Re: [Foundation-l] [Fwd: Re: Do WMF want enwp.org?]
Nice ideas. For reference, here are the current usage options of enwp.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tl-lomas/enwp.org And here are a few ideas to extend that (in transparent ways): http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/137551#137551 Waldir On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 8:22 PM, Nihiltres wiki.nihilt...@gmail.com wrote: (Please pardon my not quoting earlier emails) I think a URL shortener is a great idea if we can make it work right. We do need, however, to sort out our issues, e.g. the following list: *Choice of domain name(s) (or a TLD) **Acquisition of domain name(s) **Registration of TLD (if applicable) **Maintenance and admin. of the above, including costs **Length of domain name/TLD *Implementation of URL shortening **Namespacing for projects/languages **Whether to encode pagenames/IDs/etc. **How to encode pagenames/IDs/etc. I'm not particularly familiar with the process for TLDs, and I don't mind the choice of domain much as long as it's short, but I pondered Wikimedia URL shorteners one day and came up with the following system for a Wikimedia URL shortening service: *The domain wi.ki (at 5 characters, it's among the shortest, and is very obvious despite the problematic wiki vs. Wikimedia confusion) *First, a base 64 encoded ID number for project and language. This has the advantage of fitting up to 4096 projects before needing three characters, and would allow some of the most heavily-used wikis to use only one character for their ID. One potential snag is that we would want to substitute other characters for a and A in this area so that the URL didn't start with http://wi.ki/a/ and confuse us with Wikia. *Next, a slash to separate the project number from the page number. *Next, a base 64 encoded revision ID. By using the revision ID to determine the target page, we get around the problem of page-moves, and we could add the option of adding a control character (e.g. +) at the end to make a permanent link to that particular revision, an option that many proposals don't allow for. *An ideal implementation would allow one to prepend a control character to use a transparent link. Thus, we'd have links something like these: http://wi.ki/0/ZXh8g http://wi.ki/0/ZXh8g+ http://wi.ki/0/+Foobar In the above examples, the first would go to [[w:en:Foobar]], the second to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Foobaroldid=425598752 , and the third again to [[w:en:Foobar]] but in a more transparent way. Foobar might be a bad example, since the title itself is so short that encoding it doesn't save many characters. Nihiltres ___ 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: Re: Do WMF want enwp.org?]
wi.ki, on the other hand, would be safe in this regard :) By the way, since no one at WMF offered to send the email requesting a donation/price reduction of the wi.ki domain, I'll do it as the president of Wikimedia Portugal, with my @wikimedia.pt email. Hopefully that'll give me some leverage -- only a fraction of what an email coming from an @ wikimedia.org would, but hey, it's better than nothing. Waldir On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 12:54 AM, Kirill Lokshin kirill.loks...@gmail.comwrote: Although, on the other hand, would this leave us too open to imitators, given that wiki is not a trademark? Consider the scenario of a group like, say, 4chan registering eng.wiki and filling it with assorted shock content; enough people might mistakenly visit the fake site to generate considerable bad publicity for us. Kirill ___ 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: Re: Do WMF want enwp.org?]
On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 2:18 PM, Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoeks...@gmail.comwrote: Back to the issue at hand though: Thomas is (quite generously) offering the enwp.org domain. Would the foundation like to have it? I can only guess that the tech-oriented people don't seem to fancy the idea much. From this thread we have the following (explicitly stated): On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 11:12 PM, Ashar Voultoiz hashar+...@free.fr wrote: Can we please stop multiplying the number of domains? Although the registration is cheap, the administration overhead is not that cheap. Plus the implicit indifference signaled by the absence of other inputs from the tech staff despite their being asked at least once --so we were told-- to comment on the issue. There's also a thread about this from 2008 in wikitech, especially this message from Brion On Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 11:49 AM, Brion Vibber br...@wikimedia.org wrote: I strongly recommend against making links through *any* unofficial alternate domain, whether WMF owns it or not. (Perhaps especially if WMF owns it!) Sooner or later someone will forget to renew it and it'll become a squatted spam site. :) -- brion [source: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/137602#137602] Well, I don't think this should be a valid impediment. I mean, don't domain registrars send reminders when the expiration date is close? Even if they don't, can't the tech people set one themselves? There must be some sort of system already in place for the several top-level domains we already have: one for every project (which amounts to 7), plus wikimediafoundation.org, mediawiki.org, and the .com, .net variants of many of these and god knows what else (funny, mediawiki.net seems to be owned by WM-IT). So, on one hand I can understand the resistance towards adding even more domains to that mix: the enwp.org would set a precedence for others in the same vein, and this would mean up to 7 (projects) * ~200 (languages) domains. Even if we assume only a handful of these would get enough demand to be registered, it could easily double or triple the number of domains currently managed by the WMF. In fact, if we assume only the .org domains I noted above (9 in total), adding the current shorteners I have knowledge of (enwp.org, frwp.org, enwn.net) means a 33% growth. On the other hand, as I said, there are likely more than the 9 .org TLDs I mentioned, so there probably is (if not, should be?) an automated system of reminders or something to that effect. This system could easily be extended to add one or a few more. Waldir ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Fwd: Re: Do WMF want enwp.org?]
On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 1:15 AM, Waldir Pimenta wal...@email.com wrote: On the other hand, as I said, there are likely more than the 9 .org TLDs I mentioned, so there probably is (if not, should be?) an automated system of reminders or something to that effect. This system could easily be extended to add one or a few more. Btw, if we consider the wi.ki domain, which would be the _only one_ we'd need to add for this purpose, so I really can't see any reason to not do it (except perhaps unwillingness to add to the wiki -- wikipedia misconception?) Waldir ps - ok, even if we didn't get a price reduction from the current owner and have to buy it for the $992 it currently costs (see https://domaininfo.com/search_result_xml.asp?domain=witld=kicurrency=USD), we would have to pay $1,000/yr for the renewal ( http://www.tak.ki/what-we-do/domain-name-registration.html), which doesn't sound very cost-effective. But you'd think an email from, say, Jimmy Wales ;) could get a price reduction from the Telecommunications Authority of Kiribati, wouldn't you? :D pps - I just wanted to point out to a related thread, from 2010, in the Village pump: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29/Archive_76#URL_shortener_for_wikipedia.org_e.g._http:.2F.2Fwi.ki.2F_to_use_on_social_networking_sites_such_as_twitter.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Fwd: Re: Do WMF want enwp.org?]
On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 10:27 PM, Béria Lima berial...@gmail.com wrote: I preffer wp.org (if is possible) to make internationalization easier. So to en.wiki would be en.wp.org, de.wiki de.wp.org and etc. For the record (sorry I'm late btw :P), I had independently contacted the owners of wp.org shortly before this thread came up, and they basically said that even though they supported Wikipedia (they had even donated in the past), the domain has too much potential value (WordPress, the Washington Post, etc) for them to hand it over. I also thought about this multi-language facet of Wikimedia, which is further aggravated by the existence of multiple projects. That is, even wp.org would have problems too, since we'd then need to get one for wikinews, commons, etc. The best solution would be IMO getting the domain * wi.ki*, since this could be adapted either through prefixes (i.e., subdomains, such as en.wi.ki) or suffixes (e.g. wi.ki/en) for languages and/or project codes. In addition to that we could generate links as the current shorteners do, like wi.ki/x23yz. Now, the wi.ki domain at first seems to be unused, but http://whois.nic.kireveals it is registered at least until 9 Jan 2012, by domaininfo.com. A search on that page reveals that wi.ki is not available for registration, but seems to be buyable for 696 €. We could contact them and ask for a partial donation, but it would work best if the request comes from the WMF itself. Before figuring it was already registered, I sent an email to organization that manages the .KI domain. The text of that email might be useful for this effect: http://pastebin.com/L0v6uz1i Here's a quote from that message that points out some of the advantages of having these short urls: * * *[Wikipedia] links are often long and hard to read (for instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=.kioldid=408287624 ), which makes them not only inconvenient, but also prone to reproduction errors. Since the practice of citation is such a critical component of journalism and scientific publication, minimizing this risk would bring very significant benefits for scholars, journalists, and even users who want to share links in social media.* So, who supports that we request them a donation of that domain? And is anyone from the WMF willing to send them the request? (Moka?) It's fine if the tech team doesn't want to manage the domain; I'm sure plenty of volunteers could offer to do that. But it we'd be much more likely to get it in the first place if the request is made officially by the WMF. So what do you guys think? Waldir ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] multilingual mailing list
Milos, Basque is not spoken on that list. I haven't heard of any interest in creating a Basque chapter (and I've recently been in contact with a few people from the Basque Wikipedia, for a chapter-like activity, so I believe I would know if such interest existed), and the Iberocoop list, on the other hand, is focused on existing and planned chapters. In any case, although we firmly defend a multilingual setup, we've thoroughly discussed this and agreed that it can only work when the languages are, like Thomas said, mutually intelligible. Basque would not fit there, because of this, but AFAIK most Basque people speak Spanish as well, so that wouldn't be a (hypothetical) problem. Cheers, Waldir On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 10:00 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 16:32, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On 12 March 2011 14:53, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: A really (and not only formally) multilingual list is the new iberocoop list, started after the last Wikimania (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Iberocoop ). I didn't know about that list. That's very interesting - thanks for the heads up! It is a lot easier to manage a multilingual discussion where all the languages are, to at least some extent, mutually intelligible, though. It would be useful to hear what measures, if any, that list has taken to make things easier, though. They might work more generally. Willing to hear how Basque language is used on that list. ___ 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
Hi Thomas, and all who showed concern about Wikimedia Portugal's planned expenses. I am one of the persons who calculated that budget, and thus I feel I should provide you with some information. First of all, I'd point out that none of us has any experience in nation-wide nonprofit organizations. We thus had no way to know what we would need to make it work, and chose to play safe. Obviously, we were aware that the value for meetings was fairly high, and we pointed that out in our proposal, as you can read in the page you linked: We are (...) willing to reduce the frequency of the meetings if the total value is considered too high And we indeed were advised to do so, when the grant was conceded: The award was reduced from the requested USD $7,909 to encourage a smaller budget for travel. Let me assure you, we are as much as yourself concerned in not wasting the grant's money with lunches for the members. We have plenty of planned activities (as you can see in http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Portugal/Actividades) for which we didn't include a budget in our request, since it was for the start-up only. But we are very much willing to find ways to meet less and apply the money in these projects instead. We would love to receive advice on how we can make the chapter work (well) with people so spread across the country (almost all the involved people live in different cities), and since much of the money WMF has was volunteer-contributed, we will take into account the wishes of the community. If you feel we should meet less (how many times do you think are enough? let us know your thoughts on our mailing list: wikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org), then we certainly will consider your advice. Thanks, Waldir On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 8:53 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: 2009/9/10 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: 2009/9/10 Pharos pharosofalexand...@gmail.com: There are 21 accepted proposals listed on this page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants/Reporting_Guidance Ah, well found! I didn't think to check that page - the title doesn't suggest it would contain such info. I must say, I am amazed that this was approved: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants/WM_PT/Start-up WMUK managed to get set up without paying for any meals and all meetings have taken place in pubs or rooms we've got hold of for free. Paying nearly $3,500 for that out of charitable donations is patently ridiculous. ___ 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] Leaked UK Ordnance Survey report on freeing map data
Going through the benefits they mention of their hybrid model, the following bits caught my attention: - provide wider rights across the (...) public sector, enhanced data sharing and clarifying non commercial re-use of derived data - remove the restrictive licence framework to the public sector - provide maximum transparency and level playing for competitors I wonder if are they considering CC-BY-NC? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Leaked UK Ordnance Survey report on freeing map data
btw: http://twitter.com/OrdnanceSurvey/status/3424623841 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why hasn't the LocalisationUpdate extension been enabled?
Thanks, Naoko. I indeed haven't been looking at all places; as I saw the tabs still untranslated, I assumed the rest was still so. It's already very good to have the everything but the tabs localised, but of course, I'll be looking forward to see the fully translated skin live :) As you suggest, I'll contact you directly in the future should I come across any similar issues. Thanks for the feedback, and keep up the great work! Waldir On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Naoko Komura nkom...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hello, Waldir. Waldir Pimenta wrote: When the Vector skin became available, I tried it on my home wiki, pt.wikipedia, and noticed that a great deal of its interface was still in English. So I went to translatewiki.net and translated the remaining strings to Portuguese. Then I waited, and waited.. and I am waiting until today, and the skin still has the English strings on it. It's been almost a month. Thank you for the translation work. As a usability team leader, I appreciate your attention on Vector and the new toolbar especially. We, the usability team, get really excited when the text in UI are translated into new languages. We pushed lots of text especially for the beta landing page and survey. I see the Portuguese pages are fully translated for the survey. Thank you. Since the first release of usability features (Acai) on July 1st, there has been minimum of weekly software update to Acai. And we updated the deployment software with up-to-date translation on August 6th for all languages. In the case for Portuguese, the text for the toolbar, the beta landing page, and the survey was updated. However the translation for tabs didn't get the update. We will look into why the update didn't occur. As for LocalisationUpdate, there has been a discussion in this thread already, so I won't get into too much details. But we are planning to start testing it in the usability prototype sites for the next round of release. http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Prototype It would be great if we can work with translators to test LocalisationUpdate so that the translators can actually confirm their translation appear promptly after the translation in traslatewiki.net. When you see a portion of translation does not appear in UI, please drop me a note. We often think that the translation behind, and if that is not the case we will look into why the update did not occur. Hopefully this kind of gap will be gone, once the automation via LocalisationUpdate is available. But until then, feel free to write to me directly. My email address is nkom...@wikimedia.org. Cheers, - Naoko -- 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] Why hasn't the LocalisationUpdate extension been enabled?
When the Vector skin became available, I tried it on my home wiki, pt.wikipedia, and noticed that a great deal of its interface was still in English. So I went to translatewiki.net and translated the remaining strings to Portuguese. Then I waited, and waited.. and I am waiting until today, and the skin still has the English strings on it. It's been almost a month. This is bad for several reasons. On this specific context, it means that non-English users of the Vector skin, which is supposed to increase usability, will actually have potentially more trouble using it simply because it is using a foreign language. On a more general stance, this is also bad for translators, since we don't have as much motivation to contribute when our translations lay unused for so much time. It's exactly one of the arguments that was used a lot to oppose the FlaggedRevisions extension: the immediacy of the edits going live is what makes wikis so compelling. (disclaimer: I'm actualy in favor of flagged revs; I would trade some immediacy for more stability. But not if the delay means a month!) It's also bad for MediaWiki in general, since the expansion of its language support grows in a much slower pace. I understand why it was chosen not to always run bleeding edge versions of the software on the live Wikimedia wikis. But the LocalisationUpdate was created precisely as a workaround to this, i.e, to allow updating the localisation without needing to update the software. So my question is: why is it not enabled yet on most Wikimedia wikis? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
