http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation hourly 1 1901-01-01T00:00+00:00 http://gmane.org/img/gmane-25t.png http://gmane.org http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34838 On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 9:39 AM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> wrote: Thinking about this... (and catching up in thread...) There are two levels of failure with new pages on enwiki now. Level one is technical - UNICEF study pointed that out, your extensions are approaching that problem. Level two is more conceptual. Does a person who wants to create a page understand all that a "well done" page in Wikipedia should have? Can they explain what the idea is, and why it should have a page? Do they understand references and think about how to provide some? To be really useful, a toolset that structures a "create page" button response should address some or all of these questions. Have the output be not just a page, but a series of pages, which provide short inputs and do some useful things with them. Perhaps, for example: "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It exists to collect useful general information about all topics and make it freely available. But there are lots of things which don't belong in encyclopedias. Are you sure that the topic / article you want to create is really an encyclopedia article? Is it a word definition instead (link to Wictionary), or an image of some sort (link to commons), or (fill in some more). If your idea for an article is really an encyclopedia entry, click 'Yes' below to continue." "Can you explain what this page / article will be about? What's the topic? Where did you learn about it? Please fill in the text box below with your idea of what this new article is about. This will be posted on the article's talk page to explain the purpose of the article." "Wikipedia relies on outside references to verify information people post here. Can you provide the titles of some books or magazine articles, website URLs, or other sources which confirm what you are saying in the new article, in the text box below?" "Wikipedia would like to have articles about all important and useful topics, but some topics (normal people, most small businesses, etc) just aren't important enough. Is your article something which people in other states or countries will find interesting and useful? Wikipedia has some policies on what we recommend as being notable enough for articles (link to policies). If you think this article idea is notable enough, please click 'Yes' below to continue." "Wikipedia likes to have links from article to article. Are there other existing articles which you think this new article should connect to? List them below if you know of any." "Wikipedia article start with a short introduction, then more details. Can you summarize what this article is about in one to three sentences, to start the article's introduction? Think about it and then fill in the introduction below if you can. Then click on 'Continue'." "Ok, now let's create the actual article contents.... " (filled in template article, with introduction section inserted, and slightly textually processed references and see also sections). And the final step drops the article rationale entry into the talk page as well, on article creation. Does this process make sense? George Herbert 2008-12-02T20:52:37 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34809 Hoi, Over the last weeks I have been rather active in promoting improved usability for the MediaWiki software. What really got me going was learning from a Wikimania presentation that a UNICEF usability study done in Tanzania showed that 100% of the test subjects were unable to create a new article. UNICEF has created extensions to improve on this, extensions that make a difference. The fact that our usability is poor does not only hurt what some call "minority languages". A professor in Austria I know, a veteran user of software, was also hard pressed to collaborate on a wiki. Our usability hurts all our projects. It hurts our smaller projects because they do not have enough content and contributors. It hurts our big projects because it excludes large demographies from contributing leading to bias and hurting the NPOV of many articles. When we want to reach out, there is no easier way then by making our software usable. The CreatePage extension provides a first obvious step on the road towards a more usable MediaWiki. Implementing only this one extension is a start. When we have taken this direction towards more usability, many more issues will arise. The CreatePage extension is best used in combination with a change in the skin. The CreatePage extension allows for a user to select templates for specific types of new articles. There are ways in which you can make editing easier ..... What I propose is that those projects who are interested in improving their usability ask the WMF to work with them on this. Given that usable software should be understood, and given that this is somewhat experimental in nature as well, it makes sense that project should localise the extensions first before they qualify for an implementation. NB the CreatePage extension has only eight messages. What I propose is to have many and frequent updates. We should learn from our experience and consequently move forward carefully but deliberately. It is not acceptable that so many of our projects are failing. The UNICEF studies explain why this is, the studies show how to improve on this. We just have to apply the lessons learned. We just have to show that we can apply the lessons learnt. Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Gerard Meijssen 2008-12-02T11:51:03 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34740 Hi, we've entered December. Has my worry has come true, namely that interim discussion of localization would send the request to never-never land? It would be great if he.wikisource could be implemented :-) In general, for those who are interested in the topic, information on the implementation of Flagged Reviews may be found at this page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FlaggedRevs In my opinion, priority should be given to custom implementation at as many wikis as possible. Only in this way can its long-term effectiveness be tested. Great resources were rightfully invested in creating this extension, which is (in my opinion) an essential part of the functionality of a wiki environment. It is also, on a cultural level, a necessary tool for improving public attitudes about the reliability of wiki projects. (The latter reason is, especially, the reason we want it on he.wikisource. Only with a function like this can we convince certain organizations to make their texts open-content, by guaranteeing that an authoritative version will appear on the wiki website, not subject at all to vandalism or to well-meaning deprecation.) So let's get it implemented as widely as possible and track its effectiveness! Dovi _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Dovi Jacobs 2008-12-01T04:01:30 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34737 New mailing list summaries: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2008_November_16-30 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/wikiEN-l-archives/2008_11_16-30 (I won't do this every time one is posted, but just in case people missed the last note about the list summary service reboot...) Also, a question: would weekly summaries be more useful? I'm thinking of going back to that instead of biweekly. Any other suggestions? Effeietsanders suggested icons for particularly extensive discussions. I'm thinking this one for particularly controversial topics: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Nuvola_apps_core.png ;) best, phoebe ayers 2008-12-01T02:24:27 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34702 Hoi, Regularly I hear people say that Wikipedia is failing. When you then listen, there are all kinds of good reasons why Wikipedia is failing. Quality is low, issues with living persons, pov pushers a long litany of woes are all grounds to predict the imminent demise of Wikipedia. While all these issues may be grounds for concern, it is hardly indicative of failure. To me they are indicative of a wildly successful project coping with everything that is a consequence of success. I am of the opinion that most of our projects would love to have the same problems, the same issues, the same success as the few project that do well. For most of our projects a lack of content, a lack of community ensure that the project is irrelevant. No growth, no interest is more killing then all the woes that our big projects suffer from. At Wikimania 2008 a presentation was given by developers from UNICEF who had done proper usability studies. They found that 100% of their newbie testsubjects were not able to create a new article. This is serious. This explains why so many of our projects fail. We do not invite collaboration because people do not know how to. They do not know how to EVEN when they are explicitly invited to create a new article as they were in this research. At the Wikimedia Conference Nederland, Jan-Bart de Vreede indicated in his speech that Kennisnet is interested in implementing the UNICEF extensions. These extensions are now localisable in any language at Betawiki. At ExtensionTesting, all the extensions have been tested against stable releases. Bugs were identified and some bugs were fixed. As a consequence it is likely that some more MediaWiki installations will benefit from research. It seems obvious to people who deal with small projects that usability is one of the big issue when it comes to the moribunt status of our small projects. The question I put to you, what are we going to do to first agree that this is an issue and then to deal with this issue. Do we care that 80% of our projects are failing? Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Gerard Meijssen 2008-11-30T20:43:11 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34694 English -> English dump No worries: in only 176 days from now the English dump will be ready and I can run wikistats scripts on it. It just started 52 days ago, so let us be patient for a while ;) http://www.infodisiac.com/cgi-bin/WikimediaDownload.pl Nice stats though! Erik Zachte _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Erik Zachte 2008-11-30T16:20:49 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34693 Ø Because myself and others have been frustrated by the lack of good Ø stats on the number of active editors on the English Wikipedia, I have Ø compiled some stats on the editing frequency on enwiki: No worries: in only 176 days from now the English will be ready and I can run wikistats scripts on it. It just started 52 days ago, so let us be patient for a while ;) http://www.infodisiac.com/cgi-bin/WikimediaDownload.pl Nice stats though! Erik Zachte _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Erik Zachte 2008-11-30T16:12:44 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34686 dear wiki i'm sorry that i decide to unsubcribe from the list _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l agung gumilar 2008-11-29T05:11:36 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34671 hi, a video showing how immune cells eat parasites [1] attracted quite some sites to cite an article about medical visualization [2]. when looking at it i noticed: * that it is published in a cc-2.5 licensed journal * that there is a possibility to enter links from facebook, stumble upon, ... * that there is no link to do make a reference in wiki* would it make sense that a wikimedia page allows referencing such an article? the functions of such a page could be: * enter it in a (not yet existing) references library (bibtex or whatever) * add it to a portal talk page selected by the user (like medicine) * add it to project selected by the user (like wpedia, wversity, ...) imo the advantages would be that on one hand quality may rise through better citations, on the other hand having a citation library where researchers in future want to be and need to be. kr, rupert. refs: [1] (http://www.plospathogens.org/article/fetchFirstRepresentation.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.ppat.1000222.s013) [2] http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1000222#ppat.1000222-Leon1 _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l THURNER rupert 2008-11-28T14:38:42 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34649 Here are foundation-l list statistics for the end of November. (Sorry for HTML email, it was the only way known to me to format stats well for all.) Statistics are at the bottom. == Good news == * If we get one more new participant at foundation-l, we will at the highest level of new participants per month since April this year. * This is the biggest (relative) raise between October and November at all. This is, also, one of the biggest relative raises in communication between two months at all. * This is the second best November by number of active participants. * At last, we are communicating and the most of discussions are constructive. Lower amount of emails for 10-20% is reasonable if quality of discussion is higher. == Bad news == * This is the second worst November by amount of emails. However, it should be noted that it is much better than the worst one (2004) and that the number of emails will be much closer to the number of better Novembers. * This is the second worst November by amount of new participants. * This may be just a seasonal raise in conjunction with one important (and extraordinary) event (GFDL 1.3). == Conclusions == * Raise of communication encourages. If the trend of raising continues to December (all Decembers show raise toward Novembers except one, 2005), it would be possible to say that at least communication on this list came back to the normal trends. Communication behavior for the winter months is also important because it is usually higher than during summer months (except for 2006; possibly related to Wikimania in Boston, but I didn't check it). * Events, bad or good are raising communication level. But, of course, it is better to have good events than to have bad events (which took in my mind the famous quote of Grunf, one of the characters from Alan Ford comics [1]: "If you want to win you must not lose"). == Statistics up to 2008-11-27, ~16:00 UTC == ;Email count: <pre> year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2004 xxx xxx xxx 64 532 506 474 242 462 650 276 282 2005 630 760 642 574 690 438 396 684 488 758 1074 672 2006 514 506 860 588 910 1666 1262 1670 2180 1206 1116 2530 2007 1138 624 665 1042 798 407 1163 471 791 1072 1030 1260 2008 1497 688 1679 1675 1131 942 609 501 699 559 761 xxx </pre> ;New participants: <pre> year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2004 xxx xxx xxx 13 31 25 14 6 22 9 8 9 2005 17 21 10 8 9 9 8 18 15 10 15 16 2006 21 12 18 16 18 20 15 28 25 17 20 28 2007 19 26 13 21 22 18 18 19 14 15 21 19 2008 23 11 24 15 12 11 7 8 12 4 12 xxx </pre> ;Active participants: <pre> year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2004 xxx xxx xxx 13 39 48 40 29 48 45 40 40 2005 58 61 56 56 57 57 52 73 67 67 74 73 2006 71 69 75 78 85 100 73 114 117 100 108 131 2007 120 112 103 132 126 110 142 105 121 135 131 156 2008 158 115 164 130 132 124 125 112 123 91 111 xxx </pre> ;Emails size: <pre> year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2004 xxx xxx xxx 121475 1104754 1053462 967130 485494 719985 1097434 564584 539745 2005 1249081 1380845 1074325 953014 1347131 860264 857746 1296746 969160 1525844 2426353 1369238 2006 1042910 985712 1903912 1655576 1928528 3816811 2879586 3570674 4147155 2128520 2385879 5398523 2007 2563519 1333895 1462309 2244803 1745971 955367 2470301 968443 1741702 2224105 2129518 2422959 2008 3618057 1514498 4042573 4485905 2360334 2033119 1152809 1078196 1390021 1363943 1917469 xxx </pre> [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Ford_(comics) _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Milos Rancic 2008-11-27T16:51:42 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34642 Dear friends, We are conducting a study on the motivation of the knowledge sharing on Wikipedia. Your experience of the read from and write to Wikipedia is very important to the design and management of this knowledge platform. The survey will take about two minutes. We deeply appreciate your help on answering the following questions. After the survey is done, we will randomly select twenty persons and present them with USB 2GB Flash Drives. Besides, with each valid questionnaire, we will donate US $1 dollar to the Wikimedia Foundation. The result of this survey is analyzed in an anonymous way and is only regarded as the academic use. Please feel free to fill out the questionnaire. Thanks again for your time and valuable input. May happiness and health be with you everyday! ★ On-line Questionnaire: http://140.119.19.152:8080/wiki/ 　 Shari S. C. Shang Eldon Y. Li Professor, Department of Management Information Systems, National Chengchi University Tel.: +886-2-82374038； Fax: +886-2-29393754 ； E-mail: s1213527< at >yahoo.com. tw _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l< at >lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Joanne 2008-11-27T10:44:21 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34638 Dear all, We are working for a new version of Kiwix, the offline reader wich used for http://wikipediaondvd.com/ . This new version don't use a selection of article , is available from the project : wikibooks, wikipedia, wikiquote, wikisource, wiktionary for all the languages. To try : http://download.kiwix.org/install/ just for windows , Mac and linux will be make in a few day. after install you choose downlaod every corpus that you want to consult in offline. All the language is not yet finish. It s a release candidate, so we need what you think about this version. Cordialement Martin Pascal tel : 02 32 40 23 69, fax : 02 32 61 45 26 gsm : 06 13 89 77 32 _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Martin Pascal 2008-11-27T09:02:09 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34612 Hello, Wikimedia Serbia is proud to announce the Regional Conference of Wikimedia Serbia 2008. The Regional Conference of Wikimedia Serbia will be held at 19th, 20th and 21st December in Belgrade, in the Belgrade Youth Home. Depending on the number and locations of participants, we are likely to be able to finance you travel (only from countries near Serbia) and/or accomodation expenses. If you are interested in visiting the conference, please answer to this message with exact information on when can you come and how long can you stay; as well as is there possibility to provide your own accomodations in Belgrade. If you would want to held a lecture, a workshop or similar during the conference, also report that to us so that we could include you in the program. Please forward this message to anyone you believe could come. Bye, Wikimedia Serbia _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Nikola Smolenski 2008-11-26T18:36:32 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34563 For quick background, it's pretty painful to rename a database in our system, and we currently have a lot of bits in our configuration that make automatic relationships between the database name and the domain name, so this has delayed renaming of some language subdomains for a while. It's not impossible to have them be different, just fairly awkward. :) I'd like to get these done soon, but before we get started, I want to make sure the queue is complete and ready to go. I've currently got four language code renames that I see being requested... == Aromanian == roa-rup.wikipedia.org -> rup.wikipedia.org roa-rup.wiktionary.org -> rup.wiktionary.org https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15988 ISO-639-2 code 'rup' was added in September 2005, and can supersede the generic 'roa' code with 'rup' subtag. This seems pretty uncontroversial. Existing domains and interwikis would be redirected. == Low German == nds.wikipedia.org -> nds-de.wikipedia.org nds.wikibooks.org -> nds-de.wikibooks.org nds.wikiquote.org -> nds-de.wikiquote.org nds.wiktionary.org -> nds-de.wiktionary.org https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8540 Reasoning: Disambiguation of country variants to create a portal site (nds-nl.wikipedia.org exists as well). The original request is almost 2 years old and didn't seem to have any clear consensus; is this still desired? Creating a portal site could cause difficulties with URL compatibility, and I don't really recommend making this change without clear consensus from the community there. Note that nds.wikipedia.org includes a link on the front page to nds-nl.wikipedia.org. == Moldovan == mo.wikipedia.org -> mo-cyrl.wikipedia.org mo.wiktionary.org -> mo-cyrl.wiktionary.org The official Moldovan language is the same as Romanian, using Latin script and same orthography as on ro.wikipedia.org. Latin script was officially adopted in 1989, replacing Soviet-era Cyrillic script; use of Cyrillic script is still "official" in an unrecognized, lightly-populated breakaway region but if people there use it, they don't seem to edit Wikipedia... The 'mo' language code has been officially deprecated from ISO 639-1/2 as of November 3, 2008; "Moldovan" in general use is just Romanian, and is covered by ro.wikipedia.org. mo.wikipedia.org has not actually been edited since December 2006. mo.wiktionary.org seems to have.... 4 definition pages, which only contain translations (no definitions!) Being inactive, these projects could be closed in addition to / instead of the rename. Use of tag 'mo-cyrl' would follow existing IANA-registered language subtags such as 'bs-Cyrl' and 'bs-Latn' for Cyrillic and Latin script variants. Most likely, for compatibility we would redirect the existing 'mo' URLs to the new 'mo-cyrl' ones, but they would now be visibly marked by the subtag as being "yes we know, it's Cyrillic here". If we're going to lock the site as well, adding a sitenotice pointing to the Romanian wiki is probably wise. == Belorusian "old orthography" == be-x-old.wikipedia.org -> be-tarask.wikipedia.org https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9823 Some time ago we swapped around the Belorusian Wikipedia, moving the previous version which was primarily using a non-official orthography, from 'be' to 'be-x-old', and re-establishing be.wikipedia.org using the official state orthography. There was later a request to rename 'be-x-old' (using a non-standard code) to 'be-tarask', a IANA-registered subtag which is rather more descriptive. IMHO this change should not be terribly controversial -- if we're not closing it, we may as well give it its official RFC 4646-registered code. Old domain and interwikis would be redirected. Brion Vibber 2008-11-26T01:04:12 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34559 Hey All-- There has been a lot of good feedback on the first set of site notices and we've taken those ideas and, I think, done a pretty good job of implementing fixes across projects and languages. The tech team has done fabulous work. You can see a brief statistical summary of the Phase I notices here: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/11/25/wikimedias-fundraiser-which-banners-click/ Please feel free to comment in the blog. We're going to be doing some short term testing of some minor tweaks to the Phase I notices soon. Which brings us to Phase 2. We are trying to juggle two separate concepts in designing the site notices: 1) we want our viewers and visitors to see and understand that their donations are important to the mission of Wikimedia Foundation and 2) we want our visitors to be stimulated into giving without being too disruptive. As such, Phase 2 drafts can be found here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2008/design_drafts. We are attempting to re-define the space in a different manner to encourage those who have not yet donated. The Quotes site notice will have 6 different quotes (all translated, we hope) rotated in. We will continue the same wiki project specific coding and current collapse/expand features that we have now. These are just drafts. Please comment on the page or in the discussion section. I'm also happy to hear any suggestions that you might have. Post your designs or drafts as well. Phase 2 notices will go live the week of December 1st...pending the time needed by our volunteer translators and the tech team. Phase 3 (slate for mid December) will focus on an end-of-campaign push and might include video elements. On a side note, we updated our comparative statistical presentation: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics. These charts compare 2007 vs. 2008 including only gifts of less than or equal to $10,000. -Rand Montoya Head of Community Giving Rand Montoya 2008-11-26T00:19:24 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34502 Very neat! Looking at tab 2 (Number of contributions): In 2007 from day 14 and onwards the number of gifts per day more than doubled. Is it known why that happened? Just curious. Erik Zachte _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Erik Zachte 2008-11-25T07:58:47 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34464 2008/11/24 Michael Bimmler <mbimmler-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>: That's an interesting question. What is the current trademark situation for the WMF? A trademarks committee was set up nearly 3 years ago to advise the board on what trademarks to register and where but it seems to have only lasted a few months before disbanding. There is a page on meta ("Wikimedia Trademarks") that was marked as historical over a year ago on which Angela said the details of the trademarks were confidential, but that doesn't sound right - how can a registered trademark be confidential? Doesn't it need to be public knowledge in order to serve a purpose? The main reasons I can see in old discussions for not registering everything and everywhere was that it's expensive and time consuming, but we have a much larger budget now (the discussions say the registration fee is $400 a time for the US, which was a lot of money for the foundation 2 or 3 years ago, it isn't now) and a full time staff (including a general counsel) which it didn't have when the committee was set up. It would seem we can reasonably register (and even, if necessary, defend) all our major trademarks in at least those countries where we have significant activity (in terms of readership, more than anything), so has this been done? _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Thomas Dalton 2008-11-24T16:04:55 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34454 fyi, the 2007 mozilla results: * income 75 mio usd * cost 33 mio usd * net assets ~80 mio usd * http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/11/19/sustainability-in-uncertain-times/ * audited financial statement: http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/documents/mf-2007-audited-financial-statement.pdf * current staff: http://www.mozilla.org/about/staff interesting is that the irs (the US national tax agency) decided to review the tax status of the funds generated from their deal with google. rupert ------------------------- http://wikimedia.ch/donate - tax deductible support for the wikimedia movement for swiss tax payers _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l THURNER rupert 2008-11-24T12:54:41 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34439 I will try whit my poor enghish report a problem that are in discuss in mailling list of the brazilian chapter[1]. In the end of this text, are the original text in portuguese, for try to minimalize the comunicacion mistakes. Brazil have 8,514,877 km² of extesion and more of 190,000,000 inhabitants, in 26 states[2]. Build a local chapter in Brazil is very complicated. Since 2006, that is the dream of some users, but they never have a significant number of wikimedians living in a same geografic region. In the beging of 2008, ist created a meta-wiki page to centralize the ideias for a local chapter[3]. follow the example of the wikimedians in Portugal[4]. After that, people that never edited in anyone project of wikimedia appears to participate. That people are welcome and beging to work whit the brazilians wikimedians. The time are past, the people interested but whitout free time are gone (exactly like ist happened in every others times that the brazilian local chapter have been discuss by the comunity). The people that never participated before of the wikimedians projects ended up taking the front of several efforts and achieved progress, include the aproval of Wikimedia[5]. The same group of no-wikimedians managed to organize an event with the participation of Jimmy Wales[6]. I imagine that Jimmy think that the event is realize by wikimedians, therefore, before proceeding, let me make it clear: people who organized that event never participated in any Wikimedia project before. Mediators of the debate either. A common concern in various wikipedians and wikimedians is on the future of this local chapter. If they continue the current way, he will not be composed of people from the Wikimedia projects, will only a support organization with no one wikimedian. There is even the fear of Wikimedia's name be used in an NGO ([[w:NGO]]) if it no more of an organizational issue that receives money from the Brazilian government to carry out certain activities, but in order not to hold agreed on how (such as those investigated by Brazilian senators[7], do not know how it is in other countries, but in Brazil the NGOs receive money from the government in exchange for doing something that the government should do but can not). My opinion on the subject: I am very against the local chapter of the Brazilian continue current form. I would rather wait a few more years and see it being done by wikimedians to see it being done for people who do not participate in Wikimedia. If the desire of that people in help Wikimedia Foundation is legitimate, I imagine that should open some other kind of institution, but without using the trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation. Should the Wikimedia Brazil continue the current form or should be aborted for a little longer? (other peoples have speak in similar terms of mine on the mailing list[1]. I invited them to the foundation-l for addition views to this discussion, then to this message, in wikimediabr-l disclose the existence of my questioning here on foundation-l.) [[:m:User:555]] [1] - http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediabr-l/ [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil [3] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Brasil&dir=prev&action=history [4] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Portugal&dir=prev&action=history [5] - http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Approval_of_Wikimedia_Brasil [6] - http://wikibr.org/ [7] - http://www.senado.gov.br/sf/atividade/Comissoes/consComCPI.asp?com=1382 (thanks to [[:m:User:Beria]] for the translation!) ---- Message in Portuguese: Vou tentar com meu limitado inglês relatar um problema que está sendo discutido na lista de discussão sobre o local chapter brasileiro[1]. Anexo ao final do texto em inglês o meu rascunho inicial em português, para tentar reduzir ao máximo as possibilidades de falha de comunicação. O Brasil possui 8,514,877 km² de extensão e mais de 190,000,000 de habitantes, divididos em 26 estados[2]. Constituir um local chapter nele é algo bastante trabalhoso: desde 2006 isso é almejado por alguns usuários, mas jamais foi possível reunir uma quantia razoável de wikimedianos experientes morando na mesma região geográfica. No começo deste ano, foi criada uma página no Meta-Wiki para centralizar esforços relativos à criação de um local chapter no Brasil[3], seguindo-se o exemplo tomado pelos desejosos de um em Portugal[4]. Com a criação de tal página sobre o brasileiro, apareceram pessoas que jamais editaram antes em algum projeto Wikimedia interessadas em participar. Tais pessoas foram inicialmente bem-acolhidas e começaram a trabalhar juntamente aos wikimedianos brasileiros. O tempo foi passando, as pessoas entusiasmadas mas sem disponibilidade de ajudar começaram a se afastar (tal como ocorrido em todas as tentativas anteriores de discutir sobre o tema). As pessoas que jamais participaram anteriormente de projetos Wikimedia acabaram tomando a frente dos esforços e conseguido diversos progressos, inclusive o de ser aprovarem os seus esforços perante a Wikimedia[5]. O mesmo grupo de não-Wikimedianos conseguiu organizar um evento que contou com a participação do Jimmy Wales[6]. Imagino que o próprio Jimmy tenha pensado que se tratavam de wikimedianos, por isso, antes de prosseguir, quero deixar bem claro: as pessoas que organizaram tal evento jamais participaram de algum projeto Wikimedia antes. Os mediadores do debate idem. Uma preocupação comum em diversos wikipedistas e wikimedianos é sobre o futuro de tal local chapter. Se ele continuar prosseguindo da forma atual, ele não será composto por pessoas vindas dos projetos Wikimedia, será apenas uma organização de apoio, sem ninguém das wikis. Há até mesmo o receio do nome da Wikimedia ser utilizado em uma ONG ([[:w:NGO]]) que não passe de mais uma organização problemática que recebe dinheiro do governo brasileiro para executar determinadas atividades, mas que no fim não as realiza da forma como acordada (tais como as investigadas pelos senadores brasileiros [7]; não sei como é em outros países, mas no Brasil as NGOs recebem dinheiro do governo em troca de fazer alguma coisa que o governo deveria fazer mas não consegue). Minha opinião sobre o tema: sou extremamente contra que o local chapter brasileiro prossiga da forma atual. Preferia aguardar mais alguns anos e ver ele sendo feito pelos wikimedianos do que por pessoas que não participam da Wikimedia. Caso a vontade delas de ajudar a Wikimedia Foundation seja legítima, imagino que deveriam abrir algum outro tipo de instituição, mas sem usar a marca registrada da Wikimedia Foundation. Deve a Wikimedia Brasil prosseguir da forma atual ou deve ser abortada por mais algum tempo? (Outras pessoas tem opinado de forma parecida à mim na lista de discussão[1]. Convidei algumas delas para a foundation-l para opinarem nesta discussão além de, em seguida à esta mensagem, divulgar na wikimediabr-l a existência deste meu questionamento aqui na foundation-l.) [1] - http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediabr-l/ [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil [3] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Brasil&dir=prev&action=history [4] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Portugal&dir=prev&action=history [5] - http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Approval_of_Wikimedia_Brasil [6] - http://wikibr.org/ [7] - http://www.senado.gov.br/sf/atividade/Comissoes/consComCPI.asp?com=1382 _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Luiz Augusto 2008-11-24T01:14:22 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34403 I realise that proposal for a Wikipedia in American Sign Language has remained without a decision since 2007 february 15th, more than a year and half. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_American_Sign_Language_2 Current policy don't say anything about those: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy But, community draft expressly accept them: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy/Community_draft What about you, do you think wikimedia, should be deprived of these potential resources? C.m.l. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Crazy Lover 2008-11-22T19:24:36 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34385 Thought people might be interested to hear about Open Everything Berlin, which will take place on Saturday 6th December 2008. More details at: http://blog.okfn.org/2008/11/21/open-everything-berlin-saturday-6th-december-2008/ Warm regards, Jonathan Gray The Open Knowledge Foundation ---- After the success of Open Everything London a few weeks ago, we're now involved in putting on Open Everything Berlin, which will take place in early December. It will be a great opportunity to meet people interested in open knowledge, open source software, and so on. Details are as follows: * When: Saturday 6th December 2008 * Where: newthinking store, Tucholskystr. 48, Berlin-Mitte (map) * Programme: http://openeverything.mixxt.de/networks/wiki/index.Programm * Registration: Attendance is free! Sign up on the mixxt network! The event will start with a handover from Open Everything Hong Kong and finish with a handover to Open Everything Madison - both of which will also take place on the 6th. In addition to talks, presentations and discussions, the event will feature the launch of Ivo Gormley's Us Now, a Creative Commons licensed documentary about new forms of collaboration produced in association with the RSA: Everywhere you look, groups of people are using the internet to come together to share with one another, work together, or take some kind of public action" Clay Shirky. For the first time in history, we have the tools that truly amplify group effort and can change politics, business and society. Us Now follows the stories of the people that are redefining what is an institution; it plots the fate of a football club owned and run by its fans, a bank in which everyone is the manager, a global network whose members share their homes with strangers and asks politicians and thinkers such as George Osbourne, Ed Milliband, Don Tapscott and Clay Shirky; what all this means for society. There's also a (relatively) new ok-berlin mailing list. If you're around Berlin and you'd like to stay in touch with other people interested in open stuff - we hope you'll join! _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Jonathan Gray 2008-11-21T13:59:12 Search the mailing list at Gmane query http://search.gmane.org/?group=$group=gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation