Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki Travel Guide
Dear James, In general the idea sounds interesting, and Wikitravel is certainly one of the notable wiki community projects. But I am not sure whether Wikitravel (or the content it provides) fit into the scope of Wikimedia. Is it really 'educational' content? Kind regards Ziko 2012/4/9 James Heilman jmh...@gmail.com: The core group of editors at Wikitravel are interested in joining a WMF run Wiki Travel Guide. A proposal for creating such a project has been outlined here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Travel_Guide and would develop from the content currently at wikitravel.org *Wikitravel is currently in 20 languages and in English contains more than 25,000 articles. The content is licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0. Site readership statistics are not released by Internet Brands, but for travel information the site is consistently highly ranked. It is the largest and most popular freely-licensed, user-contributed travel guide collection. Alexa.com ranks it as the 2637 most popular site on the web with a global reach of 0.0602%. The interwiki links between Wikipedia and Wikitravel highlight the close historic cooperation between the editors of both sites, where users adding travelogue style content to Wikipedia have often been directed to add the content to Wikitravel. Benefits for the WMF: 1) Increase the scope of content offered by the WMF 2) Increase the number of Wikimedians 3) Increase the volume of content for fundraising 4) Provide a separate repository for important travel and tourism information, some of which currently is contained within Wikipedia articles. Benefits for travel content: 1) Reputation of the WMF would increase the editor base. 2) Remove the conflicts between the commercial decisions of the current hosting provider and the community. 3) Would increase the reliability of the site, which is currently running old MediaWiki versions, on poorly performing infrastructure. Benefits for both: 1) Would make it easier for the two sites to direct editors to the better site for the content in question, leading to better focus within articles. 2) Combining the image repositories at Wikimedia Commons would result in greater and easier image availability for both Wikipedia and the travel site, and an increase in both contributors and images.* -- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian ___ 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/ Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki Travel Guide
Hello, Possibly, what is educational in Wikitravel (-voyage) can go into Wikipedia, and what not, is not educational. One might get problems with policies such as NOR and NPOV. I suppose that they should be applied on Wiki Travel Guide, as on Wikipedia, Wikibooks and other Wikimedia sites. Kind regards Ziko 2012/4/9 Juergen Fenn schneeschme...@googlemail.com: Am 9. April 2012 06:50 schrieb James Heilman jmh...@gmail.com: The core group of editors at Wikitravel are interested in joining a WMF run Wiki Travel Guide. A proposal for creating such a project has been outlined here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Travel_Guide and would develop from the content currently at wikitravel.org As I've just written on the talk page there: Frankly speaking, I don't think we need another wiki on travelling as there already is Wikivoyage. Wikivoyage is a fork of Wikitravel that was created when Wikitravel went commercial. It is run under a free CC-by-sa licence, and it is ready to add new language projects. German editors of Wikivoyage most probably will not change to a WMF project. So the question is why the editors of English Wikitravel won't rather come over and join Wikivoyage? It would be a rather bad idea to split communities instead of joining them together. To my mind Wikivoyage is the place where to gather travel information. Regards, Jürgen (contributing to both Wikipedia and Wikivoyage). PS. I'll tell the German Wikvoyage community about this discussion. ___ 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/ Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] New Project Process
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[Foundation-l] What 'movement role' for Esperanto?
Dear all, Here a little contribution to the discussion about new organizations for the Wikimedia movement. As far as I know, at this point there are not many groups who consider seriously about becoming such a new organization. Sometimes people mention the Esperanto Wikipedians because they cannot form a territorial chapter. I have thought through how the new organizations of the Wikimedia movement could translate to the Esperanto movement. The Esperanto Wikipedia is not one of the smallest. For about 50-100 speakers of Esperanto contribute to Esperanto Wikipedia on a fairly regular basis. == Esperanto associations == For speakers of Esperanto, also called Esperantists, it is not unusual to be a member of an Esperanto association. The [[World Esperanto Association]] has individual members but is also a federation of the national Esperanto organizations. Besides that, there are specialist organizations; eight of them are politically and religiously neutral and well organized, they are affiliated to the Word Esperanto Association in more or less the same way as the national organizations. Other specialist organizations are not affiliated because they are not neutral or find it too much work to join. They have signed a contract of collaboration with the World Esperanto Association. == Esperanto associations and Wikipedia == There is a („other“) specialist organization of Esperantists occupied with the internet and education, called [[E@I]] (pronunciation: Eh – cheh – Ee). When an Esperantist-Wikipedian wants to do something about Wikipedia it is natural to approach E@I. But also the national associations and the World Esperanto Association are sympathetic to Wikipedia and like to have Wikipedia lessons at an convention, for example. In 2008 the Esperanto Wikipedians wanted to have a flyer for the promotion of Wikipedia among Esperantists. I then approached the Wikimedia Foundation directly for the use of the logos, and collected some money from the World Esperanto Association and the European Esperanto Association. At the World Congress of Esperanto in that year, all of the 2000 participants had that flyer in their goodie bag, and we were given a room for a lecture on Wikipedia. In 2011, the Czech Esperanto Association hosted a Wikipedia convention in the Czech Republic, with an international character as usual in the Esperanto movement. It would have been better visited, possibly, if travel expenses could have been reimbursed. This is actually less usual in the Esperanto movement but would be very welcome. Esperanto speakers are often multiplicators (like teachers, artists, socially active people). So supporting them is well invested energy. == What movement role for Esperanto? == So what can the new kinds of Wikimedia organizations, discussed about under the expression „movement roles“, mean for Esperanto? Actually the Esperantists could become an affiliated in all of the three new kinds: * A thematic organization: E@I, or a newly founded organization, could become a thematic organization of Wikimedia with similar rights and duties as the territorial chapters. * A Wikimedia group: E@I or even just a number of Esperantists listed on Esperanto Wikipedia could form a Wikimedia group. It could get the right to use the logo without especially asking WMF for permission, and ask some money from WMF for a flyer or similar expenses. * An Official Partner of Wikimedia: E@I or the World Esperanto Association could become a partner. I have talked to some Esperanto Wikipedians, some are enthusiast about a thematic organization, others not. One important question is how much (extra) work being a Wikimedia affiliate would cost. Kind regards Ziko ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Draft charter of the Wikimedia Chapters Association
Dear friends, After weeks of full work, this is the draft charter that has been worked on. I copy for you here the introduction and the link to meta. If you have questions about it, you may put them on the talk page or send them to me. Kind regards Ziko In February 2012, in Paris, Chapter representants agreed on creating a new organization. As there was no person or group assigned to write a draft charter, finally, after having talked to some people on general questions, I took the task on me. Subsequently I presented this page (March 7th) which was very much altered in the meanwhile. I have tried to integrate Paris texts, parts from the models B and KISS, and I have contacted a lot of the people who are going to Berlin (end of March; alas I did not find all e-mails but I believed I contacted every participating chapter). There were some phone calls and chats e.g. with Sebastian Moleski. There is also another draft, by Tango, which I (and others) have read carefully. Now we nearly arrived March 18th, on which, according to the timeline, a draft charter is supposed to be ready. Whatever that means, I would like to call the draft provisorily ready (there will be certainly changes, especially for the final incorporation) and invite people again to read. ... The idea is to have an organization with a kind of parliament (Council) and a kind of government (Secretariat). A Judicial Board has the task to arbitrate in severe cases of conflict; this could have been a simple Council committee, but for general reasons a seperate organ is better: the Council or Council members could be part of a conflict. We hope that the Judicial Board will have nothing to do. Normally, the members of the organs are elected for a certain term. This is important to give them a certain independence. There must be a relationship between work, responsibility and the right to make decisions. But if there is a severe problem, then the Council can dismiss people (by a 2/3 majority). There was a lenghy discussion on several levels about the position of the Council members, the Representatives. Now, according to the general principle, the Representative has a fixed term and can be dismissed in certain cases. But the Representative can have a position in a chapter (in contrary to a former model). Maybe the most important question to be answered: If a chapter joins, what are the consequences and obligations? First of all: A chapter joins only if it wants to, it does not become a member automatically. A chapter agrees to elect a Representative and pay an annual contribution. Later in the year 2012, there will be a budget. Possibly, the chapters will have to pay some % of their annual chapter budget. Of course the Wikimedia Chapters Association will consider the financial possibilities of the chapters. Why is it good for a chapter to join? The Association will support the chapters and represent their interests. A lot of international coordination work, that now has to be done by chapter boards, will be done (or supported by) the organs of the Association. Even if a chapter is already big and mature - it is good for every chapter to belong to a big family of well organized chapters. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_Council/Draft_charter_of_the_Wikimedia_Chapters_Association -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Stopping the presses:, Britannica to stop printing books
Dear Robin, There are several reasons for making a text not too long. Pity with the reader is one of them. I personally try to be reluctant with generalizations about Wikipeda language versions. They usually are not true. It's often like the thing that the grass in the neighbour's yard is greener. Kind regards Ziko Robin: I find it bizarre that inclusion of information of local importance is encouraged in the internationalized local language wikipediae but discouraged in the U.S. English wikipedia. So events of local interest in a town in Romania are desirable but the same cannot be said of a similar event in San Jose, California. 2012/3/14 Robin McCain ro...@slmr.com: Why did the articles in Brittania keep getting shorter? Because printing on paper costs money. Storage on the Internet is free by comparison. - So why do our editors insist on reducing what might be an interesting article down to something so brief it might as well be on paper in a book that will be recycled in a few years - or deleting content completely? This whole idea of editing for brevity and notability came from the TRADITIONAL encyclopedia business... Wikipedia was supposed to be the opposite - big enough to include anything of importance to people. It is socially and historically interesting to compare very old edition of Brittanica to a newer edition. For example: an entry on battleships would evolve from a discussion of wooden ships powered by sail that enforced seapower of an empire to sidewheelers, to iron ships fired by coal to the current thinking that battleships are too expensive. In an online encyclopedia it is possible to include all these articles side by side into a section on the evolution of battleships. I find it bizarre that inclusion of information of local importance is encouraged in the internationalized local language wikipediae but discouraged in the U.S. English wikipedia. So events of local interest in a town in Romania are desirable but the same cannot be said of a similar event in San Jose, California. On 3/14/2012 1:15 AM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: But I started getting frustrated with them when I was about 12 or 13, because the shorter articles rarely answered the questions I had, and I never happened t be looking up something with one of the longer articles... ___ 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] Wikimedia Nederland reports for January and February 2012
This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for January 2012. == Cultural heritage == Together with Teylers Museum in Haarlem there is a challenge in which people are asked to write Wikipedia articles about subjects related to that museum. Conferences etc. On Saturday January, 21st WMNL was the guest of Teylers Museum in Haarlem. Our new years reception (nieuwjaarsborrel) was visited by ca. 120-150 people. == Press and outreach == The anti SOPA strike was a news subject in the Netherlands on and around January 18th. Many newspapers reported, and our president was on national TV for the issue. == Upcoming == February: strategy weekend board March: general assembly This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for February 2012. == Cultural heritage == User:Husky gave a short one-day course on editing in Wikipedia to volunteers in Gouda, co-organized by Goudanet and The Gouda platform for History. People made their first edits and wrote their first article on Gouda history. Around 10 people participated including people from the local library. The volunteers will continue to edit Wikipedia in the next few months. Conferences etc. == Other == The board of WMNL met in Zutphen on the 4th and 5th for a strategy weekend. The results should be presented to the members before the general assembly on March 24th, so they will have time to give feedback on the results. On the 25th the WMNL board had an afternoon scheduled on the day of a Wiki-Saturday to receive people who are interested in a board position. == Upcoming == March: general assembly http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederland#Wikimedia_Nederland -- --- 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing
Dear Castelo, We are in danger to repeat ourselves. :-) Short and simply, my statement: * WP is an encyclopedia, with all what that means; * the difference between primary sources and secondary sources is of vital importance (at least in the perspective of most historians). Kind regards Ziko 2012/2/26 Castelo michelcastelobra...@gmail.com: On 25-02-2012 23:02, Ziko van Dijk wrote: As said, all the great things Oral history can be done - outside of Wikipedia. Yes, it can be done but it's not been made. The information is there for decades or centuries, and it was never registered outside of Wikipedia, and now we have interested people, available time and enough resources to make it happen. We already did a lot of things that could be made (less efficiently, indeed) outside Wikipedia. Let's begin with Wikipedia itself. And what about Wikimedia Commons? This is knowledge, and our commitment is to freely share the knowledge with every human being, so change the question from Why? to Why not?. Castelo ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing
Yes Ting, and for these cases there is the method of [[oral history]]. This is a means to create what the Anglosaxons call primary sources. It is recorded and can later be used by a scholar (historian, ethnologist etc.) for his research, for his secondary sources. These, with their scholar reflections, can be used by an encyclopedia. There are good reasons for this way. One is, that it is not very practical to cite from audiotapes/audiofiles. Another, that what this individual is describing may be true for his personal environment but cannot be generalized to others. For that, one needs the scholar. Remember: witnesses are the most unreliable source ever. People tell you plain nonsense - not because they want to ly or are stupid but because the human brain is simply not created to be a historian. It has the greatest difficulties to store information truthfully. So you need to record, and compare the different assertions from different people. It is a possibility to record oral and visual expressions from illiterates, and only later to do something with it scholarly. But all this has nothing to do with Wikipedia. Kind regards Ziko 2012/2/25 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de: Mountain, the first ever editor on zh-wp, and still active until today, told me the following story one day (it was before the Oral Citation project but I remembered the story very well): He came from the coast of Shandong, and his father told him that earlier there was a local tradition where people went early morning to the coast to catch crabs or mollusks (one of them). They used to use a special technique to catch the animals. But meanwhile no one is using this technique anymore, not only because there are now plenty of crabs or mollusks on the market from the hydroculture, but also because the coast which was wild earlier are now all urbanized, with oil terminals and harbors and those. When Mountain told me that story he felt he would like to write down those stories because in maybe 10 or 20 years, latest in 50 years, no one would ever know that there was such a thing on the world. And that tradition would be lost for ever. But he also felt he could not write them on Wikipedia because he had no resources, because until now no of the ethmologists ever had interested on such traditions and no academic resources ever mentioned it. With the Oral Citations Sourcing it would be possible to interview the old people or even let them show how the techniques worked. Greetings Ting On 25.02.2012 09:02, wrote Lodewijk: Hi Castelo, just to make the discussion clearer: could you just give say 5 or 10 examples of topics where you believe oral citations are unavoidable? Then I hope that Ziko in his turn can explain how we can write about those examples without using them. Best regards, Lodewijk ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing
As said, all the great things Oral history can be done - outside of
Wikipedia. And what local Wikipedians like to do with it, will be
decided in the community.
Kind regards
Ziko
2012/2/25 Castelo michelcastelobra...@gmail.com:
On 25-02-2012 15:58, Michael Peel wrote:
Actually, Wikipedia sort of is the place for original content - when it
comes to illustrations in articles.
Those illustrations are mainly in Commons, with exception of the images in
fair use, but linked in the articles. That kind of original content also
plays a minor role, only illustrating the article, but we cannot reference
a sentence as vide image, for instance.
It's possible to envisage audio recordings being used in appropriate
Wikipedia articles along the lines of 'listen to a fisherman from the coast
of Shandong talk about his work', more in the current role of
pictures/photographs rather than as references.
In this case, the audio files will be in Commons, too, and as you pointed,
won't be used for referencing a specific assertation in the text. It will
be, just like images, illustrating the written content, as we do now with
music samples in musicians biography[1]. I suggest transcribe the interview
for Wikinews and use it in inline citations, as in {{cite news}}, for i)
easier checking than by {{cite video}} and ii) facilitate translating.
Castelo
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Dickinson#Singing_style
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Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing
Global South you are talking about ?) (yeah, true stories even if figures are invented). Docs produced by departments of research or finances, I would put a lot of trust in them. There is always the bad luck to stumble on a cheating company just as it also happens that Museum Staff host a black sheep from time to time. But generally, I consider information out of these departments quite safe. But the most difficult ennoying point is simply that most corp archives appear to be a mess. Because companies are bought and sold, information is lost on the way. Because of poor communication between departments. Because staff come and go. And because the acceleration of business processes unfortunately make it so that in the past dozen of years, less and less time and money has been spent (invested) on a proper archive system, on good procedures and efficient implementation. So when you ask can you retrieve the past 20 years of sales regarding this yoghurt, you'll get a blank stare. Truth is, no one knows the date and no one knows where to find the info. Some companies sometimes hire external services (private historians) to clean up their archives and some good stuff can get out of this, such as a book or a museum (Michelin did that. Do visit the museum http://www.aventure-michelin.com/ if you happen to come. It is very nicely done). Usually, I recommand good sense. If the information does not appear weird or controversial at all, I use the corp information as trusted source. If it is clearly misleading or potentially illegal info, I trash it. But in between there is room to accept the data as long as there is another source, that may not be so great but that appears independant. For large companies, there are usually independant sources. But for most medium size companies, not. I give the situation a certain degree of tolerance. Difficult to put that into any sort of policy except for good sense. Florence In terms of social media, this is tricky. Because social media is vastly more accessible than other mediums - particularly to hacks. Wordpress blogs are trivial to make, for example, and you can sound authoritative or convincing on a subject to a layman with only medium effort. I'd treat these with more caution. Phew, that was dumped out in a stream of conciousness way - so it might be a bit buggy. But that's what I figure :) Tom (Just as a note; I consider publisher quite broadly - i.e. the person who hosts or maintains the material) ___ 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 -- --- 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing
Those people who would like to write on Wikipedia about any subject can write a book or pdf about it. It does not have to be a scholarly work in every aspect. And then, the Wikipedia in language X can decide that it accepts this kind of literature as reliable. (Those various standards are not uncommon in the different Wikipedias.) Not everything has to happen *in* Wikipedia. Kind regards Ziko 2012/2/25 Castelo michelcastelobra...@gmail.com: On 24-02-2012 07:48, Ziko van Dijk wrote: Leave the use of historical sources to historians, and then cite from their books. That's what historians are for. Kind regards Ziko Ziko, there's a lack of historians writing books outside Europe/US, specially on some traditional oral history. They love to write about what other historians like, and the unpublished content remains unpublished. If i understood correctly, Oral Citations Project doesn't intend to replace books. Its focus is on what is not covered by books. Amike, Castelo ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Communicating effectively: Wikimedia needs clear language now
, bad grammar and buzzwords. Reward their efforts with barnstars and the occasional thank you messages on talk pages. Commit to clear writing by adopting a policy of copyediting almost always welcome for chapter wikis, Foundation documents and as close to everything as possible. There are volunteers in the movement who happily spend hour after hour copyediting on Wikipedia and Wikinews and Wikibooks and so on. Give them the opportunity to fix up the language used by the Foundation and the chapters. Remember: how can community members support and become more deeply involved with the work of the chapters and the Foundation if they can't understand what you are saying? -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012
Lodewijk, I remember the session in Haifa very well. The audience found it extremely difficult to understand the texts and do anything with them - think of the awkward silence when the group asked for feedback. It must be possible to criticize the texts in spite of their alleged roughness. And indeed, after Haifa we never neard from the group again, its members also did not take part in the discussion on the concerning meta talk page. Now, suddenly, the content of what you call very rough and a first phase is put on the table again. So I take it seriously and say what according to me must be said. Kind regards Ziko 2012/2/14 Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org: Hi Ziko, what was presented at Wikimania, was only supposed to be very rough and a first phase. The idea was to then continue the process further - somehow that never really happened. I agree there were and are quite some flaws in the design (for which I don't necessarily see an immediate solution). When wordings are the problem, we can probably fix that together - it is more important that we agree on the actual content - and that seems hard enough as it is. I'm afraid that a new group at this point would bump into the same problems as the old one did, and has to go through that whole learning process all over again. So yes, lets be critical, and constructive as much as possible. best, Lodewijk No dia 14 de Fevereiro de 2012 00:57, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nlescreveu: Hello, I am afraid that the letter takes over the results of the MR group that where presented at Wikimania 2011. There nobody, as far as I remember, who was enthousiast about those results. My board colleague Marco, for example, was stunned that the MR group thought that the International Olympic Committee were a great model for us because of its transparency (!). The wordings were unsatisfying, and we couldn't make up much of the proposed charter text. On the talk page I later commented that the WMF should call for a new group. I would like to interpret this new letter as an invitation to think about entities and its names again. It would be nice if the expressions could be more self-explanitory, and if we had more information about what these new entities will be for. What problems will be solved by establishing them, what problems could emerge etc. Kind regards Ziko --- 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 -- --- 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012
That's exactly what I did. Ziko 2012/2/14 Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org: agree. Just review the proposals on their own merits, and consider its impact rather than its source. ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012
2012/2/14 Jan-Bart de Vreede jdevre...@wikimedia.org: It is clear to me that there is a close link between the fundraising/dissemination discussion and the increased options of organising ourselves. I am also convinced that we Indeed, and it may not be a coincidence that these two letters came out more or less at the same time. :-) I find it good that the WMF board is taking up these discussions and opens them again. How about asking the *official* opinion of the chapters, within a certain time frame (e.g. 1 or 2 months)? Then we would have a more substantial and reliable feedback, compared to the mails on a mailinglist or talk page comments, all done by people as individuals. Kind regards Ziko -- --- 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012
Hello, I am afraid that the letter takes over the results of the MR group that where presented at Wikimania 2011. There nobody, as far as I remember, who was enthousiast about those results. My board colleague Marco, for example, was stunned that the MR group thought that the International Olympic Committee were a great model for us because of its transparency (!). The wordings were unsatisfying, and we couldn't make up much of the proposed charter text. On the talk page I later commented that the WMF should call for a new group. I would like to interpret this new letter as an invitation to think about entities and its names again. It would be nice if the expressions could be more self-explanitory, and if we had more information about what these new entities will be for. What problems will be solved by establishing them, what problems could emerge etc. Kind regards Ziko --- 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Congratulations to Wikimedia Kenya!
Hello, With great pleasure I allow me to join the congratulations to the newest member of our family. I didn't know that it was so far when I saw Abbas Mahmood in Amsterdam. It'll be great to hear more from Wikimedia Kenya in future. Certainly it is a lot of work to get a chapter established. But only after a couple of years, you'll already have your first notable anniversary (we had 5 years of WMNL in 2011), look back and cannot imagine that there was once a time without a chapter. Kind regards Ziko van Dijk Wikimedia Nederland 2012/2/8 phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com: The Wikimedia Foundation Board is very pleased to welcome and approve our 39th chapter, Wikimedia Kenya: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Recognition_of_Wikimedia_Kenya Congratulations to all for your hard work! -- Phoebe Ayers WMF Board of Trustees Secretary -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at gmail.com * ___ 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] Wikimedia Nederland reports
Hello, Wikimedia Nederland is reporting monthly on its activities. We just completed December, and for convenience I send you here the link to the whole list of reports. Kind regards Ziko van Dijk president -- --- 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Nederland reports
Ah - things happen. Thanks for the note. Ziko http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederland This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for December 2011. == Cultural heritage == The Tropical Museum has put out a call for volunteers and will also be interested in appointing a Wikipedian in Residence. This will be the first such position in the Netherlands. == Conferences etc. == A barcamp is selforganizing at the day GLAMcamp Amsterdam (GLAmsterdam for short) was held December 2-4 and hosted several presentations on Friday to a mixed public of Wikipedians and representatives from various cultural institutions. Europeana presented the GLAM statistics project which should make it easier for outside parties to track usage of Wikimedia Commons donations. The Amsterdam Stedelijk museum presented their efforst to keep a dialog alive with the public even though the museum has been under renovation for several years. One of the most interesting challenges for a modern art collection is the copyright status of photographic images of works of art. Even though the Museum is the owner of the works, they cannot publish photographs of the works without the permission of the artists. They have done pioneering work in engaging artists and their heirs to grant such permissions. The Tropical Museum gave a repeat performance of the presentation that Frank Meijer gave at the WCN in November. One of the presentations given was on the results of the Wiki Loves Monuments contest, and included an announcement to go ahead with a world-wide WLM photo contest in September 2012. The WLM organizers had held a small evaluation on December 1st, the day before the GLAMcamp began. Though not all of the conclusions have been drawn up, there are two main areas of concern; for a larger number of countries there will need to be a better task management system in place and better documentation such as clearer instructions (in more languages) for uploaders, organizers, and Wiki Takes volunteers. Not to mention coordinating partnerships with cultural heritage organizations. == Press and outreach == Annual report 2010 printed. Discussions on a new Wikipedia flyer began. == Upcoming == January: Nieuwjaarsborrel February: Strategy weekend April: General Assembly --- 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
Re: [Foundation-l] A fundraiser for editors
Actually, the initiative of Article Feedback Tool is going pretty much into this direction, asking people (readers) to participate in a way they like and ultimately also making a path to make them contributors. Kind regards Ziko http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Version_5 2012/1/7 Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru: Actually, do we have somewhere a concise page with a list of say ten most urgent needs we need money for? Smth a banner can link to? Cheers Yaroslav ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] A fundraiser for editors
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 amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il: 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 jmh...@gmail.com 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Hypothetical project rebranding Wikimedia
The site offers a brilliantly simple user experience, has clear strategic goals and is driven by the objectives laid out in its Five Pillars. However, Forget about the Five Pillars. Originally they were three essential characteristics of the Wikipedia project. They grew to six later. In German, they were four, later five. In Dutch, at some times 3, but also 5. In Afrikaans, no real list. In Frisian, originally 3, later 4, the four F's. Frisian, Facts, Free, ObjektyF. But don't be too worried about rules. Contributing must remain fun. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Sue Gardener, Wikipedia's leading editor - wikileaks
Funny, These lines remind us that a lot of the intelligence work is nothing more than reading the newspaper. No much real leaking, one might say. Obviously, those writers love the word leading to make their readers understand the importance of the news. :-) Isn't it a problem in the English language that editor usually means a person who is publishing, like the editor (publisher?) of a newspaper? Kind regards Ziko 2011/9/6 Marcin Cieslak sa...@saper.info: Jimmy Wales jwa...@wikia-inc.com wrote: I was mentioned in a leaked US diplomatic cable - with my name spelled wrong! http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2008/11/08SANTIAGO1015.html What about this: Reference id: 09TELAVIV982 Origin: Embassy Tel Aviv Time: Mon, 4 May 2009 10:30 UTC Classification: UNCLASSIFIED (...) Ha'aretz reported that Sue Gardner, Wikipedia's leading editor, who attended the Wikipedia Academy 2009 Conference in Israel this week, refuted claims by leading Israeli Internet researchers that WikipediaQs coverage of Israel-related issues is 'problematic. Gardener said that the Web site merely reflected public discourse. 'I know that more or less the same mistakes [on Wikipedia] can be found in The New York Times,' she was quoted as saying. http://www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=09TELAVIV982 //Marcin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia Brasil + WMF
Sorry, I did not mean you, I should have deleted the previous text. Ziko 2011/9/4 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com: Ziko van Dijk, 04/09/2011 14:26: I would like to know: Is the introduction of WMF people on national boards a serious idea, or is it just a whim, a piece of loud thinking, and does not need to be discussed further? If you're quoting me on purpose, I'd say it belongs to the realms of scholastic hypothesis (worth rejecting) and surrealism; if you agree you can safely ignore the first two paragraphs of my message. ;-) Nemo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia Brasil + WMF
Hello, I would like to know: Is the introduction of WMF people on national boards a serious idea, or is it just a whim, a piece of loud thinking, and does not need to be discussed further? Kind regards Ziko 2011/9/4 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com: Florence Devouard, 02/09/2011 21:11: You seek to remove perceived conflicts of interest, even if that means creating real conflicts of interest ? Because there would be conflict of interest and rather BIG ONES. We are facing rather severe challenges right now. Let's say it straight, Wikimedia Foundation is simply trying to absorb/control the chapters as is they were simple bureaux of the WMF locally and chapters kind of disagree with WMF idea that centralization is a good move for the mouvement... Actually it can be considered quite a coherent plan: if the chapters are completely controlled by the WMF, like local branches of a corporation but with more subtle means, then there's no conflict of interest, perceived (by whom?) or real. I don't understand, by the way, why the perceived conflict of interest should be perceived as high right now, and in need of being reduced; the topic seems a bit surreal, Florence gave better examples and context of real COI issues. Michael Snow, 02/09/2011 22:02: If the point is to improve communication, then a more practical approach might be to designate observers who are not given authority but merely sit in with a chapter board. I don't consider this practical, rather ideal: it's impossible to appoint voting (and working) board members, as explained by Ilario, Florence and others; at least observers are ideally possible. Assuming that they are not spies of another organization (!) but they're there because they know the language, the chapter and its problems, and they are willing to help with suggestions, who wouldn't be happy to have them? But even considering only the language problem mentioned by BYria, this is going to be quite difficult and the WMF is most likely not able to find suitable observers; the ChapCom /could/ be able to. I bet that WMIT board would be super-happy to have e.g. Delphine as observer, if she wanted to follow yet another mailing list and bunch of meetings; but despite her preternatural ability to find discussions (among thousands on our members mailing list) where she can give useful feedback, this doesn't seem a safe assumption even in this lucky context. But we're going more and more offtopic. Theo10011, 02/09/2011 21:25: I would argue that the onus is on WMF to aid in communication, there is still not a single dedicated person on staff for chapter coordination/outreach, instead most Chapter relation/oversight comes from an unusual overlap of Global Development, Communications department and rarely Community department. Let me put this in perspective, there are 3 Storytellers, a Strategy department, dedicated researchers, full-time on staff but not a single person to deal with chapters who have been around for several years. If a board of chapters composed of volunteers who have to solely rely on the foundation for activities have to do a better job in communications, the Foundation has to do its part first. Perhaps this can take us a bit more on topic. There's indeed a big confusion about WMF staff responsibilities and it would be interesting to know how the Outreach and the Global South departments will work together, why they're separated despite the overlaps etc. Brasil could be a good example to see whether the local office will just be yet another layer of complexity or rather a useful single point of contact and catalyst for the local chapter and community. I've been following the WMF Brasil office activities on Meta for several months now (almost a year) and I don't understand completely how local activities have been organized and what impact they had so far, so I don't know what's the best approach, but the letter by Wikimedia Brasil is very good in its approach if not in the details. To actually involve the local community and chapter in the activities, besides generic transparency which often doesn't actually give room to useful feedback, we could imagine something like an advisory board or scientific committee (not executive), appointed by the local chapter (and which could just be the chapter board of trustees, to start with), which would assist and somehow oversee the local office, with frequent reciprocal reports and feedback at least. Nemo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman
Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced
Hello, I also detest the use of the word censorship, which is obviously out of range here. It's simply about what individuals want to see or not. Some Wikimedians are rather short sighted or ignorant towards the fact that other people may think and feel differently. Still, I had preferred to let the Wikimedians vote on the introduction in general. Or, better, prepare the tool and then let the single communities decide. German language Wikipedia has indeed a rather homogenous community, compared to more global linguistic communities. Kind regards Ziko 2011/9/4 Sarah Stierch sarah.stie...@gmail.com: Yes (maybe). It's not at all clear that this use case should not be ignored to avoid the possibility of compromising the encyclopedia. I have to ask: if there's such a demand for a censored Wikipedia, where are the third-party providers? Anyone? This is a serious question. Even workplace filtermakers don't censor Wikipedia, as far as I know. Some workplace filters don't allow for certain subjects to be searched. I work at a major museum institution, I cannot view subject matter about certain sex topics (and I'm the Wikipedian in Residence, so I'm on WP most of my day). (i.e. sexual differences). I don't know why people are wigging out so badly about the image filter. If people want to use it, great, and if you don't, DON'T. But perhaps I'm misunderstanding something about the idea. I voted for it, and it seems the people who dislike the idea are the only one's speaking out on the list. The idea that there is a choice is very empowering. Just like people filter television cable programming for their children, and internet access. Sometimes this appear when you least expect them, and to allow our users the choice, is great. I will probably never use it (even though I just found out there are plenty of things that gross me out that end up on Wikipedia by way of Commons images), but, I support the option. And to say that a 4 year old being restricted from seeing nudity on Wikipedia is not educating them just makes me laugh out loud. Just like I wouldn't want my 4 year old (and no, I don't have kids, but I have nieces, nephews, etc) watching porn, playing violent video games or watching John Waters movies. :P (And I love John Waters!). It's really fascinating how freely Wikipedians and Wikimedians love to throw around the word censorship. Someone should do a study on that. Sarah -- GLAMWIKI Partnership Ambassador for the Wikimedia Foundationhttp://www.glamwiki.org Wikipedian-in-Residence, Archives of American Arthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SarahStierch and Sarah Stierch Consulting *Historical, cultural artistic research advising.* -- http://www.sarahstierch.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Tragedy: videos and slides from presentations Wikimanias (lately 2011 in Haifa)
Actually, in Haifa I did not visit a lot of presentations, intentionally, because I thought they were recorded and going to be uploaded. I used the time in Haifa to talk to people and make new friends... Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Improving links between chapters and the Foundation
2011/9/3 Ilario Valdelli valde...@gmail.com: On 03.09.2011 18:55, Jon Huggett wrote: The members selected in the WMF's board by chapters are not representatives of the chapters. Indeed. And it is actually a good thing that the WMF board can invite new board members also from without the Wikimedia movement. One can argue about the numbers, but the principle by itself is good. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] The Yodeling diploma
Dear friends, From time to time we talked in de.wp about a 'Wikipedia diploma', useful e.g. for those who want to present or teach Wikipedia in tertiary education and have to prove their skills. The usual reaction is: Ridiculous, that sound's like the Yodeling diploma! Every German speaking person who saw the 1970s or grew up afterwards knows what the Yodeling diploma is: a sketch by Loriot (Vicco von Bülow). Loriot died today. Let's commemorate him and his Yodeling diploma, luckily someone put it on Youtube with an English translation.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lliHC7QSiG8 Kind regards Ziko http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicco_von_B%C3%BClow -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Movement Roles: my suggestion of Language Contact Persons
2011/8/16 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: realized that we have to elect our ambassadors to Meta [1]. So, the first three persons on the list were actually elected. Unfortunately, the idea of Embassy was never really alive. Interesting! Actually, from the 5 persons on that list for Esperanto, at least 2-3 are no longer active. But there was noone who felt responsible (or authorized?) to remove those names. Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Global Wikipedian of the year 2011
Hello, Is there anywhere more information about the Global Wikipedian, introduced at Haifa? By chance, I got the business card of Rauan at the chapters meeting. Kind regards Ziko http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2011-08_Wikimania_ZVD_10.jpg -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Movement Roles: my suggestion of Language Contact Persons
Hello, The name is not so important, of course, but I think that the old Ambassador is a little bit a big word. Why do the ambassadors not work? Because they don't feel responsible, if they can simply put themselves on a list and then forget about. It is important that they feel an obligation to fulfill some well defined tasks. Yes, one can go to the village pumps and ask people to do something. And that is a lot of work, and that's why we need those Language Contact Persons. It is always better when they can post in their own language. Reports about the language version (monthly, yearly) are only written when there is a person who knows that that his exactly *his task*. Kind regards Ziko 2011/8/16 Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru: Let's do it! What's the best way to encourage embassies, especially on small projects that may have never had them before? Obviously, to let a message in a relevant language (which is expected to be understood by many of the users) on the village pump of the corresponding project. The message should clearly explain what and why is expected from these users. Langcom is another good starting point. For big projects, I believe, this approcah is hopeless, but I do not think the embassies as designed are needed for the big projects. Cheers Yaroslav ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Movement Roles: my suggestion of Language Contact Persons
the Wikipedia language versions to elect LCPs (and their deputies). After a year, the Foundation evaluates the experiences with the LCPs, whether they really make communication more efficient or not. Then, * the LCP system can remain the same as it is, * or has to be abolished because it caused more work than it helped, * or the system will be given a more formal basis, with the LCP getting a higher status or more tasks, or even becoming the nucleus of language based formal Wikimedia organizations. Maybe the LCP experiences can be of value with regard to Wikimedia projects such as Wikisource, Wikibooks etc. Please let me know what you think about the possibility and potential usefulness of Language Contact Persons. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge
Hello, Today I found the time to read the messages about the Oral Citations project and watch the film People are Knowledge. I hope that we can go on in this discussion without accusations about racism etc. In science, it is the quality of the findings that should matter, not the colour of the researcher's skin (may it be black, white, or green). == Concerned == I must say that I am deeply concerned about the Oral Citations. If someone wants to set up a new Wikimedia project for oral traditions or oral history, I could live with that although I don't think that it fits into the scope of Wikimedia. It certainly does not fit into the scope of Wikipedia. The film says that recorded oral history should be considered to be a reliable souce when there are some accessible printed sources on a subjet, but the sources are incomplete or misleading by way of being outdated or biased. So, when someone believes that those accessible printed sources are biased, he comes up with the video of his grand uncle telling the truth? == Problems of orality (of the human brain) == The film presents some carefully selected scholars supporting the film makers' opinion, but if you ask the huge majority of historians they will explain to you why they are so reluctant about oral history. Take an example described by Johannes Fried, Memorik, p. 215: The Gonja in Northern Ghana told to British colonial officials that there once was the founder of their empire, Ndewura Japka. He had seven sons, each of them mentioned by name, and each of them administered one of the seven provinces of the Gonja empire. Then the British reformed the administration, and only five provinces remained. Decennias later, when the British rule ended, scholars asked the people again about the history of Ndewura Japka. Now, the founder had only five sons. Those two sons, whose provinces were abolished by the British, were totally erased from memory, if British colonial records had not preseved their names. I myself have interviewed people who claimed that they did not write a peticular letter (which I found in the archives), that they met a person at a peticular convention (although the person did not participate at all) and so on. These people may not be liars, but memory is flexible and unstable. By nature, man is not created to be a historian, to preserve carefully information in his brain, but to deal with the actual world he lives in. == The way of historiography == * Historians collect primary sources and try to create a sound and coherent narrative based on them. Those primary sources are written records in archives, or already in printed or online editions, or interviews recorded. * Then the historians publish their findings in secondary sources. * Later, text-book and handbook authors read those secondary sources and create their tertiary sources. Wikipedia is such a tertiary source. It is not the task of Wikipedians or even readers to be confronted with the mass of primary sources and figure out a good synthesis. That is a work that must be let to scholars (in the largest sence) who have a good overview on the subject. Printed books may not be the answer in poor countries, but maybe e-publishing is, and there are certainly at least some places on the internet that are suitable for new primary and also secondary sources. Wikipedia cannot solve all problems in the world, and even Wikimedia cannot. Kind regards Ziko -- Dr. Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge
Dear Achal, I don't have a form fetishism :-) although I highly prefer written to oral sources for many practical reasons. You know that in oral history projects the transcription is an essential part of the work, by the way. What I am pointing to is the difference between primary sources and secondary sources. It is the utmost important distinction in history science. I am sure that any introduction to historiography will agree with me on that. Kind regards Ziko 2011/7/27 Achal Prabhala aprabh...@gmail.com: Dear Ziko, On Wednesday 27 July 2011 09:38 PM, Ziko van Dijk wrote: Hello, Today I found the time to read the messages about the Oral Citations project and watch the film People are Knowledge. I hope that we can go on in this discussion without accusations about racism etc. In science, it is the quality of the findings that should matter, not the colour of the researcher's skin (may it be black, white, or green). == Concerned == I must say that I am deeply concerned about the Oral Citations. If someone wants to set up a new Wikimedia project for oral traditions or oral history, I could live with that although I don't think that it fits into the scope of Wikimedia. It certainly does not fit into the scope of Wikipedia. May I say, firstly, that this is an experiment - an experiment which those of us working on it, and others around us, thought might lead to interesting results. Secondly, may I also say that the project is not on oral history - it's on using oral sources as citations. The film says that recorded oral history should be considered to be a reliable souce when there are some accessible printed sources on a subjet, but the sources are incomplete or misleading by way of being outdated or biased. So, when someone believes that those accessible printed sources are biased, he comes up with the video of his grand uncle telling the truth? == Problems of orality (of the human brain) == The film presents some carefully selected scholars supporting the film makers' opinion, but if you ask the huge majority of historians they will explain to you why they are so reluctant about oral history. Obviously, the scholars and intellectuals we talked to were selected. We don't pretend otherwise. I am personally not privy to what the majority of historians think. But on that note - this project was about using oral citations as sources, not about re-writing history. If you will please take a look at the subjects we covered through the course of this experiment, you will see that they are: recipes, religious ceremonies, traditional liquor and folk games. All of these things relate to everyday events that are practised by a large number of people and can be observed by anyone Take an example described by Johannes Fried, Memorik, p. 215: The Gonja in Northern Ghana told to British colonial officials that there once was the founder of their empire, Ndewura Japka. He had seven sons, each of them mentioned by name, and each of them administered one of the seven provinces of the Gonja empire. Then the British reformed the administration, and only five provinces remained. Decennias later, when the British rule ended, scholars asked the people again about the history of Ndewura Japka. Now, the founder had only five sons. Those two sons, whose provinces were abolished by the British, were totally erased from memory, if British colonial records had not preseved their names. and none of the articles thus created are about rewriting the history of the last few centuries or undoing the work of the academy. We are simply interested in these subjects because they are part of the everyday life of millions of people like us, and because they haven't been recorded in print in a form that is useful to Wikipedia. I myself have interviewed people who claimed that they did not write a peticular letter (which I found in the archives), that they met a person at a peticular convention (although the person did not participate at all) and so on. These people may not be liars, but memory is flexible and unstable. By nature, man is not created to be a historian, to preserve carefully information in his brain, but to deal with the actual world he lives in. == The way of historiography == * Historians collect primary sources and try to create a sound and coherent narrative based on them. Those primary sources are written records in archives, or already in printed or online editions, or interviews recorded. * Then the historians publish their findings in secondary sources. * Later, text-book and handbook authors read those secondary sources and create their tertiary sources. Wikipedia is such a tertiary source. It is not the task of Wikipedians or even readers to be confronted with the mass of primary sources and figure out a good synthesis. That is a work that must be let to scholars (in the largest sence) who have a good overview on the subject. I
Re: [Foundation-l] roadmap for WM affiliation ; a name for self-identified affiliation
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 lodew...@effeietsanders.org: 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 meta...@gmail.com 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 alecmcon...@gmail.com 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 right-- what should I say I am a part of? We could just tell projects in this situation to say they are Part of the Wikimedia Movement, but perhaps that name is one we want to reserve just for officially recognized projects. If so, what name should such projects use instead? Note that they need to be saying something different than just I like Wikipedia, here's a link. They need to be _identifying_ their own efforts as _under the umbrella_ of what we do. They need to be investing in us and our mission, saying This project is our attempt to help share the world's information. Right now, I think we can craft any statement, logo, or button we want and like-minded projects would use it if prompted. We just have to be thoughtful about what we want those things to look like. We will no longer have total control over whichever name or logos we recommend projects use
Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
Hi Nemo, you are not very specific - the discussion on Strategory you are linking to contains a lot of good reasons provided by Dedalus. Indeed, if you talk to the press, or to media experts, they all know Wikipedia but not Wikimedia. The most simple and reasonable way is to use the famous brand, not to invest in Wikimedia. With regard to the sister projects, I feel a lot of vigorous emotions but no arguments. Ziko 2011/7/2 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com: There are much more meta-wikis that could be merged: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_wikis#Organizational_and_planning_projects Ziko van Dijk, 02/07/2011 00:14: But in those sister projects communities, I have met fierce resistance to any new branding or technical rearrangement. They even tend to avoid to associate themselves with Wikipedia. They want to grow on their own appeal and strengh. (They also are annoyed when Wikipedians come to a sister project and don't learn immediately that the rules differ.) And with good reason. See also http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_talk:Brand_name_consolidation (this is a perennial proposal). Nemo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
Dear colleague, What you say makes absolute sence. I have the suspicion that there was a time, around 2009, that new activities in WMF were eager to have a wiki of its own: Strategy, Outreach and so on. Alas, after a while of retention, there came Ten wiki. The intention was to have a website for the public, but I don't believe in creating again and again more and more communication channels. I see the same tendency in WMNL, by the way. About the sister projects such as Wiktionary and Wikisource: there is ALS.WP doing that already, maybe knowing that it would be hard to create thoses sister projects in ALS (Alemannic). In general I would like to see more bounds between the sisters, including Wikipedia. We had that discussion with regard to a rebranding, going under the name of Wikipedia only and have a Wikipedia Foundation, a Wikipedia dictionary (Wiktionary), a Wikipedia Text Books (Wikibooks) and so on. But in those sister projects communities, I have met fierce resistance to any new branding or technical rearrangement. They even tend to avoid to associate themselves with Wikipedia. They want to grow on their own appeal and strengh. (They also are annoyed when Wikipedians come to a sister project and don't learn immediately that the rules differ.) Kind regards Ziko van Dijk 2011/7/1 WereSpielChequers werespielchequ...@gmail.com: 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. WereSpielChequers ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Projects in simple languages
Hello Milos, Thank you for the elaboration. Indeed I am afraid that the concept is a little too narrow. A language like Dutch is not really a world language, but it as a lot of speakers with Dutch as a foreign or second language. Also, as far as I know Simple English Wikipedia mentions Basic English but does not base itself explicitly and willingly on it. The step of the committee looks to me as if only the concept of (elligible) artificial languages has been extended to the group of basic languages. You could add Weltdeutsch to your list of examples. Maybe the case needs more consideration. I ackknowledge that it is a difficult thing and that we don't want every language version to exist in a second version. Kind regards Ziko 2011/6/20 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: After a month of on-list talk -- sometimes very heated, sometimes very quiet -- Language committee has agreed about the next wording of the part of the new policy [1] related to the simple languages: * Can there be wikis in simple languages? *: Yes, in principle. But two special criteria would need to be met: the language should be a world language with many L2 users, and there must be a reliable, published specification of the controlled language to be used. Examples are [[w:en:Basic English|Basic English]] and [[w:fr:Français fondamental|Français fondamental]]. (In reality it does not appear that there ''are'' many controlled languages other then English and French.) In practice, it means that: * It is likely that just Wikipedia in simple French would be approved. If there are reliable and published specifications of other world languages (Russian, Spanish, Arabic etc.), group interested in creating project in simple language has to present it to the LangCom. * It is likely that border cases would be discussed in Language committee on case-by-case basis. For example, German is not a world language, but at least discussion would be opened if strong arguments would be given, including widely accepted definition of simple language. * It is not a matter of LangCom would any Wikipedia (or any other Wikimedia project) host project in corresponding simple language inside of a separate namespace -- with or without specification. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Re: Projects in simple languages
Hello, The case with Simple English WP is a little more complicated: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple_English_Wikipedia Basic English is only one standard they are looking at. There should be also more consideration about the target group. If a simple wikipedia meant to be a tool to learn the language? Kind regards Ziko 2011/6/20 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: This was intended to be reply to the list. Original Message Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Projects in simple languages Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:12:16 +0100 From: Michael Everson ever...@evertype.com To: Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com On 06/20/2011 08:55 PM, David Gerard wrote: I have been around the Wikimedia projects since 2004. This is the very first time I have ever heard any official subset of English mentioned in any connection with the Simple English Wikipedia. Did I just miss past documentation to this effect? Was this part of its founding? When was Basic English first linked with Simple? Evidently from the beginning. http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_English_Wikipedia Simple English Wikipedia is a Wikipedia encyclopedia, written in basic English.[1] http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English Even in the earliest revision of the main page http://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Pageoldid=461 it refers to controlled vocabulary of 1000-2000 words. Ogden's Basic English was published in 1940. It's unlikely that those who asked for simple.wikipedia.org were unaware of it. Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] NPG still violating copyright
Hm, I'm afraid that is not sufficient. :-) It's CC-BY-SA. Kind regards Ziko Thanks. I mean all they need to add is text taken from Wikipedia - it shouldn't be too hard. Scott ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikis and the direction hardware is taking
Hello Birgitte, Those same worries came up in me when I saw a video about the Discover app: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DSBEmkeUzQ In a contribution to http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Kurier/Ausgabe_7_2010 I compared those new apps with the clones around 2005, with the difference, that the apps are a more serious threat because they look much better than the original Wikipedia site. In those apps you don't see the edit button, the donate button nor the site notice. Even in Safari, the Apple browser, on an iPhone or iPad you usually don't see the left side bar with the donate button. I wonder whether in future we must take more, say, intrusive action to make people see the donate features... Kind regards Ziko 2011/6/10 Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com: On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 6:16 PM, birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: I am getting ready do to a little traveling. It works out that traveling light is going to be my best bet for various reasons. As I don't want to carry around the weight of a laptop; I have purchased a little closer to the cutting edge than I generally do. In setting up my iPad this is what shocked me. It is near impossible to edit a wiki. Well that wasn't to worrisome. I figured there's an app for that. I searched Wikipedia and was presented with a large selection of apps that basically hide the fact that the websites are even editable. They offer helpful things to using the wiki on small screen wrt to TOC and general navigation, but they also strip out all the edit links. After specifically searching for edit, I found one app that made it possible to edit from iPad without pulling my hair out. [1]. The whole trend is a bit worrisome. Ever since I got the device I really don't want to use my laptop. I thought I would hate typing anything on it. But it not bad at all (and I am the sort to make sure and buy laptops with full-size keyboards). People are going use the free apps so long as WM wikis are hard to navigate natively. We will never convert readers to editors if they reading with the editing interface stripped away. Do these apps for read-only Wikipedia even support the central-notice? I am not sure. Some seem to completely convert the website to a magazine appearance; some seem more like sleek web-browser. I can't help but think that WMF does't jump in soon with an inexpensive app which solves the difficulties of navigation while preserving the facets of the site that are important to WMF, it will be harder to recover the losses if this trend of hardware takes hold. I imagine an official WMF app would get some sort of preference when searching wikipedia in the App Store, which is why I really think the foundation might want to attend to this. BirgitteSB Birgitte, You are absolutely correct. Just as an additional option for Wikipedians who use the iPad, I'd point out this little trick that makes it easier to edit from the browser: http://blog.tommorris.org/post/5662997343/custom-css-for-wikipedia-on-ipad There are a whole host of opportunities and risks on mobile for Wikimedia. You've clearly been thinking about this, so I think it would be helpful if you could add your ideas to the relevant Talk pages on strategy wiki.[1] [2] If you could write in detail about your experiences with the iPad that would be helpful to the mobile team I'm sure, as a case study in user experience. I completely share your fears about Wikipedia in an app-centric world. In general I'm glad to say that I hear all the time at the Foundation about what the mobile team is doing. This isn't iPad-relevant per se, but they're in the middle of rewriting the mobile site and making sure that all mobile browsers actually redirect there. Another thing that will make things better is that Kul is hiring a person to develop partnerships with mobile businesses. That means that, with both app makers and big companies like carriers, we will have more of a fighting chance to make our feelings about edit buttons, donations, proper licensing attribution, and other issues heard. There are lots more, but if you have ideas please share. Steven 1. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Product_Whitepaper 2. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Request: WMF commitment as a long term cultural archive?
Hello Fae, There should be no explicit statement because the WMF holds it self-evident to preserve. The bigger problem might be the project scope. I don't know what kind of images your academic partners wishes to upload. Kind regards Ziko 2011/6/2 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: Hoi, It is the explicit goal of the Wikimedia Foundation to make information available for as long as it exist. In addition to this, there are several copies at the Internet Archive. If there is no statement that satisfies your need, it will not be hard for the WMF board to come up with one. Having such a statement by tomorrow is a bit much to ask for. Thanks, GerardM On 2 June 2011 13:29, Fae fae...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I'm taking part in an images discussion workshop with a number of academics tomorrow and could do with a statement about the WMF's long term commitment to supporting Wikimedia Commons (and other projects) in terms of the public availability of media. Is there an official published policy I can point to that includes, say, a 10 year or 100 commitment? If it exists, this would be a key factor for researchers choosing where to share their images with the public. Thanks, Fae -- http://enwp.org/user_talk:fae Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/faetags ___ 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 -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] LangCom meeting report
Hello, So, we are 10 days (or more) further. :-) Kind regards Ziko If I interpret it right, Germans can come to the incubator and build up a Wikipedia in Simple German? With a reasonable chance to become later recognized? Wait for 10 days to make this issue clear. The logic behind this approval is related to non-native speakers. And it has its own problems. My bottom line (which doesn't mean that it is the bottom line of other members of LangCom) is: if we use some language as fallback one in MediaWiki localization, then it should have possibility to have simple Wikipedia. -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 1.3 billion of humans don't have Wikipedia in their native...
Hello, I am even more pessimistic. Of course, Wikipedia exits in many languages, but many Wikipedia language versions are still quite small and of low quality, typical encyclopedias-to-become, but still no really useful encyclopedias by now. Kind regards Ziko 2011/5/23 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: On 05/23/2011 03:04 PM, M. Williamson wrote: When words are from the same root, the same character is generally used regardless of modern pronunciation. In Traditional Chinese, phonetic elements are mostly based on older pronunciations which might not make sense in all modern Sinitic languages; sometimes in Simplified Chinese these are replaced by phonetic elements based on Mandarin pronunciation. However, Milos, I believe you have misinterpreted logophonetic here. Although the script has phonetic elements, this does not mean that the phonetic elements are based on modern pronunciations. So for example, 西瓜 is the word for watermelon in every Sinitic language (as far as I'm aware). In Mandarin it is pronounced xi gua; in Cantonese it is sai gwaa, in Min Nan it is sai koe, in Shanghainese Wu it is si kwo (I have not noted tones here due to different tone systems in these languages). In spite of differing words, since they are all from the same etymological root, they are all written exactly the same way with the same characters. This is probably not the best example since neither of these characters has a phonetic element, but that is irrelevant because even if they did the case would be the same. What DOES make Sinitic (Chinese) languages different when written is the following (*this is important*): Words that are not etymologically related to the equivalent in other Sinitic languages are often/usually written differently; grammar and syntax can be different (as an example, in Shanghai Wu you can say We drink coffee as Ala kafi che which is literally We coffee drink; in Mandarin it would be said as Women he kafei, literally We drink coffee, notice the different word order), including grammatical particles which have no direct equivalent. Imagine for a moment that English and Spanish used a similar writing system. I want you to give me a piece of bread and Quiero que me des un pedacito de pan would be written differently due to differing grammar: I want you to give me a piece of bread would be written as [I] [WANT] [YOU] [TO] [GIVE] [ME] [A] [PIECE] [OF] [BREAD] Quiero que me des un pedacito de pan would be written as [WANT]-[FIRST PERSON SINGULAR] [THAT] [TO-ME] [GIVE]-[SECOND PERSON SINGULAR SUBJUNCTIVE] [A] [PIECE]-[DIMINUTIVE] [OF] [BREAD]. Also, Cuando va a llegar Maria? (accents missing) and When is Maria going to arrive? Cuando va a llegar Maria? would be written as [WHEN] [GO]-[THIRD PERSON SINGULAR] [TO] [ARRIVE] [MARIA] When is Maria going to arrive? would be written as [WHEN] [IS] [MARIA] [GOING TO] [ARRIVE] or something like that. Note here that the arrive comes after Maria in English, but before in Spanish. These are relatively simple examples, but although in many ways English and Spanish (and many other Western European languages) have relatively similar syntax (as compared to, say, Asian, African or American languages) and are related, due to these grammar differences it would be impossible to unify them in writing. It is essentially the same case with Sinitic languages. Mark, thank you very much for making things clear! However, there is another issue at play here: the classification of Sinitic languages and dialects is a bit controversial, and it is possible that some of these languages identified by the Ethnologue would not want or need a separate version. Jin Chinese, for example, is often identified as a divergent dialect of Mandarin, and I'm doubtful that a Wikipedia written in Jin in Chinese characters would differ substantially from zh.wp, and almost certain (though I am willing to be proven wrong) that they would not differ enough in writing to merit separate Wikipedias. ... I would ask you personally (but, others, too) to give your opinions toward as many as possible missing languages inside of notes sections at [1] or inside newly created articles inside of the namespace of that page (let's say, [[Missing Wikipedias/Spoken Arabic varieties]]). Such additions would be very valuable: if there are people who don't need Wikimedia projects editions, we can spend our resources on those who need. Macrolanguage editions of Wikimedia projects are not anymore taboo. If it is more reasonable to use one project for a number of closely related languages *and* communities want that, there is no reason why not to allow that. [1] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Missing_Wikipedias ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http
Re: [Foundation-l] CentralNotice use
Hello, When we have a POTY contest or board elections, that is certainly not very exciting for non Wikimedians. But when the picture of the year is actually chosen? And when the WMF publishes an annual report written for the public? We had the problem with the site notice on nl.wp recently when we wanted to announce our Ten Years Dutch Wikipedia event. - There were already two notices! I would welcome to run notices not permanently, e.g. have your Ten event announced for a week now and then again for a week in june. Ziko 2011/5/19 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: On 05/19/2011 05:42 PM, Kirill Lokshin wrote: On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: On 05/19/2011 10:52 AM, church.of.emacs.ml wrote: 1. Display it for logged-in users only. This is especially useful for information concerning active Wikimedians, e.g. Wikimania, POTY, etc. Agreed with this in relation to the Board elections. Just users with accounts are able to vote or to be candidates. And those who are interested in our governing should be able to read it on Meta, which should have clear note on Main Page that there are ongoing elections. There are many people who would be legitimately interested in board elections, but who don't visit Meta on a regular basis (or at all, for that matter). Then notices just on Main Pages? I don't think that a random user from search engines is interested in our governing. Not to say that if someone is interested in Wiki*p*edia governing, may be introduced into the whole process after two or three pages, starting from [[Wikipedia]] in any language. As an account owner on LiveJournal, but without any activity, I am getting emails which inform me about the process of their elections. However, I don't remember that I saw that online (although I am very rarely there). I have no precise idea how, but it is obvious that we need to lower amount of our own advertising to random users. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] LangCom meeting report
some things need time to be changed, good ideas are always welcome. Other members of LangCom and others who participated in our discussions can add here what they think that is relevant and I forgot to say. [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/May_2011_meeting [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_proposal_policy [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects [4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee [5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Language_committee [6] http://translatewiki.net/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] User talk page email notification
Absolutely - a major problem of ours is that we often cannot communicate properly with (new) users. Kind regards Ziko Email address is a basic requirement for any user registration on the internet and I am hoping that it would be made mandatory also on the Wikimedia sites. Regards Tinu Cherian -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Greetings from the new board of Wikimedia Nederland
“, womit die Freien Inhalte gemeint sind.[34] Ferner hat die friesische Sprachversion die Seite Wikipediy:Dochs wat regels, die offenkundig von der niederländischen inspiriert wurde. Dort heißt es, dass man sich nicht zu sehr an den Regel stören solle, das Mitmachen müsse angenehm bleiben. (Diese Aussage erinnert an die Regel Ignoriere Alle Regeln.) Für alle Beiträge gälten vier „F“: Frysk (Friesisch), Feitlik (faktenbasiert), Frij, Objektiyf.[35] Ob in einer der fünf Wikipedias eine Regel in den Grundprinzipien erwähnt ist oder nicht, scheint ohne Bedeutung zu sein. Sonstige Regeln werden darum nicht etwa weniger respektiert. Der Überblick lässt vermuten, dass die Wikipedias auf denselben Vorstellungen beruhen, unabhängig von einer unterschiedlichen sprachlichen Realisierung. 2011/4/14 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de: Congratulations to the new board. Ting On 10.04.2011 22:13, wrote Ziko van Dijk: Dear friends, Wikimedia Nederland, the Dutch chapter, has a new board. Please be welcome on our site with a short Dutch/English message: http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Mededelingen Kind regards Ziko van Dijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Greetings from the new board of Wikimedia Nederland
Dear friends, Wikimedia Nederland, the Dutch chapter, has a new board. Please be welcome on our site with a short Dutch/English message: http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Mededelingen Kind regards Ziko van Dijk -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] BNR: Less writers on wikipedia due to agression (dutch)
Hello, As far as I know, the Wikimedia organizations up to now have never undertaken serious steps to analyze and tackle aggressive behavior. One idea would be to engage a social psychologist or therapist or mediator who can teach Wikipedians at conventions. Of course, the most extreme people will not attend but many good willing editors - I am sure, the vast majority - could need advice how to behave in difficult situations and with difficult people. Gerard is absolutely right, such reports in the media are dangerous for us especially when they support perceptions the reader has already made by himself. Kind regards Ziko 2011/3/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: Hoi, They are national radio and television. They are particularly influential with the young. Thanks, GerardM On 30 March 2011 22:26, Austin Hair adh...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 10:22 PM, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote: See http://www.bnr.nl/programma/bnrdigitaal/2011/03/30/minder-schrijvers-wikipedia-door-agressie1 Dit is niet nieuw, natuurlijk. I've lived in the Netherlands for a year, now, and I've never heard of BNR—but then, I don't listen to the radio; I still get most of my news from teh internets and the satellite dish I have pointed at the BBC. How influential are they? Austin ___ 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 -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2011 Board Elections: Input needed
2011/3/20 marcos tal_t...@yahoo.es: I agree with FT2. Give right to vote to the donors looks like a bad idea, for several reasons, especially because it is not good for a charitable entity that its donors have the possibility of deciding its future policy ... Hm, it is actually very common that those who pay a fee have voting rights, we usually call them members. :-) I understand well that those who already have voting rights are reluctant to extend them to other people. The ideas of the election committee deserve more consideration. If donors can vote isn't that similar to a membership the Foundation had planned in its very beginning? Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2011 Board Elections: Input needed
Not so quick - I am paying fees, for Wikimedia Nederland and Wikimedia Deutschland. Would you say that they are not Wikimedia?`:-) Kind regards Ziko 2011/3/20 marcos tal_t...@yahoo.es: I think Wikimedia is not a club , and there's no fee for collaborating in its development. There is a difference, it seems to me, between a fee and a donation. I believe that FT 2 has explain it better than I. ;-) Marcos (aka Marctaltor) --- El dom, 20/3/11, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com escribió: De: Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com Asunto: Re: [Foundation-l] 2011 Board Elections: Input needed Para: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Fecha: domingo, 20 de marzo, 2011 14:28 2011/3/20 marcos tal_t...@yahoo.es: I agree with FT2. Give right to vote to the donors looks like a bad idea, for several reasons, especially because it is not good for a charitable entity that its donors have the possibility of deciding its future policy ... Hm, it is actually very common that those who pay a fee have voting rights, we usually call them members. :-) I understand well that those who already have voting rights are reluctant to extend them to other people. The ideas of the election committee deserve more consideration. If donors can vote isn't that similar to a membership the Foundation had planned in its very beginning? Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.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 -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2011 Board Elections: Input needed
Hello FT2, as members of a chapter, people already can decide about the consistence of the WMF board - at least, indirectly. I mean the general principle that someone pays and can vote, it's not so strange. But I concede that we would then have to ask ourselves how much money is equivalent to what number of edits... Ziko 2011/3/20 FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com: That's a different possible category. Should people who do not have capacity to vote as editors, but are paid-up members of a chapter, be able to vote in that capacity? (Alternatively, are chapter members' voting rights and involvement limited to the chapter if they haven't taken part in any wider activity?) I don't have a problem with it, provided their membership is long enough (6+ months?) before the election. There are probably good arguments both ways. A lot depends on personal philosophy: whether you see the foundation and chapters, as effectively different arms of the same thing or as distinct. For example, if they are different arms of the same thing then there would be commonsense reasons to share donor lists (as John Vandenberg raises) as there is no reason why 2 parts of the same project would withold information from each other. If they are distinct then paying membership to one may not lead to voting franchise for the board of the other. There's considerable philosophy here that spreads far beyond the election, it may be better to discuss it before it's a problem in any way while it's fresh and malleable, but the board election isn't really the context to do so. FT2 On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 2:01 PM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.comwrote: Not so quick - I am paying fees, for Wikimedia Nederland and Wikimedia Deutschland. Would you say that they are not Wikimedia?`:-) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Usability wiki
Indeed, in 2008/2009 there was a little wave of new wikis by Wikimedia Foundation. It seemed to me as if it was a prestige thing for the new WMF collaborators to get a wiki of their own. :-) We have Meta Wiki and similar general wikis already. A similar tendency we saw in some of the larger chapters. The last new content project of WMF was Wikiversity in 2006. I hope there will come something new in 2011... Kind regards Ziko 2011/1/29 Stephanie Daugherty sdaughe...@gmail.com: I would hope that in the future, the decision to make a separate wiki for any subproject is not taken as lightly, given the concerns about fragmenting discussions - it's much easier to track these things when they are all in one place. :) On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 8:42 AM, Guillaume Paumier gpaum...@wikimedia.orgwrote: Greetings, Le samedi 29 janvier 2011 à 21:35 +1000, K. Peachey a écrit : I must disagree with that, fragmenting discussions all over the place just makes things worse, It would be much better to keep these discussions centralized on somewhere like Meta or Mediawiki wiki (or possibly Strategy as well) instead of scattering them onto obscure wikis where they don't have as much viewage. Yes, that was exactly the rationale behind the closing of the usability wiki. I can try to elaborate a bit, since concerns were raised. The usability wiki was historically created as a work space for the Wikipedia usability initiative. The end of both usability grants provided an opportunity to revisit the decision to have a whole separate wiki. Of course the Wikimedia Foundation is continuing to work on usability, and I don't think anyone would argue that all usability problems are solved :) Far from it. But usability is now an integral part of all WMF-supported engineering work and features. As such, it makes sense to use mediawiki.org as the main workspace for Wikimedia developers, rather than to have a separate wiki. It might also help paid developers mix more with volunteers developers. In a nutshell, the usability wiki is being replaced by the strategy wiki (for strategic product discussions, where Amir's and others' dozen of ideas will be most welcome) and mediawiki.org (for specific project management and implementation). Hope that helps, -- Guillaume Paumier Product manager - Wikimedia Foundation Support free knowledge: http://donate.wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Faith is about what you really truly believe in, not about what you are taught to believe. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Again: January 15 retro?
Yes, it's no big deal, and see whether people will notice at all. Kind regards Ziko 2011/1/11 Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org: for the record: we are _not_ talking about advertizing for events here or anything like that. Just about replacing the current logo with an older one (the text logo) - not for a very functional reason but because it is fun. Lodewijk 2011/1/11 Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com I think the banners are already enabled in most non-cat1-chapter geographies. I think they should also be enabled in other places as/once the FR thank-you messages have run their course. I support the logo change, btw. Bence -- Sent from my phone On 2011.01.11. 14:10, emijrp emi...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, readers may be interested in local meet-ups. A link to the Ten Wiki would be great. Come on! Involve readers in this! 2011/1/11 HW waihor...@yahoo.com.hk I perfer a global notice for all project as soon as possible since some activity is going on ... ___ 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 -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] January 15 retro?
In German there was a children's tv show about Wickie the Viking, with a popular intro song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgVjAY0n2fQ A Wikipedian came up with a new, Wiki-related text: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Neitram/Hey_hey_Wiki Greetings Ziko 2011/1/10 emijrp emi...@gmail.com: We need a Free Knowledge Song, similar to the Free Software Song[1][2]. It is cool to sing it in these events. [1] http://www.gnu.org/music/free-software-song.html [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sJUDx7iEJw 2011/1/8 Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org can't we just rename Breakfast to Wikipedia Party Breakfast? :P 2011/1/8 Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org On Jan 7, 2011, at 7:04 PM, James Alexander wrote: On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 2:47 PM, Pharos pharosofalexand...@gmail.com wrote: 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 There is an 'Antarctica' in the Central Notice country list... I wonder if the IPs actually geolocate to it... I'll save you some trouble. :) I've been in touch with the folks behind the joint research station, Antarctica. This is a very very scaled down time of year for them, and they're in a pure maintenance mode, at the moment. Through a friend, I was able to get someone to make both an edit and a contribution from there (so we could say every continent) but a party of any type - even three guys and a glass of grape juice - was a non-starter. pb ___ 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 -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] January 15 retro?
Me too. Using the old logo is emphazising the cohesion of Wikipedia as one project. On other occasions there can be other logos. Kind regards Ziko 2011/1/6 KIZU Naoko aph...@gmail.com: I support Lodewijk and Delphine. Wikipedia 10 logo is fine, but it's less impulsive. 2011/1/6 Delphine Ménard notafi...@gmail.com: On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 1:59 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Steven Walling wrote: The other Wikipedias weren't started on that date, so they have nothing to celebrate or commemorate. 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. That's incredibly poor logic. Only the English Wikipedia is going to be ten years old on January 15, 2011. If people around the world want to throw parties for the English Wikipedia's tenth anniversary, they're of course free to. But that doesn't change the facts, even if people will be partying in six of seven continents. Don't be silly. If we're gonna go the silly route, I'm happy to say that as a French living in Germany, I couldn't care less what dates the French and German Wikipedia were actually online. What's fun here is that there was a time when there wasn't Wikipedia, and there was a time when suddenly there was Wikipedia. So yep, I'd say go for retro and agree with Steven, should be retro and not Wikipedia 10 mark (people will have thought we have changed our logo). Or some kind of wikidoodle thing that someone comes up with quick (I hope Google is making their own Doodle for us ;)), but that should be on ALL Wikipedias, not just on the English one. It only makes sense if it's everywhere and has wordlwide impact. And I go with Lodewijk. Man, if there are ways of partying twice, let's go for it! Delphine -- @notafish NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails will get lost. Intercultural musings: Ceci n'est pas une endive - http://blog.notanendive.org Photos with simple eyes: notaphoto - http://photo.notafish.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- KIZU Naoko / 木津尚子 member of Wikimedians in Kansai / 関西ウィキメディアユーザ会 http://kansai.wikimedia.jp ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] fundraiser suggestion
Hello, There is still a huge difference between telling a lie and being inaccurate, and I don't see something misleading. It is true that the Wikipedia/Wikimedia is confusing to many people. It never happened to me that people, to whom I explained about, had any problem with using Wikipedia as the umbrella word for the whole movement. Ziko van Dijk 2011/1/2 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: 2011/1/1 Stephen Bain stephen.b...@gmail.com: On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 12:56 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: But to suggest that the choice of such shorthand is tantamount to lying to and misleading our donors is, indeed, irresponsible hyperbole. It's clear that the choice was, in fact, made to _reduce_ potential confusion of donors about who/what they're being asked to support. Hang on: On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 11:20 AM, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: When we get letters saying things like I'd donate, but only to Wikipedia, not to Wikimedia, it spells out for us that it's possible we could attract more people with the institution of Wikipedia than the institution of Wikimedia. See the immediately previous sentence in Philippe's email: Yes, it'll come as a shock to all of you tongue-in-cheek but there are people who don't know that Wikimedia is anything more than a mis-spelling of Wikipedia. /tongue-in-cheek. He's talking about the exact same issue. -- 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 -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Korean Wikipedians charged with criminal defamation: a potential threat of censorship
Dear colleague Puzzlet, Thank you for passing through the information. Do you already have a large press reaction? And how about writing an English article about the person in question? I may know people who would like to translate into other languages. :-) Kind regards Ziko 2010/12/22 Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com: The Colorado law has been significantly weakened in the past year. See Mink v. Knox, No. 08-1250 (10th Cir. July 19, 2010), slip. op. at 26. -Dan On Dec 22, 2010, at 5:51 AM, Fred Bauder wrote: An example of an actual prosecution: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=20937 Fred This seems to be an example of the trouble that the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons policy on the English Wikipedia is crafted to avoid, unsourced or poorly sourced negative information about a living person can be removed immediately by any editor. Here, if I'm reading right, it was put back up again despite being repeatedly removed. Another aspect of this is that if there is a law around, even a disused, rarely enforced law, the possibility exists that someone will evoke it and put you into court with baleful consequences, even if you win in the end. For example in Colorado there is a criminal libel law that covers the dead, see https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Defamation#Criminal_defamation How one could fully comply with such a monstrosity as that is beyond me. Fred User:Fred Bauder At most four Korean Wikipedians are charged with defamation of Song Young-gil, the Mayor of Incheon Metropolitan City. According to the contributors, the prosecution is upon the Song's own request, and is going to be over publicizing a fabricated sex scandal in the article about him and (semi-)protecting it. The text in question is merely a sum-up of various reports about the speculations eventually found to be a hoax. Non-logged-in user(s) from various IP addresses have tried to remove the whole controversy section, including not only the scandal but other arguments about him, replacing it with personal contrary comments and legal threats. The edits are consequently reverted by some users and rollbacked by one administrator. The admin, [[ko:User:Kys951]], is also accused of being an abettor just because he is an admin. In the South Korean legal system, criminal defamation is partially a crime upon complaint, (ì¹œê³ ì£„/親告罪) which becomes irrelevant to be a crime when the complainant chose to withdraw the case. (Note that I'm not a specialist of law, especially in English terminology.) The police of Southeastern Incheon thought the case itself is too insignificant to be a criminal case and tried to persuade him to withdraw it, only to be declined. Song has reportedly demanded the admin to remove the paragraph in exchange for fixing the charge, which is definitely not the way how Wikipedia works. Another concern about this incident is that this could happen to every bit of contribution to the project. South Korean government had been censoring any scribble on the web they think beneficial to North Korea,[2] and for later on, anything they think fraudulent whenever the state is in threat, according to an exclusive report.[3] [1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ko/w/index.php?title=%EC%86%A1%EC%98%81%EA%B8%B8diff=5832689 [2] http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/shame_on_democratic_south_korea_for_censoring_face.php [3] http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/economy/it/455022.html ___ 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 -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki[p/m]edia
Dear friends, There should be nobody offended, and no apoligize is necessary. We try to deal with a complicated situation that would not exist if Wikipedia would be simply the product of Wikipedia Publishing House. Whether the names amplify the problem, whether Wikimedia was a good name choice - maybe WMF should rename itself The Wikipedia Foundation and call Wiktionary The Wikipedia Dictionary and so on. Like the Sprach-Brockhaus was the dictionary of Brockhaus, they did not come up with a new name, totally intended. But I don't believe that that matters much. There are similar problems in other movements. You can imagine what happened when the president of the Universal Esperanto Association proclamed that he wants to be the president of all Esperantists, causing many people stressing out that UEA is not the whole Esperanto movement and that the president is not their boss. It is difficult to say how many people refuse to donate to Wikimedia because they want to donate to Wikipedia. People should know that you can't donate to a website itself but only to the institution behind it. You also can't sue Ebay the website, only Ebay the company. We had the name problem also in the Schulprojekt of Wikimedia Deutschland (we visit schools and explain about WP/M). Some of us present themselves as representatives of the Wikipedia organization, others use the proper terms. Although I have obtained the reputation of being a terminological fetishist, I tend to keep things simple and say that I am from the Wikipedia organization. Sometimes I say that I am a representative of Wikimedia, the organization behind Wikipedia. Someone even said that there would be nothing fraudulent if we present ourselves as representatives of the offizieller Wikipedia-Förderverein (official booster club; well, in German it sounds much more pompous). Of course, it is always the best if you can take the time and explain about the relationship between WP and WM. In a fundraising letter addressed to the public that should be possible. And how to call the WMF ED? Some creative thinking is necessary. :-) I enjoyed the What's in a name contribution by Erik today, by the way. Kind regards Ziko 2010/12/10 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org: On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 7:20 PM, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: When we get letters saying things like I'd donate, but only to Wikipedia, not to Wikimedia, it spells out for us that it's possible we could attract more people with the institution of Wikipedia than the institution of Wikimedia. Are the donations which were made to Wikipedia, and not Wikimedia, going to be restricted for use only by Wikipedia, or was this a bait and switch. Maybe the people who say they'd donate, but only to Wikipedia, not to Wikimedia really do want to donate, but only to Wikipedia, not to Wikimedia. Suggesting that it was criminal is... well, regrettable. I didn't consider that possibility until you explained that the intention was to trick people into contributing to Wikimedia when they really wanted to contribute to Wikipedia. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki[p/m]edia
Absolutely worth re-reading this message from 2007 on brand unification: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-May/029991.html (thanks Nemo) Ziko 2010/12/10 wjhon...@aol.com: In a message dated 12/10/2010 6:52:05 AM Pacific Standard Time, zvand...@googlemail.com writes: It is difficult to say how many people refuse to donate to Wikimedia because they want to donate to Wikipedia. People should know that you can't donate to a website itself but only to the institution behind it. You also can't sue Ebay the website, only Ebay the company. However like all fund-accounting, you can donate to a fund set-aside exclusively for items related to WikiPedia, and not for any other WikiMedia activity. I would be very surprised if a non-profit were not using fund accounting as their accounting system. W ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Shopping-enabled Wikipedia pages
Hello, Ultimately, this is a kind of the Clone War, when in 2005 Google search hits were manipulated. Of of the problems of the clones is that they show no edit this page and no donate now. Kind regards Ziko 2010/12/5 Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org: Ah, Erik, thank you so much for writing this. I'd just been about to write something similar: you beat me to it :-) Thanks, Sue On 05/12/2010, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: 2010/12/4 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: Personally, I think that this is a good opportunity to get money from payed ads. It is not even on Wikimedia servers. As I said on wikien-l, the current Amazon.com use is not part of any official relationship. We're concerned about the degree to which the Amazon.com pages resemble Wikipedia pages. The content use itself is clearly permitted, and we're not opposed to commercial use per se. On the contrary, free licenses encourage this kind of experimentation by anyone. The potential issue with this kind of commercialization is that it creates confusion about the Wikipedia brand and what it stands for. Wikipedia is currently understood to be one of the few mainstream sources of information that isn't commercialized, and which aims to provide a neutral and inclusive view of any given topic. A third party adding single-vendor shopping ads into the content, while the way the content is presented closely resembles Wikipedia, threatens to undermine that perception, as Amazon.com visitors may assume that this is something that's part of our operating model. This is why we're first and foremost concerned about the risk of identity confusion here, about the impact of such confusion on how Wikipedia is perceived, and about finding ways to reduce that risk. We'll continue our exploration of this issue and will let you know as things develop. It may also well be that this turns out to be a short-lived experiment on Amazon.com's part. In general, our relationship with businesses is shifting from revenue-focused trademark licensing agreements to mission-focused partnerships closely aligned with our strategic plan. For example, we're trying to find the best possible partners to distribute very large numbers of offline copies of Wikimedia content (e.g. on low-end mobile phones used in the developing world, or as part of computing projects targeting disadvantaged communities). -- 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 -- 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 -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Photo contests in DE and NL
Hello, A coincidence: last weekend, in Germany and the Netherlands both the winners of photo contests were made public. In Germany the Zedler Medaille jury gave no first and second prize, while in the Netherlands the competition Wiki loves monuments honoured quite a number of winners. (In English about the Dutch gathering: http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/mini-conference-in-utrecht/ ) Maybe the Zedler criteria were not made clear enough to the participants, I don't know. In the Dutch case, I was stunned and positively impressed by the straight forward application of three simple criteria: the picture had to be clear (focused etc.), encyclopedic and beautiful. The Dutch winner is this picture: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Amsterdam_-_Vijzelstraat_27-35_%28halsgevel%29.JPG It may not meet the requirements of a purely technically or esthetically oriented jury. But it has great encyclopedic value. It shows the monument, a 17th century building in Amsterdam, in its actual modern use. On the right, you see an old picture of how the building looked like earlier. The advertisement for light bulb and the gentlemen dressed in modern leisure related fashion fix the picture into our modern times. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians
Hello, In fact, I cannot remember that I have ever met in Germany or the Netherlands a Turkish or Moroccan Wikimedian. Maybe there was one, but he spoke good German and presented himself as User:Encylco-dude81 so that I did not notice the migration background. :-) According to the statistics only 0.2% of the page views in Germany go to Wikipedia in Turkish, by the way.Turks in Germany belong largely to social classes that tend not to read much in an encyclopedia, and when they need one for school, they presumably copy their homework from Wikipedia in German. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Should we offer to host citizendium?
Hello, I just cannot imagine that Larry Sanger could bear to see his beloved Citizendium on a Wikimedia server, among all that child pornography he is supposing there. Kind regards Ziko 2010/11/12 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: On 12 November 2010 12:27, FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com wrote: Some prime time coverage of WMF CEO: As one of the worlds largest volunteer educational charity movements in human numbers, we have begun supporting other compatible movements in order to ensure a healthy provision of many different sources of free information. Our first (1/2/3) projects supported are (A/B/C), would do the job.. Probably we should ask Danese first, she'd have to make sure we had the techs and resources on hand for the hosting! We're not Rackspace and we shouldn't be. We're not ibiblio, though perhaps being that slightly would be good. In any case, hosting projects that are actually in distress (temporarily or more permanently) would be a good thing to do *if* we have the technical capacity. - d. ___ 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] And if I don't understand Dutch?
Hello, Just a minute ago I saw the fundraiser sitenotice of this year. A friendly, yet not too friendly, looking Jimmy Wales - much better than the word heavy notices from last year. I am a German living in the Netherlands, my browser is germanized, and I was on the de.wp and clicked on that message in German. But then I got a landingsite in Dutch. Okay, I have heard about the rationale and the negotiations between the Foundation and chapters. Still, what if I am German being by hazard in the Netherlands, and I don't even understand Dutch? At least a button Seite auf Deutsch (or Page in English) would be nice. :-) Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Left on the Table, vs. Google's serving portion
Thank you, Michael, for your critical note on the assertations concerning the huge sums of money. I didn't stand still at the fact that most of our Wikipedia pages have very low click rates. - Recently I read that 4% of our pages cause 50% of our traffic. The idea of Liam is interesting that we could have adverts on Special pages because those are genereated automatically. In Germany there was a discussion about adverts on www.wikipedia.de (which is owned by WMDE, unlike de.wikipedia.org). But even then, I am afraid, people will say anyway that there are ads on Wikipedia with the negative consequences for our reputation. And people might think that they don't have to donate anymore because Wikimedia makes money otherwise. The biggest danger remains the repercussions on our editing community. A loss of even only 10-20% of our power users would be very negative, especially in the smaller language communities. Personally, I am not such an opponent of adverts in general, and I would not mind to have a Wikimedia large voting on the subject. This should be only undertaken, nonetheless, if there is a substantial group of Wikimedians who really wants to go the advertising way. Kind regards Ziko 2010/11/8 Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com: On 11/7/2010 4:09 PM, geni wrote: As for tweak algorithmic factors firstly it's already happened at least once (there was a noticeable drop in wikipedia's Google SERPS positions a few years back). Secondly since both bing and yahoo rank wikipedia highly (in fact while I haven't checked recently for a long time google ranked wikipedia lower than those two) it seems unlikely that any reasonable algorithmic change would kill off wikipedia's traffic. I don't think there's any point in checking Bing and Yahoo separately anymore. I'm not sure what effect that might have on Wikipedia traffic in and of itself, but it means there are fewer algorithms to tweak, for good or ill. --Michael Snow ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] No, even a couple of Google ads on each page would be a fatally bad idea
Actually, Wikipedia articles link to a lot of pages that have adverts. So what. :-) Kind regards Ziko 2010/11/6 Arlen Beiler arlen...@gmail.com: I don't think I could stand it if we picked up advertising. I hate the way wikia looks, and therefore have an aversion to contributing in any way to its progress. Can you imagine! We actually link to Wikia sites and give them traffic (though I guess that is better than filling up wikibooks and wikipedia with useless junk)! Wikia is like the no good jerk up the street. Imagine us turning to ads after all these years! I am sure it could be a revenue source for some, but we are different, we are better. We create the best family of websites in the world, let's not mar them with ads. You know, wikia should sell itself to the Wikimedia Foundation so that Wikimedia would get the money. Then too, I guess the board members need some way to make money. What actually might be a better idea, would be for wikia to pay the board, since it is a for profit company. Or am I missing the point entirely? I read what that Greg Kohs said about it, and while I agree that it did sound like a conflict of interest, I don't know how much of this is proper or not. Anyway, those are my useless ramblings, so bye. On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 9:39 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 8:18 PM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com wrote: Hello, Adverts do not make content wrong, but create mistrust. Have a look what Lawrence Lessig tells about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHma3ZQRVoA After the first few minutes it turns into a long drawn out infomercial supporting US campaign finance reform. ___ 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 -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] No, even a couple of Google ads on each page would be a fatally bad idea
Hello, Adverts do not make content wrong, but create mistrust. Have a look what Lawrence Lessig tells about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHma3ZQRVoA Kind regards Ziko 2010/11/5 Cool Hand Luke user.coolhandl...@gmail.com: This was manifestly not a fatal idea. In fact, it appears they concluded that *operating on donations *would be fatal. Moral of the story: Wikipedia is different. Considering how much spam we receive, and how long some of it persists, I sometimes wonder if we haven't miscalculated the costs and benefits. For example, WMF could be getting something like $30 per-click on ads in articles like Mesothelioma. Ad money instead goes to enterprising spammers who sometimes succeed in placing their links in high-traffic or high value articles. Frank On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 12:02 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: ... and compromise content, as TV Tropes found out: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/TheSituation?from=Main.TheGoogleIncident - d. ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Swedish videos
Hello Lennart, I understood just a little but I find it great to make such videos. Nowadays it is - technically - no longer much work, there should be more chapters doing that. Kind regards Ziko 2010/10/27 Lennart Guldbrandsson wikihanni...@gmail.com: Well, we *could* use it in Swedish Wikinews, but Swedish Wikinews is all but dead, see http://sv.wikinews.org/wiki/Special:Senaste_%C3%A4ndringar. Most of the edits there are interwiki-bots. Better then to try to place these on Wikipedia somewhere, or maybe on Wikimedia Sverige's website. /Lennart 2010/10/27 Przykuta przyk...@o2.pl The first one, Linda Skugge, is a famous Swedish author and journalist, and files 2 and 3 are interviews with the guy who's behind the donation from Regionarkivet. 4 is with the Swedish Creative Commons guy. And so on. We are now debating on Swedish Wikipedia how to handle these interviews in the Wikipedia articles. I will let you know what we come up with. Are other chapters or volunteers doing similar stuff? I've seen interview with videos on the en Wikinews - the interview with Chomsky (text + video) http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Interview_with_US_political_activist_and_philosopher_Noam_Chomsky Could you use it in sv Wikinews? Przykuta ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Lennart Guldbrandsson, chair of Wikimedia Sverige and press contact for Swedish Wikipedia // ordförande för Wikimedia Sverige och presskontakt för svenskspråkiga Wikipedia ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: Mike Godwin leaves the Wikimedia Foundation
Sad news. I remember an office hour with Mike Godwin, competent and sympathetic. Best wishes Ziko 2010/10/22 Houston Navarro houstonnava...@gmail.com: Mike Godwin will be missed by the WMF. It's a fact that he never lost a case in this position with the WMF. H.N. ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal for new project
I wouldn't say that a how-to is necessarily NPOV, although there are more ways to do something. But such a project can be realised already within Wikibooks. Kind regards Ziko 2010/10/21 Marcus Buck m...@marcusbuck.org: An'n 20.10.2010 20:30, hett Leonardo Oña schreven: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiFix WikiFix is aimed at explaining *HOW TO* repair different ítems such as telephones, microwaves, autos, tables, furnitures, walls, decorations, wears, etc. We should have in mind that each model of a product is specific when repairing it since its failure is different, and that is why each page of the site will deal with one trouble of a specific model and item. Articles listed in the site will be grouped in categories such as: Electrodomestics, Autos, Houses, Clothes and Shoes, Kitchen accesories, etc. You can Add your signature to cooperate whith the proyect. Best regards. Leonardo Oña. I think your proposal is a good idea and that that wiki could develop into a very useful resource. However it does not fit into Wikimedia. Wikimedia is strictly about educational content and neutral point of view etc. and your how-to is just the opposite of neutral point of view. It collects the experience of people from their own point of view. Please don't get me wrong, I don't want to offend you, but I want to avoid any false hopes: there's no chance at all that your proposal will be adopted. No chance at all. Wikimedia has denied (or ignored) dozens or hundreds of project requests, many of which were really good ideas and which were then established elsewhere and have developed into flourishing wiki communities since. If you really want to develop that idea, I suggest that you have a look a Wikia: http://www.wikia.com/Wikia. It allows to create your own wiki. But you should also check whether the project WikiHow (http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page) is close enough to your idea. Marcus Buck User:Slomox ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Another machine-assisted translation tool
Hello David, See my experiences in http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ I do not recall exactly how the GoogleTK worked, but it is more or less the same. Kind regards Ziko 2010/10/18 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: This time from Microsoft Research: http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/10/18/wikibhasha/ Has anyone used this one? How is it? Did Google ever commit to releasing the translation pairs? If so, we should certainly ask Microsoft for the same. - d. ___ 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] Public Domain Mark - what does this mean for us?
Hello, While reading the FAQ of Creative Commons about the new Public Domain Mark, I wondered what are the consequences for our projects. Will I use PDM in future anyhow on Commons, for example? Kind regards Ziko http://wiki.creativecommons.org/PDM_FAQ -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] xkcd's map of the internet
Actually, my favorite is this one: Godwin's law: http://xkcd.com/261/ Ziko 2010/10/7 Florence Devouard anthe...@yahoo.com: On 10/7/10 12:52 AM, Svip wrote: On 7 October 2010 00:44, Florence Devouardanthe...@yahoo.com wrote: Ok, maybe that's just me but I could not find us ! Where are we ? (north west ? south east ? ) Between Troll Bay and Sea of Memes. Heh, that felt silly to say. ouarf. Well, yeah, that's good news. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not He got it right ! ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Umberto Eco's interview
Congratulations also from me, and thank you also for the translation to English! It's a lot of work. The interview provides a lot of useful thoughts and phrases. Kind regards Ziko 2010/8/4 Pharos pharosofalexand...@gmail.com This is just wonderful. Bravo, Italian Wikinews! Thanks, Pharos On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 7:15 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com 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 -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
Has anybody more information about what Google exactly told the people? A link? To whom was this call for participation directed? This issue Translation memory is another problem, another divergency of interests. We Wikipedians want to write good articles in our languages, that often means that we do not translate 1:1 but shorten and customize. But Google wants 1:1 translations for its Translation memory. And, of course, its the big numbers Google is interested in to achieve better automatic translations in the end. Ziko 2010/7/29 Muhammad Yahia shipmas...@gmail.com: On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 6:56 PM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: I heard that for the Swahili Wikipedia contest at least, they gave away prizes... but perhaps they should've included a requirement that the articles they created be rated as good by the community, not full of errors and nonsense sentences, and that all project participants who want any chance at winning must respond to all talkpage messages within 72 hours (or something like that). I have been involved with 2 big pushes by Google in the Arabic Wikipedia, one of them was by professional paid translators, the other was done completely by a volunteer organization in collaboration with Google. I supported both efforts heavily. In the latter, they recruited university students mostly to do the work and there was very little to earn beyond recognition. All the problems mentioned above plagued both efforts, and while the second one had slightly better results than the first, the vast amount of translated articles lay ignored in the user space (that's what the consensus on ar.wp was, confine them to their user space until deemed good), the efforts to contact and teach either the volunteers or the paid translators were futile, and the articles had some very awkward sentence structures, some very bad jargon translation, etc. I have reached the opinion that the gradual nature of collaboration in Wikipedia is what makes our good and excellent articles what they are. I think a very little percent of wikipedians started by writing a full length article, instead most of us started by a small edit in another article, and a bigger edit after it and so on. By the time we began writing whole articles, we had enough knowledge of the community and the wiki syntax to produce good results. Whenever someone has a question about terminology, it gets discussed on the VP, whenever someone is unsure, he recruits other people to review or help. This was all missing from the effort and I think what caused most of the problems. -- Best Regards, Muhammad Yahia ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
Dear colleagues, My experiences with the Translate Kit are negative, too. It happened just too often that a sentence was so twisted that I did not understand it. Checking it with the original took me a lot of time, so I decided that doing the translation by myself is much quicker and reliable. It is good for nobody to read Wikipedia articles in gibberish. The idea that the translation tool is doing the work and that a human being has to make just some little corrections, has simply failed. Especially negative was, to me, that the Translator kit encourages you to translate sentence by sentence. I don't want to do injustice to anyone, but in my view there are two groups of Wikipedians: - those who want to see huge article numbers and believe that any article with any content is good, in any quality, and that the Wikipedians are sufficient to do the rest. - those who believe that (at least a minimum) quality is important and that articles below a certain niveau do damage to a Wikipedia. The small numbers of Wikipedians cannot cope with the work. They welcome not any content, but content that meets the possible interests of their readers. It seems to me that the first group is mainly populated by computer specialists and natives of English. The second group consists of language specialists and non natives of English. But of course there are many exceptions. Kind regards Ziko van Dijk 2010/7/28 Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com: We welcome automation in translation, but not at the expense of introducing incorrect and messy content on wikipedia. We'd rather stay small and hand-craft than allow an experimental tool and unskilled paid translators creating a big mess. Yes. This is the answer that you will get from most of the active wiki ((small wikis) communities where this project is going on. Many of the small wiki communities are not worried about the numbers as some big wikipedias do. Quality is more important for small wikis when number of contributors are less. *Many of us will use this quality matrix* itself to bring in more people. My real concern is about the rift that is happening in a language community due to this project. Issues of a language wiki is taken outside wiki to prove some points against its contributors. Two types are communities are evolving out of this project. *Google's Wiki community* and *Wiki's wiki community*. :) This is really annoying as far as small wikis are concerned. So, some sort of intervention is required to make sure this project run smootly on different wiikipedias. ~Shiju On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 1:38 AM, Ragib Hasan ragibha...@gmail.com wrote: As an admin in Bengali wikipedia, I had to deal with this issue a lot (some of which were discussed with the Telegraph (India) newspaper article). But I'd like to elaborate our stance here: (The tool used was Google Translation Toolkit. (not Google Translate). There is a distinction between these two tools. Google Translation Toolkit (GTT) is a translation-memory based semi-manual translation tool. That is, it learns translation skills as you gradually translate articles by hand. Later, this can be used to automate translation.) Issues: 1. Community involvement: First of all, the local community was not at all involved or informed about this project. All on a sudden, we found new users signing up, dropping a large article on a random topic, and move away. These users never responded to any talk page messages, so we first assumed these were just random users experimenting with wikipedia. Even now, no one from Google has contacted us in Bengali wikipedia and inform us about Google's intentions. This is not a problem by itself, but see the following points. 2. Translation quality: The quality of the translations was awful. The translations added to Bengali wikipedia were artificial, dry, and used obscure words and phrases. It looked as if a non-native speaker sat down with a dictionary in hand, and mechanically translated each sentence word by word. That led to sentences which are hard to understand, or downright nonsensical. The articles were half-done. Numerals were not translated at all. The punctuation symbol for Bengali language (the danda symbol: । ) was not used. (apparently, GTT and/or the google transliteration tool does not support that). The articles were also full of spelling mistakes. The paid translator misspelled many simple words, or even used different spellings for the same word in different parts of the article. Finally, different languages have different sentence structures. Sometimes, a complex sentence is better expressed if broken up in two sentences in another language. We found that the translators simply translated sentences preserving their English language structure. This caused the resulting Bengali sentences awkward and artificial to read. For example, we do not write If x then y in Bengali just by replacing
Re: [Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?
Mark Williamson: GTTK can be used as a force of good if someone puts in the appropriate time and effort; when used _properly_ by a careful, knowledgeable It is my thought that the huge problem here is lack of engagement with communities. Essentially, Google swooped down and started dropping Agreed. Again, in my experience it is quicker and delivers more quality to translate by your own. If others have different experiences (it may depend on the language), okay. It seems that something went very wrong when telling people who to contribute to a Wikipedia language version. Could you report more about that, Mark? Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] small Wikipedia projects - follow-up to Jimmy Wales' talk
Hello Amir, hello Casey, Actually I am currently interested in policies of different language versions (article deletion, sources etc.), and thought about reviving the Tell us project for that. Most Wikipedians are busy only in one or two Wikipedias thoroughly, and hardly anyone knows how much the language versions have drifted apart (or not). Kind regards Ziko 2010/7/19 Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il: 2010/7/18 Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org: On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 4:43 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Hello, I'm writing this as the follow-up to Jimmy Wales' Wikimania keynote about small Wikipedias, or, as some people correctly say, Wikipedias in underprivileged languages. (It's strange to use the word small anywhere near Bengali, for example.) Is there some recorded body of knowledge about the existing attempts to engage small language communities? The only thing that i know is the parts with Ndesanjo Macha in The Truth According To Wikipedia. They are very inspiring, but very small. Something that's standing out in my mind, but might not be exactly what you're looking for, is Ziko's Tell us about your Wikipedia project, where Ziko and others tried to get different Wikipedias to share details about themselves and some tough things that they experienced. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tell_us_about_your_Wikipedia That was a first step to a lot of the stuff you're talking about. Actually i started reviving this project a few weeks ago: I translated its main page into Russian so that people from Wikipedias in the minority languages of Russia who don't know English will be able to contribute to it. Thanks for reminding me to advertise it in those Wikipedias' Village Pumps. Versions in French and Spanish may be useful for Africa and Latin America. -- 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 -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to Foundation Website
It struck me that the Foundation has decided to concentrate on the large public, the small donators, and not seek much further to approach big spenders or make money by business partnerships. This is a statement not only about our history and our future, and also about our character as movement. Is it too much to call this an event of historical importance? Kind regards Ziko 2010/6/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: Hoi, When we raise money, we have a choice; either we spend the money and we communicate what we plan to do or we build reserves for a rainy day. In the Netherlands there are several charities that find it much harder to raise funds for any purpose now that they are known to build huge reserves. This was made worse when they wanted to raise funds after many of their investments went sour. As I understand our finances, we forecast a great need and at the same time are frugal spending realising the communicated goals. Consequently there is an operational reserve. The Wikimedia Foundation is not a university and consequently it does not operate along those lines. Mind you, an American university is a completely different beast then for instance a Dutch university and our universities have as respectable reputation while their funding is not reliant on huge endowments. In my opinion we are on a mission and we should share this mission as widely as possible. This is why it is not acceptable that so much of the our finances rely on USA donations. We need chapters that take part in everything that makes the WMF possible. This includes fund raising and operating programs that benefit our projects and free knowledge in general. When people, organisations want to contribute to an endowment, they should do so separately from our fund raisers. These are to enable us to do what we aim to do. This will gain us more contributions then building large reserves. Thanks, GerardM PS you is the reader On 30 June 2010 17:38, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 12:48 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, When you consider the source of much of the donations, you will find that they have been coming mainly from the United States. Chapters are becoming more and more active in fundraising. The Dutch chapter for instance plans on professionalising its operations and fundraising staff has the highest priority. It performed much better, one of the reasons is that IDEAL, a payment method for the Internet in the Netherlands, was implemented. I am sure that with increased support from the WMF not only but also the Dutch will raise substantially more money this time around. When you ask for an endowment, you indicate an opinion that the current levels of support for our projects suffice. I do not share that opinion and, I am happy to find indications in the planning that this opinion is supported in the plans for 2010/11. Milos and myself will talk in Gdansk about the need to improve technical support for our smallest projects (think Hindi, Malayalam... hundreds of million people will benefit..). Some of it is hard core language support and some are changes to operating projects in order to raise traffic and usability for readers. Hi Gerard, A small point -- I don't know who the you refers to here -- me? -- but when *I* ask for an endowment, it is not because I think the current levels of support suffice; that's a different question. It's because I don't want the long-term support for Wikimedia to be dependent on our ability to fundraise increasingly large amounts from year to year. Fundraising above and beyond such an endowment is fine and good and necessary as well. I have heard that raising an endowment was rejected by the strategy process because it was hard; I don't know what that means, exactly, but raising an extra $20M in a recession is hard, too. Someone was talking to me the other day about the differences between Wikimedia and large universities, such as the one where I work. You don't mind criticizing the university governance, he said; in part because you can't imagine it ever going away, no matter what. It's true, and I want Wikimedia to be that stable. In fact, I want it to be *more* stable than most American universities are at the moment -- certainly more than mine! -- phoebe ___ 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 -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ 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
Hello, It seems to me doubtless that there is a substantial number of active Wikimedians who see the need in a simple or children-encyclopedia and would like to invest some of their own sweat, blood and tears. Others, who disagree, may stand on the side line and comment if they like. There are a lot of single questions when defining the exact scope etc., but the main question remains: Would WMF accept such a project, or would it reject it for being just another Wikipedia in already existing languages. So, how different the new project must be from Wikipedia. The original fear is that a linguistic group is split into two communities whereas the forces usually should be concentrated in one Wikipedia. A Wikipedia in simple English, we were told, is essentially a Wikipedia in English. But if a project, for example, directs itself to a relativeley limited group of readers (children), with consequences for the content (limited length of articles, no explicit images), usage of language (no hard words), wouldn't it be different enough from a usual Wikipedia? Kind regards Ziko 2010/6/27 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de: Hello Milos, reading your mail below I am wondering why your reaction on my first mail was so aggressive. It looks to me as if your consideration is not that far away from mine. Especially I wrote in my suggestion that first of all the project must have a very clearly defined scope and audiance, second that it should have a more rigid editorial and anti-vandal mechanism and third that we need more research. Greetings Ting Milos Rancic wrote: On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 2:09 AM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: The difference was that Wikipedia was not made for young people. If I run a social group for adults and there are issues with children who visit, I can blame it on their parents and say they should control them better. If I run a social group for children, I'm now a childcare provider and have a greater degree of responsibility. It is not [just] about blaming each other. It is about underestimating child capacities and playing with their trust. Child is perfectly able to recognize what is for adults and what is for children: everything not marked (marked in various ways) as for children is for adults. And they are able to treat differently those two types of phenomena. For adults is not safe, while for children is safe. Depending on circumstances, for children phenomena could be also boring to them, but safe. And if we want to make a project in which children will trust as safe, we have much higher responsibility than we have for creating any other project not marked as a project for children. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ting Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/ ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy one language - one Wikipedia
2010/6/25 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: My first answer is that Wikipedia is good enough for children and that we do not need a Wikipedia fork with dumb language. I wonder where such an attitude comes from. Dumb? Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy one language - one Wikipedia
Hello, Recently there has been a controversy on Wikipedia in German about extra articles in simple language. Authors of its medical group wanted to create sub pages suitable for children, believing in an urgent need. [1] In the discussion, the question of creating a Wikipedia in simple German came up. As we know, to-day Wikimedia language committee policies prohibit a new Wikipedia in a language that already has a Wikipedia. The existence of a Wikipedia in simple English refers to the fact that it had been created before that policy of 2006. 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? Kind regards Ziko van Dijk [1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/wiki/Wikipedia:Redaktion_Medizin/Projekt_Kinderleicht -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ 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
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 s...@wikimedia.org: Hi Ziko, On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 8:41 AM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com 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
Re: [Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation
that it's a cliché, and it's pretty obvious why that kind of person would find a calling in Wikipedia. One piece of insight that comes out of is that general approaches which make Wikipedia more palatable to average people, as opposed to uber-obsessive techobibilo walking-fact-machines, may have a greater impact at reducing gender imbalance than female centric improvements. (and may also reduce other non-gender related imbalances, such as our age imbalance). So this gives you an extra reason why more people to edit regardless is an especially useful approach. Though are limits to the amount of main-streaming you can do of an academic activity such as encyclopaedia writing. :-) In any case, I don't mean to suggest that your work isn't important or can't be worthwhile. Only that I think you're fighting an uphill battle against a number of _natural_ (not human originated) biases, and I wish you luck! [*] A while back I wrote up a longer and highly technical version of this explanation as part of an argument on gender imbalances in computer science with a mathematician. Anyone into math-wankery may find it interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/mf_compsci ___ 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 -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ 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...
Hello, I could imagine that such a statement, in a different form, comes originally from socialist or anti-socialist circles. By the way, I am not such a big fan of this seemingly witty remark. If there is a conflict between theory and practice, that means that your theory is bad and has to be adjusted to practice. (In Soviet Union it was the other way round, reality had to be shaped conforming to the theory, that's why I believe the idea comes from somewhere there.) If your theory is that Wikipedia is anarchy and creative chaos and swarm intelligence etc., then, of course, Wikipedia does not work in theory. :-) Kind regards Ziko 2010/6/17 geni geni...@gmail.com: On 17 June 2010 21:37, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:19 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Here's the phrase in a 1988 sociology paper: http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/1/1/19 I'd call it a pretty obvious play on words, though, so I really doubt we got it from that. Anyone got a complete wikien-l archive to grovel through? - d. going back that far it might be on wikipedia-l, I think, and Joseph Reagle has done quite a bit of work analyzing that -- maybe he can help. We're looking for the orgins of the quote: The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could never work in practice. Well I can search wikipedia-en-l as far back as 13.09.04 and I'm not coming up with anything. Running google searches for mentions pre 2006 doesn't turn up anything however use explodes in 2006 which is rather fast if than jan 2006 use is the first. -- geni ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Creating articles in small wikipedias based on user requirement
It would be indeed an useful or at least interesting tool for all Wikipedias. Though, many readers go to Wikipedia by a Google search, I don't know what that eventually would mean for the search results as we will see them. Kind regards Ziko 2010/6/12 Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com: Shiju, just FYI, tool kit can be used by anyone for translation. In fact, it's good to use because (if you choose the option) it will go toward improving future machine translation capability for your language, thus expanding possibilities for monolingual speakers of your language. In addition, machine aided translation, in which an article is translated by machine and then corrections are made, can be a much speedier yet still accurate way to create articles. -m. On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 7:15 PM, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com wrote: This topic came up while we were discussing about Google's translation effort. Google/Google employees are using Google tool kit to translate English Wikipedia articles to many of the Indic language Wikipedias. We are definitely more interested if Google translates these user required articles than translating the English wiki articles about all the american pop stars (For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Gaga). Now the issue is, we don't have such list to give to Google/Google employees. On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 5:56 AM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: +1. This would be a SUPER useful tool for all Wikis. -m. On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 3:54 AM, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com wrote: Recently I had a discussion with one of my fellow Malayalam wikipedian ( http://ml.wikipedia.org) about the creation of new articles in small wikipedias like ours. He is one the few users who is keen on creating new articles *based on the requirement of our readers*. (Of course we have many people who only reads our wiki) During discussion he raised this interesting point: Some feature is required in the MediaWiki software that enable us to see a list of keywords used most frequently by the users to search for non-exist articles. If we get such a list then some users like him can concentrate on creating articles using that key words. Of course, I know that this feature may not be helpful for big wikis like English. But for small wikis (especially small non-Latin language wikis), this will be of great help. It is almost like* creating wiki articles based on user requirement*. I would like to know your opinion regarding the same. Shiju ___ 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 -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Strategic Planning Office Hours
Dear Philippe, it is June 1st, isn't it? Ziko 2010/6/1 Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org: Hi Everyone - Our next strategic planning office hours will be: 20:00-21:00 UTC, Tuesday, 1 May. Local timezones can be checked athttp://timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?year=2010month=6day=1hour=20min=0sec=0p1=0 As always, you can access the chat by going to https://webchat.freenode.net and filling in a username and the channel name (#wikimedia-strategy). You may be prompted to click through a security warning. It's fine. More details at: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours Thanks! Hope to see many of you there. Philippe Beaudette Facilitator, Strategy Project Wikimedia Foundation phili...@wikimedia.org ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Renaming Flagged Protections
Indeed revision and review makes the impression that much more is done than actually is. (Revision = not only a check, but also alterations, it sounds to me.) I am afraid that is the problem with pretty much of all the expressions that have been put in forum. In German Wikipedia, our word gesichtet is a little bit strange. Sichten is like spotting a rare animal in the wilderness. Actually, the subject we should talk about is not an article or a revision, but the version that has been changed by an edit. Kind regards Ziko 2010/5/24 Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net: On 24 May 2010, at 07:57, Erik Zachte wrote: Revision Review is my favorite. It seems more neutral, also less 'heavy' in connotations than Double Check. Also Review is clearly a term for a process, unlike Revisions. The downside is that 'Review' could be linked to an editorial review, and hence people might expect to get feedback on their revision rather than a simple 'yes/no'. I'd also personally link the name more to paid reviewing than volunteer checking. Combining the two, and removing the potential bad bits (i.e. double and review) how about Checked Revisions? Mike Peel ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Renaming Flagged Protections
Well, what James Alexander says - maybe we can make up something of edit. Checked edit. Ziko 2010/5/24 William Pietri will...@scissor.com: On 05/24/2010 01:41 AM, Ziko van Dijk wrote: In German Wikipedia, our word gesichtet is a little bit strange. Sichten is like spotting a rare animal in the wilderness. That's funny. Internally, especially in technical discussions, sighted gets used a fair bit. All this time I'd been assuming that, however weird sighted sounded in English, it must be perfectly good German. For non-native speakers, sighted is rarely used in English. The main uses I can think of are to describe a person who isn't blind (For the hike we paired a sighted person with each blind one), for spotting rare animals, or for an archaic nautical flavor (Cap'n! The bosun's mate has sighted the pirate ship from the fo'csle!). As they say, there's sometimes a quality in a good translation that you just can't get in the original. William ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Renaming Flagged Protections
It is EXTREMELY important to use proper expressions. Otherwise you will create confusion and even scare people away. When I helped preparing the introduction of flagged revisions on Dutch Wikipedia I came up with marked versions. Above all, it's versions we are talking about, not revisions which get a flag. A flag is for me something you put on something that is notable, but it is our goal that the marked versions are the normal thing. So the procedure is: A sighter is sighting a new version of an article, and after sighting he is putting a mark saying this version is sighted. Only versions marked as sighted are shown to our readers. Kind regards Ziko 2010/5/22 MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com: David Levy wrote: The feature's name is a legitimate concern, and I see no attempt to erect any hurdles. (On the contrary, Rob unambiguously noted that time is of the essence.) No, it really isn't a legitimate concern. It wasn't a legitimate concern when the AbuseFilter was enabled and every user had a public abuse log. And with that feature came the ability to tag edits. We now mark edits with generally inflammatory remarks that are impossible to have removed. Naming wasn't a concern when file description pages were all prefixed with Image:. It wasn't a concern when RevDelete was enabled (first for oversighters, then for everyone else). RevDelete doesn't apply to just revisions, and the user rights associated with it could not have been more confusingly named if someone had tried deliberately. To hear that feature naming has suddenly become an issue sounds like bullshit to me. The worst that happens? A few power-users confuse their terminology. And Jay Walsh gets a headache trying to explain this mess in a press release. God forbid. If anything, using consistent terminology that has been used previously in blog posts and press releases would be better than inventing an entirely new and foreign term. Please, don't be fooled by the it'll just be another X days when Y happens and then we'll be good to go! Time and again, Wikimedia has used this tactic with this exact project. If I were a betting man, I'd say the next deadline will be before Wikimania! When that passes, everyone can get distracted spending six months focusing on the annual fundraiser and we'll see you in 2011. Think I'm wrong? Prove it. MZMcBride ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] deployment of Vector to other languages -
Hello Naoko Thank you for the explanations, by the way I find it interesting to read the feedback, the users' comments. Sometimes it is difficult for me to follow things because Vector has changed or is displayed in various projects differently. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Appropriate surprise (Commons stuff)
Thank you for retaking the thread, Jussi-Ville. Please allow me to share some thoughts about attitudes on nudity, unneccessary provocation and Jimmy Wales' action. I remember something I heard on Wikipedia Weekly, a year ago or so, I believe it was even before the Virginkiller issue (the Scorpions' cover). Andrew Lih said that many Wikipedians laugh about pornography/nudity issues and have a laissez-faire-I-don't-care attitude. Like let the world think what it wants, we Wikipedians go simply on with what we doing. Andrew Lih disqualified that attitude as immature and ignorant (sorry, I do not recall the precise words). People who have difficulties with nudity etc. are a legitimate part of our community and our readership and we should at least listen to them and try to find a compromise that does not hurt someone's feelings unnecessarily, even if in many points they would have to give in. This came up in me again on March 21st, this year. A group arround Achim Raschka improved the article Vulva in German Wikipedia and promoted it through the procedure to make it Article of the day. So on that Sunday, the Main page of German Wikipedia presented the article with an illustration. On a Wikipeda meeting on Cologne, then, I heard people grinning about the dream of all puberal vandals came true: a pussy on Main page. I was not sure what to think about that, but I come more and more the conclusion that it was an unneccessary provocation, at least the illustration. I know about some people who are honestly shocked by graphic nudity (some are religious, others not); so when they go to an article such as vulva or fellatio it is at their own risk, but they should not be confronted with a vulva picture at the Main page where they don't expect it. This should apply, I think, also to other pictures people may find disturbing, for example about people deformed by deaseses or injuries. There are simply subjects and illustrations that are not like all others. So when illustrating the article Holocaust you can and should use pictures of dead bodies [1], but for a link from the Main page it is preferred to use someting like the Entrance to Auschwitz [2]. Some Wikipedia commuties might want to have rules of their own, depending on the Wikipedians and the expected readership. I noticed that while German Wikipedia's article Penis has photographs, Arabic Wikipedia's is illustrated only by a medical drawing. About the deletions on Commons in the last days: I cannot imagine that there were significant losses of valuable illustrations. But in general I wonder that a board member is deleting these pictures in person. In my humble opinion, if a community is late with important policy making, the board has all right to take action (as the board, or the Foundation, is finally responsable for the projects). But there should be a board decision, and the implementation should be left to a collaborator of Wikimedia Foundation. You would also find it strange seeing the Queen of England sweeping the streets of London in person, or handing you out a parking fine. Maybe it is useful to install an extra community assistant for Commons, given the importance of Commons for all projects, with at the same time an inherent weakness of Commons because many Wikipedians use it but do not engage in it specifically. Kind regards Ziko van Dijk [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_175-04413,_KZ_Auschwitz,_Einfahrt.jpg [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mass_Grave_Bergen_Belsen_May_1945.jpg 2010/5/13 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com: Gregory Maxwell wrote: There are also people who are honestly offended that some people are offended by human sexuality content— and some of them view efforts to curtail this content to be a threat to their own cultural values. If this isn't your culture, please take a moment to ponder it. If your personal culture believes in the open expression of sexuality an effort to remove redundant / low quality sexuality images while we not removing low quality pictures of clay pots, for example, is effectively an attack on your beliefs. These people would tell you: If you don't like it, don't look. _Understanding_ differences in opinion is part of the commons way, so even if you do not embrace this view you should at least stop to understand that it is not without merit. In any case, while sometimes vocal, people from this end of the spectrum don't appear to be all that much of the community. I apologize for the late reply, but since this issue is of a long term nature, hopefully not much harm will come from only commenting on it now. I fully admit I experienced a Hey, I resemble that remark! moment regarding the middle part of the paragraph. My culture is certainly near the end of the spectrum mentioned, being as I am from Finland (if it tells you anything, we usually consider our neighbors to the west, the Swedes, as hopelessly repressed sexually --- and I
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
Adam, As long as you do comments like this [1] (Fuck you) I would like you to abstain from discussing until your mood has changed. Ziko [1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons_talk:Sexual_contentdiff=nextoldid=38893870 2010/5/8 Adam Cuerden cuer...@gmail.com: The foundation appears to be of the impression that Jimbo is merely attempting to encourage scrutiny, and removing clear cases. This is not true. Jimbo has speedy deleted, without discussion, historical artworks and diagrams, often edit warring with admins to keep them deleted, and has made a statement that he refuses to discuss his deletions until after he has finished deleting them all, which would only compound the problem. Examples: Artworks from the 19th century, by notable artists: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AF%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_Sainte-Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se.png- Wheelwarred with three different admins to try and keep it deleted. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AFranz_von_Bayros_016.jpg- Wheelwarred with two admins this time. Diagrams intended to illustrate articles on sexual subjects, in wide use on Wikipedia projects for that purpose: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AWiki-fisting.png- Edit warred with three admins http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AWiki-facial.svg Further, when challeged on these, he said that he refused to engage in any discussion on the deletion of artwork *until he was done deleting all of them* From http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Walesaction=historysubmitdiff=38891861oldid=38891748 I have redeleted the image for the duration of the cleanup project. We will have a solid discussion about whether Commons should ever host pornography and under what circumstances at a later day - June 1st will be a fine time to start.--[[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo Wales]] ([[User talk:Jimbo Wales#top|span class=signature-talktalk/span]]) 17:31, 7 May 2010 (UTC) How are such images to be found, after's he's gone and deleted them all? Are we really to sift through every single deletion several months later, to find the things that shouldn't have been deleted in the first place, and which, thanks to the Commons Delinker bot, have been automatically removed from the articles they were used in? Out of Jimbo's deletions, at the very least a third of the deletions related to diagrams and historical artwork in wide use on Wikipedia projects. This despite his initial claim ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Walesaction=historysubmitdiff=38820363oldid=38819608) that he'd only be dealing with things that violated the law that started the controversy. If the board are not aware, there was, about a year ago, a controversy related to images of Muhammed, in which Muslim readers - for whom such are horribly offensive, due to rules against depiction of the prophet - were politely informed that we could not delete material simply because it offended someone, as Wikipedia sought to show all of the world's knowledge. Jimbo's actions make that consensus deeply problematic. There is a petition for Wales' founder flag to be removed, which has gained widespread support since his actions. ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Remove_Founder_flag ) -A. C. ___ 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Ideas from Limburg
Dear Phoebe, You make my day! Actually, it should have been yesterday, but I am afraid most people did not notice my Aprils fool item. Once I thought translating my Handbook into English, but other things gained priority. Especially my textbook I am due to have finished on July 1st, and about which I was still going to ask you questions - you are more experienced still. Kind regards Ziko 2010/4/2 phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com: Ziko, On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com wrote: When he told me about, I looked up again what I had written about (small) Wikipedia language editions in my handbook (in German): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Ziko/Handbuch-Titel . I then, in 2008, found li.WP relatively good, but there were also some difficulties, for example the lack of a technical vocabulary. Thanks for reminding us of your book on multilingual Wikipedias! It's amazing. It would be lovely to expand this to all languages, to have a comprehensive Wikipedia handbook! When I examined the background I found out that most of the li.Wikipedians indicate their real names and many are women. With permission, here what Gebroeker:JennySteen wrote to me: wow! This is really unusual and interesting. Do you think it is just because of the effect of having a small community centered around this group of editors? btw I am not seeing the color changes for user pages.. and maybe http://li.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebroeker:JennySteen edits under a different account? -- 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
Re: [Foundation-l] At school
Hi Tyler, The problem of vandalism is indeed one and it will remain so. Most people don't realize actually that not everybody can edit, or if he does, it is very likely that his edit will be reverted. That is our real problem - it is difficult to join the team, which may become smaller and no longer capable to fight vandalism and check information. I wonder, by the way, which works teachers will recommend in the future. Don't use Wikipedia, all right, but what else? The printed encyclopedias die away in these times. Once I read what pupils in Germany are allowed to use for their final essay (when they are 18 and are going to leave grammar school). Practically everything: local newspapers, brochures from organisations... To me as a historian, that is horrific, at least if you use that as Sekundärliteratur (what you Anglo people call secondary sources). So - if the pupils are allowed to use that, why not even Wikipedia? :-) In general: Never before people knew so little about something they use so often, as a German journalist said about Wikipedia. I am looking forward to the results of the bookshelf projects and the possible effects... Kind regards Ziko PS: the bureaucrat of the Hebrew wikipedia, came on stage and said How can you trust an encyclopaedia that anyone can edit? How can you trust an encyclopaedia that no one can edit!! Shlomi, that*s a good one from your bureaucrat! 2010/2/16 Tom Maaswinkel tom.maaswin...@12wiki.eu: I can understand why 'outside' people would think that wikipedia is unreliable. But don't all the articles have sources? So why don't they just learn their students to verify the sources themselves (help us out while they're at it) and then they'll see quick enough that wikipedia is reliable. I showed to one school once by vanadalizing a page myself and they were amazed how soon that was put straight again. Ok, I cheated a little by notifying someone else up front, but they didn't know that :-) Tom TheDevilOnLine Maaswinkel Op 16-2-2010 9:03, Dorozynski Janusz schreef: | -Original Message- | From: foundation-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l- | boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jon Davis | Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 5:53 AM / | In the end, vandals get bored. It is thrilling to defile Wikipedia | once or twice, but when your changes are swiftly dealt with... it | loses its appeal. | There isn't much fun in writing graffiti that no one will see. Right. Particularly when given Wikipedia, as Polish, has included Flagged versions. Vandals practically left my observed sides alone. Janusz Ency Dorozynski ___ 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 -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 10th birthday edit drive?
Amazing idea, Philippe! Additionally to some big things (Hagia Sophia? the Red Square?): small Wikipedia logo stickers to put on a number of buildings etc. in your town. (On the other hand, some people could consider that a kind of environment unfriendly spamming.) The 10th anniversay will be a kind of looking back, also remembering those who have left us on the way. Some of them we are happy to be rid of, but others - maybe the anniversay is a good occasion to direct us to people who once tried to edit but were beaten away. Couldn't we ask them to give Wikipedia a second chance? Ziko 2010/2/8 Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org: Can you imagine, finding places that have WP articles and projecting the logo globe on them? That would be an amazing public visibility thing. In SF alone, for instance, Grace Cathedral, Coit Tower, the Transamerica Pyramid -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
