Wikimedia-l July 2006

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

74 participants
74 discussions

[Foundation-l] How to develop policy in a multilingual organization
by Elisabeth Bauer 01 Nov '06

01 Nov '06

"If you contribute to the Wikimedia projects, you are publishing every word you post publicly." german translation: "Wenn Sie zu den Wikimedia-Projekten beitragen, veröffentlichen Sie jedes Wort, das sie abschicken, öffentlich." That's the second sentence of our privacy policy, to be found on http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy and inspires me to loose a few words on how policy writing should be handled in a multilingual project: * Decide on the core principles of the policy - the essential rules * Create a nice, elaborate page in english which you place on the Foundation wiki as the official policy * Ask the community to create inofficial translations based on the essential rules - they may want to phrase a few things differently, some things may need longer or shorter explanations depending on culture, country or project. They may translate the english version word by word but are free to formulate the essential rules in their own words if they prefer. * Each translation should have a note on top that in doubt the english version is the valid one. In the case of the privacy policy, I decided to act on these principles. The german privacy policy at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Datenschutz tries to say the same as the english one but in own words. Some paragraphs and sentences which are not part of the core rules were shortened for the sake of clarity and readability. If you disagree with this you may want to find community members who will create a literal translation. My feel for language and style doesn't allow me to do so. greetings, elian

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[Foundation-l] Wiki trademark issue for ZH Wikipedia in mainland China
by Hsiang-Tai Chien 01 Nov '06

01 Nov '06

Dear Wikipedians in fundation, We now in Chinese Wikipedia have some trademark issues that needs your help. We have found an Chinese had registered "Wiki" and "維基" (in literly it also means "Wiki" in Chinese) as his trademarks at 2005/11/23 in mainland China. Since we now have WP and WN, there might be some trademark issues in mainland China. Do you have any advice or suggestions that we can do? Best regards, Zh:User:HTChien ___________________________________________________ 最新版 Yahoo!奇摩即時通訊 7.0，免費網路電話任你打！ http://messenger.yahoo.com.tw/

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[Foundation-l] .eu domains soon
by Jan Kulveit 30 Aug '06

30 Aug '06

Hi, the 1st sunrise period for .eu domain registration is going to begin soon - 7 December 2005 only domain names which are registred EU community/national trademarks will be registered. I'm not sure about the status of Wikimedia trademarks, but guess at least Wikipedia a Wikimedia are suitable. IMO "we" should apply at least for wikipedia.eu and wikimedia.eu. Because of trademark issues and eu regulations concernig who can apply for .eu, I'm affraid it will be a bit complicated. I hope someone from the foundation can take care of it. (If the process is allready going, sorry :-) Jan Kulveit ([[USEr:Wikimol]])

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[Foundation-l] Wiki expert in Nigeria needed
by Erik Moeller 02 Aug '06

02 Aug '06

A friend of mine, Wayne Mackintosh of the Commonwealth of Learning (col.org), is looking for a local wiki expert in Nigeria to help with wiki skills development "to a group of folk with low technical experience." The project "is aimed at developing free content for health professionals." The wiki expert would be paid, of course. Anyone know someone who might qualify, or someone who might know someone? Thanks, Erik

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[Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions
by Anthere 01 Aug '06

01 Aug '06

... have been posted here : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions#July_2006 Resolution:election officials passed 20 July 2006 :drafted by the communication committee. Appointement of the election committee for september elections. Resolution ombudsperson checkuser passed 23 July 2006 :creation of the committee in charge of investigating privacy policy abuse reports. Appointment of the original members. The committee is free to organise its own rules and in particular to define the tools it needs (such as checkuser status on meta to have access to checkuser logs. Registration to checkuser list. Creation of OTRS specific queue where such requests may be redirected etc...) Wegge, please, can you contact the two other members and see what needs to be done ? Resolution:WiktionaryZ passed 23 July 2006 :from the special project committee. Agree to host the WiktionaryZ project. Brion will see to this *after* Wikimania Resolution:Hardware_Purchase_Jul-06 passed 24 July 2006 :upon proposition from the technical committee. Approximately $61,440 worth of hardware ant

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[Foundation-l] Incubator Logo
by Daniel Bregman 01 Aug '06

01 Aug '06

After nearly a month of voting, the logo has been chosen for Wikimedia Incubator (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Incubator/logo). I'm writing on behalf of http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NielsF, who created the logo. He wishes to know how to tranfer copyright over to the Wikimedia Foundation. What would need to be included in a transferal statement, and where should it be put? Thank you very much. -Daniel (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dbmag9)

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[Foundation-l] Project Proposal: Wikicat
by Jonathan Leybovich 31 Jul '06

31 Jul '06

All- I hereby propose for your consideration Wikicat, a project to create an open, bibliographic catalog. The purpose of Wikicat is to both lay the groundwork for a scholarly apparatus to be used within Wikipedia as well as create a unique and valuable information resource in its own right. In particular, Wikicat will: * facilitate the process of citation by automatically fetching bibliographic data based upon unique keys such as ISBN, ISSN, and LCCN * allow users to more easily navigate between information resources by grouping them in a functionally significant manner (in particular, according to the principles of [[w:FRBR]]) so that, for example, different editions, translations, etc. are all joined together * apply Wikipedia's collaborative content creation model to bibliographic data, resulting in a catalog of unprecedented detail In terms of implementation, Wikicat will be defined like any other [[m:Wikidata]] dataset and will integrate with other datasets such as WiktionaryZ to share common entities and perhaps someday support something along the lines of a Semantic Mediawiki. As Wikidata is currently not code complete, though, Wikicat will be deployed in stages, during the first of which it will exist as a read-only database that populates itself on an as-needed/"as-cited" basis by importing data from the open catalog servers of such institutions as the Library of Congress, the University of California library system, the U.S. National Library of Medicine, etc. Details about the project, in increasing technical detail, are available on the following pages: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikicat http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicat http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicat_Technical_Design Coding of the first stage of the project is nearly complete and a list of its operational requirements will soon be forthcoming. Here is a demo of Wikicat integration with the Cite/<ref> extension: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikicat_Cite_screenshoot.png Thank you for your time and I look forward to your comments. Jonathan Leybovich __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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[Foundation-l] Project Proposal: Wikicat
by Jonathan Leybovich 30 Jul '06

30 Jul '06

Ray Saintonge wrote: > Citations and verifiability are absolutely essential to the credibility > of Wikipedia and its sister projects. Nevertheless, a person > undertaking to substantiate his contributions should not need a > professional librarianship background to do so. Any manner of clearly > identifying the source should be acceptable. Absolutely. The catalog that is the subject of this project proposal is distinct, though obviously quite-interrelated with, the issue of citation. Whatever will be of most convenience to actual editors should be supported, though I suspect that ambiguous citation styles where the user must take an extra step to disambiguate the work/edition he actually meant will not be all that popular in practice, in addition to being more involved to implement within the software. But again, we should support whatever is most useful to users. > There is also a need to begin referencing the material that is > relatively easy to access on line or in other relatively inexpensive > sources of public domain material, like CDs sold for $5.00 each that can > each easily contain 100 books or more. In the last few years this > material has been produced at a phenomenal rate. These are available in > image, ASCII plain Jane or more scholarly annotatable formats. We could > begin by including our own Wikisource material in the catalogue. Yes, all these types of items will eventually be supported by the catalog. But this will not be possible during the bootstrap/read-only phase of the catalog, where the only data within it will be imported from other catalogs like the Library of Congress. Not only do certain technical pre-reqs need to be met before Wikicat is made world editable (i.e. the compeletion of Wikidata), but, as Lars pointed out, soft pre-reqs need to be met as well, particularly the creation of cataloging standards and some sort of training/orientation regime for new editors. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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[Foundation-l] Wikipedia and Wikimedia Software Prompt Solution to Problem Posed in 2000 by David Brin?
by Michael R. Irwin 30 Jul '06

30 Jul '06

Hi All, Some of you might find this article by David Brin (P,hd in Space Physics & SciFi Author) interesting: http://www.davidbrin.com/disputationarticle1.html He outlines a top down design to try to use the Internet as a collaborative discussion and thinking tool. It seems to me that the Wikimedia software and various projects utilizing some simple rules (NPOV, only one 32K article per subject or title, comprehensive history of revision, and the ever evolving community guidelines) allowed solutions meeting his basic criteria and goals to self organize. As a publicity drive or stunt we might consider inviting him to evaluate how well Wikipedia or some other Wikimedia project meets his proposed requirements for useful Internet sites on his website for his fans. Perhaps a good time (considering that Wikipedia hardly needs publicity drives considering its current success and maturity) would be after a few months of Wikiversity's authorized operation makes it clear that good ideas or material tends to float or stay on the current page of learning/study activities there; just like the best material and presentations drift to the current article or definition on Wikipedia and Wiktionary. I would be very interested in reactions or opinions why or why not Wikipedia currently meets or does not meet his stated goals or criteria for a "Disputation Arena". regards, lazyquasar

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[Foundation-l] Free Content Definition updates
by Erik Moeller 30 Jul '06

30 Jul '06

A while ago I posted here about the Free Content Definition. Our goal with this definition is to create a stable reference point by which we can say that a particular work or license is considered "free" (to use, modify, copy, modify ''and'' copy, etc.). We're now moving closer towards a 1.0 release to this definition, and I'd like to invite feedback from all interested parties on some recent changes I have made to the "unstable" (openly editable) copy: http://freecontentdefinition.org/index.php?title=Definition/Unstable&diff=2… In line with discussions and feedback: * I've tried to change the language so it can apply to physical works like sculptures. For instance, the definition now refers to derivative works instead of modified versions. * I've sectioned the page clearly into defining separately what a free license is and what a free work is. New conditions are now listed to define free works. For instance, a computer program that is only available in binary form under CC-BY would not be considered a free work now. * I've removed the term "Free Expression" -- it was largely negatively received in our naming discussion -- and now refer to the definition only as the Free Content Definition. To compensate, I've listed several specific terms and specific definitions that can be used in fields like knowledge, art and software. * I've made a reference to DRM, and changed a few bits in the preamble. Please leave comments and suggestions on the talk page. In case you haven't seen, some volunteers have also started to create a matrix of free content licenses that meet the definition: http://freecontentdefinition.org/Licenses For those who will be there, Mako Hill, the co-initator of the definition, is going to give a presentation at Wikimania about it: http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:BMH1 When we release a 1.0, I hope that Wikimedia will be one of many organizations which will use this definition as a reference point for clarifying what they mean when they say "free content." :-) Cheers, Erik

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Wikimedia-l July 2006