gmane.org.wikimedia.wikinews

WikiNews...no NOT Wikinews

Jason Safoutin — 2012-02-27T20:03:26

This is interesting. Upon my daily sift through Google News for agencies
that might post Wikinews articles, I came across this (A video from
WikiNews...no not Wikinews):http://vimeo.com/35988111  It was posted on
another site a week ago:http://www.vhx.tv/644528  I don't know who made the video.
All I know is this poses a potential threat to our project. I don't know enough
about copyright laws in regards to the use of Wikipedia's project names
or the use of logos. Regardless, this is not good and quite frankly
kinda scared me a little. So I am sending this message through Foundation-1 in hopes that someone might be able to explain this. Wikinews Water Cooler discussion
on this:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Water_cooler/miscellaneous#WikiNews_makes_a_video...

Re: Al Jazeera photos

Brian McNeil — 2011-12-08T21:24:32

I've "spammed" this on-wiki:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikinews/en/wiki/Wikinews:Water_cooler/technical#Al_Jazeera_images_and_video

What Al Jazeera is offering is *not* to be sniffed at! Personally, I
would love if their "act of good faith" pays off. It's an extremely
shrewd move, but with some associated risks.

AP, Reuters, AFP, et-al, now have to deal with an upstart Mid-East-based
competitor who is *giving away* all but the cream of their photo/video
journalism work. It goes into relevant Wikipedia articles, a
million-and-one blogs, and proves that information=>knowledge=power.

Given my upbringing, I'd love to beat the BBC over the head with this
and force them to do the same. It, sadly, isn't about to happen.

I'll probably greatly upset some of my Wikinews colleagues on the
western side of the Atlantic, but I see a possibility of Wikinews
working with Al Jazeera. That provocative statement is based on the fact
that Al J. could readily put a few Western journalists in situations
where, alone, they'd get shot just for where they came from.

Geopolitical news of global importance comes from places which are
no-one's comfort zone. Wikinews should support people taking the risks
to go to such places by using their reportage.

Al Jazeera, you've followed the wiki axiom, "Be Bold". I sure as hell
hope it works out for you!


On Sat, 2011-12-03 at 19:10 -0400, bawolff wrote:


Brian McNeil.

Call for image filter referendum

Casey Brown — 2011-07-01T19:55:22

/Please distribute this message widely/

*Call for referendum*:  The Wikimedia Foundation, at the direction of
the Board of Trustees, will be holding a vote to determine whether
members of the community support the creation and usage of an opt-in
personal image filter, which would allow readers to voluntarily screen
particular types of images strictly for their own account.

Further details and educational materials will be available shortly.
The referendum is scheduled for 12-27 August, 2011, and will be
conducted on servers hosted by a neutral third party.  Referendum
details, officials, voting requirements, and supporting materials will
be posted at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_filter_referendum
shortly.

For the coordinating committee,
Philippe (WMF)
Cbrown1023
Risker
Mardetanha
PeterSymonds
Robert Harris

[ResourceLoader] JavaScript may break on your wiki: Fix it before that happens

Guillaume Paumier — 2011-02-12T09:53:58

Greetings,

As you may know, the Wikimedia teach team has started to upgrade
MediaWiki on some wikis. MediaWiki is the software that runs all
Wikimedia wikis.

The most visible change for Wikimedia users will be the deployment of
ResourceLoader [1].

ResourceLoader optimizes the use of JavaScript in MediaWiki, speeding up
its delivery by compressing it sometimes, and cutting down on the amount
of unused JavaScript that gets delivered to the browser in the first
place.

The installation of ResourceLoader may cause compatibility issues with
existing JavaScript code.

Trevor Parscal and Roan Kattouw, the main developers of ResourceLoader,
will be available on IRC [2] on Monday, February 14th, at 18:00 (UTC)
[3], to answer questions and help fix issues related to ResourceLoader.

*If you maintain JavaScript code on your home wiki, please attend.*
Don't wait until your wiki's JavaScript is all broken.

Please spread this information as widely as possible; it's critical to
reach as many local JavaScript maintainers as possible.

Logs of the session will be published publicly.

[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ResourceLoader
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours
[3] All timezones: http://ur1.ca/3819u

--
Guillaume Paumier
Product manager - Wikimedia Foundation
Support free knowledge: http://donate.wikimedia.org

Help Beat Jimmy! (The appeal, that is....)

Philippe Beaudette — 2010-10-06T01:49:18

Hi everyone,

I wanted to take a moment to bring you up to date on the planning of
the 2010-2011 fundraiser, and ask once again for your participation in
the process. Our updated meta pages (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010
) will give you an overview as well. There's a lot of information
here, because we've made huge progress: I hope you'll take the time to
read it and join in the planning for the fundraiser.

There's no doubt about it: the appeal from Jimmy Wales is a strong
message. We've tested it head-to-head against other banners, and the
results [1] are unequivocal - especially when you also compare its
performance last year and the year before.

But nobody wants to just put Jimmy up on the sites and leave him up
for two months!

So we're issuing a challenge: Find the banner that will beat Jimmy.

Data informed conclusions
Here's the trick:
We have to make our decisions based on the facts, not our instinct.
Please read the summaries below for really important details from our
focus group and survey of past donors.

Focus Group
Wikimedia conducted a focus group of past donors in the New York City
area in September 2010. It's important to note that this was a single
focus group, and in a single city. We'll need to do more to make sure
that results correlate universally. But we came out of it with a few
important take-away points. It's important to realize that these
points reflect ONLY donors - they should not be read as a wider
feeling about mission or strategic direction - they're messaging
points to help us refine and deliver the best messages possible.

** The most powerful image is of Wikipedia as a global community of
people who freely share their knowledge and self-police the product.
For everyone who participated, the idea of a global community of
people sharing knowledge that is accessible to anyone who wants it
free of charge is incredibly powerful. Respondents in this group were
highly unlikely to be editors themselves; most consider themselves
users. They love the idea of the community and want to support it, but
they are reluctant to put themselves out there by being more than a
user and a donor.

** Keeping the projects ad-free is a powerful motivator.
Respondents were unanimous that keeping Wiki[m\p]edia ad free should
be a priority, even if it meant that Wiki[m\p]edia would be
approaching them for money more often. Accepting paid ads could
corrupt the values and discourage the free flow of information.

** Independence is critically important.
These respondents consume a lot of media, and they place a high
premium on the free flow of information. They have little patience
for “sponsored” news or information that excludes other perspectives.
The Wikimedia model of openness and community engagement facilitates
that.

** It’s a cause because it’s a tool.
This may sound a bit like a chicken/egg argument, but it’s actually an
important nuance. These folks use Wikimedia every day for things from
simple curiosities to serious research. So it’s a tool that lets them
get what they need. But it has grown to 17 million articles in 270
languages. Because it has that kind of depth and it reaches so many
people around the world, it’s worth protecting what the community so
successfully built. And that makes it a cause too.

** Growing isn’t always a good thing, when positioning for donors.
Like many tech savvy folks, our respondents are a suspicious lot. The
idea of Wikimedia growing brings up concerns about what Wikimedia
would become, and fears about the path of companies like Facebook.
It’s not just a privacy concern; it’s a concern about what would
happen to the democratic model of Wikimedia inside a growth strategy.
Supporting the organic growth of the community doesn’t raise the same
concerns.

** Supporters strongly reject any agenda being attached to Wikimedia,
even when that agenda would extend the current offerings.
An agenda implies ownership, and respondents feel pretty strongly that
the community owns Wikipedia. They think of Wikipedia as an organic
thing, not like a typical nonprofit, and any attempt to steer it would
disrupt that. Community support is one of the key values, and not
everyone in the community would support new initiatives.

** There is room to fundraise more aggressively.
Across the board, respondents were surprised that they didn’t have the
opportunity to give to Wikimedia more often. Obviously, there is a
balance and a PBS-style solicitation schedule wouldn’t make sense both
for Wikimedia’s personality and for this audience, but there is much
more space available than we are taking.

** Wikimedia donors are highly suspicious of marketing gimmicks.
Simple, direct messages are likely to work best. Jimmy’s message
worked not so much because he was the founder, but because it was a
simple plea for support delivered authentically.

As we know, that’s something that also needs quantitative testing to
prove. Sometimes donor response in a focus group and donor activity
don’t line up exactly. But, some things already line up with early
tests. The more gimmicky the banner, the less likely it is to drive
donations even if it increases clicks.

Reaction to banners like “572 have donated in New York today” also
raised concerns about privacy – not a good reaction in an already
suspicious audience. Appeals to “keep us growing” or that highlight a
contributor’s work raise earlier concerns about an agenda.

Donor Survey Highlights
Wikimedia produced a random sample of 20,000 individuals from the much
larger number of individuals, from many countries, contributing less
than $1000 between November 1 2009 and June 30 2010. These individuals
were invited to participate in a 29 item (but around 70 question)
survey. 3760 agreed to participate, and the survey was conducted in
August 2010. The participants probably differ from those who declined
in ways that are associated with survey answers. Hence the respondents
do not represent an entirely representative sample of the < $1000
donors.

The survey participants are committed to Wiki[p/m]edia, visiting it
frequently. They say that they are very likely to donate again, and
they support all the survey-mentioned reasons for donation. They were
not aware of Wikipedia chapters. A majority of respondents did not
appear greatly concerned about possible threats to Wikipedia’s identity.
About 1/3 of these individuals have edited, though not frequently.
Those who express more support for Wikimedia as a cause appear more
prone to edit. Those who have not contributed in this way say mostly
that they haven’t thought about it--suggesting that they haven’t
really considered the possibility—or that they don’t have time.
Europeans and the highly educated especially stress lack of time.

Some subgroup differences were found within the sample. The likelihood
of writing or editing does vary a bit by subgroup, for example.
Overall, however, responses did not vary greatly by subgroup, whether
“demographic” (nationality, education, sex) or behavioral (e.g.,
degree of on-line activity).

* The full details of the survey can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FR_Donor_survey_report.pdf
* A short overview can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Donor_survey_report_excerpts.pdf
.

Chapters
Chapters will receive the specifics of how we will work with them
through their fundraising contacts which were designated on the
fundraising survey, in order to keep the information communicated here
to the essentials.

Testing
We have been testing for ten weeks now, and are really pleased with
the progress that the tech team has made with new tools to support the
fundraiser. Geotargetting appears to work now, and we are currently
testing a 1 step versus 2 step donation process. We will have solid
test results this week, we believe. In all, we believe that we are -
technically and message-wise - in a really good position. We're
working out kinks, definitely, but we're working them out before the
fundraiser starts, so that we can maximize the dollar-earning
potential of every day that we have banners up.

We need you
From the very beginning, Zack charged me with presenting the most
collaborative fundraiser yet. I'm thrilled at the level of
involvement from the community, in everything from banner creation to
testing structure, to design, to actually sitting on our test
fundraisers with us in virtual conferences and being a full
participating member of the team. We're reporting out frequently, and
trying very hard to engage with members of the community. We have
dedicated staff who are outreaching to our various language wikis in
an attempt to get ever more broad participation. I strongly encourage
you to join in the discussions at the meta pages about the
fundraiser: /http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FR2010. Your involvement
is not just appreciated - it's crucial.

Thanks for sticking through this email - join us in discussion and
help us beat the Jimmy appeal!

Thanks,
Philippe

[1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Banner_testing#Test_six_
:_September_23rd.2C_2010
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation

philippe< at >wikimedia.org

Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

IRC office hours with Zack Exley

Philippe Beaudette — 2010-10-03T21:17:08

Hi all,

Zack Exley, the Chief Community Officer [1] of the Wikimedia  
Foundation, will
be having office hours this Tuesday (October 5)  at 21:00 UTC
(14:00 PT, 17:00 ET, 23:00 CEST) on IRC in #wikimedia-office.

If you do not have an IRC client, there are two ways you can come chat
using a web browser:  First, using the Wikizine chat gateway at
<http://chatwikizine.memebot.com/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi>.  Type a
nickname, select irc.freenode.net from the top menu and
#wikimedia-office from the following menu, then login to join.

Or, you can access Freenode by going to http://webchat.freenode.net/,
typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office as
the channel.   You may be prompted to click through a security warning,
which you can click to accept.

Please feel free to forward (and translate!) this email to any other
relevant email lists you happen to be on.


[1] - http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Chief_Community_Officer

____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation

philippe< at >wikimedia.org

Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

Re: Office hours with Sue Gardner

Philippe Beaudette — 2010-08-31T12:06:38

Just a reminder.... this is in about 11 hours :)

Philippe

On Aug 30, 2010, at 10:08 AM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:

Re: [Foundation-l] Office hours with Sue Gardner

Philippe Beaudette — 2010-08-19T04:09:44

Just a reminder about this, about 13 hours from now.  :)



On Aug 16, 2010, at 10:15 AM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:

Office hours with Sue Gardner

Philippe Beaudette — 2010-08-16T17:15:38

Hi all,

Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, will  
be having office hours this Thursday at 17:00 UTC (10:00 PT, 13:00 ET)  
on IRC in #wikimedia-office.

If you do not have an IRC client, there are two ways you can come chat
using a web browser:  First is using the Wikizine chat gateway at
<http://chatwikizine.memebot.com/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi>.  Type a
nickname, select irc.freenode.net from the top menu and
#wikimedia-office from the following menu, then login to join.

Also, you can access Freenode by going to http://webchat.freenode.net/,
typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office as
the channel.   You may be prompted to click through a security warning,
which you can click to accept.

Please feel free to forward (and translate!) this email to any other
relevant email lists you happen to be on.

____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation

philippe< at >wikimedia.org

Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

Viewpoint from Ascend

Lise Colyer — 2010-03-08T13:13:35

Hello, 

Please find attached the latest Ascend news in Viewpoint. This edition
includes an outlook for aviation finance in 2010, a review of 2009 jet
orders, and a look at the rising dragons in Chinese aviation.

Sincerely,

Lise Colyer.


For more information please contact Nancy Prendergast nancy< at >tannissanmae.com
or Lise Colyer lise< at >tannissanmae.com at Tannissan Mae Communications on +44
(0) 20 7243 4440.

About Ascend
Ascend (www.ascendworldwide.com <http://www.ascendworldwide.com/> ) is the
world's leading provider of specialist information and consultancy services
to the global air transport industry. For over four decades it has supplied
the most reliable, trusted and up-to-date aviation industry information and
insight available anywhere.

Offerings include: 
*Aviation data
*Aircraft and engine valuations and appraisals 
*Consultancy solutions 

the aviation industry relies on Ascend to help make informed decisions and
capture new opportunities.

Ascend is based in London with offices in New York and Hong Kong.




 

tannissan mae communications ltd
studio 4
folly mews
223a portobello road
london w11 1lu
+44 (0) 207 243 4440
+44 (0) 7896 503 804
lise< at >tannissanmae.com
www.tannissanmae.com

Re: Around enWikinews - September '09

Casey Brown — 2009-10-04T13:59:35

I just saw <http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Wikinews_Bulletin>
mentioned on <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Internal_news_media>, is
that what you were talking about?

Re: Wikinewsie

gopher65 — 2009-10-04T13:36:48

I'd suggest 3 wikinewsie blogs, for the reasons specified by Tristan and 
Brian (rants look unprofessional, but unused personal blogs do too, if 
they're associated with Wikinews). Blog 1: technical stuff related to 
Wikinews. Blog 2: strict editorial content. Rules are much the same as they 
are with an on-wiki article, but the NPoV requirement is dropped (and 
probably a few of the other reqs as well). Blog 3: Combined personal space 
for accredited reports, for any crap that doesn't fit in either of the other 
2 blogs (including the occasional inappropriate rant that we *know* will 
happen whether we want it to or not).

I've read blogs before that attempt to combine those 3 separate aspects of 
blogging into a single blog, and it does indeed look unprofessional (see the 
badastronomy blog for an example. You have Science posts (good), editorial 
posts (the author can do as he pleases I guess), and rants (bad) all in one 
section). I think we should attempt to avoid this problem by separating out 
our ranting, editorials, and technical content. That way people can *choose* 
want parts they read and what they don't.

gopher65
--------------------------------------------------
From: <brian.mcneil< at >wikinewsie.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 04, 2009 6:13 AM
To: "Wikinews mailing list" <wikinews-l< at >lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] Wikinewsie

Re: Wikinewsie

Tristan Thomas — 2009-10-04T13:25:21

Those points make sense-however the only issue with having multiple
blogs is they look unused and dormant If there are too many.

On Sunday, October 4, 2009,  <brian.mcneil< at >wikinewsie.org> wrote:

Re: Wikinewsie

2009-10-04T12:13:32

#blog on front page

I know who past accredited reporters were, and who some of those who
still are, are.

Sooner or later someone will "rant" in an inappropriate and extremely
poorly thought out way. Sure, it is themselves they're opening up to
comments that rip their arguments apart for being poorly thought out and
not based in reality. But it will reflect poorly on us all, and look
highly unprofessional. That's why I would rather have more than one
blog, define a clear scope for any blogs we do have, not have them
in-your-face up-front, and if anyone does feel the need to "rant" they
do it on their own personal blog.

#list of accredited users on wikinewsie

The email domain is < at >wikinewsie.org. If you contact someone, and they
decide to see who/what a "Wikinewsie" is, they'll look at that domain's
website. If they're redirected to en.wn, they could attach all the
"unreliable", "anyone can change it", &c connotations from seeing a
wiki. Presenting the data (list of reporters & bios) in such a way that
it looks 'cast-in-stone', and unalterable is more credible.

I am also on ComCom, and have access to the OTRS queue for press queries
sent to the WMF. You do tend to carry out these sort of checks, you do
want to "know thine enemy" before responding. Just like when someone
emails from a gmail address, and says they're from the NYT, you make an
effort to verify this is true. This can even be emailing back and asking
for contact from a < at >nyt address.

#google for email

I'm doing my best to keep my email out of the UK government's
super-database. I have zero assurances or trust Google won't give up
that information if told "He's a UK peon, we say you're one of his ISPs,
give all the data". If you think it won't happen, look at how they
cooperate with China. At least USians have the current attempt to get
telcos bitchslapped for warantless wiretapping, not so for many others.

I have used gmail accounts as a convenient and semi-anonymous free email
address. If I ever intend to say something I would prefer difficult to
pin on me, I always retrieve and send email with POP/SMTP *through Tor*.
Let's see a show of hands as to how many people on this list, accredited
or not, could actually do that.

I am disinclined to use Google for wikinewsie stuff on that basis,
they're not really the techie "do-no-evil" company anymore, they're an
advertising and marketing company. They will always collect data to make
saleable statistics - I prefer to "poison the well" and skew the
statistics over helpfully providing such data.

As Jon says, we've had this Google Apps argument before. I've 20 years
experience in IT with a big chunk of that in cellular telecoms, I used
to get my hands on 1/4" mag tapes with a full month's call details for
all a service provider's subscribers; who called, for how long, which
tower(s) handled the call, all the numbers dialled that didn't answer.
There has never been any thought that this data belongs to the
subscriber. That attitude has never changed, just a variety of
concessions to stop customers running away screaming, or compliance with
whatever government legislation is enacted to give the appearance of
privacy.

So I'm fairly sure my position is well-informed. Google will quickly and
quietly fold in the face of concerns from a sovereign government. We're
trying to be journalists, using Google is like Bob Woodward faxing all
his reporter's notes to a document storage company that would hand them
over the second Tricky Dicky asked.


Brian.

Re: Wikinewsie

Tristan Thomas — 2009-10-04T08:22:09

I like Jon's proposal.  I want to keep list of accredited users on Wikinews
as there's no reason it needs to be anywhere else.  We can start having
quick biogs of reporters on there if that's what people want.  Agree with
Gmail-Godaddy is forwarded to it anyway for me, so not too bothered.  TBH I
can't see it is worth it to get SUL-it's only a few things & you can have
the same details.
Thoughts on Jon's idea?

2009/10/4 Jon Davis <wiki< at >konsoletek.com>

kisr qbouuzpkue

Mail Delivery Subsystem — 2009-04-30T07:36:33

Dear user wikinews-l< at >lists.wikimedia.org,

We have received reports that your email account was used to send a large amount of spam during the last week.
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Wikimania 2009: Call for Participation reminder

Mark (Markie — 2009-04-04T23:15:16

Just to remind you all that the Call for Participation for Wikimania 2009
closes soon.  You can view the Call for Participation on the following page:
http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Participation with many
translations available.

For more information about Wikimania 2009, see
http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/

Regards

Markie

Delivery reports about your e-mail

Returned mail — 2009-04-01T11:06:50

Tech updates: code updates going live to Wikimediasites

Brion Vibber — 2009-03-25T13:22:42

After a few weeks of bug fixes, we've caught up with MediaWiki 
development code review and I'm pushing out an update to the live sites. 
This fixes a lot of little bugs, and hopefully doesn't cause introduce 
too many new ones. :)

* Change logs: http://ur1.ca/2rah (r47458 to r48811)

As usual in addition to lots of offline and individual testing among our 
staff and volunteer developers, we've done a shakedown on 
http://test.wikipedia.org/ -- and as usual we can fully expect a few 
more issues to have cropped up that weren't already found.

Don't be alarmed if you do find a problem; just let us know at 
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ or on the tech IRC channels 
(#wikimedia-tech on Freenode).

We should be resuming our weekly update schedule soon -- I won't be 
doing a mega-crosspost like this every week! -- and will continue to 
improve our pre-update staging and shakedown testing to keep disruption 
to a minimum and awesome improvements to a maximum.

I'd also like to announce that we've started a blog for Wikimedia tech 
activity & MediaWiki development, in part because I want to make sure 
community members can easily follow what we're working on and give 
feedback before we push things out:

* http://techblog.wikimedia.org/

I'd very much like to make sure that we've got regular contacts among 
the various project communities who can help coordinate with us on 
features, bugs, and general thoughts which might affect some projects 
distinctly from others.

Returned mail: see transcript for details

MAILER-DAEMON — 2009-03-17T17:31:48

Returned mail: see transcript for details

Bounced mail — 2009-03-12T13:38:50

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