanks for your very useful thoughts, Samuel. They lead us to these
> two key questions:
>
> - Create new Wikipedias, or a new project: What would make sense? If
> they were new Wikipedias, we would potentially double the list with
> interwiki links ("in other languages"). I prefer a new project.
>
> - Scope and name: Maybe it would practically make no big difference
> whether the project is called "simple" or "for kids". Poor readers and
> adult beginning readers (natives or not) tend to read texts that are
> meant for children anyway. It could make a difference in promoting,
> though. A scope question can also be whether certain kinds of explicit
> images are allowed.
>
> Before beginning such a project, it may be good to have a more
> elaborate concept than there has been when the Wikipedias started. But
> even before that, the Foundation should tell whether such a project
> has any chance to be accepted, or will be banned for being essentially
> Wikipedia in already existing languages.
>
> Hey, I just googled and found that there is already a proposal at Meta. :-)
>
> Kind regards
> Ziko
>
> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Wikikids
>
>
> 2010/6/24 Samuel J Klein :
>> Hi Ziko,
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 8:41 AM, Ziko van Dijk  
>> wrote:
>>
>>> In the discussion, the question of creating a Wikipedia in simple
>>> German came up.
>>
>> This would be useful.
>>
>>> As we know, to-day Wikimedia language committee policies prohibit a
>>> new Wikipedia in a language that already has a Wikipedia.
>>
>> To be more precise: the language committee was tasked with determining
>> when to start new language projects.  It was never asked to consider
>> other sorts of new projects.  So either "simple German" is a new
>> language, or it's out of the current scope of the committee.
>>
>> Overall, we've never decided whether a "simple" or "children's
>> encyclopedia" should be a separate project with its own root domain,
>> or another set of 'languages' that show up as an interlanguage link or
>> as FOO.wikipedia.org .
>>
>>
>>> The existence of a Wikipedia in simple English refers to the fact that it
>>> had been created before that policy of 2006.
>>
>> Simple English is quite useful, and used for groups developing their
>> literacy skills at all ages, including many communities learning
>> English as a Second Language.  Presumably the same could be true of
>> any other language.
>>
>>
>>> There are a number of ideas and initiatives to create online
>>> encyclopedias in "simple language", in and outside the Wikimedia
>>> world. Wouldn't it be suitable to reconsider and try to give those
>>> initiatives a place? Who else is more capable to create and support
>>> such encyclopedias than we are?
>>
>> +1
>>
>> My thoughts:
>> * I would love to see similar projects in at least German, French,
>> Spanish, and Dutch -- languages in which there are already communities
>> working on encyclopedic knowledge in simplified language.
>> * We should have a new process for requesting a simple-language
>> version of a project.
>> * We should resolve standard practice for naming them, and decide if
>> this should be a new top-level Project (like wikikids) or a variation
>> on the normal language code.
>>
>> Considering the historical role of the children's encyclopedia, we
>> might consider rescoping "simple" as "for children" -- this could help
>> to increase participation and use, and clarify the role of these
>> projects.
>>
>> SJ
>>
>> ___
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Ziko van Dijk
> Niederlande
>
> ___
> 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] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia"

[Pharos]

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Aaron Adrignola
 wrote:
> It may be relevant to note that http://wikijunior.org currently redirects
> to http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior .
>
> From what I've heard, Wikijunior was supposed to become its own separate
> project at some point.  Now, that is Wikibooks-related and not
> Wikipedia-related, but if one were looking for a combined edition of all the
> projects in each language, for children, you've got the domain name there,
> owned by Wikimedia.
>
> -- Aaron Adrignola

"a combined edition of all the projects in each language, for children"

That's an interesting conception, right there.

Thanks,
Pharos

> ___
> 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] Umberto Eco's interview

[Pharos]

This is just wonderful.

Bravo, Italian Wikinews!

Thanks,
Pharos

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 7:15 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo)  wrote:
> Ilario Valdelli, 04/08/2010 10:37:
>> A translation can be found here:
>> http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Intervista_a_Umberto_Eco/Traduzione
>
> Yes, could someone publish it on en.news?
>
> Przykuta, 04/08/2010 11:04:
>  > Eco is known in science world as semiologist. Next time ask him about
> "disambig system" ;)
>
> There were 10 kB of suggested questions. :-p
> http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinotizie:Storie_in_preparazione/Intervista_a_Umberto_Eco
> But actually there's a related answer: «In those cases where elements
> are more disperse, instead, the total and collective categorization is
> impossible.»
> http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Intervista_a_Umberto_Eco/Traduzione#_11
>
> Nemo
>
> ___
> 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] Umberto Eco's interview

[Pharos]

I presume the interview with Jimbo was in English?  This would
probably be a good opportunity for collaboration with English
Wikinews...

Thanks,
Pharos

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Cristian Consonni
 wrote:
> 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
>

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] How many books are there in the world?

[Pharos]

On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 10:19 PM, Tracy Poff  wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 8:18 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Bod Notbod  wrote:
>>> in particular, I didn't know that multiple books (entirely unrelated
>>> books) have shared ISBNs. So, if nothing else, it might impact...
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ISBN
>>
>> AFAIK, this is a fairly uncommon problem; I've never run across it in
>> 6+ years of working with lots of books & library catalogs every day.
>
> It varies by publisher--for example, in my experience, Harlequin (a
> publisher of romance novels) seems to have used all of its ISBNs *at
> least* twice. It's a real problem, if you expect an ISBN to be a
> unique ID for a book, and worse if you wanted to it be unique to
> edition or so on. Well, it's a minor issue from out point of view, I
> guess. How would Mediawiki scale to 130 million articles? Gotta cover
> everything...

The number of notable subjects covered in all those books is much much
greater than  >> 130 million.

Thanks,
Pharos

> ___
> 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] $20 TV-based en:wp reader

[Pharos]

This is a pretty great embodiment of our copyleftism, that's for sure.

BTW, here's the guy's website:

http://humaneinfo.com/

Thanks,
Pharos

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 6:07 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> http://www.tomsguide.com/us/humane-reader-wikipedia-console,news-7706.html
>
> Just a tiny gadget that hooks to your TV to display stuff and holds a
> copy of en:wp. Nice reuse :-)
>
>
> - d.
>
> ___
> 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] Wiki-Conference NYC August 28-29

[Pharos]

Our 2nd annual Wiki-Conference NYC will be held over the weekend of
August 28-29 2010, hosted by ITP at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts,
and also supported by Free Culture @ NYU and Wikimedia New York City.

Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner will be giving a
keynote, and we will also have a second keynote speaker TBA.

There's still plenty of time to join a panel, or to propose a
lightning talk or an open space session.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Wiki-Conference

Register for the Wiki-Conference here:

http://bit.ly/wikinyc

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)
Wikimedia New York City
http://nyc.wikimedia.org

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Signal languages Wikimedia projects

[Pharos]

Greg, this has nothing to do with cochlear implants.

The deaf activist community is not a monolith, and the SignWriting
folks are not advocates of isolationism at all.

They simply believe in bilingualism, and that attaining literacy in
one's everyday language is valuable in itself, and should also be a
great aid in improving literacy in English and other spoken languages.
 Several SignWriting studies have focused on its use as an educational
tool that increases student's real literacy in spoken languages.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 10:57 AM, Gregory Maxwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 2:14 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [snip]
>> Many people who are deaf have not learned to read and write in their own
>> language.
> [snip]
>> It is true that many deaf people do not know how to write their own
>> language.
>
> I think the shifting definition of 'own language'. In discussions of
> other languages which follow national borders 'own language' has been
> defined to be the language spoken by a persons ancestors, regardless
> of what a person prefers to use. Here we must be using some other
> meaning since the overwhelming majority of deaf children are born to
> hearing parents who do not speak sign language.
>
> I know some deaf English readers/writers who would be very insulted if
> you claimed English was not their language.
>
> There are some deaf advocates who claim that deaf people should not
> interact with the hearing world, not in person, not online. These are
> a fringe minority, a vocal minority, but a fringe minority none the
> less. There are people who argue that deafness is equivalent to
> national, cultural, or racial identity and that attempting to cure
> deafness is akin to attempting to cure blackness. (really!) We should
> not allow these people to set our policy.
>
> [snip]
>> It is because of the lack of of a script that the Deaf communities
>> have a problem retaining much of the vocabulary that goes out of fashion.
>
> I'm glad you admit that they lack a script. That was basically the
> core of my statement: They do not, effectively, have a script today.
> As such it is unreasonable for us to expect that we can do much to
> help real speakers of these languages today.
>
> We can help people who are working on creating a script for signed
> language by supporting it in a project. But we have no idea if and
> when whatever script we support will actually be useful to a
> significant number of speakers of these languages. Because script
> support is so wrapped up with pro-isolation advocacy (along with
> mandatory sign language education and forbidding cochlear implants, as
> they are all necessary components for isolation) it is a politically
> loaded area.
>
> There are also competing systems. I do not believe we can decide
> whether SignWriting or Stokoe's notation system is more desirable,
> though certainly the latter would present fewer technical limitations.
>
>> It
>> is because of this that their culture is to be given to the next generation
>> by rote and consequently much is lost.
>
> I do not generally consider it to be beneficial to have groups of
> people who are unable to communicate fluently with most of the world.
> But I admit that there is merit to the claim that cultural things are
> lost when a pre-existing state adopts a world language.   But in the
> case of the deaf?
>
> The world has enough isolation.  On the Internet no one even needs to
> know that you are deaf… unless you have the misfortune of being raised
> in one of the few strongly pro-isolationist deaf communities and did
> not obtain fluency in a common written language.
>
> Wikimedia's mission is to promote knowledge, we believe we can do that
> best by supporting the many languages which people prefer to use, but
> Wikimedia projects should not be a tool for promoting isolation. Not
> nationalist isolation, not cultural isolation, and not the isolation
> of the deaf. Accomplishing the former without venturing into the
> latter requires careful action and careful consideration of who we
> allow to advise us.
>
> I don't really care to carry on an argument over this much further. My
> last real interaction with the 'deaf community' was almost 8 years
> ago, and I have too many other projects in progress to worry about how
> we might be contributing to the isolation of the deaf (or others).  I
> simply do not want the participants here believing that creating a
> SignWriting Wikipedia would help the deaf *today* as it would not. In
> the near term it would help SignWriting advocates, just as Lojban
> wi

Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename

[Pharos]

If the 'mo' language code is deprecated, then why not ro-cyrl.wikipedia.org ?

Thanks,
Pharos

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 8:04 PM, Brion Vibber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> For quick background, it's pretty painful to rename a database in our
> system, and we currently have a lot of bits in our configuration that
> make automatic relationships between the database name and the domain
> name, so this has delayed renaming of some language subdomains for a while.
>
> It's not impossible to have them be different, just fairly awkward. :)
>
> I'd like to get these done soon, but before we get started, I want to
> make sure the queue is complete and ready to go. I've currently got four
> language code renames that I see being requested...
>
> == Aromanian ==
>
> roa-rup.wikipedia.org -> rup.wikipedia.org
> roa-rup.wiktionary.org -> rup.wiktionary.org
>
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15988
>
> ISO-639-2 code 'rup' was added in September 2005, and can supersede the
> generic 'roa' code with 'rup' subtag.
>
> This seems pretty uncontroversial. Existing domains and interwikis would
> be redirected.
>
>
> == Low German ==
>
> nds.wikipedia.org -> nds-de.wikipedia.org
> nds.wikibooks.org -> nds-de.wikibooks.org
> nds.wikiquote.org -> nds-de.wikiquote.org
> nds.wiktionary.org -> nds-de.wiktionary.org
>
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8540
>
> Reasoning: Disambiguation of country variants to create a portal site
> (nds-nl.wikipedia.org exists as well).
>
> The original request is almost 2 years old and didn't seem to have any
> clear consensus; is this still desired?
>
> Creating a portal site could cause difficulties with URL compatibility,
> and I don't really recommend making this change without clear consensus
> from the community there.
>
> Note that nds.wikipedia.org includes a link on the front page to
> nds-nl.wikipedia.org.
>
>
> == Moldovan ==
>
> mo.wikipedia.org -> mo-cyrl.wikipedia.org
> mo.wiktionary.org -> mo-cyrl.wiktionary.org
>
> The official Moldovan language is the same as Romanian, using Latin
> script and same orthography as on ro.wikipedia.org. Latin script was
> officially adopted in 1989, replacing Soviet-era Cyrillic script; use of
> Cyrillic script is still "official" in an unrecognized,
> lightly-populated breakaway region but if people there use it, they
> don't seem to edit Wikipedia...
>
> The 'mo' language code has been officially deprecated from ISO 639-1/2
> as of November 3, 2008; "Moldovan" in general use is just Romanian, and
> is covered by ro.wikipedia.org.
>
> mo.wikipedia.org has not actually been edited since December 2006.
> mo.wiktionary.org seems to have 4 definition pages, which only
> contain translations (no definitions!) Being inactive, these projects
> could be closed in addition to / instead of the rename.
>
> Use of tag 'mo-cyrl' would follow existing IANA-registered language
> subtags such as 'bs-Cyrl' and 'bs-Latn' for Cyrillic and Latin script
> variants.
>
> Most likely, for compatibility we would redirect the existing 'mo' URLs
> to the new 'mo-cyrl' ones, but they would now be visibly marked by the
> subtag as being "yes we know, it's Cyrillic here". If we're going to
> lock the site as well, adding a sitenotice pointing to the Romanian wiki
> is probably wise.
>
>
> == Belorusian "old orthography" ==
>
> be-x-old.wikipedia.org -> be-tarask.wikipedia.org
>
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9823
>
> Some time ago we swapped around the Belorusian Wikipedia, moving the
> previous version which was primarily using a non-official orthography,
> from 'be' to 'be-x-old', and re-establishing be.wikipedia.org using the
> official state orthography.
>
> There was later a request to rename 'be-x-old' (using a non-standard
> code) to 'be-tarask', a IANA-registered subtag which is rather more
> descriptive. IMHO this change should not be terribly controversial -- if
> we're not closing it, we may as well give it its official RFC
> 4646-registered code.
>
> Old domain and interwikis would be redirected.
>
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.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] 2008 Annual Fundraiser - Going into Phase 2

[Pharos]

I think it's good that this started after the election.

We would lose if we competed with Obama donations...

As it is, I think some of the donors may be looking for new places to give.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 2:35 PM, Chad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 3:54 AM, Przykuta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> > > For those who haven't seen it yet:
>> > > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics
>> >
>> > Very neat!
>> >
>> > Looking at tab 2 (Number of contributions):
>> > In 2007 from day 14 and onwards the number of gifts per day more than
>> > doubled.
>> > Is it known why that happened? Just curious.
>> >
>> > Erik Zachte
>> >
>>
>> So, Obama has won election in the USA, people are more happy (maybe not
>> only part of people in USA) - they want to pay for that ;)
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_altruism
>>
>> they can't pay to Obama and find other ways to pay for this (their)
>> victory. If you are happy you are able to give more.
>>
>> Maybe :)
>>
>> In 2007 after 2 weeks banner has been changed.
>>
>> przykuta
>>
>
> Great theory for 2008, except for the whole economy is screwed,
> high employment, mortgage foreclosure and general "nobody has
> any money to spare" thing.
>
> -Chad
> ___
> 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] EN Wikipedia Editing Statistics

[Pharos]

On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 1:12 PM, Nathan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Wow, someone had more than 10,000 edits in February of 2002.
>
> Does it look to anyone else like the first five months of 2007 and 2008 were
> very busy, followed by a drop for the rest of the year? If that is whats
> happened, any theories as to why?
>
> Nathan

Summer break for students would be the obvious reason.

Or just good weather, generally.

You might find the inverse if you look only at Southern Hemisphere IPs.

Thanks,
Pharos

> On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 5:32 AM, Robert Rohde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> Because myself and others have been frustrated by the lack of good
>> stats on the number of active editors on the English Wikipedia, I have
>> compiled some stats on the editing frequency on enwiki:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_frequency
>>
>> I am going to forgo any extensive analysis for now.  But I will say
>> that these trends mostly mirror trends seen elsewhere, with a peak in
>> early 2007 followed by a decline and then leveling out as we go
>> towards the present.
>>
>> In September, 130,000 registered users and 525,000 anons made at least
>> one edit to an article.  If you define "active editors" as those
>> making at least 20 article edits per month then 14000 registered users
>> and 6000 anons met that threshold in September.
>>
>> -Robert Rohde
>>
>> ___
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Your donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation
> today: http://www.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] EN Wikipedia Editing Statistics

[Pharos]

On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 1:24 PM, Nathan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> If that were the major reason, wouldn't you expect to see a return to former
> levels in the last four months?
>
> Nathan

Not necessarily.  We have to think about psychological dynamics here.

It may well be the case that many students "quit" Wikipedia for the
summer, and only take it up again after winter break, when they are
more settled into their academic routine than in the fall.

Thanks,
Pharos

> On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 1:17 PM, Pharos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 1:12 PM, Nathan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> > Wow, someone had more than 10,000 edits in February of 2002.
>> >
>> > Does it look to anyone else like the first five months of 2007 and 2008
>> were
>> > very busy, followed by a drop for the rest of the year? If that is whats
>> > happened, any theories as to why?
>> >
>> > Nathan
>>
>> Summer break for students would be the obvious reason.
>>
>> Or just good weather, generally.
>>
>> You might find the inverse if you look only at Southern Hemisphere IPs.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Pharos
>>
>>
>>
> ___
> 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] Site notice suggestion needed.

[Pharos]

"260 languages"

This page says they are technically 264 Wikipedias:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Languages

But Herero and Tokipona have 0 articles, and Simple English, useful as
it may be, isn't really a separate language.

So, I say we go with 260.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 11:47 AM, Rand Montoya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hey All-
>
> If you have the time and energy, take a look at this site notice here:
> http://dev.donate.wikimedia.org/index.php/Donate/Notice8a/en
>
> I'm looking for a few different/better ideas of what text should go on
> the left side (in place of the 250 million visitors/11 million
> articles). Right now there is strictly a data/numerical piece, but it
> can better.
>
> If you have an idea, please send to me at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Thanks.
>
> -Rand
>
> --
> Rand Montoya
> Head of Community Giving
> Wikimedia Foundation
> www.wikimedia.org
> Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Phone: 415.839.6885 x615
> Fax: 415.882.0495
> Cell: 510.685.7030
>
> "At some future time, I hope to have something witty,
> intelligent, or funny in this space."
>
>
> ___
> 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] Site notice suggestion needed.

[Pharos]

"2,434 articles on people born in 1908"

Ha!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1908_births

Thanks,
Richard

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 11:47 AM, Rand Montoya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hey All-
>
> If you have the time and energy, take a look at this site notice here:
> http://dev.donate.wikimedia.org/index.php/Donate/Notice8a/en
>
> I'm looking for a few different/better ideas of what text should go on
> the left side (in place of the 250 million visitors/11 million
> articles). Right now there is strictly a data/numerical piece, but it
> can better.
>
> If you have an idea, please send to me at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Thanks.
>
> -Rand
>
> --
> Rand Montoya
> Head of Community Giving
> Wikimedia Foundation
> www.wikimedia.org
> Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Phone: 415.839.6885 x615
> Fax: 415.882.0495
> Cell: 510.685.7030
>
> "At some future time, I hope to have something witty,
> intelligent, or funny in this space."
>
>
> ___
> 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] Site notice suggestion needed.

[Pharos]

"14 articles on famous cows"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Famous_cattle

That's still gotta be way more than Britannica.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 2:12 PM, Chad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 12:49 PM, Pharos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
>
>> "2,434 articles on people born in 1908"
>>
>> Ha!
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1908_births
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Richard
>>
>>
> "347 articles on internet memes"
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Internet_memes
>
> -Chad
> ___
> 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] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening

[Pharos]

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 6:28 PM, Nikola Smolenski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tuesday 09 December 2008 08:23:07 Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>> When people from other projects tell me that this is one of the reasons why
>> they do not bother with Commons, I have to disbelieve them? Try to find
>> "paard" and you will not be served in the same way as with "horse" the
>> search result is inferior. Dutch is not the worst option, try "ίππος"  and
>> you find nothing. This is Greek and it also means horse.
>>
>> It is indeed ridiculous that for people who do not read / write English,
>> Commons not a resource that is functional as a resource where you find
>> freely lincensed pictures. It is however a fact. Do some studies and ask
>> people to find images, people who do not read English. Try it in Arabic,
>> Russian, German, Mandarin, French or Dutch. When that does not convince you
>> try Neapolitan, Nepali, Bangla, Hindi or Xhosa. Have them search for things
>> that are of interest to a seven year old. Things like a horse...
>>
>> I have had the financing to create a demonstration project that
>> demonstrates that this is a problem that can be solved. Our resources were
>> limited so the result is not as polished as I would hope for, but it does
>> include the category tree translated.
>
> Me too - perhaps not as perfect solution, but hopefully adequate:
> http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php
>
> Examples:
>
> http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=nl&search=paard
> http://toolserver.org/~nikola/mis.php?uselang=el&search=%CE%AF%CF%80%CF%80%CE%BF%CF%82

Something like this looks pretty good for starters.  Why don't we just
flip a switch?

Thanks,
Pharos

> ___
> 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] Some Ideas About Technical Stuff/Community Relations Improvements

[Pharos]

Maybe we the technical side of WMF could get a "communications
advisor", some trusted volunteer from among the regular Wikimedians,
like they've done at the Chapters Committee recently.

Thanks,
Pharoos

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 11:13 PM, Eugene Zelenko
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> There are many signs of miscommunications between technical side of
> WMF operations and outside worlds (users, administrators, external
> projects): periodical rattling on Planet Wikimedia, frustrations on
> TranslateWiki, almost impermanently growing number of bug reports in
> Bugzilla.
>
> Typical example may include:
>
> 1) There is approved project X which still not created for Y days
> 2) Why new translations are not propagated to project X
> 3) Bug reports with opened years ago with several duplications
>
> Definitely technical stuff members are limited resource. And even
> trivial fixes or problems may took much more time then expected. Code
> changes reviewing require efforts. But outside world don't know what
> is going on and could only make uneducated guesses and in best case
> scenario perceive technical stuff as black box
>
> I think will be good idea to introduce some kind of technical stuff
> reporting and future planning (may be located on WMF site). It'll
> provide approximate answer for question 1; explain clearly situation
> with 2 (like "rXYZ introduced database scheme changes, currently
> updating WMF servers"). This will also highlight and communicate
> priorities to general public.
>
> This is not about control over developers but about development
> process transparency, which I believe, will improve understanding and
> appreciation of job done from outside. Think how CodeReview improve
> transparency of MediaWiki code base maintaining.
>
> Also development road map for next quarter/year may be considered.
>
> Possible solution for problem 3:
>
> * WMF may consider to allocate some part of development budget to
> outside developers. It may be in form of bug fixing bounties, gifts or
> sponsoring travel/accommodation for participation in
> Wikimania/MediaWiki developers conference.
> * Advertisement of "Google Summer of Code" jobs on WMF projects.
>
> Eugene.
>
> PS
>
> Disclaimers: I write weekly reports on work and don't think is most
> interesting part of it. I don't believe that reports are best
> reflection of working process.
>
> ___
> 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] Jimmy Wales donation appeal

[Pharos]

On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 8:59 PM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> 2008/12/23 effe iets anders :
>> Up to now, I kinda liked the fundraiser. Although they are very shouty for
>> what I'm used to (I dislike the red button for instance and the somewhat
>> agressive tone), I think this last change in message could use a *little*
>> step back. Please use a slightly smaller font, an slightly less shouty text.
>> To me it really reads like " wow, now we're really desperate, PLEASE COME
>> READ THIS ** APPEAL". I would really appreciate it if this last banner would
>> be done a little less in a way that comes to me (justified or not) as
>> "typical American"...
>
> Within the last 24 hours, we've raised a total of $283,859. That's
> more than 10 times as much as we made during a typical weekday in the
> last few days of the fundraiser, and the single highest day on record
> for community gifts. We don't know yet how steep the inevitable
> drop-off will be, but it's obvious that the appeal is working beyond
> everyone's expectations.
>
> I think it's worth noting that this tenfold increase has been possible
> without the use of additional pixel real estate, without scrolling
> marquees,  interstitials, or other serious interruptions of the
> Wikipedia reader/editor experience. All it took were less than 60
> characters of text on each page in a highly visible font, linking to a
> personal appeal that makes our case in more detail.
>
> We should ask ourselves why it is that based on the previous
> sitenotices, 9 in 10 people who would be clearly willing to give to
> us, did not do so. There seem to be at least three principal reasons
> for that:
>
> * The previous messages were below the visibility threshold for most
> people: They considered them to be an unimportant part of the page
> that should be ignored.
>
> * The previous messages did not, clearly enough, make a case for
> giving. They appealed to people who instantly "get" the non-profit
> donation model, but not to those for whom Wikipedia is essentially the
> same as any other website. The appeal directly addresses this
> distinction, to the satisfaction of a great number of people.
>
> * Because it's a personal appeal, rather than an impersonal donation
> message, the letter seems more likely to resonate with people.

This is really important.  Even the fact there was a picture is
helpful.  It humanizes the process, and makes it much less anonymous.

When this letter has reached its audience and we need a new donation
banner, I would strongly suggest another personal appeal of this type,
from a new person (maybe an educator).

Thanks,
Pharos

> Regardless of how the numbers will hold up, it's clear that these are
> important lessons to take away: The appeal, compared to some of our
> other site-notices, was trivial to implement. It's more important to
> communicate clearly and in a personal manner what we're trying to do
> than to focus on widgets & designs.
>
> Yes, more so than before, this appeal communicates a sense of urgency.
> As it should: We still have a revenue gap of $1.75M to just cover our
> expenses for the fiscal year (let alone increase our reserve). We're
> in the middle of the worst financial crisis in our lifetime; companies
> are failing or laying off staff around us. If people's reaction is "I
> don't want Wikipedia to go away - I better donate", that's not a bad
> thing.
>
> Obviously we should try to work out any remaining display glitches.
> And I'm sure over time we'll find a "happy medium" when it comes to
> aspects like font size, color, etc. But more importantly, we should
> try to translate this appeal into as many languages as possible, as
> it's currently just running in the English language wikis.
> --
> 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

[Foundation-l] Wikipedia Loves Art- photography contest at museums worldwide

[Pharos]

Hi folks,

I'd like to let you folks know about "Wikipedia Loves Art", a
scavenger hunt and free content photography contest project being
organized at several museums worldwide in February.

So far these museums are confirmed:
Brooklyn Museum in New York City
Victoria and Albert Museum in London
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Inadianapolis Museum of Art

But we're very interested in recruiting other institutions to join.
There have been some rumblings in Australia, Hungary and Germany on
that front, I think.

Here are the main relevant links:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/wikipedia_loves_art/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Loves_Art

These links also cover some of our past photography projects in New
York City (which this project is partly an evolution on):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Manhattan/Spring_2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Manhattan
http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/wikis-take-manhattan/

If anyone anywhere is interested in helping their local museum to
participate in this project, please contact me and I'll help.

Thanks,
Pharos

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Commons and The Year of the Picture

[Pharos]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 2:05 AM, Michael Snow  wrote:
> This isn't directly related to the board meeting, but I want to pause
> for a moment to share some ideas. Not all of them are mine, quite a bit
> of this is directly from the chapters.
>
> The Swedish chapter had the idea to declare 2009 The Year of the
> Picture, to put a concerted effort into adding images to the Wikimedia
> Commons, along with using more illustrations in Wikipedia and elsewhere.
> I think this is absolutely a great idea. Making better use of visual
> material in our projects also fits in with the ongoing effort to improve
> quality.
>
> I applaud the efforts of all the chapters in this area, and I encourage
> anyone who can to join in. You may recall that the German chapter
> recently secured the release of a large number of images from their
> federal archive, and several other chapters are also working on free
> image collection projects. Hopefully our April meetings of chapter
> representatives, in conjunction with the board, will be an opportunity
> to develop more ideas and strategies. And of course, you don't even need
> to have a recognized chapter to get a group together and organize photo
> expeditions, as for example some of the people in the now-approved New
> York chapter have done.

Hurrah for the The Year of the Picture!

In New York City, it feels like 2008 was our Year of the Picture with
our "Wikipedia Takes Manhattan" photo scavenger hunts, and I encourage
folks to look at stuff that has been done in other places as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_The_City

I hope "Wikipedia Loves Art" can be a great kick-off to The Year of
the Picture, with maybe a dozen museums and cultural institutions
around the globe who will be participating next month.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Loves_Art

Thanks,
Pharos

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Simple English Encyclopedia

[Pharos]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 7:16 PM, Gerard Meijssen
 wrote:
> Hoi,
> When the use case of the Simple Wikipedia is better understood, it may even
> make room for more simple projects as in simple projects in the biggest
> languages.
> Thanks.,
>      GerardM

If anyone is interested, I believe the other language most suited to
such a project would be French, because of its lingua franca status in
large parts of the developing world.

Thanks,
Pharos

> 2009/2/25 Cary Bass 
>
>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>> > Brian Salter-Duke wrote:
>> >> However my central point that a discussion of something as important as
>> >> closing one of our most important projects in a way that few know about
>> >> it remains. The !vote is 42:102. We get more at en:WP on a RFA.
>> >
>> > A further argument against having this principally discussed on Meta is
>> > that those who are best served by Simple do not have the language skills
>> > to participate fully in a discussion where there is unlimited use of
>> > language.
>> >
>> > Ec
>>
>> In light of that, I understand that there is some kind of simple
>> wikipedia usage among the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) distribution.
>> Perhaps someone could clarify, but if this is the case, then that would
>> make the likelihood that this already failing proposal would pass even
>> more remote.
>>
>> Cary Bass
>>
>> ___
>> 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] Academic article review

[Pharos]

I agree with Yaroslav that we should have a specific role for experts,
or rather for the greater number of experts who may be interested in
contributing, but who will not be attracted to participate in the
classical back-and-forth wiki model.

But I do not believe that experts should have any special powers in
the editing of articles.

Rather, I think they should be encouraged to act in a pure review
capacity, assessing the existing work of Wikipedians, and making
recommendations for improvement.  This might also be partially
implemented through flagged revs, and I could also envision a type of
button at the top of articles that says "see last version assessed by
an expert".

Really, what we want to encourage is a sort of organized external peer
review of Wikipedia, possibly published through a new academic journal
for the genre, which authors might have some prestige in contributing
to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_peer_review

Thanks,
Pharos

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 2:30 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter  wrote:
>
>> One of your points there was:
>>> 6. The current experience (or at least my current experience) is not
>>> really encouraging. The real top researchers just plainly have no time
>>> to edit articles, nor are they really interested. Those who come are
>>> mostly interested in editing article about themselves or about their
>>> immediate research, and view this as a kind of free PR.
>> The same might be said of articles about Wikipedia.  If you don't get
>> any responses within 48 hours you are unlikely to get any at all.  I see
>> one response there but that is most likely because of the message to
>> which I am responding.  Your comments are on "Temp17" of what is
>> probably a much longer series of personal subpages.  There is very
>> likelihood that anyone will ever see it, let alone respond.
>>
>> Ec
>
> Actually, I only have Temp17, and I was preparing it in my personal space
> (so far provided links to several users), but on one occasion a couple of
> months ago I posted it in this mailing list. It there is any interest, I
> will obviously move it to the general meta namespace.
>
> I did not yet check the comments, will do now.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
>
> ___
> 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] Academic article review

[Pharos]

Well, one has to adopt a relative perspective.

My experience has been that, although certainly there is room for
expansion in scientific articles on specialty topics, Wikipedia
already has much better coverage of science than any print
encyclopedias, and most basic scientific subjects are treated fairly
completely.

The Evolution article is here typical:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

In contrast, Wikipedia's coverage of the humanities is often inferior
to the better print encyclopedias, and even with very basic subjects.
This is perhaps because the humanities lend themselves less to easy
summary, as there is usually a great variety of scholarly opinion on
basic subjects, unlike in science.

The Tribe article is here typical:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe

So I think particularly for basic humanities subjects (which are very
important to many of our readers), a pure review process by academic
experts would be of great value, and help to indirectly guide the
contributors to such articles along more productive paths.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 2:50 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter  wrote:
>> But I do not believe that experts should have any special powers in
>> the editing of articles.
>>
>> Rather, I think they should be encouraged to act in a pure review
>> capacity, assessing the existing work of Wikipedians, and making
>> recommendations for improvement.  This might also be partially
>> implemented through flagged revs, and I could also envision a type of
>> button at the top of articles that says "see last version assessed by
>> an expert".
>>
>
> My point is actually that for majority of articles on science-ralated (and
> possibly some article on humanity-related, here I understand the situation
> less) there is nothing to review - they are either stubs or non-existent.
> Somebody needs to write them. You can consider this as a kind of review if
> you wish.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
>
> ___
> 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] Wikipedia Invades La Plata Natural History Museum

[Pharos]

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.

Thanks,
Pharos


On 4/28/09, emijrp  wrote:
> Category can be introduced with a beautiful template about the event.
>
> 2009/4/28 emijrp 
>
> > Perhaps a subcategory "Wikipedia Invades La Plata Natural History Museum" ?
> > It would be easier to follow activities like this. I think this is related
> > with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_loves_art . It is only a
> > suggestion :).
> >
> > 2009/4/28 Patricio Lorente 
> >
> > 2009/4/28 emijrp :
> >> > Please, can all these images be categorized in a common category? Thanks
> >>
> >> Existig photographs are in
> >> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Museo_de_La_Plata
> >>
> >> I think we should use that category.
> >>
> >>  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] Board statement regarding biographies of livingpeople

[Pharos]

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 1:25 PM, Sue Gardner  wrote:
> I agree that the turnout was impressive, and I was also impressed that many 
> of the wealthier chapters helped to fund travel for the less-wealthy.
>
> I was also amazed by the volunteer devs, many of whom travelled long 
> distances on their own dime (e.g., Aude, and many others).  I've spoken with 
> Brion, and if it would help the devs to have some form of subsidy for their 
> travel, or some form of other support, the Wikimedia Foundation would be 
> happy to help next year.

I would like to support this too.  Devs like Aude can be be a real
asset in jumpstarting chapters activities as well, as she has shown
with her great organizing work in Washington DC.

Thanks,
Pharos

> It was all really great :-)
> Sue
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Thomas Dalton 
>
> Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:12:11
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living
>        people
>
>
> 2009/4/30 Domas Mituzas :
>> Thomas,
>>
>>> I believe there were about 50 chapters people about about 100 devs.
>>> I'm not sure why the mean travel distance would be lower if you
>>> include everyone - there were people from all around the world there,
>>> many having travelled further than the average board member.
>>
>>
>> Actually, I'd be happy if you were right (and you probably are!) - it
>> shows, that lots of people had the motivation to come to this
>> "excursion".
>
> Every single chapter was represented by at least one person - I was
> extremely impressed by that.
>
> ___
> 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] Long-term archiving of Wikimedia content

[Pharos]

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:02 AM, Tim Starling  wrote:
> Samuel Klein wrote:
>> They wouldn't take up proportionally more space in etching than they
>> do on screen.  So an extra 10-20% overall.  They would probably make
>> the process a bit more expensive, but still to this scale.  an
>> illustrated encyclo may well be worth twice as much.
>>
>> Let's see what the Rosetta folks have to say.   I can think of a lot
>> of people, not least those who have one of the early Rosetta disks,
>> who would love an  archival etched copy of Wikipedia + Commons thumbs,
>> which might cover some of the early costs of trying this out.
>
> I can tell you what the Rosetta folks would say: they would say that
> they paid $125k to Norsam for 5 prototype discs, and that we are free
> to do the same. Norsam have developed this technology at great cost
> and expect a commercial return, regardless of who's paying them.
>
> <http://www.internetnews.com/storage/article.php/3771051/Storage+That+Really+Lasts.htm>
>
> Personally I think it would be a waste of general funds, since I don't
> expect we'll see the end of civilisation any time in the next year or
> two. Maybe if there was a directed grant, it would be appropriate. Or
> we could have a small investment fund aimed at paying for such an
> archive in 20 years or so, when the process will be cheaper.
>
> By the way, it's FIB etching, not laser etching, and the discs are
> nickel-coated silicon, not plain nickel.
>
> -- Tim Starling

If we or anyone were to go this route, wouldn't microfiche in a sealed
plastic container be a lot cheaper and more practical to mass-produce?

See the section on preservation through moisture-tight containers:

http://graphics.kodak.com/docimaging/uploadedFiles/D-31.pdf

My personal plan for saving civilization is through intrinsically
worthless plastic jewelry, kind of like this idea:

http://www.google.com/patents?id=yLk3EBAJ&dq=4249330

Make these cheap pendants colorful, make them collectible, let people
string dozens on a necklace, and soon you'd have thousands of copies
of books floating through society that can never be lost.

Wow, I can't believe they let us post this stuff on foundation-l :)

Thanks,
Pharos

>
> ___
> 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] Wikipedia Invades La Plata Natural History Museum

[Pharos]

On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 7:31 AM, Hay (Husky)  wrote:
> 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

Hooray for Patricio and Wikimedia AR!

Looks like everything went brilliantly, and that you had a very
productive 'invasion'.  Like Hay, I am very happy to see this
cross-fertilization of ideas, and I very much look forward to future
updates from everyone.

Thanks,
Pharos

> On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 12:51 PM, emijrp  wrote:
>> Really nice Patricio. Keep up the good work and tell us about those future
>> events!
>>
>> 2009/5/13 Patricio Lorente 
>>
>>> 2009/5/1 Pharos :
>>> > 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
>

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Open teaching materials in the Netherlands

[Pharos]

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 10:40 AM, Ziko van Dijk  wrote:
> Hello,



> The project manager of the organisation of Dutch high schools gave me a very
> striking reason against a license that allows commercial use: Most of the
> teachers want to teach with the help of ordinary school books, with
> additional material taken from the internet. They want to have something on
> paper. If the school book publishers are allowed to make print versions from
> open content, then the teachers want those print versions. They will put
> pressure on their head masters to buy them, and then the shift from print to
> digital will not occur, and the plan of the organisation to save 385
> millions €  will not become reality. So, the manager says, the better if the
> publishers cannot sell print versions.

But no publisher will have an exclusive right to print such textbooks,
so these textbooks would cost much less than existing alternatives, in
fact just slightly above printing costs.

This is an especially salient point if these headmasters really do
value print versions so much; the alternative of using an obscure
copyright mechanism to force them into all-digital does not make much
sense to me.

Thanks,
Pharos

> Ziko van Dijk
>
> read more in German on
> http://groups.google.de/group/infobrief-wiki-welt/msg/21c9f6c00634d13c?
>
>
>
> --
> Ziko van Dijk
> NL-Silvolde
> ___
> 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] Wiki-Conference New York July 25-26

[Pharos]

Hi folks,

The 1st Wiki-Conference New York will be held over the weekend of July
25-26 2009 (confirmed!) at New York University, and hosted by Free
Culture @ NYU and Wikimedia New York City.

Jimmy Wales will be giving a keynote, and we'll also have several
dedicated panel discussions to be organized on-wiki (Panels), open
opportunities for short presentations to the whole assembly (Lightning
Talks), and a good deal of totally open space (Open Space Technology).
 Oh yeah, and there's the Central Park picnic!

Participants are encouraged to give your own ideas for topic sessions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Wiki-Conference_2009

More details coming soon!

And let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)
Wikimedia NYC

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] GFDL-only + OTRS

[Pharos]

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 11:57 AM, David Gerard wrote:
> 2009/6/24 Pedro Sanchez :
>
>> With the license move...
>> do we still accept GFDL-only material?
>> I've seen OTRSer today accepting and tagging entries released as GFDL only.
>
>
> Is this images for Commons? I'd personally like to deprecate the GFDL,
> but if it's a Commons-accepted free content licence then there's no
> reason not to accept it.

Of course, there are and always have been a wide range of free content
licenses used for images on Commons, not just GFDL and CC.

Thanks,
Pharos

>
> - d.
>
> ___
> 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] A chapters-related question

[Pharos]

I think a possible solution for this kind of thing might be "Working
Groups", each carefully organized under a "Working Group Organizer"
who has a time-limited charter to lead such a group.

The issue here is that when dealing with a small unorganized group,
really the only practicable way to maintain communication and
accountability is through an individual.

This would be the type of structure that from my experience would work
best with embryonic local efforts crystallizing in something like a
"Wikimedia Working Group for Tennessee", and I could also see it
working with supra-local efforts like "Wikimedia Working Group for
Catalan".

Of course, the "Working Group Organizer" can and should delegate
activities to other trusted persons, but the overall responsibility
(and the blame if things somehow go horribly wrong) is theirs.

Thanks,
Pharos

2009/7/8 Delphine Ménard :
> On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 06:54, Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> case.) The basic question is, what can or should we do to encourage
>> grassroots groups that want to support our mission, but may not fit into
>> the chapters framework?
>
> As an answer to this question, I would say yes. My nuances come later.
>
>> There are various possibilities here. One example is interest groups
>> that aren't tied to geography, the way the chapters are. I always cite
>> the idea of an Association of Blind Wikipedians, who might wish to
>> organize to promote work on accessibility issues. As with the Brazilian
>> situation, informal groups could also fit local conditions better
>> sometimes, or serve as a proto-chapter stage of development. Maybe
>> there's a benefit in having an association with some durability and
>> continuation, but without going to the effort of incorporation and
>> formal agreements on trademarks and such. It could also make sense to
>> have an organization form for a specific project and then disband after
>> it is completed, such as with Wikimania (somebody can correct me if I'm
>> wrong, but I understand the Gdansk team is planning something like this
>> as distinct from Wikimedia Polska).
>
> I think it's important to keep in mind the implications of supporting
> Wikimedia. These implications fall, in my opinion, in two categories:
> - Use of the trademark
> - Financial flow (access to specific grants, fundraising)
>
>
> I see three scenarii:
>
> 1) informal national chapters or "chapters to be":
> There are countries in the world where starting a chapter in the way
> it is defined today is an endeavour that makes little sense, for
> political, cultural, philosophical, financial or administrative
> reasons.
>
> Here I'll make a difference between  informal local/national groups
> (will never be a chapter) and chapters to be (aims at becoming a
> chapter).
>
> For informal national groups, it is important that the Wikimedia
> Foundation supports grassroot initiatives that aim at supporting the
> Wikimedia projects. If the work stays informal, and there is no need
> for any kind of formality (plan wikimeets, intervene in conferences,
> that kind of grassroot public outreach), then the support from the
> Foundation could be minimal, such as maybe a letter of introduction
> for someone wanting to participate in a conference in a specific
> country.
> If, on the other hand, the need shows up for a formal kind of
> "representation", there are probably many ways to explore on how a
> group of Wikimedians could integrate an existing structure (some other
> NGO with similar goals) in order to enter a formal agreement with the
> WMF re: trademarks and/or fundraising. I believe we could develop some
> kind of "partnership agreeement with third party non-profits" which
> would allow active Wikimedians who are not able or willing to form a
> chapter to intensify outreach in some kind of structured way, under a
> "Wikimedia banner".
>
> For "chapters to be", I think the same could happen, with the idea
> that the grassroot initiative wants to take some time to develop into
> a working national chapter. Growing initiatives with the help of an
> existing structure could be a good first step towards "chapteriality",
> and it is important that the WMF follow those initiatives and help the
> members who wish to develop the best way of founding a chapter by
> developing ideas in another context.
>
> What I don't see, in either of these cases, is an "informal group"
> with the same objectives of fundraising and potentially trademark
> usage that stays completely informal. Of course, national legislations
> may vary, but in the end, in order to prot

Re: [Foundation-l] Recommending a Browser for High Quality Ogg Theora Video Support

[Pharos]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 12:41 AM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> geni geniice at gmail.com wrote:
>> I assume you are pointing to the "Downpreffed VLC because it crashes
>> my browser all the damn time -- TS" comment.
>> Still another problem with recommending an option is well when this happens:
>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Videoscreengrab_of_Morris_C8_towing.ogv
>> As you can see following the recommended course of action results in a
>> far from idea experience. Now to be fair [[File:Morris C8 towing.ogv]]
>> is known to cause problems when played but it does work on the VLC
>> plugin with firefox 3.0 at least on my system.
>
> Mozilla is quite responsive. (I fixed quite a few video bugs prior to release)
>
> But in this case there doesn't appear to be any real firefox problem.
>
> You've got a >6mbit/sec Ogg/Theora file. The stalling is because
> firefox doesn't prebuffer and your connection isn't fast enough to get
> ahead of it. Once the file is transferred moving the playhead back to
> the start gives smooth video.
>
> Prebuffering can be achieved by setting the autobuffer parameter
> before playback begins. The current way video is launched by the site
> defeats that. Other playback methods will hold the initial playback
> until some buffer has filled, so they don't exhibit the same behavior.
>
> This situation can be improved by managing the buffering process using
> JS or simply making good use of autobuffer.
>
> But the real flaw here is expecting a 6mbit/sec file to stream…
> Unfortunately until we have some trans-coding infrastructure that will
> remain a problem.
>
> I was thinking about running a bot to take all uploaded videos shrink
> them to 480px (if larger) and encode at reasonable streaming friendly
> bitrates, then uploading back as filename_thumb480 and replacing them
> in articles.  I'm not sure how people will feel about that but it will
> greatly improve video playability without encouraging people to upload
> at low qualities which are completely unsuitable for editing.

I presume there's no way to thumbnail them in a way analogous to how
images are thumbnailed?

Thanks,
Pharos

> ___
> 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] About that "sue and be damned" to the NationalPortrait Gallery ...

[Pharos]

On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 1:43 PM, Sue Gardner wrote:
> Sure. Actually the New York chapter probably sends some press releases to US 
> media too; I'm not sure.

FYI We have had a number of contacts with journalists, but so far we
have not been in the habit of putting out formal press releases.  This
may change in future; it's just a question of the particulars of
public relations management.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)
Wikimedia NYC

> --Original Message--
> From: Thomas Dalton
> To: susanpgard...@gmail.com
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Sent: Jul 11, 2009 10:41 AM
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] About that "sue and be damned" to the 
> NationalPortrait Gallery ...
>
> 2009/7/11 Sue Gardner :
>> Point of clarification -- the Wikimedia Foundation sends out press releases 
>> to international media, not just US media.  We have no plans to send out a 
>> press release on this issue.
>
> Of course, what I meant was that only the WMF sends press releases to
> US media, not that the WMF only sends press releases to US media.
>
> ___
> 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] A heads up

[Pharos]

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 2:34 PM, Gerard
Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> Why should the term base be translated ? Is it not more important to be
> gained by getting all this material in the public domain ??
>
> I do however agree with you. All the material that is about Indonesia should
> be translated to Indonesian. For them it is very much the opening up of
> material that is part of their cultural history. Translating it into English
> does not make it easier for Indonesians to find this material.
> Thanks,
>  GerardM

Well, in the 21st century a good deal more Indonesians speak English
than Dutch, and if translation to English is relatively easy, this
will probably facilitate translation to Indonesian also.

Thanks,
Pharos

> 2009/7/15 John at Darkstar 
>
>> At least the term base should be translated.
>> John
>>
>> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>> > Hoi,
>> > I have been in discussion with the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam about making
>> > their material available on Commons. The Tropenmuseum has an important
>> > collection on the colonial past of the Netherlands and contains a rich
>> > collection on Suriname and Indonesia. The initial talks are about 100.000
>> > images.
>> >
>> > The annotations of this material is all in Dutch. It will come with
>> unique
>> > identifiers back to the physical object in the Tropenmuseum and it will
>> come
>> > with the termbase for the images; this termbase is as I understand it the
>> > equivalent of our categories. Some of the material has a partial
>> translation
>> > in English and, this can be provided to us as well.
>> >
>> > The key issue I want to raise is that there are hundreds of museums in
>> the
>> > Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname all using Dutch there are more museums
>> in
>> > Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein who speak German  While
>> we
>> > aim to improve our front end to allow for easy uploads, we do not provide
>> > language support. Language support will help people find pictures in
>> their
>> > language and will help the matching of categories into other languages.
>> > Thanks,
>> >   GerardM
>> > ___
>> > 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
>

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] LocalWiki project needs your support

[Pharos]

LocalWiki looks like a great project.

In a similar vein, Wikimedia NYC has been engaged with local free
culture and community groups on our joint 'NYCwiki' initiative:

http://nycwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://nycwiki.org/wiki/NYCwiki:Community_portal

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)
Wikimedia NYC
http://www.wikimedianyc.org

On 9/7/10, phoebe ayers  wrote:
> This is spammy and OT -- but still may be of interest to people on
> this list. I can vouch for the awesomeness of the localwiki project,
> which is trying to make local and city wikis (like the amazing Davis
> Wiki, which serves my hometown) for the world. Free, local, open and
> nonprofit -- and they're raising money, and need to raise a bunch more
> in the next week to get their kickstarter grant funded. If this
> project is successful, they will help grow an essential part of the
> free content/collaborative landscape that Wikimedia by and large
> doesn't serve at all.
>
> -- phoebe
>
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Michael Ivanov 
> Date: Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 3:57 PM
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] LocalWiki project needs your support
> To: wikipedi...@lists.wikimedia.org
>
>
> Hi folks, my name is Mike Ivanov, I am one of the co-founders of the
> Davis Wiki, currently the largest local community wiki in the world,
> where nearly every local resident uses the wiki and 1 in 7 contribute
> content.
>
> LocalWiki (http://localwiki.org) is our new non-profit project to
> create the next generation of wiki software designed specifically for
> local communities and promote the use of community wikis as a new kind
> of collaborative, community-owned local media.  We want to apply the
> lessons we learned building the Davis Wiki to help as many communities
> as possible create the same kind of useful, engaging local resource.
>
> The technical costs of this project are covered by a grant from the
> Knight Foundation, but in order to reach more communities and have
> more of an impact, we are raising an additional $25,000 for community
> outreach and education.  If you support this project, please make a
> pledge on our Kickstarter page at http://kck.st/a5vx43 and help us
> spread the word.  We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so your donation is
> tax-deductible.  Nearly 300 people have already donated over $17,000
> as of today, and we only have 5 days left in this all-or-nothing
> pledge drive.  We cannot do this without your support.
>
> You can read more about LocalWiki at http://www.localwiki.org
> (@localwiki on Twitter) or about the Knight Foundation grant at
> http://www.newschallenge.org/winner/2010/local-wiki and I would be
> happy to answer any questions or comments.
>
> Thank you,
> Mike
>
> ___
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> wikipedi...@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
> --
> * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
>  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] Proposal for new projects

[Pharos]

Perhaps an alternative strategy could be to hold a grand round-robin
vote to launch one new project per year, at least in beta phase.

This might ensure that the very best ideas get through and are
actualized, without quite opening the floodgates.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 11:47 AM, Robert S. Horning
 wrote:
> On 10/23/2010 05:13 AM, Samuel Klein wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> WikiHow is a good place for how-tos, and has an amazing community.
>> They unfortunately use a license (NC-SA) that isn't compatible with
>> Wikimedia projects.  If you want to do something like WikiHow under a
>> CC-SA license, you might pursue a new Project for them -- while
>> incubating the project on Wikibooks.  As Robert Horning notes, there
>> are some examples there already.
>>
>> There are other models like HowStuffWorks that you could look at for
>> how to organize this sort of information, if you really want to
>> organize a new Project.
>>
>> On 10/21/10, Robert S. Horning  wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I've never been a real fan with the "new project" process as it relates
>>> to Wikimedia, and I find it unfortunate that nothing new has been
>>> created for quite some time.  The last major "community-sponsored" (aka
>>> the idea originated with ordinary users as opposed to something of a pet
>>> project by a WMF board member) project to become a major Wikimedia
>>> project was Wikiversity.
>>>
>> I'm not sure what 'pet projects' you are thinking about.  Wikiversity
>> is the last major Wikimedia project, period.  [unless you are counting
>> the Incubator itself?]
>>
>
> Actualy, I would count the incubator project as a "pet project" that
> ignored community consensus building and discussion of the nature that
> was associated with the creation of projects like Wikiversity and
> Wikinews.  There were several attempts at getting an "incubator project"
> going and the current incarnation of that concept completely ignored
> previous ideas that were suggested about the idea.  It also didn't get
> created with the "proscribed" new project creation process.  This is
> water over the dam now and I'm not necessarily saying that we can't move
> forward, but a solid incubator building community could have been
> organized along much different lines.
>
> Wikispecies is an example of a project idea that didn't get the critical
> early effort to get it going, and is still sort of floundering.
>
> Previously, nearly all "project incubator" efforts were done strictly on
> Meta, Wikibooks, or as sub-pages in the "User:" space on Wikipedia.  I
> could also mention some of the other "minor wikis" that are associated
> with the WMF including the Wikimania wiki, some of the foundation
> communication wikis, and there are a few other that do serve a useful
> role.  I also hope that I don't have to bring up the creation of the
> German Wikiversity project, which predated English language Wikiversity
> by nearly two years.
>
> There is room for cynicism in how projects are created and it isn't
> always pretty.
>
>>> As I've mentioned on the talk pages at Meta, I wish somebody would
>>> officially state on Meta and elsewhere that new Wikimedia sister
>>> projects will never be started,
>>>
>> Whereas I see support of good sister projects -- including avoiding
>> duplication of effort and directing them to partners when Wikimedia
>> isn't the right incubator/host -- as essential to realizing our
>> mission.  So I think we should just fix the process.
>>
>> There are at least two good candidates for new sister projects:
>> * Wikibibliography / WikiScholar, which has been developed on Meta and
>> in a couple of threads on this list
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiScholar
>> * Wikifamily / Rodovid, which has been working well as an independent
>> project but may be looking for more stable long-term support.
>>
>
> What has been the problem with these efforts then?  These are hardly the
> only new sister project proposal to be put forward and to me there have
> been some very good ideas, including some concepts that would serve as a
> strong support role to other Wikimedia projects even if not necessarily
> Wikipedia itself.  My complaint is more that the resistance to these new
> project ideas is so fierce that the best advise I ever give to folks who
> want to create a sister project is to simply don't try, or go somewhere
> else like Wikia but if you do don't ever consider that such a
> proje

Re: [Foundation-l] Should we offer to host citizendium?

[Pharos]

On 11/13/10, phoebe ayers  wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 11:05 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
>> On 12 November 2010 17:34, Anthony  wrote:
>>
>>> These are all questions which would have to be answered before WMF
>>> should even consider getting involved.  To cover itself legally it
>>> should have the agreement of Larry Sanger, the Tides Center, and at
>>> least a majority of the Management Counsel
>>> (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Management_Council).
>>
>>
>> This would be WMF just providing ISP services for free, no more liable
>> than Slicehost presently are.
>
> You know what would be kind of awesome? If there was a neutral hosting
> service -- by which I mean neutral hosting and technical support
> service -- for a whole variety of small free content projects that
> don't truly have the capacity to run independent technical
> organizations but are otherwise fairly stable. We've seen two such
> organizations brought up on Foundation-l just this year -- the
> fanhistory wiki and now Citizendium -- both of which need stable
> hosting, people who understand MediaWiki, and maybe even a bit of an
> organizational platform (like fundraising support) too. This platform
> could be a hosting service that was geared towards free and
> participatory projects, the upstart free content of the web.
>
> Such a hosting service would be a commons approach to this problem,
> with the costs and burden shared not just among the small projects but
> perhaps among the big ones too: I can see the big free culture
> organizations (us, Mozilla, Creative Commons, etc.) pitching in to
> such a thing in order to have a space to direct small projects to.
> This would be different from wiki hosting because perhaps all the
> projects wouldn't even be a wiki, as we understand them now; and there
> would be room for Citizendium's funky branch of MediaWiki and every
> other hack you can think of.  And it would be neutral ground: not
> necessarily tied to the values of our Foundation or anyone else's.
>
> What do you think? Does such a thing exist already? Would it work?
>
> -- Phoebe

Ourproject.org does something like this, but I think that something
evolved with the help of the big free culture organizations and
building on this model, could turn into even a much greater resource.

http://ourproject.org/

Thanks,
Pharos

> ___
> 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] Banners inviting people to edit.

[Pharos]

It would also be great if we could have banners inviting people to
participate in major local community events, like the many Wikipedia
10 celebrations planned for January.

http://ten.wikipedia.org

Thanks,
Pharos

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 7:05 AM, Daniel ~ Leinad  wrote:
> One of Polish banners has intent to invite people to edit:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Messages/Language/pl#Korzystasz_z_Wikipedii.3F
>
> --
> Leinad
>
> ___
> 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] January 15 retro?

[Pharos]

I actually tried to set up a geonotice to catch Wikipedian
Antarcticans a while back, but unfortunately the convergence of the
longitude lines kind of threw it off :P

Thanks,
Pharos

On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 4:36 PM, Ray Saintonge  wrote:
> On 01/05/11 4:52 PM, David Gerard wrote:
>> On 6 January 2011 00:45, Steven Walling  wrote:
>>> The anniversary is not just about English Wikipedia. If this was just
>>> English Wikipedia's celebration, there certainly wouldn't be more than 100
>>> events organized in dozens of countries and on every continent except
>>> Antarctica.
>> And just WHY is there not one in Antarctica? Don't we have BORED
>> SCIENTISTS in Antarctica? I THINK THIS ISSUE IS IN NEED OF IMMEDIATE
>> RESOLUTION.
>
> There was some casual discussion in Taipei that there should be a
> Wikimania in Antarctica, but only after having one in Australia.  Then
> too there was also talk about having one on a cruise ship, or perhaps in
> a plane on a round-the-world flight.
>
> The International Space Station isn't big enough ... yet.
>
> Ray
>
> ___
> 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] [Fwd: [Wiki-research-l] Pew Research Report on Wikipedia]

[Pharos]

There's a high correlation between broadband and income levels that
probably has more to do with it.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Fred Bauder  wrote:
> "Broadband use remains another predictor, as 59% of those with home
> broadband use the service, compared with 26% of those who connect to the
> internet through dial-up."
>
> Many images... Although a sophisticated user can turn them off or use lynx.
>
> Fred
>
> User:Fred Bauder
>
> --- Original Message 
> Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Pew Research Report on Wikipedia
> From:    "phoebe ayers" 
> Date:    Thu, January 13, 2011 1:53 pm
> To:      "Research into Wikimedia content and communities"
> 
> -
>
> As you all may have seen there is tons of media coverage coming out
> around Wikipedia's 10th anniversary (Jan 15, 2011). In the midst of
> this the Pew Internet Research Center released a new report today:
>
> "Wikipedia, past and present"
> http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Wikipedia.aspx
>
> -- phoebe
>
> --
> * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
>  gmail.com *
>
> ___
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> wiki-researc...@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-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] Making wikimediafoundation.org more open to contributions

[Pharos]

On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 9:27 AM, Aaron Adrignola
 wrote:
>>
>> I agree that the edit restrictions on the WMF wiki are very
>> unfortunate and there's still much more that can be done (perhaps one
>> day leading toward www.wikimedia.org as a single information,
>> collaboration and discussion hub, subsuming both WMF and Meta, and
>> possibly other backstage wikis).
>>
>> --
>> Erik Möller
>> Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>
> Perhaps have Meta: Strategy:, Outreach: Usability:, Tech:, and Wikimania*:
> namespaces to replace the separated sites in existence today.  The main
> space could cover wikimediafoundation.org content.  Wikimedia: for meta-wiki
> discussion.  Or any variation on that.  At the least, there is no need to
> keep creating new wikis for Wikimania if you properly tag content for the
> year it applies to.
>
> -- Aaron Adrignola

Here, here, for the namespace solution!

There is a lot of flexibility in degrees of differentiation and
control of namespaces that is really underused as a tool, and could
help us get a really integrated and useful 'wiki to rule them all' for
Wikimedia organizational purposes.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Making wikimediafoundation.org more open to contributions

[Pharos]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 8:25 AM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> On 28 January 2011 20:33, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>> Such a solution would make it easier to fold separate wikis
>> (such as a conference wiki) back into Meta when we were done with
>> them, too.
>
> Why fold them into meta afterwards rather than just use Meta from the
> beginning? Isn't the whole point of the proposal that we stop creating
> new wikis for everything?

Yes, we should start with integrating the most amenable material (ie
the most stable/languishing material on side wikis) onto meta as a
first step in the project.

Changing the url from meta.wikimedia.org to plain vanilla
wikimedia.org would be one of the last steps, actually.

This should certainly be a multi-stage process, not something that's
done all in one blow, but it would definitely be good to start a
project for adapting new namespaces on meta soon.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] 2006-2011: Mexican, Argentinian, Brazilian governments distance themselves from freedomdefined 1.0

[Pharos]

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 4:38 PM, Ray Saintonge  wrote:
> Translation is an important problem, and it is also key to making
> material available in less developed languages. Linked with moral rights
> it gives too much leeway to those who would claim that a given
> translation is defamatory.
>
> It makes me wonder whether big copyright holders would be willing to
> give free, translation specific licences into the less common
> languages.  They would not want a situation where the free material ends
> up being translated back into the original language, but the laughable
> quality of that kind of effort may be enough to prevent it.
>
> This may not satisfy the purists, but it would move things in the right
> direction.
>
> Ray

I believe this is actually the case in the People's Republic of China,
where translations into national minority languages are explicitly
allowed as an exception under the copyright law.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness

[Pharos]

On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 2:49 AM, Nikola Smolenski  wrote:
> Дана Sunday 10 April 2011 06:36:22 MZMcBride написа:
>> featured article requirements or anything like that. They might be
>> inundated with too many links in welcome messages (which I view as a
>> largely separate issue from policy creep), but I don't think the vast
>> majority of editors pay any mind to the details of policies and pages that
>> even established users can't be bothered to keep up with. This is what some
>> argue is the actual meaning behind "ignore all rules." :-)
>
> I too loathe the wall of text displayed to new users and believe it is highly
> ineffective. Some possible solutions I thought of are:
>
> Perhaps each newbie could get a short welcome message from "their" experienced
> Wikipedian who will later mentor them with specific errors the newbie made.
>
> Perhaps it would be helpful if, when creating a new account, a user could
> write a short message about what would they like to do on Wikipedia (this
> would become their user page). It would give us an idea on what part of
> guidelines to present to the new user, and also very needed insight on why do
> people just create account and leave.

This is the best actually-practical idea I've seen in a long, long time!

++to making user page info for new accounts a simple box to fill in at
registration

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] "How many articles have you created?"

[Pharos]

On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 3:40 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 8:37 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
>> On 10 April 2011 13:14, David Moran  wrote:
>>
>> For that matter, the contents of
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikipedia_ads might be nice for
>> the site notice.
>
> Yes, we should start doing this.  Most wikiproject banners are fun for
> me to read as a (logged-in) user, and reader-focused banners can be
> made for everyone.

This would be totally amazing on about 15 different levels- I"m all
for fun reader-focused outreach banners on the site notice :D

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia at events

[Pharos]

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 6:32 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:
> James Forrester wrote:
>> On 2 June 2011 03:25, MZMcBride  wrote:
>>> Samuel Klein wrote:
 I'd like to see this for more than just the Foundation - any event
 where wikimedians have a presence - but this is a great place to
 start.
>>>
>>> I started a (very bad) page at Meta-Wiki for future events:
>>> .
>>>
>>> If anyone else could give it some love, that would be appreciated. :-)
>>
>> No reason that you couldn't scrape and push into an iCal format (or
>> whatever) from that. Worth doing?
>
> Absolutely worth doing, in my opinion. I'd first like to get the page/system
> a bit more established (and fill in some of the past years), but supporting
> iCal/gCal/etc. through a MediaWiki extension or a Toolserver tool would be
> awesome.
>
> Casey Brown wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 10:25 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:
>>> I started a (very bad) page at Meta-Wiki for future events:
>>> .
>>
>> What's the difference between that page and
>> ?  We should clarify what the
>> difference is, if any.  Then again, maybe it's okay if the two
>> overlap. :-)
>
> Err, didn't really know about the "Events" page. :-)  It seems to list only
> current information, but the page history is probably ripe with good
> information that can be pulled out and stored in the subpages of the new
> system.

Actually, "Events" is not particularly focused on current stuff, the
great majority of items are actually for past events over the last
several years.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Events

Definitely there should be some kind of merge, and we'll figure out
whatever the best format is and go with that.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

> I know I did look at  before creating
> "Wikimedia in meatspace," but the "Meetup" page had a note about being
> outdated and unmaintained at the top. At some point it probably makes sense
> to re-evaluate and/or merge some of these pages (the "beyond the web"
> series), though my intention is for "Wikimedia in meatspace" to be purely
> informational while subpages of "Meetup", etc. are more for active
> collaboration and coordination.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
> ___
> 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] Merge wikis

[Pharos]

On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 2:40 AM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> On 07/01/2011 11:52 PM, WereSpielChequers wrote:
>> One thing I find irritating and complex about our structure is the
>> proliferation of small wikis. Now I've no objection to the idea that
>> we have a wiki for every language on Earth, though where languages are
>> mutually intelligible such as the major dialects of English  it seems
>> sensible to me that we combine them in one wiki - if necessary with
>> spelling and alphabet being subject to user preference.
>>
>> But I see no reason why ten wiki, Strategy and the various wikimanias
>> each need their own wiki as opposed to being projects within meta.
>>
>> On a broader and more radical note, why do we need separate wikis for
>> wikiquote, wikiversity, wikipedia wikinews and wiktionary? Surely each
>> of those could be separate namespaces within a language wiki?
>>
>> This would make it much easier when people create an article on
>> wikipedia that is really a wiktionary or wikinews article as one could
>> just move it. It would immediately reduce the number of userpages,
>> watchlists and usertalk pages that one needed to maintain to one per
>> language (plus meta and commons). It would also foster cooperation
>> between editors across what are currently different projects if you
>> had one wiki for each language, as individual wikiprojects would now
>> work across what are currently quite separate  news, quote and pedia
>> projects.
>
> Thanks for raising this issue. Previously discussed system of redirects
> and Incubator Extension [1] would help not just to the Incubator, but to
> the languages with smaller amount of speakers, as well as to Meta forks.
> So, instead of having numerous meta wikis, we could have just one
> (Meta), with separate namespaces, which would get redirects. Thus,
> namespace "Strategy:" could be strategy.wikimedia.org; namespace
> "Research" could be research.wikimedia.org etc.
>
> [1] http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/235020?page=last


I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated
editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path
forward to me.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

[Pharos]

On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 1:02 AM, John Vandenberg  wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Pharos  wrote:
>> ..
>>
>>
>> I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated
>> editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path
>> forward to me.
>
> Or we could just leave the sister projects alone.  That is also a viable 
> option.

[snip]

Clarify: I mean new namespaces are the best way forward for our
Meta-type content ("Strategy:", "Outreach:", "Research:", etc).

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] roadmap for WM affiliation ; a name for self-identified affiliation

[Pharos]

Informally, and in my own mind, I tend to think of like-minded free
culture wiki sites as part of a broader "Wiki Knowledge" movement.

Of course, this is not meant to be an exclusivist or trademarked term :P

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 2:13 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
> I had the same interpretation as Ziko.  Affiliate sites, in Alec's
> language, want to indicate they share Wikimedian ideals.
> Few such sites would want to become a Wikimedia-hosted project.
>
> SJ
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 7:03 AM, Ziko van Dijk  
> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> If I understand Alec right he wants a model wherein a project like
>> WikiSomething can declare itself affiliated with Wikimedia:
>> "We need a name for self-identified project affiliation. External
>> projects needs to be able to claim, on their own initiative, that they
>> are "part of" something."
>> Of course, WikiSomething can say on its website "We like Wikimedia and
>> share its goals", but the wording must not give the impression that
>> there is an official link between both.
>> The problem is that we don't want that anybody can decorate himself
>> with the Wikimedia trademark and maybe abuse it. There must be an
>> official recognition anyway from Wikimedia Foundation.
>>
>> Kind regards
>> Ziko van Dijk
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2011/7/13 Lodewijk :
>>> I am not sure if this is about the same thing. I read Alec's questions as
>>> being about content projects that want to affiliate themselves with
>>> Wikimedia - want to become the new Wikimedia project. I know that in the
>>> past this question has lived for example with OmegaWiki/WiktionaryZ . SJ,
>>> would you consider this to be similar to Wikimedian groups who want to have
>>> a slightly more formal relationship with the Movement?
>>>
>>> Lodewijk
>>>
>>> 2011/7/13 Samuel Klein 
>>>
 We're discussing setting up an "Affiliation committee" to oversee
 simple, low-overhead wikimedia affiliates and associations.  These
 could be organizations 'under the umbrella' of free knowledge --
 requiring just basic review of their work and standards to confirm
 they are in line with our basic principles.  [1]

 Wikimedia Associations could be individual wikiprojects, clubs, or
 meetups run by one or more people that want to establish a lasting
 identity as part of the movement.

 Third-party wikis and larger groups could be Wikimedia Affiliates.

 Both could use web-badges and icons to identify them with the movement
 (derived from the WM community logo?).

 SJ

 [1]
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_roles_project/New_group_models

 On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 8:32 PM, Alec Conroy 
 wrote:
 > Prompted by discussions in another thread, I ask a related question--
 >
 > ;1--  A roadmap towards affiliation
 >
 > How should a currently-unaffiliated project go about becoming 'part
 > of' Wikimedia?
 >
 > One easy step they could take would be to simply  say, on their
 > website, "This site considers itself to be part of the Wikimedia
 > Movement".   (alternate text welcome )
 >
 > Later, a self-identified affiliate could be formally designated as
 > "part of the Wikimedia Movement" by the global community or the
 > foundation or both.
 >
 > Such recognition would have lots of benefits for the new projects that
 > share our values-- other WM projects would know to visibly link to
 > them whenever they have relevant content (as we currently do across
 > WMF projects).  We could permit access to the unified login, we could
 > allow template-sharing or image-sharing.  We could set up
 > interwiki-linking, and other interoperability functions.
 >
 > Such recognition would have even bigger benefits for us.   We could
 > get an affiliation with an established, successful project that shares
 > our values.  The kinds of project that we would build ourselves if
 > someone else hadn't already built it.   Their userbases and readership
 > would see get to Wikimedia as something larger than just WP, and it
 > would help cement public understanding that Wikimedia is a Movement,
 > very big, very diverse, and very special.
 >
 > ; 2--   We need a name for self-identified project affiliation.
 >
 > External projects needs to be able to claim, on their own initiative,
 > that they are "part of" something.    That something should be a
 > something that is connected to us.
 >
 > But self-identified affiliation has no gatekeeper, so whatever it is
 > new projects can be "part of", there could be lots that we don't
 > approve of.
 >
 > I'm the founder of a project and I want signal my ideological
 > affiliation to WM.   I think my own project's values match the
 > Wikimedia's values, in my opinion anyway.
 >
 > Recognizing that I may or may not be righ

[Foundation-l] Taxonomy of Free Culture Movements

[Pharos]

I'd like to approach the "Unnamed Movement" idea from a slightly
different perspective.

What we really have emergent is a series of related movements, many of
which are nested inside of each other.

At the highest and most general level is the Free Culture Movement,
which is a real and active movement for sharing-minded copyright and
IP innovations in all forms.

Below that, there is a division between the artistic side (Remix Art
Movement) and the factual side (Open Knowledge Movement).

The Open Knowledge Movement is itself divided between the side
dominated by professional scholars (Open Access Movement) and the side
dominated by info-hobbyists (Wiki Knowledge Movement or New
Encyclopedist Movement or "Unnamed Movement" or whatever).

(Of course, this doesn't mean that experts aren't deeply involved with
Wikimedia-like sites, indeed they play a very important role, just
more of a supporting than a dominating one.)

It is only I think on the level of the last mentioned info-hobbyist
movement (of whatever title) that Wikimedia can seem to be the clear
"industry leader" and potential movement-definer.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[Foundation-l] Hypothetical project rebranding Wikimedia

[Pharos]

I thought folks might be interested in this, which was created by
Moving Brands as a hypothetical project for rebnranding Wikimedia, and
published in Viewpoint Magazine in the UK:

http://www.movingbrands.com/?category_name=wikipedia-work

Note the very elaborate work on this, and the particular role in
representing all the sister Wikimedia projects, not just Wikipedia.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] WikiKids - Vikidia: encyclopedia for children

[Pharos]

Earlier this year, I helped organize and archive some of the past proposals
for new Wikimedia projects on meta, and those with an education focus
(including several for children's education) are collected here:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Proposed_projects_-_education

Perhaps these historical proposals might also be of some use.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 1:54 PM, Mathias Damour
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I've tried to compile some of the old messages and discussions about
> this topic, which has been put in light time to time, notably (as far as
> I know) three times on this mailing list from 2005 to 2010 (see below).
>
> I am a French wikipedian, and would like to tell you about this pretty
> old project: a wiki encyclopedia designed for and partly maintained by
> children.
> The idea of a equivalent of Wikipedia for children was discussed in
> particular in 2005-2006 on this page :
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids
>
> Although it had no continuation as a Wikimedia project, wikis with such
> a feature were launched first in Dutch: WikiKids
> http://wikikids.wiki.kennisnet.nl ; in french a few month later: Vikidia
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikidia ( http://fr.vikidia.org/ ) and then
> in Spanish ( http://es.vikidia.org ) for 8-13 years old children. I
> opened Vikidia.
>
> WikiKids.nl and Vikidia in French are doing well and are quite alike in
> size and activity, they are both 5 years old now, whereas Vikidia in
> Spanish doesn't make it so well. (If you are Spanish speaker or if you
> know people that would be interested in it, please tell them about this
> wiki !)
>
> On Vikidia in French, we currently have a guest-book opened, and the
> comments left on it
> http://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Livre_d%27or/Automne_2011 are quite
> encouraging (Google translation: http://bit.ly/vfPP4m ). Children say
> they appreciate the articles to be more readable for them than on
> Wikipedia, their main reserve being that some article are not developed
> enough, or that there isn't articles on every subject they would like to
> know about... They clearly expect (and claim) some substantial content,
> though it has to be easier than the Wikipedia's content.
>
> We have yet a bit more than 10,500 articles in Vikidia in French, and
> about 250,000 unique visitors a month.
>
> This "Wikikids" question was mentioned again in the Wikimedia scope one
> year ago firstly on this mailing list, and on the 2010 Wikimedia Study
> of Controversial Content there:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content:_Part_Two#Recommendations:_Controversial_Text
> :
>
> 
> Recommendations: Controversial Text
> Because of the considerations outlined above, our recommendations
> surrounding text in WMF projects are the following:
>
> It is recommended:
> (...)
> 3. That, however, the Foundation investigate the creation of a
> “WikiJunior” version of the Wikipedias, aimed at children under the age
> of 12, either as a stand-alone project or in partnership with existing
> and appropriate educational institutions.
> Explanations:
> (...)
> Recommendations 2 and 3
> (...) Much more successful, in our opinion, is a project specifically
> targeted to children, and to the quite different needs of children in
> different age groups. Some projects of this nature have already been
> begun in the WikiJunior section of WikiBooks, but it is our feeling that
> the scope of such a venture might necessitate the formation of
> partnerships with institutions who have experience and resources already
> devoted to this area.
>
> 
> I of course agree, except on those points :
>
> * /"a project specifically targeted to children, and to the quite
> different needs of children in different age groups"/ I would warn
> against the idea of dividing the content for age group as restricted as
> each year of age, following the pattern of school class. That point
> could be expounded.
> * /"the scope of such a venture might necessitate the formation of
> partnerships with institutions who have experience and resources already
> devoted to this area."/ Thats quite a conservative point of view, kind
> of those that, if followed by Wikipedia, wouldn't have permit its
> developpment. I mean that in such a project, one should try to
> communicate with institutions, publicize what they do, share some points
> of view, competence and so on, but he shouldn't wait for those
> institutions as if they would have to approuve the project and its
> methods, as if only them could tell what is good for the project, since
> it deals with children.
>
> Another feature of WikiKids/Vikidia is of course that it let children be
> involved in building the content, and does not "only" aim to produce and
> offer content for children, for the same benefits that you can f

Re: [Foundation-l] A fundraiser for editors

[Pharos]

I would pitch it as a simple appeal to edit the Wikipedia article on
your hometown (or home neighborhood if you're from a big city).

In my experience, something like this has been attractive to a very
broad spectrum of people, and gives them a nice "in" as a place to get
started.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

On Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 1:40 PM, Ziko van Dijk  wrote:
> Hello,
>
> In principle it is a nice idea. But it is extremely diffcult to "edit"
> (to make substantial contributions) so such an initiative should be
> accompanied by more than a simple appeal...
>
> Kind regards
> Ziko
>
>
> 2012/1/2 Amir E. Aharoni :
>> I tend to agree. At times of Fundraising, public interest grows
>> noticeably. People have been asking me aobut the banners almost every
>> day for the last few weeks. (A few times they even asked me whether
>> they are going to see a personal appeal from Amir Aharoni soon.)
>>
>> I don't think that i ever saw a focused "personal appeal + photo"
>> banner that asks people to edit instead of asking them for money. I
>> did sometime see graphical banners in Wikipedias in various languages
>> that invite people to edit or participate in writing contests.
>> Something like this is happening in the Tamil Wikipedia now (
>> http://ta.wikipedia.org/ ). I don't know how effective it is - it's
>> worth checking.
>>
>> 2012/1/2 James Heilman 
>>>
>>> The fundraiser for money has been working exceedingly well with our
>>> number of donors increasing 10 fold since 2008. What we need now is a
>>> fundraiser for editors. I meet well educated professionals who use
>>> Wikipedia but have no ideas that they can edit it. We need to run a
>>> banner with the same energy we use to raise money to raise editor
>>> numbers. This idea has been trialed to a limited extent here
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Invitation_to_edit but the
>>> effort did not have sufficient data crunching behind it to determine
>>> if it works.
>>>
>>> --
>>> James Heilman
>>> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
>>>
>>> ___
>>> 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
>
>
>
> --
>
> ---
> Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
> dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
> http://wmnederland.nl/
> ---
>
> ___
> 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] A fundraiser for editors

[Pharos]

On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 3:48 PM, Przykuta  wrote:
>> >
>> I agree cities are probably better, but I don't think that's really the
>> best place to start editing Wikipedia either, because it's an area where
>> it's really easy for new users to mistakenly think that they should
>> write content based on their personal experience rather than on sources.
>
> What do you think about libraries? ^^

FWIW, this was actually the focus of the Seattle Wikipedia Loves
Libraries event:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/seattleWLL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_libraries_in_Seattle

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia's ebook and PDF creation feature doesn't support Chinese and Japanese

[Pharos]

Side question:

Does Chinese Wikipedia indeed have an elected or consensus "leader" or
some sort?

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Yao Ziyuan  wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I think you guys can all see how useful it would be if the Chinese
> Wikipedia also has the ebook/PDF creation feature as seen on other
> language Wikipedias. Some countries don't always let their people
> visit Wikipedia, so ebooks can be an alternative.
>
> We have tried to solve this bug that prevents the Chinese/Japanese
> Wikipedias from having this feature:
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33430
>
> The relevant developers (PediaPress) have solved the bug to some
> extent, but Shi Zhao, leader of the Chinese Wikipedia, still doesn't
> think the resulting Chinese PDF files are good enough, so the Chinese
> Wikipedia has not yet upgraded to the latest MediaWiki software to get
> this feature.
>
> My two suggestions:
> (1) Persuade Shi Zhao to adopt the latest MediaWiki software, which
> can generate ebook/PDFs for the Chinese Wikipedia, although the page
> layout is not perfect.
> (2) Or find another organization than PediaPress to provide this
> feature, because PediaPress refuses to adopt a more Unicode-friendly
> PDF code library that provides better Chinese PDF rendering.
>
> Regards,
> Ziyuan Yao
>
> ___
> 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] A discussion list for Wikimedia (not "Foundation") matters

[Pharos]

On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 11:30 AM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 7:14 AM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
>> That sounds reasonable.  Most things discussed on this list are not
>> specially relevant to the Foundation.
>
> OK. Any strong objections to changing the list name and scope (the
> latter being the description at
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ) to be
> all-encompassing for Wikimedia-wide issues?
>
> The rename would likely occur by unsubscribing current members from
> this list and re-subscribing them to the new one, to avoid breaking
> links or accidentally corrupting archives -- meaning that list
> archives pre-move would be accessible via a different URL, which could
> be prominently advertised in the list description.
>
>> I do think many discussions can be moved from internal-l to this list;
>> and on occasion people have suggested that foundation-l is a less
>> suitable place for an otherwise public discussion simply because the
>> name seems exclusive to the WMF.
>
> Agreed -- creating a forum that feels welcoming to everyone,
> regardless of their specific affiliations, is one of my strongest
> motivations here.
>
> Erik

Yes, a rename to wikimedia-l certainly seems like a practical and focusing idea.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[Foundation-l] WikiWorldDays and multi-events

[Pharos]

Hi folks,

I've started this page to help list the various themed multi-event
campaigns that have been popping up around the Wikimedia universe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiWorldDays

Not sure if it's the best name, I was also thinking WikiSpring, or
WikiSeason, or WikiWhatnot.

(yes, that page could maybe be on meta instead :P )

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] New Project Process

[Pharos]

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 2:47 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo)  wrote:
> Samuel Klein, 03/04/2012 06:40:
>
>>  - a global list of areas needing free knowledge, and how far we are
>> as a society towards reaching that goal
>
>
> We had started a stub table about this:
> https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_that_need_to_be_free

The several topical subcategories of 'Proposed projects' that I've
played with also give a good idea of the variety of areas of free
knowledge (list-focused, citation-focused, DIY-focused, etc) that have
been proposed on meta:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Proposed_projects

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] New Project Process

[Pharos]

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 4:22 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 3:38 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
>> On 3 April 2012 07:47, Federico Leva (Nemo)  wrote:
>>
>>> We had started a stub table about this:
>>> https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_that_need_to_be_free
>>
>> This is brilliant! I've been after something like this for a while.
>
> Thanks for the reminder, Nemo.  I was looking for this on Meta, but
> forgot to check the stratwiki.
> Embarrassing, since apparently I started the page... :) Liam: another
> reason to consider merging meta wikis.
>
> Ziko:
>> what would a WMF evaluation of Wikinews or Wikispecies say? Should we shut 
>> down such
>> a project... cease to mention it on Wikipedia main pages... or invest money 
>> in promoting it?
>
> Good questions, subtle answers.  Those are not the only options; we
> might help them merge with a similar project.  For instance,
> wikieducator and wikiversity have almost identical missions, and might
> benefit from being merged; the question of 'who hosts the site' is
> relatively minor compared to the loss of splitting energy and focus
> across two wikis.
>
> Liam (paraphrased):
>> - "project review" : identify support each project expects from the WMF.
>> - "easy improvements with high value". Start with Wiktionary
>> - rename Commons to "WikiCommons"? merge WikiSpecies w/ WikiData?
>> - merge Outreach, Strategy and MetaWiki --> wikimedia.org
>> - lower barriers b/t wikis: global userpages, talk, watchlists
>
> This whole class of brainstorming is important; making it less of a
> pain to travel between projects is good for all of them.
>
> Yaroslav:
>> may be we could use the experience of langcom and appoint ten individuals
>> who would recommend new proposals to the Board.
>
> That's not a bad idea.
>
> SJ

Indeed, perhaps a 'Sister Projects Committee' could start looking into
some of Liam's type of questions.

(Of course, Wikipedia is a "sister project" too!)

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] New Project Process

[Pharos]

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 10:28 AM, Lodewijk  wrote:
> I totally second SJ's poke for more new projects! Although our flagship
> project is highly successful, it would be good if we try to keep creating
> new communities. I have been sad for quite a while now that we don't create
> new projects any more. It would be great to see one new project every year
> :)

I had suggested earlier that we might even run this as an annual
thing, with a Wikimania-style bidding process for the new sister
projects.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

> No dia 4 de Abril de 2012 05:53, Pharos 
> escreveu:
>
>> On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 4:22 PM, Samuel Klein 
>> wrote:
>> > On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 3:38 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
>> >> On 3 April 2012 07:47, Federico Leva (Nemo)  wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> We had started a stub table about this:
>> >>>
>> https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_that_need_to_be_free
>> >>
>> >> This is brilliant! I've been after something like this for a while.
>> >
>> > Thanks for the reminder, Nemo.  I was looking for this on Meta, but
>> > forgot to check the stratwiki.
>> > Embarrassing, since apparently I started the page... :) Liam: another
>> > reason to consider merging meta wikis.
>> >
>> > Ziko:
>> >> what would a WMF evaluation of Wikinews or Wikispecies say? Should we
>> shut down such
>> >> a project... cease to mention it on Wikipedia main pages... or invest
>> money in promoting it?
>> >
>> > Good questions, subtle answers.  Those are not the only options; we
>> > might help them merge with a similar project.  For instance,
>> > wikieducator and wikiversity have almost identical missions, and might
>> > benefit from being merged; the question of 'who hosts the site' is
>> > relatively minor compared to the loss of splitting energy and focus
>> > across two wikis.
>> >
>> > Liam (paraphrased):
>> >> - "project review" : identify support each project expects from the WMF.
>> >> - "easy improvements with high value". Start with Wiktionary
>> >> - rename Commons to "WikiCommons"? merge WikiSpecies w/ WikiData?
>> >> - merge Outreach, Strategy and MetaWiki --> wikimedia.org
>> >> - lower barriers b/t wikis: global userpages, talk, watchlists
>> >
>> > This whole class of brainstorming is important; making it less of a
>> > pain to travel between projects is good for all of them.
>> >
>> > Yaroslav:
>> >> may be we could use the experience of langcom and appoint ten
>> individuals
>> >> who would recommend new proposals to the Board.
>> >
>> > That's not a bad idea.
>> >
>> > SJ
>>
>> Indeed, perhaps a 'Sister Projects Committee' could start looking into
>> some of Liam's type of questions.
>>
>> (Of course, Wikipedia is a "sister project" too!)
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Richard
>> (User:Pharos)
>>
>> ___
>> 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] help.wikimedia.org - Q&A site

[Pharos]

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Gregory Varnum  wrote:
> Some modifications and requested info has been added to:  
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ask.wikimedia.org_(Q%26A_site)
>
> -greg aka varnent

There have also been a couple of other proposals on meta along these
same lines, and perhaps something useful could be merged from the
other ones as well:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Proposed_projects_-_Q&A

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

> On Apr 6, 2012, at 2:52 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
>
>> Great!  Could you two please revise the current dormant proposal at
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiAnswers
>>
>> And note that one of the active uses of the site would be a channel
>> dedicated to Q&A about using the Wikimedia projects and MediaWiki?
>>
>> I think it is simpler and easier to say "let's start a Q&A site, and
>> focus on building a help channel there".
>> As long as the site is up and maintained, you could answer other
>> questions there as well.  The WP:RefDesk has never been an ideal
>> formal for answering questions or, more importantly, for aggregating
>> and organizing answers over time so that it develops into a permanent
>> reference resource.
>>
>> SJ
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 2:28 PM, Gregory Varnum  
>> wrote:
>>> I would be interested in helping with this project from a third-party wiki 
>>> and MediaWiki developer perspective.
>>>
>>> -greg aka varnent
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Apr 6, 2012, at 2:26 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
>>>
 On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 3:45 AM, Jan Kučera  wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> new projects suck, because there are (close to) none
> asked some time ago already with few positive replies
>
> bug was already filled at 
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29923
> is there someone who can help move on?

 It looks like a good idea to me.  Do you have any experience running
 one of those sites?

 As with any new project, a set of people signed up to help administer
 it / be initial contributors and editosr would be useful.   So I think
 it's still valuable to create a page about it on meta as a 'new
 project' even though we haven't cleaned up the new project process
 there recently.

 SJ

 ___
 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
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Samuel Klein          identi.ca:sj           w:user:sj          +1 617 529 
>> 4266
>>
>> ___
>> 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] New Project Process

[Pharos]

Indeed, I would expect for the 'Sister Projects Committee' to have
both the options of project fission and project fusion within its
toolbag.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 11:24 AM, Tarc Meridian  wrote:
>
> In some respects, that change would be quite good. My experience on Wikiquote 
> has been unfavorable, to put it mildly, where the en.wiki concept of BLP is 
> non-existent.
>
>
>> Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2012 14:42:41 +1000
>> From: jay...@gmail.com
>> To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] New Project Process
>>
>> The policies of each project are different for a very good reason.
>>
>> e.g. If English Wikiquote was merged into English Wikipedia, the vast
>> majority of the quote pages would be deleted very quickly, for good or
>> ill.  I know I would be the first to get out the sickle. :P
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 2:22 PM, Carlos Felipe Antonorsi
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> John Vandenberg
>>
>> ___
>> 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] Wiki Travel Guide

[Pharos]

I think I would consider it educational.  Travel itself is an
educational experience, and a fuller travel experience enabled by the
sharing of Wikimedia-style free knowledge all the more so :)

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 11:36 AM, Patricio Molina
 wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 12:19 PM, Ziko van Dijk  wrote:
>> I am not sure whether Wikitravel (or the content it provides) fit into the 
>> scope of Wikimedia. Is it really 'educational' content?
>
> Hum... I thought this project was adequate for Wikimedia, but now I'm
> having some doubts. Could you please define 'educational content'?
> What's the nature of projects like Wikinews?
>
> Regards,
> --
> Patricio Molina
> http://twitter.com/patriciomolina
>
> ___
> 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