subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
In a message dated 8/18/2005 10:52:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
andrew.lih at gmail.com writes:

As  Delphine said, there are things from the spirit of wiki that we can
and  should carry over - transparency, volunteerism
(self-identification for  tasks), assume good faith. Others, like
phantom authority and rollback  (anyone/everyone having veto-power)
don't have a place at the board/officer  level. To sooner we realize
not all wiki concepts map over, the  better.

Thank you, Andrew and Delphine for pointing this out. It is important that
people realize that beyond being a pleasant website and a friendly community,
this is also a legal entity with financial and other obligations. Jimmy and
the  Board bear enormous responsibility. They have to deal with other
organizations,  including large corporations such as Google and Yahoo, they have to face
 potential legal threats, and they have to broker and approve deals which
provide  us with much needed financial support. I am quite impressed by how
transparent  they have been, but I also understand when the nature of certain
things in  the works requires a certain degree of discretion. I know that they will
 continue to keep up the outstanding work that they have done so far.

Danny


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] 300 Euro for excellent Articles: an experiment

body:
In a message dated 8/18/2005 11:44:24 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
jwales at wikia.com writes:

Thanks Jimmy,

As I clarified in a later email, my problem is not in small Wikipedias like
Bambara, where seed money can be necessary to get the project off the ground.
In  fact, I was one of the original people to propose this. Rather, my concern
is  with well established with Wikipedias, like English, German, French,
Italian, or  Japanese, where the money is being used to promote personal or
corporate  interests.

Danny


from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
Maybe this is the moment to introduce a thought I had some weeks ago.
Some of us use wikipedia articles for personal websites - sometimes
mixed with free and commercial content.

At a certain stage I myself realised that I would like to see an article
about the region where I live in another language - this would be
important not only for me, but for hotels in this region as well. That's
when the idea of wikitranslations came about. Consider that when I
translate an article for wikipedia it takes away time I could sell my
professional services that are translations - I am not going to talk
about my money here, but it is a general consideration.

So at a first stage I thought about me paying for having translations
done - I would like to see Chinese, Russian, Ucrainian, Japanese etc.,
but I cannot afford to pay "normal prices" for free content translations
as if I would do this this would mean I had to translate also much more
myself selling and so I could not have the time to definitely contribute.

I then set up a small website - still to be finished in its idea, still
to be completed, but I wanted it to be there to remind me on that theme:
http://wikitranslations.com/

Then going ahead thanks to a friend I found out that on the German
wikipedia people already did "if you do for me I will do for you", "if
you do for me I will give you".

When talking about contents we can also think about companies that maybe
would feature an article paying it ... why not? It is a contribution as
well and we can get things done. And why not say: if you want this
article to be translated you also have to give something of something
that is important to other projects? Example: I have an article
translated into English (and really this is not "so much needed") - in
addition to that I pay for another article in any of the languages that
are "important to develop" - so everyone is happy.

I also wrote some thoughts on my portal for translators - a place where
I hope we can start to insert "we need this/that for this amount of
money" and where direct contacts will be created ... and at a certain
stage maybe also new contributors to the projects.

http://www.wesolveitnet.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=71&forum=34&post_id=103#forumpost103

There's still so much to consider ... like always: the day has only 24
hours ... sigh ... anyone for a vote to triple the hours of the day???

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

references:
<20050818001120.4EF9E1190A7C@zwinger.wikimedia.org>	<4303D9A6.10301@earthlink.net>
	<de1bap$en3$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<453b6e505081801527aad9aca@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Delphine M?nard wrote:

>>We asked several times, what is needed and
>>never got an answer. the answer "give us the money" is not appropriate"
>>With my perception
>>look at my mail
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-August/003915.html
>>Look at answers given to it.
>>There are none whatsoever.
>> From my perspective, not only did I lose time writting the mail, but I
>>do not have the slightest beginning of more information. *I* also feel
>>not informed at all.
>
>
> I might be stepping on some toes here, but I found your e-mail very
> informative, and it was, as I understand it, actually answering the
> question that was being asked, ie. "what could the Foundation need
> that we could look into to see its feasibility". However, please, you
> wrote it yesterday, give people a chance to look at the proposals you
> made and give you an intelligent answer.

I am patiently waiting :-)
Will re-ask the question in a month if necessary :-)

The best German chapter can do right now, if not sure how to spent it,
is to place it in special accounts so that the money works and generate
more money. Just pick up a bank account where the money can be freed
within 15 days.

Ant

PS : when you are done, please do the same with my personal bank
accounts :-)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> I tried to explain the difference in my earlier message. Basically,
> people see developer decisions and actions as more technical than
> political (most of the time), so they feel less need to be informed. And
> even so there have been plenty of complaints about lack of information
> from the developers - usually when something has gone wrong and the
> developers are too busy trying to fix it to provide much information
> back to the community.

We definitely need to do a better job notifying the public of issues.
Part of the problem is just need being disciplined about it -- being
busy or tired and assuming somebody else will drop a note when they're done.

Part of it is having too many possible channels of information: a couple
dozen mailing lists, a few hundred wikis, a myriad half-forgotten
community pages, village pumps, and announcements lists, several blogs,
topic messages on a half dozen (or dozen? or more?) IRC channels, etc,
about several different major projects and in many languages.

At a minimum, all relevant tech issues need to get noted at
http://wp.wikidev.net/Server_admin_log so all of us can keep track of
what's broken, what needs to be left untouched or fixed immediately,
etc. Hopefully, more public announcements of general issues can get done
too.

Roughly we can speak of three kinds of issues:
* Here's this neat new feature / old bug we fixed!
* There was a brief service hiccup, here's what happened, and a list of
expected side effects.
* Massive ongoing breakage: here's what's down and roughly when we hope
to have it fixed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> I tried to explain the difference in my earlier message. Basically,
> people see developer decisions and actions as more technical than
> political (most of the time), so they feel less need to be informed. And
> even so there have been plenty of complaints about lack of information
> from the developers - usually when something has gone wrong and the
> developers are too busy trying to fix it to provide much information
> back to the community.

We definitely need to do a better job notifying the public of issues.
Part of the problem is just need being disciplined about it -- being
busy or tired and assuming somebody else will drop a note when they're done.

Part of it is having too many possible channels of information: a couple
dozen mailing lists, a few hundred wikis, a myriad half-forgotten
community pages, village pumps, and announcements lists, several blogs,
topic messages on a half dozen (or dozen? or more?) IRC channels, etc,
about several different major projects and in many languages.

At a minimum, all relevant tech issues need to get noted at
http://wp.wikidev.net/Server_admin_log so all of us can keep track of
what's broken, what needs to be left untouched or fixed immediately,
etc. Hopefully, more public announcements of general issues can get done
too.

Roughly we can speak of three kinds of issues:
* Here's this neat new feature / old bug we fixed!
* There was a brief service hiccup, here's what happened, and a list of
expected side effects.
* Massive ongoing breakage: here's what's down and roughly when we hope
to have it fixed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> I tried to explain the difference in my earlier message. Basically,
> people see developer decisions and actions as more technical than
> political (most of the time), so they feel less need to be informed. And
> even so there have been plenty of complaints about lack of information
> from the developers - usually when something has gone wrong and the
> developers are too busy trying to fix it to provide much information
> back to the community.

We definitely need to do a better job notifying the public of issues.
Part of the problem is just need being disciplined about it -- being
busy or tired and assuming somebody else will drop a note when they're done.

Part of it is having too many possible channels of information: a couple
dozen mailing lists, a few hundred wikis, a myriad half-forgotten
community pages, village pumps, and announcements lists, several blogs,
topic messages on a half dozen (or dozen? or more?) IRC channels, etc,
about several different major projects and in many languages.

At a minimum, all relevant tech issues need to get noted at
http://wp.wikidev.net/Server_admin_log so all of us can keep track of
what's broken, what needs to be left untouched or fixed immediately,
etc. Hopefully, more public announcements of general issues can get done
too.

Roughly we can speak of three kinds of issues:
* Here's this neat new feature / old bug we fixed!
* There was a brief service hiccup, here's what happened, and a list of
expected side effects.
* Massive ongoing breakage: here's what's down and roughly when we hope
to have it fixed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> I tried to explain the difference in my earlier message. Basically,
> people see developer decisions and actions as more technical than
> political (most of the time), so they feel less need to be informed. And
> even so there have been plenty of complaints about lack of information
> from the developers - usually when something has gone wrong and the
> developers are too busy trying to fix it to provide much information
> back to the community.

We definitely need to do a better job notifying the public of issues.
Part of the problem is just need being disciplined about it -- being
busy or tired and assuming somebody else will drop a note when they're done.

Part of it is having too many possible channels of information: a couple
dozen mailing lists, a few hundred wikis, a myriad half-forgotten
community pages, village pumps, and announcements lists, several blogs,
topic messages on a half dozen (or dozen? or more?) IRC channels, etc,
about several different major projects and in many languages.

At a minimum, all relevant tech issues need to get noted at
http://wp.wikidev.net/Server_admin_log so all of us can keep track of
what's broken, what needs to be left untouched or fixed immediately,
etc. Hopefully, more public announcements of general issues can get done
too.

Roughly we can speak of three kinds of issues:
* Here's this neat new feature / old bug we fixed!
* There was a brief service hiccup, here's what happened, and a list of
expected side effects.
* Massive ongoing breakage: here's what's down and roughly when we hope
to have it fixed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikien-l

from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

body:
On 18/08/05, Roozbeh Pournader <roozbeh at gmail.com> wrote:

> A question: If I put some material on a website and publish it to the
> world (including US) by doing that, do I get copyright protection?
> Will it matter that I reside in Iran or not? Will it matter if the
> hosting machine is in Iran or not?

Several jurisdictions have interpreted "publication", in terms of
legal coverage, to mean publishing, by a foreign national, on a
foreign webserver, of documents. Admittedly, this is in the context of
defamation not copyright law, but it may prove interesting.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Resignation as CRO

body:
Anthere:
> Now that several people have expressed their feeling we are non
> transparent, I would like that they go further than just stating a
> situation, and make suggestions to improve.
.....
> Well, this is also one of our problems. We are also struggling with more
> pressing issues. We would also benefit of help, because we also lack
> wo-man power. And as you mention, taking care of communication could
> also be a full-time job and aside from Jimbo, both Angela and I also
> have one of those.

First noone said the board is not working hard.
I think we all know that and appreciate it.

> Are you yourself ready to help distribute the information ?
> How many times did you yourself copied an information mentionned on that
list on your own village pump ?
> How many times did you help translate the foundation website or the Quarto
?
> How many times did you yourself provide us information that might be
useful ?

Please do not say that others can not comment unless they spent more time on
the issue,
they spent lots of time on other issues and still have an opinion about
this.

One of the virtues of a democracy is that everyone can participate in a
discussion
even when they are outsiders (or seen as such by the insiders), even when
they are (perceived as) unreasonable or one-sided.
I try to give reasonable, balanced comments and suggestions, so please do
not tell me I am de facto an outsider on this issue.

This whole discussion is not about blaming anyone.
It discusses where improvements could be made.

> Eactly on which topic do you feel you are not informed ?
> Please cite some examples of issues where we have been failing ?

Since you asked what could be more transparent, three examples:

To keep close to the subject at hand: the way that new officers were
appointed is a prime example,
It came out of the blue. No discussion about definition of roles. I got very
much the impression that officers were to define their own role.
When Erik Moeller stated how he wanted to act, I did not see much response
from the board or anyone else.
Of course the whole community could have started to debate the new roles
after people were appointed,
that hardly happened either. It is a bit more difficult when people have
been appointed already.

Secondly I already mentioned the current discussion about reforming the
decision making process, which is taking place.
Jimbo hinted to it when I met him in Amsterdam months ago and voiced similar
concerns as I did now.
I asked if Wikimania would be a good place to discuss this more openly and
he agreed,
but his answer on a question by Tim Starling was something close to "We are
working on reform and you'll hear more in a few months time."

Lastly in the beginning most board meetings were open, either for anyone to
comment online, or to read the full proceedings later.
Now most board meetings and even some wikis are closed and at best we get to
hear the actual decision and a very concise rationale.
I can understand that some issues deal with outside partners or specific
persons in our community and are sensitive.
Also meeting with 50 people talking at the same time on IRC is not
productive.
Why not publish most discussions verbatim with bits taken away that are
sensitive and a short explanation of what has been left out.
Is it that most meetings now deal with sensitive issues, and did not in the
past?

Anthere, you did not yet comment on a the lack of clear definition of roles,
responsibilities and procedures for board and other officials.
That was the major point I raised in my mail.

And let me state once more, what actually should go without saying,
that this is not a personal attack on you or Jimmy or anyone, as I think
most highly of you all.

Small digression about working hard: since I am asked almost daily, mostly
by mail: yes I am working on new wikistats.
In a few weeks time, when I announce new stats, I'll explain why it took so
long to update the scripts to mediawiki 1.5

Erik Zachte


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Resignation as CRO


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

body:
haha. Well, I actually intend to make a labeled version of those penis
pictures, like the clitoris one, but i've been lazy. And my parents
would probably think i'm gay if they walked in while i had a huge
picture of a dick on my screen. :P I really don't think they get that
I do not want to discuss things like this with them..

And by the way, I believe all vertebra are under alot of strain during
autofellatio.

On 8/18/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales (jwales at wikia.com) [050818 20:33]:
> > Phroziac wrote:
>
> > > Also, I think pictures should be encyclopedic. It's a little silly to
> > > just show a picture of a dick with no labels. Look at the picture on
> > > the clitoris article. It's all nice and labeled, and I think that's
> > > pretty encyclopedic. In fact, I was intending to make a labeled
> > > version of those penis pictures, but never got around to it yet.
>
> > I think that's exactly the right approach.  Contrary to common
> > impressions, I don't think even very conservative parents in the deep
> > south of the US (my own upbringing, you see) have a problem at all with
> > a serious and respectful article like 'clitoris' with a useful
> > illustration.
>
>
> I'm waiting for a fully labeled autofellatio photo. "This vertebra is
> placed under particular strain." Heck, pixelate the penis on the inline
> version, it'd be an amazing and unique encyclopaedic work!
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


from_name: Arne Klempert

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Chapters,
	deductibility and donation profiles (was Wikimania 2006 - host city
	contest to open onSeptember 1st 20)

body:
On 8/17/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> A week ago, at Wikimania, when it was pointed out that the german
> chapter had money, while the french and the italian did not, I suggested
> that possibly some of the german money could be used for other chapters,
> in particular when there is common currency and these countries are in
> certain common frame (here, european union). I am not sure I got a
> positive feedback on this (nor a negative actually).

The problem with this, like with almost every idea on how to spend the
german money is that we don't really know yet if it's possible :(

> Maybe it would help to clarify in which cases we could actually use the
> money and in which we can not.

This question is not easy to answer. The usual case for a charity
organisation in Germany is to spend money for its own undertakings.
>From what I know (I'm neither an expert in this field, nor am I the
treasurer) every other spending is more or less difficult. Spending
money in Germany (for hardware or almost everything else) would be the
easiest way. Likewise easy would it be to buy hardware in Germany and
ship it to a data center, let's say in Amsterdam, providing the
purpose of this hardware is easy to explain (to the tax office) in the
sense that it can be separated from other things (eg. we wanted to buy
a big tool server until a nice company came around and donated us
one). Unfortunately, adding to the existing server park is much more
complicated to explain to the tax office.

To pay for general hardware might be possible but would probably be
much more difficult. For example, it *might* be possible to buy
general hardware in Germany, send it to Amsterdam and explain how it
is used to the tax office. This gets much more complicated if we buy
hardware in the US and add it to an existing pool. The idea is that
starting a whole new data center, anywhere in the world, as our own
undertaking, run by German money, would be easier to endorse as a
"Wikimedia Deutschland undertaking".

If Wikimedia Deutschland?s money is to be only a part of an existing
pool, then we need a clear idea of what Wikimedia wants to do (not
only now, but also in the next year or the year after). Then, and only
then, once we have a plan, a budget... we can ask a tax professional
to tell us, how this is possible and how - which paperwork (project
descriptions, contracts) is needed. To be sure that the tax office
will accept this later, we need to ask them beforehand. This will take
time, perhaps a few months (until they might respond with more
questions ...)

So far we (or at least I) have no idea what the mid-term plans are.
Some months ago the Kennisnet cluster seemed to be a comparative easy
option. But as I understood Jimbo, this is not an option "now". As I
said above this "now" is part of our problem. Given the work and time
it needs to find *one* way to spend a lot of our money and given the
fact that Wikimedia Deutschland not only now has money but will
probably have much more in the next months and years it would be much
more effective to work on mid-term plans. I wonder if this is
possible.

> * paying some travel costs which would otherwise be paid by the
> Foundation (easy enough probably would be to pay for some speakers to
> come to wikimania in Germany, but would it be possible for a german
> chapter to pay travel for Jimbo to Germany to meet with german partners,
> or for the german chapter to pay travel for Angela to go to South Africa
> to meet with some possible african partners ?)

Yes, we can pay for travel costs (in principle). But I'm not sure what
the tax office would say if we  spent 10k Euro for travel expenses,
for people who are not flying from or to Germany or are not somehow
connected with Wikimedia Deutschland.

BTW: As far as I know Wikimedia Deutschland did agree on paying 50% of
Tim's ticket for his trip to Berlin in December 2004. We never
reimbursed the money to the Foundation because we never got a bill :(

> * Paying for some promotional items (easy enough in german for a
> conference in Germany, but would it be possible to pay the publishing of
> an italian-language leaflet for a conference in Belgium for example ?)

Yes, we can pay for promotional items (in principle). Unless we don't
spend huge amounts on this, nobody will ask us, in which language the
stuff is printed and where and to whom it was given.

> * Paying people for certain activities (such as, but non restricted to,
> development). Could these people be paid if non german ? Could they be
> paid to work on global issues ? (for example, grant specialist ?)

Yes, paying people to improve free software is totally ok, but again,
this has to be well documented (what project is the developer working
on?). A grants specialist working abroad would be harder to explain,
but one in Germany working on grants in which Wikimedia Deutschland is
involved should be no problem.

In all these discussions we also have to keep in mind that the German
board is responsible for the money, and this not only in a legal way.
This also has moral implications. To give an example: Even if it is
legally okay, I would find it very hard to explain to the German
donators that *all* of their money has been spent on plane tickets or
a single development task or something like that.

I would be very happy if we can work together on other mid- or
long-term ideas to spend our money. And while we are doing this we
should give some money for some of the things mentioned above.

-- Arne (akl)


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ginu George

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiPedia Malayalam

body:
Dear,
 I will give two three non latin fonts, can we include that for making that
better. ???????????:???????,
???????<http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%80%E0%B4%9F%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AF:%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%97%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%82%2C_%E0%B4%A8%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%97%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%B0%E0%B5%86>
 and ?????? ?????<http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B0%E0%B4%A7%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%A8_%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B3%E0%B5%8D%E2%80%8D>is
entirely wrong
 See my hand written font in the attachment dear.
 You must be an administrator to edit the message pages.
(But you can also get adminship just to do that kind of work)
 >>> What more i have to do in this matter ?
 Regards
  Ginu George

 On 8/18/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Ginu, deciding what font to use for the logo text is still a gray
> area, particularly in non-latin scripts. I believe there are one or
> two malayalam editors on the translators mailing list; I am including
> it in copy.
>
> What are your thoughts about the font currently used for Wikipedia article
> text?
>
> To update other interface messages, see
> http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allmessages
>
> You must be an administrator to edit the message pages.
> (But you can also get adminship just to do that kind of work)
>
> Sj
>
> On 8/18/05, Ginu George <ginu.george at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In which format I have to send the text. Could you please tell the font
> name
> > or can attach the same in reply. Otherwise I can send a font file along
> with
> > the correctly written font.
> >
> >
> > Regards
> >
> >
> > Ginu George
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Sj [mailto:2.718281828 at gmail.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 12:46 AM
> > To: Ginu George
> > Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] WikiPedia Malayalam
> >
> > Hello Ginu,
> >
> > Did you get a response about Malayalam and editing the logo?
> >
> > To edit the logo you should write the text you want to include, and send
> it
> > in an email to the wikitech-l list....
> >
> > Let me know if you have any trouble.
> > SJ
> >
> >
> > On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 19:08:17 +0400, Ginu George <ginu.george at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > I saw the language version for Malayalam in Wikipedia is not in full
> > > mode for long. But i go through the entire stuff. There is no option
> > > to edit the logo text. Thats wrong. And i would like to do the project
> > > for malayalam. So if you can provide further information, then thats
> > > better i think.
> > >
> > > Hope you respond soon
> > >
> > > --
> > > Regards
> > > Ginu George
> > > www.ginugeorge.com <http://www.ginugeorge.com>
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > +sj+
> > _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]
>

--
Warm Regards

Ginu George,
Dubai, United Arab Emirates

ginu at ginugeorge.com
www.ginugeorge.com <http://www.ginugeorge.com>


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

references:
<20050818001120.4EF9E1190A7C@zwinger.wikimedia.org>	<4303D9A6.10301@earthlink.net>
	<de1bap$en3$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cfe1dfe105081803054a2d25c7@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Dan Grey wrote:

> On 18/08/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Now that several people have expressed their feeling we are non
>>transparent, I would like that they go further than just stating a
>>situation, and make suggestions to improve.
>>
>>Michael is mentionning that "with the developers, they struggle
>>constantly with more pressing issues". And that "we could use three or
>>four times as many developers".
>
>
> Hackers rarely communicate outside of themselves. Fact of life in that
> arena. However, the server log:
>
> http://wp.wikidev.net/Server_admin_log
>
> isn't too bad.

What is funny is that it is assumed allright that developers only
communicate in their area, but it is not allright for others. Why ?

>>I have a problem with the equation
>>
>>board : amount of time spent answering personal mails + amount of time
>>spend on OTRS + amount of time spent writing board meeting reports +
>>amount of time spent writing to this list + amount of time spent on
>>setting up a wikimedia foundation website + amount of time spent writing
>>Quarto
>>
>>With
>>
>>Wikipedians : we are not informed.
>>
>>It does not fit :-)
>>
>>
>>So my questions are
>>
>>* exactly on which topic do you feel you are not informed ?
>
>
> Everything. The WMF wiki is a shambles and so are the related meta pages.

Everything is frankly not a valuable answer :)
Please be more specific. There is so much to do that we CAN NOT start on
everything all at once.

I do not know what a shamble is, but I can imagine.

When you say "so are related meta pages", I do not follow you. Please
again be more specific.

--------

Since you consider you are lacking information on every point, let's
start by one example to try to evaluate the damage.

Here is a meta page listing the board meeting reports :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings

Look at it please.

On the right side, there is a nice and clear navigation tool, leading
you to major pages. Is that navigation tool sufficient ? Or not ?
Suggestion for improvement ?

On the left, a very very very straight forward and clear list of all
board meeting held.
Good news, when you click on the links, it actually goes somewhere...
and there, you will find each time a summary of each board meeting, made
by Angela (who, incidently, is no more secretary. She was a good one.
Did anyone ever thanked her for taking the time to organise our meetings
? take the time to thank her for these very clear reports ? Well, she is
no more secretary. I hope next reports will be as accurate and clear
than Angela's. Thanks Angela :-)).

The reports are hosted on the Foundation website.

Are they sufficient ?
	if not sufficient, please explain Tim Shell how they can be improved,
for he will now be our secretary
Are they clear enough ?
	If not, please explain how to clarify them.
Are they translated enough ?
	Probably not. Well, The board only speaks two languages, so please help
us find more people to help with translation.
Are they easy to find enough ?
	Probably not. What do you suggest ? I have been caressing the idea of
re-doing all the foundation meta pages and foundation website pages for
clearer access, but could never find the time to do it yet.
Are they well advertised ?
	Angela mentionned all of the board meeting on this mailing list. Do we
need more place to advertise these for example? Or relays ? Did you
yourself advertised them on wikinews ?

> I suspect a lot of the information people want *is* actually out
> there, it's just very hard to find.
>
>
>>* please cite some examples of how we could inform you. Please not "I
>>want to be more informed", but HOW, WHERE, WHEN and under WHICH form.
>
>
> 1. Start the announce-l list, and use it

It is unclear for me if the announce list should be the list for the
foundation to announce things. Right now, we announce things on this
mailing list, which allow you to comment on what is announced (while
announce-l will not allow this). But I am open to this suggestion.

> 2. Make the WMF wiki useful

Ah, good point. Now, next good point : who is concerned ?
How many people are editing this website ? Are you yourself an editor
over there ? Did you help for any of the translations done there ? Any
one can help with translation as these are done on meta.

> 3. I understand that there is now code to transclude templates between
> wikis. This would make "broadcasting" info to individual wikis's
> village pumps easy, if it were to be enabled. This would be
> *extremely* powerful.

I absolutely agree. I am sorry to say I know nothing about these new
templates. I am definitly interested by the prospect. Can you tell me
more about this ?

> 4. Y'know, a "board and officers" blog would be very useful. Perhaps
> the blogging extension could be turned on on the WMF wiki.

I also agree. This has been discussed a year ago, and not kept. I would
agree it might be a solution.

This said, a blog only lives because people think of adding stuff to it.
On the WMF, I started a news template which might be a sort of a blog
(except that it is not).

Look : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home

It is in the right side, blue background.

It intends to give short news of major events. Now, two issues about this

First, do people think of going there to read information (or to read
Quarto ?). I fear not. So, what do you suggest we do to push people to
come here for information ? Having more news will certainly help.

Second, this is definitely a place for board, officers and chapters to
add information. Overall, chapters included, that might sum up to 30
people. The fact is few of them think of adding information here. How to
  clarify the fact they can ?

> As someone who is a) disappointed with the foundation and it's lack of
> openess, real or percieved, and b) is a whizz with wikis and how to
> make them easy-to-follow, I would be very happy to sort out the WMF
> wiki.

Sorry, I am not sure I understand well what you wrote. What does "being
a whizz with wikis" mean, and what do you mean by "sort out the WMF wiki" ?
Do you mean to close it, or do you mean to participate to help its
development ?

If you have ideas about developping it, your help will be welcome. Be
certain of that Dan.

> Dan


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject:
[WikiEN-l] WikiEN-L Mailing List Members - What I Don't Like
	About Wikipedia

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Lester D.K. Chow and Associates wrote:
> I wrote additions to the topics of "Eber," "Joktan," and the "Zhou
> Dynasty."  My family's dynasty of which I am a qualified expert.  In
> history, there are conflicting interpretations as to events and dates.
> I think that it is wrong to only allow one view to dominate and to not
> publish all valid views.  Somehow, your editors erased what I had
> republished about two or three hours ago (my time, at this writing, is
> August 17, 2005, 11:10 p.m.).  Then, too, I think that it is wrong for
> people (the general public) to erase all of the hard work and time that
> you have put into your article and to continually erase it every time
> you post.

Hi,

Because I'm not the person who removed your contributions I'm doing a
bit of second-guessing here.

The reasons I think your contributions were removed is because you did
not write them in an encyclopediac manner. Encyclopedias are typically
written in the third-person, while yours was written in the
first-person. You also added some sentences which are more appropriate
in individual essays debating a point (e.g. "I would like to add some
information to the above article, in correction of the above article,
about Eber").

Most of what you have written appears to be useful, but the way you have
written it is not how articles should be written. Try correcting the
article directly rather than adding a paragraph saying what is wrong
with it (known on Wikipedia as "being bold"), and make sure you cite
sources.

Have a look at Wikipedia's Manual of Style on article writing:
 --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style

Hope this helps,

Chris

- --
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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85ZmZgJLD0nZTXC6LCvBmg==
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-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Arkady Rose

body:
Lester D.K. Chow and Associates wrote:

> I am a Chinese-American of the third generation.  I worked as a
> political negotiator, during the Iraq War in 1990.  My college
> background is four years of college as a business management major and
> history minor.  My family are very prominent Chinese people as my
> second cousin is China's renowned Premier Zhou Enlai.  I am a member
> of China's Imperial family and a self-taught cultural expert on China
> and the Middle East.
>
> I wrote additions to the topics of "Eber," "Joktan," and the "Zhou
> Dynasty."  My family's dynasty of which I am a qualified expert.  In
> history, there are conflicting interpretations as to events and
> dates.  I think that it is wrong to only allow one view to dominate
> and to not publish all valid views.  Somehow, your editors erased what
> I had republished about two or three hours ago (my time, at this
> writing, is August 17, 2005, 11:10 p.m.).  Then, too, I think that it
> is wrong for people (the general public) to erase all of the hard work
> and time that you have put into your article and to continually erase
> it every time you post.
>
> Can anything be done about this?

The whole point about Wikipedia is that *anyone* can edit any article
they wish and that it is not restricted soley to "experts".

The NPOV (Neutral Point Of View) policy does not mean "all views must be
published" but that the tone of the article should be neutral and
balanced. Any additions to an article that appear to be overly biased in
one direction or another are therefore likely to be deleted or edited by
another editor to achieve the desired neutral overview. No one editor
can claim "ownership" of an article, regardless of what their "expert
credentials" may be.

-a


from_name: estela noemi pini

subject: [Foundation-l] UNSUSCRIBE

body:
__________________________________________________
Correo Yahoo!
Espacio para todos tus mensajes, antivirus y antispam ?gratis!
?Abr? tu cuenta ya! - http://correo.yahoo.com.ar


subject: [Foundation-l] UNSUSCRIBE


from_name: Puddl Duk

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
On 8/18/05, Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Please bend over so that I can say it very softly and privately in

...

Also, in some cultures and for some people individually, not speaking is a
> form of assent, and speaking is reserved for pointing out problems.
> This may make some people seem to only criticize, when in fact they
> fully support and are involved.
>
> Chris Mahan
> 818.943.1850 cell
> chris_mahan at yahoo.com
> chris.mahan at gmail.com
> http://www.christophermahan.com/

This is very true or me. I think a thousand things that Anthere does are
great, but have never said so. The only interaction we've had involves
unpleasantness, and are 'one in a thousand' events. I can easily see (now
that Chris has pointed this out) how Anthere could view my cumulative posts
as a personal attack, that wasn't my intention. Sorry Anthere if you got
this impression. I'll try to say some nice things once in a while :)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiProject Decency

body:
On Thu, 18 Aug 2005, David Gerard wrote:

> Geoff Burling (llywrch at agora.rdrop.com) [050818 20:35]:
>
> > Disclaimer: Yes, I have contributed material towards both. However, I
> > learned of both by accident; there is no organized group out to get -Ril-,
> > just an increasing number of people who have grown weary of him. And
> > many of whom no longer care -- if they ever did -- that David has
> > determined he is not a sockpuppet for Lir.
>
>
> To be precise, I could see no evidence he was. I should add that -Ril-
> doesn't edit anything like Lir IMO - I see no reason to assume -Ril- is
> anything other than what he appears and claims to be, an ordinary
> good-faith editor with a strong interest in ancient Egypt, who has
> unfortunately been conflicting with quite a few people (whoever may be
> considered to "blame" for this).
>
And for the record, from his style alone I never thought he was Lir.
-Ril- has always demonstrated that he is informed or knowledgable -- but
resolutely opinionated about the articles he contributes to.

He has simply repeated this exoneration enough times -- & in at least
one circumstance where it wasn't relevant -- that he is in danger of
raising people's suspicions that he _might_ actually be Lir unless he
stops. Or at least should someone mention it, limit his response
to a terse reply like "That was proven false; look at my Talk page for
the details."

I didn't mean to cast doubt on David's abilities, & apologize if I
gave that impression.

Geoff


from_name: Milos Rancic

body:
On 8/18/05, Arne Klempert <klempert at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would be very happy if we can work together on other mid- or
> long-term ideas to spend our money. And while we are doing this we
> should give some money for some of the things mentioned above.

What do you think about giving money to some African(s) for improving
some Wikipedia in some African language or to find some Roma (a lot of
Romas from Balkans live in Germany) and to start Wikipedia in some of
Roma languages? Also, there are no yet any Sorbian Wikipedia and all
of Sorbians are German citizens.


from_name: SJ

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiPedia Malayalam

body:
Hi Ginu, deciding what font to use for the logo text is still a gray
area, particularly in non-latin scripts.  I believe there are one or
two malayalam editors on the translators mailing list; I am including
it in copy.

What are your thoughts about the font currently used for Wikipedia article text?

To update other interface messages, see
 http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allmessages

You must be an administrator to edit the message pages.
(But you can also get adminship just to do that kind of work)

Sj

On 8/18/05, Ginu George <ginu.george at gmail.com> wrote:
> In which format I have to send the text. Could you please tell the font name
> or can attach the same in reply. Otherwise I can send a font file along with
> the correctly written font.
>
>
> Regards
>
>
> Ginu George
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sj [mailto:2.718281828 at gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 12:46 AM
> To: Ginu George
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] WikiPedia Malayalam
>
> Hello Ginu,
>
> Did you get a response about Malayalam and editing the logo?
>
> To edit the logo you should write the text you want to include, and send it
> in an email to the wikitech-l  list....
>
> Let me know if you have any trouble.
>   SJ
>
>
> On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 19:08:17 +0400, Ginu George <ginu.george at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > I saw the language version for Malayalam in Wikipedia is not in full
> > mode for long. But i go through the entire stuff. There is no option
> > to edit the logo text. Thats wrong. And i would like to do the project
> > for malayalam. So if you can provide further information, then thats
> > better i think.
> >
> > Hope you respond soon
> >
> > --
> > Regards
> > Ginu George
> > www.ginugeorge.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
>
> --
> +sj+
>  _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


body:
>Sure it is a contribution, but what would that do to our credibility.
>
Nothing. Books and Encyclopedias have always been translated and did not
loose anything about their credibility for that.

>Having
>companies pay for articles, especially feature articles, raises the  question
>of whether they are simply advertising pieces in the guise of  articles, or
>genuine NPOV coverage.
>
It is a wikipedia article that is going to be translated (therefore
npov) - and it is a wikipedia article afterwards and therefore npov and
editable for anyone.

>If a company pays us to write or  feature an article,
>does that mean that we are beholden to them to provide their  POV as well?
>
no - since whoever wants such a translation knows that the article is
already npov - so he wants this content translated and not re-written to
his/her favour

>What
>about if a political or religious group tries to do the same  thing?
>
see above: any article for wikipedia is there to be improved - also the
translated ones ...

>To what
>degree will corporate or other moneys be used as leverage  against NPOV.
>
>I am confident that the community will reject this idea.
>
>
well ... see: if there is a translated article and you don't even know
about this and then it is uploaded it is treated like any contribution -
people will have a look at it and say it is fine or modify it

if you know that an article is translated and then it is uploaded I
suppose you will have a closer look to make sure it is correct and npov,
right? so anyway it is better to know this

what if anyone takes any article without telling you, translates it and
then puts a bit of pov there? this is not wanted ...  the procedure is
the same, only it is less checked than the one we know to be translated
I suppose

so think about a translator doing such a job: it is his credibility and
professionality that depends on a correct translation of an article - so
if he does not work well this will be known and it is useless to say
what this means to the carreer since this should be obvious to anyone -
what does a correct article instead mean? it would be a piece of text to
show in his/per portfolio of translations ... so it makes only sense for
a translator to do a good job

what you are saying of religious or political groups can happen anyway -
it is even more probable that if it happens, this happens in background
without anyone knowing it

then: anyone is free to translate whatever is published under gfdl - if
you want this or not

any wikipedia can decide if leave an article or not

I also can take an article, have it translated under gfdl and only use
it for my purposes on my website indicating its source and stating gfdl
+ providing the text of the license on my website and anyone can do this
also adding pov - so isn't it better to have things in an npov
enviroment being checked by many people?

so the community might approve or reject this idea: it can and sooner or
later will happen anyway (somewhere) - so it is better to prepare this
and do it in a professional way instead of leaving things happen on
their own and it is better to be able to choose the translators that can
be part of that project (providing a cv and some credentials) than just
leaving it to whoever - or am I wrong in that?

ciao, sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>
>In a message dated 8/18/2005 5:48:41 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
>sabine_cretella at yahoo.it writes:
>
>When  talking about contents we can also think about companies that maybe
>would  feature an article paying it ... why not? It is a contribution as
>well and  we can get things done. And why not say: if you want this
>article to be  translated you also have to give something of something
>that is important  to other projects? Example: I have an article
>translated into English (and  really this is not "so much needed") - in
>addition to that I pay for  another article in any of the languages that
>are "important to develop" -  so everyone is happy.
>
>
>
>
>
>Sure it is a contribution, but what would that do to our credibility.  Having
>companies pay for articles, especially feature articles, raises the  question
>of whether they are simply advertising pieces in the guise of  articles, or
>genuine NPOV coverage. If a company pays us to write or  feature an article,
>does that mean that we are beholden to them to provide their  POV as well? What
>about if a political or religious group tries to do the same  thing? To what
>degree will corporate or other moneys be used as leverage  against NPOV.
>
>I am confident that the community will reject this idea.
>
>Danny
>
Hoi,
When an article from the German Wikipedia is translated for money by a
professional translator, in what way would this article be of less
quality or of a lesser reputation than the orignial
article in German? When an article is translated there can be no doubt
that the only thing you might want to improve on a translation is some
localization where applicable or whatever an editor deems necessary to
improve an article. When good articles are translated by good
translators the result will be good. Certainly good enough for further
work by a community that has proven that it can do just that and
certainly better than not having information on a topic.

There have been organisations that threatened to come to Wikipedia in
numbers.. This was met with efficient dispatch when they started to
praise their wares or sing their message. I do not think payed
translations and payed content can be rejected by the community because
there is nothing in our charter that says that good information cannot
be payed for. It is also very much against the ethical underpinnings of
our license. What is there to fear but fear itself ?

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: An other attempt for Announce-l;	central
	info about wikimedia tech status and info

body:
Delphine M?nard <notafishz at ...> writes:

> Completely agreed. Wheter it is a mailing list that people can
> subscribe to, or a blog (there is one I think, but maybe not
> advertised enough?) or an info page which gives important information
> such as "OTRS is down, will be for a week, contact so and so to get
> emails redirected", it is important that the community be informed of
> technical issues that have an impact on the projects as a whole, or on
> the work some people do. OTRS down certainly has a greater impact than
> people might think.

Do not forget that the Q4 funddrive will start very soon. That can lead to
important questions from visitors or sponsers or so.

I suggest that all Wiki-projects make sure the have an working contactpoint.
You can use the "owner" emailadress adress of your local mailinglist so you
have a @wikipedia.org adress.

Walter


from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

references:
<20050818001120.4EF9E1190A7C@zwinger.wikimedia.org>
	<4303D9A6.10301@earthlink.net> <de1bap$en3$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cfe1dfe105081803054a2d25c7@mail.gmail.com>
	<de1q8g$mft$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 18/08/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> What is funny is that it is assumed allright that developers only
> communicate in their area, but it is not allright for others. Why ?

We all know the devs work very hard as the results are right in front
of us. So I think many of us realise that while better communication
with the devs would be nice, it's not essential.

However, few people know what the board is for or even that it exists.
But as I understand it, you want us to give you $200,000. Well, that
makes me want to know more about who you are and what you do.

> Everything is frankly not a valuable answer :)
> Please be more specific. There is so much to do that we CAN NOT start on
> everything all at once.

Yes, it is. *Everything* about the board could be improved: As Erik Z
says, publish full logs of meetings (sans sensitive information). Make
sure everyone knows where to find said logs. How to communicate with
the board. Who the board are. What they do.

> When you say "so are related meta pages", I do not follow you. Please
> again be more specific.

This is relatively minor; however meta isn't locked so I can probably
sort this out myself :-).

> Snip stuff about the WMF wiki.

See below.

> > 1. Start the announce-l list, and use it
>
> It is unclear for me if the announce list should be the list for the
> foundation to announce things.

That can be sorted out, I'm sure.

>> 2. Make the WMF wiki useful
>
> Ah, good point. Now, next good point : who is concerned ?
> How many people are editing this website ? Are you yourself an editor
> over there ? Did you help for any of the translations done there ? Any
> one can help with translation as these are done on meta.

WMF is a closed wiki so no, I do not have access.

> > 3. I understand that there is now code to transclude templates between
> > wikis. This would make "broadcasting" info to individual wikis's
> > village pumps easy, if it were to be enabled. This would be
> > *extremely* powerful.
>
> I absolutely agree. I am sorry to say I know nothing about these new
> templates. I am definitly interested by the prospect. Can you tell me
> more about this ?

No, I'm not a dev. I could even be wrong on this. Ask on wikitech-l or
in #wikimedia-tech.

> > 4. Y'know, a "board and officers" blog would be very useful. Perhaps
> > the blogging extension could be turned on on the WMF wiki.
>
> I also agree. This has been discussed a year ago, and not kept. I would
> agree it might be a solution.
>
> This said, a blog only lives because people think of adding stuff to it.
> On the WMF, I started a news template which might be a sort of a blog
> (except that it is not).
>
> Look : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
>
> It is in the right side, blue background.

All true, and the news template there is good.

>
> It intends to give short news of major events. Now, two issues about this
>
> First, do people think of going there to read information (or to read
> Quarto ?). I fear not. So, what do you suggest we do to push people to
> come here for information ?

Advertise it everywhere. In the Wikipedia:About (or whatever it's
called) and the equivalent in the other projects, in the new
free-content page on wp.en, on the front of meta in big writing, and
everytime there is a bit of foundation news, don't tell people the
whole story here - just give a link to the WMF wiki.

The aim is to raise awareness - to make people think "oh, I know where
to get the latest news or to find out things, the WMF wiki!".

> Second, this is definitely a place for board, officers and chapters to
> add information. Overall, chapters included, that might sum up to 30
> people. The fact is few of them think of adding information here. How to
>   clarify the fact they can ?

Chapter-l is a very good idea, and I hope that it  will help here. Use
it to ask people!

> > As someone who is a) disappointed with the foundation and it's lack of
> > openess, real or percieved, and b) is a whizz with wikis and how to
> > make them easy-to-follow, I would be very happy to sort out the WMF
> > wiki.
>
> Sorry, I am not sure I understand well what you wrote. What does "being
> a whizz with wikis" mean, and what do you mean by "sort out the WMF wiki" ?
> Do you mean to close it, or do you mean to participate to help its
> development ?
>
> If you have ideas about developping it, your help will be welcome. Be
> certain of that Dan.

I'm not going to sit here and type out every last change that needs to
be made on the WMF wiki, then wait for "approval". My time is more
valuable than that. I'm simply saying this: there is a lot wrong with
that site, and I know how to fix it. Let me.

I have made 13,000 edits across two projects, and I'm an admin on
both. I think that says you can trust me. And if you don't like the
results - it's a wiki! Anything can be undone.

Dan


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: valdelli at bluemail.ch

subject: [Foundation-l] UNSUSCRIBE

body:
Incorrect procedure.

To unsubscribe, you should use this link:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

BB

Ilario

>-- Messaggio originale --
>Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 13:20:34 +0000 (GMT)
>From: estela noemi pini <estelapini at yahoo.com.ar>
>To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>Subject: [Foundation-l] UNSUSCRIBE
>Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>
>
>
>__________________________________________________
>Correo Yahoo!
>Espacio para todos tus mensajes, antivirus y antispam ?gratis!
>?Abr? tu cuenta ya! - http://correo.yahoo.com.ar
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] UNSUSCRIBE


from_name: Roozbeh Pournader

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

body:
On 8/18/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> First, if we are breaking Iranian censorship laws, then so be it.  (I
> have no idea, actually, but I would imagine that we are.)   Merely
> "breaking Iranian law" isn't particularly worrisome.

Well, to get to the details about Iranian censorship of the Internet,
the is no law there, but semi-official regulations. And those
regulations, when referring to content from hosts outside Iran, only
have some implications for the Internet service providers inside Iran
who provide that information to end users.

Fortunately, Wikipedia is still far from raising anything

> Second, I think the point is that such use would be legal in the US, and
> if so, I don't see that Iranians would have much of a way to sue us,
> except perhaps in Iran, which would be more or less pointless.

The copyright holders can republish the same material outside Iran and
have copyright protection, I believe. But Wikipedia may then say that
they have used the unprotected source...

A question: If I put some material on a website and publish it to the
world (including US) by doing that, do I get copyright protection?
Will it matter that I reside in Iran or not? Will it matter if the
hosting machine is in Iran or not?

In other words, assuming we actually want to use something protected
in Iran and not protected in the United States, what is the criteria
for making sure?

> I think the most compelling argument is that we want to encourage broad
> re-use, including in Iran, and if Iranian copyright laws are more or
> less as sensible as the laws of other places, then we should follow
> those laws, regardless of ongoing disputes between the US and Iran which
> may prevent an actual treaty.

I really appreciate that.

roozbeh


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
On 8/18/05, W. Guy Finley <wgfinley at dynascope.com> wrote:

[snip]

> I made reference to this before Anthere but let me put it bluntly - you have
> some work to do on boardsmanship.  Chiding those you represent for not
> having complete enough complaints is not going to endear you to any hearts
> nor help anything.  The board's position is one of governance, it shouldn't
> be making day to day decisions on things that need to be run, that's what
> officers are for.  Those officers should have clearly defined job
> responsibilities set by the board and if they aren't living up to them then
> the board, as a board, should give them direction.  Individual board members
> have NO power outside of their vote in a duly convened board meeting.

Although I agree with you on the background of this all, I believe
that  we as a community are not cutting board members enough slack as
is, particularly to the ones who actually try and get some information
out as elected representatives, Angela and Florence.

This whole thread and the various ones going on on this list or on
other lists make me think that we have reached a point where we are
redifining, or rather *finally defining* what the board should do/not
do, what officers are for/are not for, what local chapter can/cannot
do, in short, what this organisation is all about.

I see us as an organisation still struggling to find the balance
between too much information and not enough information, struggling to
define whose role is what and what can be achieve, where we want to go
and how we get there. Some people are impatient, others are too
silent, others again too sporadic. Some criticize easily, others
constructively, others just don't care at all.

I personally strongly believe that the organisation *is not* a wiki,
that the learning process is longer and that unfortunately, when you
make a mistake, nobody can just revert what mistake you have made, you
have to assume the consequences. In that, I believe our actual board
has done a good job. I can understand that they feel a bit lonely
sometimes, as there is no "edit" button on whatever decision they
make, and they are indeed carrying the weight of it on their
shoulders. The only *wiki* thing I personally would allow in this case
is "assume good faith", and if Florence's way of trying to learn how
to do things well is not of your liking, please, do share with her
your experience as "member having served many years on many different
boards of various kinds", so that she, and all of us, can benefit from
 it. Escalating in ping-pong scheme: "you this" "but you that!" is, in
my opinion, not the best way to go about it.

Florence voiced it plainly enough, and I believe that the near future
will come to emphasize it, at some point it does take professional
advice and time (ie. a full-time job - or full time job*s*) to make
things go the way they should be going. If we (including board members
by pointing out as Florence did the problems they encounter) can help
finding ways on how we can solve the problems, and allow the board
members and officials to have enough time to do what they should be
doing (and for which I completely agree with you) then, I think that
we should try and do that.

Best,

Delphine

--
~notafish


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Resignation as CRO

body:
Tim -

I don't know what discussions the Board has had about the position. I
wasn't part of any closed meetings. In fact, the only closed meeting I
have ever participated in with me and the Board is the one where we
discussed my resignation.

I also had nothing to do with the idea of appointing official positions.
That idea had popped up already around the first Board election (mostly
promoted by Anthere). Even the idea of a Research position, among
others, was already floated in a proposal sent to the Board a few months
ago by some prominent Wikimedians, which also suggested other changes,
and was never published for reasons unknown to me.

By the time that proposal was made, I had indeed decided to run for
election. However, Jimmy made it clear that no Board Reform (e.g. more
open seats) was immediately forthcoming due to fears of hostile
takeover, and that the only change that would likely be made is the
appointment of official positions.

Jimmy had a very strong preference for seeing Anthere and Angela
continue their work as trustees, and he was prepared to publicly endorse
them if necessary. Several other prominent Wikimedians did endorse them.
This made me think about alternatives.

In mid-May, the idea of official positions was publicy debated, and
people were asked to submit proposals. I did so. The proposal was accepted.

There was no "grand strategy" on my part to "get" an official position
by "threatening" a board candidacy. Simply put, the way the cards played
out, I didn't think running for the Board would have been wise,

> So I'm not sure why Erik was surprised that he didn't have the full
> support of the Board, given that there was never a Board consensus.

As I said, I don't know what arguments were raised in the internal
discussions, but I do know that I was a bit surprised Jimmy was the one
announcing the appointments, so I specifically asked Anthere and Angela
whether they reflected the opinion of the board, or just that of Jimmy
Wales personally. Anthere's response was:

 > Yes, the appointments reflect an internal agreement of the board.
 > However, since it was highly official decision, we considered it
 > appropriate that Jimbo announced it,
 > which is his role as the president of Wikimedia Foundation.

 > As previously indicated, the board does not take decisions by vote,
 > but by consensus.
 > This means all positions given received opinions between strong
 > support to neutral opinion.

This was publicly posted on this list:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-May/003340.html

Have you read that e-mail? Or are you accusing Anthere of lying?

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Resignation as CRO


from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] Personal attacks and low EQs

body:
On 8/18/05, ANDREA MARTIN <escvelocity at email.wintu.edu> wrote:
>     Hi I was reading your post about personal attacks, to avoid personal attacks is just how it sounds. Avoid using the word "you". If someone wants to point something out as being hypocritical, they should use language such as that was a hypocritical statement, not you are a hypocrite. Calling someone a hypocrite implies they are a hypocrite in general, and not just being a hypocrite about a certain topic.
> ANDREA MARTIN

I agree but i don't remember the post to which you are referring
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: >>: Re: [Foundation-l] 300 Euro for excellent Articles: an experiment

body:
The money should definately go to Guaka .... that is if we have a say in
it .......

Waerth/Walter

>
>And, of course, the money should be sent to Guaka :)
>
>On 8/18/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I propose instead that we all pitch in to write an excellent article as
>>a gift for Fantasy's wife, and that he direct the money to Guaka to fund
>>the creation of 300 articles in Bambara Wikipedia.
>>
>>This seems very nice to me. :-)
>>
>>--Jimbo
>>
>>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Objectionable material

body:
On 8/18/05, Skyring <skyring at gmail
> I appreciate both positions, but in the meantime, we live in the real
> world where some parents and teachers and clergymen are going to apply
> pressure to stop their children or students or congregations from
> using an online encyclopedia that contains material that they consider
> objectionable, regardless of how sensitively it is presented or how
> much we might wish for there to be no censorship at all.

Yes

>
> These sort of people tend to be firm in their convictions and vocal in
> presenting their opinions,

Yes

> and if there is a picture of autofellatio
> or a gigantic anus in WP, then they will find it and use it against
> us.

Well they can try.

> I rather think that they will not be swayed by the arguments noted
> above.

Well you can't win 'em all.

> Just how tasteful and educational is a picture of a naked guy
> sucking himself? It's hardly Michaelangelo's David, is it?

It's not art though. It's educational in the sense that is shows what
autofellatio is in the same way as a photo of a microscope shows what
a microscope is. It doesn't harm anyone. it doesn't show something
will give people nightmares . It doesn't exploit anyone or show
someone being harmed and it doesn't depict an unsafe act. I wonder
what people's objection's to it might be (apart from it's yucky).

Theresa


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Resignation as CRO

body:
I wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>>Why did this breakdown happen? Due to conflicts of personality and
>>goals, and in my belief, due to the fact that I *do* operate openly,
>>document what I do, and enter discussions -- and when I enter
>>discussions, refuse to just accept that someone else is correct based on
>>their position in the food chain or the volume of their voice.
>
>
> You operate openly do you? Perhaps it's about time then that you told
> everyone about the deal you did to obtain this position.

Well, my understanding was that it was a deal anyway. Apparently that
may have been a misunderstanding on my part, so I'll just state the
facts as I know them with little interpretation.

Erik was preparing to stand for the Board, but said that he would be
happy with an official position instead. If he was given an official
position, he wouldn't stand.

This put the elected board members into an ethical dilemma, since it was
in their interests to see that Erik did not compete against them. For my
part, I said that I would be happy for Erik to have an official position
and thus be kept off the board, as long as he didn't consider himself to
have any special power over the core MediaWiki development team.

Anthere didn't cave in, and argued against it internally, despite the
fact that she was most likely to lose her position if Erik ran. If it
was taken to a board vote there would have been two in favour and one
abstention, but instead they decided that the positions would be
announced as a decision of Jimbo, rather than a decision of the Board.

So I'm not sure why Erik was surprised that he didn't have the full
support of the Board, given that there was never a Board consensus.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Resignation as CRO


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Resignation as CRO

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> Anthere:
>
>>Now that several people have expressed their feeling we are non
>>transparent, I would like that they go further than just stating a
>>situation, and make suggestions to improve.
>
> .....
>
>>Well, this is also one of our problems. We are also struggling with more
>>pressing issues. We would also benefit of help, because we also lack
>>wo-man power. And as you mention, taking care of communication could
>>also be a full-time job and aside from Jimbo, both Angela and I also
>>have one of those.
>
>
> First noone said the board is not working hard.
> I think we all know that and appreciate it.
>
>
>>Are you yourself ready to help distribute the information ?
>>How many times did you yourself copied an information mentionned on that
>
> list on your own village pump ?
>
>>How many times did you help translate the foundation website or the Quarto
>
> ?
>
>>How many times did you yourself provide us information that might be
>
> useful ?
>
> Please do not say that others can not comment unless they spent more time on
> the issue,
> they spent lots of time on other issues and still have an opinion about
> this.
>
> One of the virtues of a democracy is that everyone can participate in a
> discussion
> even when they are outsiders (or seen as such by the insiders), even when
> they are (perceived as) unreasonable or one-sided.
> I try to give reasonable, balanced comments and suggestions, so please do
> not tell me I am de facto an outsider on this issue.

Sorry to see you interpretated my words like this. I sure do not
consider you as an outsider. I do not see where I said that.
My current main problem is that I try to see why some people say
communication is failing, and to see how we can help fix that.
I am only touchy because I think this is an area where I tried to put a
lot of work in, and answer to my question "* exactly on which topic do
you feel you are not informed ? " with an answer such as Dan
"Everything" is definitly HARD to swallow.

To take a developer comparison, it is just as if you wrote code for a
full year and some one tell you absolutely 100% is to put in the bin.

Hard not to be touchy when reading that. So, sorry if I am a bit short.

> This whole discussion is not about blaming anyone.
> It discusses where improvements could be made.
>
>
>>Eactly on which topic do you feel you are not informed ?
>>Please cite some examples of issues where we have been failing ?
>
>
> Since you asked what could be more transparent, three examples:
>
> To keep close to the subject at hand: the way that new officers were
> appointed is a prime example,
> It came out of the blue. No discussion about definition of roles. I got very
> much the impression that officers were to define their own role.
> When Erik Moeller stated how he wanted to act, I did not see much response
> from the board or anyone else.
> Of course the whole community could have started to debate the new roles
> after people were appointed,
> that hardly happened either. It is a bit more difficult when people have
> been appointed already.

Very good point.

I try to give you my memories (on which Jimbo and Angela might not agree).

Mav was immediately appointed finance officer, because he wanted to take
care of that, is very trusted by the community and it was a good part of
his election agenda last year. I do not think we really made a "role"
description. He is taking care of budget, trying (with difficulty not
due to him) to follow expenses and taking care of fundraising. It is so
because he is willing.

Tim was made developer liaison... mostly because defacto he held that
role. He resigned at some point because he felt wikipedia was eating his
real life and needed to back up.

No real role has frankly been defined for Brion and Dammit. I guess it
just seemed natural to us, because they are both appreciated, non
controversial, good at their job and nice guys (though Brion does not
like kisses). I think their role should probably be more strictly
defined in the sense of them possibly having to communicate more; but
this is a personal feeling. I do not think I am informed enough in
computer issues to be able to judge myself how they could do things or
not better. Other developers or Jimbo (and you) could probably better
say. Neither of both ask for this position and neither wrote any
description of their role.

Erik wrote his role description and sent it to the board to comment.
I agree he did not really submitted that to the community review, and I
cant remember at which point it was exactly posted on meta (before or
after nomination ? I really do not remember).

Danny. Well, Danny's nomination has been pending all through last year.
I do not really know why. He being appointed was kinda obvious, since
grant making is part of his real life job and he is one of the most
interested by the topic. Would I have to cite another name, I would not
know which other, and Danny seems just the perfect role for the
coordinator. The last meeting with the chapters just show that exactly.
He is a good mixture of professionalism, friendliness, openness. Well.
Anyway, no role was frankly written, because in the whole past year, we
had no reason to say anything with regards to what he was already doing
:-) (though, admittedly, I complained a couple of time that he was
informing only Jimbo rather than the board, but well, no biggie). Should
the role be better defined ? Possibly.

Legal. Well, this role is still very much under work. There was no real
legal department, and it is obvious we  need to develop this part for
many reasons that I myself explained here (when we created the
juriwiki-l). This was all explained on meta. I guess Soufron's role is
none of "commanding" others, but more one of animation. I wish he be
more assertive in starting discussions and policies creation with
regards to logo use, trademarks and such, but at the same time, I see
all the time he is already giving to wikimedia, and I feel it is
justifiable he can't be everywhere himself :-)  Role description ? Well,
  yes, I guess I basically outlined it, but I was not very precise
because I wish things to evolve in a natural direction, without pushing
it in a specific way. So the role is quite fluttery.

Elian and press. This role was proposed by Jimbo, after discussion with
Elian (so I can guess, the role description was very much due to Elian).
It results from the observation of a fact : Jimbo having sometimes
troubles to handle all the press requests :-) Elian role was fully in
light during Wikimania, where she organised the press conference,
educated board members for their bad answers (me :-)), managed Jimbo's
agenda during 4 days etc... Additionnaly, she is trying to centralize,
organise and make more consistent press releases, press team and our
answers. Again, this came mostly from seeing a lack... and a wikipedian
offering an answer to us to help with this lack. A proactive approach.

Election officials. I asked on this very mailing list for candidates.
Candidates were free to candidate. They organised the elections and
translations pretty much the way they felt was the best. I think it was
very well organised. Probably better than what it would have been if we
had told them what to do.

Last, there is a discussion for a role of chapter coordinator. This
comes from an arising need, mentionned by a wikipedian. The role was
discussed at wikimania amongst board and chapter. It is currently
visible on meta; it was drafted by Delphine, with comments from I and
small modification from Angela. Delphine drafted it upon my request
after Wikimania and it is posted for open comment. It has not been yet
approved, pending board and chapter discussion.

> Secondly I already mentioned the current discussion about reforming the
> decision making process, which is taking place.
> Jimbo hinted to it when I met him in Amsterdam months ago and voiced similar
> concerns as I did now.
> I asked if Wikimania would be a good place to discuss this more openly and
> he agreed,
> but his answer on a question by Tim Starling was something close to "We are
> working on reform and you'll hear more in a few months time."

Yes.
Last time we discussed it was I think in may, mostly per private mail
and several other people (amongst which Elian, Delphine and Akl). At the
end of the discussion, we agreed that JImbo will set a short and general
draft (something like 15 lines) and post that for open discussion and
creation of the concept.
As of today, no draft has yet been posted. But I think what Jimbo is
referring to is that draft, to be hacked by you guys.

> Lastly in the beginning most board meetings were open, either for anyone to
> comment online, or to read the full proceedings later.
> Now most board meetings and even some wikis are closed and at best we get to
> hear the actual decision and a very concise rationale.
> I can understand that some issues deal with outside partners or specific
> persons in our community and are sensitive.
> Also meeting with 50 people talking at the same time on IRC is not
> productive.
> Why not publish most discussions verbatim with bits taken away that are
> sensitive and a short explanation of what has been left out.
> Is it that most meetings now deal with sensitive issues, and did not in the
> past?

I think you make a small mistake. No board meetings are less open than
the first ones. The truth is mostly "less board meeting" because it has
been VERY difficult to "have" board meeting in the past months. Motive :
Jimbo was very often travelling. Second motive : I need to sleep more
than before, so can't agree any more to very late meetings. For 3 months
this winter and three months this spring, I fell asleep every evening
around 8h30. Between Jimbo and I, meetings were hard to organise so most
discussions occurred by mail, or two by two on irc. We also increased
the number of semi-privte small groups on irc, due to an increasing
number of painful individuals on irc (note that developers did the
same). We also reduced discussions on foundation-l due to many trolling
topics. Unfortunate, but real.

This said, yes, many of the last meetings dealt with sensitive issues on
top.

The meeting tonight could possibly gather board + officers + three or
four chapters members.

I guess we could have the next one open to everyone.

> Anthere, you did not yet comment on a the lack of clear definition of roles,
> responsibilities and procedures for board and other officials.
> That was the major point I raised in my mail.

Is this enough to answer your questions or are they points left out you
would like to clarify ?

> And let me state once more, what actually should go without saying,
> that this is not a personal attack on you or Jimmy or anyone, as I think
> most highly of you all.

Thanks for saying this

> Small digression about working hard: since I am asked almost daily, mostly
> by mail: yes I am working on new wikistats.
> In a few weeks time, when I announce new stats, I'll explain why it took so
> long to update the scripts to mediawiki 1.5
>
> Erik Zachte

neat :-)
I was sorry I could not go to your presentations at Wikimania. 4 rooms
in parallele made that all not so easy.

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Resignation as CRO


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> When an article from the German Wikipedia is translated for
> money by a professional translator, in what way would this
> article be of less quality or of a lesser reputation than the
> orignial article in German?

I agree. On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.  And
when I translate an article, nobody knows if I'm paid or not.

> There have been organisations that threatened to come to
> Wikipedia in numbers.. This was met with efficient dispatch when
> they started to praise their wares or sing their message.

I predict that this is a passing phase.  There are now many
skilled wikipedians who know how to follow NPOV and all policies.
Some of these will be short on money and tempted to get hired by
public relations firms to place "messages" in Wikipedia.

For example, suppose that I were hired by the Swedish tourist
board to promote Sweden as an exotic tourist destination.  I would
spend time to update and improve articles on places and things
Swedish on the Swedish, Danish, English, and German Wikipedias.
I could then go on to write interesting background articles on the
German Wikipedia about the TV series Inga Lindstr?m.  In fact,
this activity would be impossible to distinguish from what I now
do without pay.  (I'm probably an idiot who does this without
compensation.)

The bias would be that I only write articles on Sweden and none
about Norway or other countries.  Nobody can blame me for that.

Traditional encyclopedias (supposedly) have editorial policies to
balance the coverage of different topics and countries, but that
is missing in Wikipedia (for a good reason: Wikipedia has no size
limit that requires such limitations).

> I do not think payed translations and payed content can be
> rejected by the community because there is nothing in our
> charter that says that good information cannot be payed for.

I agree.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: W. Guy Finley

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
On 8/18/05 8:58 AM, "Delphine M?nard" <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 8/18/05, W. Guy Finley <wgfinley at dynascope.com> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> I made reference to this before Anthere but let me put it bluntly - you have
>> some work to do on boardsmanship.  Chiding those you represent for not
>> having complete enough complaints is not going to endear you to any hearts
>> nor help anything.  The board's position is one of governance, it shouldn't
>> be making day to day decisions on things that need to be run, that's what
>> officers are for.  Those officers should have clearly defined job
>> responsibilities set by the board and if they aren't living up to them then
>> the board, as a board, should give them direction.  Individual board members
>> have NO power outside of their vote in a duly convened board meeting.
>
> Although I agree with you on the background of this all, I believe
> that  we as a community are not cutting board members enough slack as
> is, particularly to the ones who actually try and get some information
> out as elected representatives, Angela and Florence.
>
> This whole thread and the various ones going on on this list or on
> other lists make me think that we have reached a point where we are
> redifining, or rather *finally defining* what the board should do/not
> do, what officers are for/are not for, what local chapter can/cannot
> do, in short, what this organisation is all about.
>

I couldn't agree with you more Delphine, those are all legitimate points.  I
just consider it unfortunate that someone had to resign out of all this.  I
think there needs to be some effort put into the structure of the
organization, define what the roles are and then judge based on those
definitions.  It just seems to me that Erik Moeller wasn't given that
opportunity.  Granted, he resigned, but I fully understand his reasons.

--Guy (en user: Wgfinley)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

references:
<20050818001120.4EF9E1190A7C@zwinger.wikimedia.org>	<4303D9A6.10301@earthlink.net>
	<de1bap$en3$1@sea.gmane.org>	<cfe1dfe105081803054a2d25c7@mail.gmail.com>	<de1q8g$mft$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cfe1dfe1050818071744009c8c@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Dan Grey wrote:

> I'm not going to sit here and type out every last change that needs to
> be made on the WMF wiki, then wait for "approval". My time is more
> valuable than that. I'm simply saying this: there is a lot wrong with
> that site, and I know how to fix it. Let me.
>
> I have made 13,000 edits across two projects, and I'm an admin on
> both. I think that says you can trust me. And if you don't like the
> results - it's a wiki! Anything can be undone.
>
>
> Dan

Yo, send me your email adress (the one to use on the WMF wiki) to
Anthere9 AT yahoo.com and you'll get an account there.

ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>
>Your comments below have nothing to do with what you said earlier. I
>appreciate the value of translation, and actually worked as a professional
>translator for twenty years. This is not about translation. You suggested  companies
>pay the Foundation or (individuals) to translate articles about them.  Once
>money changes hands over content, the question becomes whether the  Foundation or
>the translator has a responsibility to ensure that the content is
>satisfactory to that client. The exchange of money can be viewed as a  contractual
>agreement of sorts. Assuming we do that, it is the corporation that  determines the
>content of the article, not the community. It is clear that this  is a
>violation of NPOV.
>
>In general, I am also opposed to people paying for articles. I think that
>this will be the first step toward a breakdown of a volunteer community. Imagine
> this scenario. If Danny is getting paid to translate or write articles,
>maybe I  should too. Maybe I wont even write an article until I get paid for it.
>
>In just four and a half years, we have been highly successful because we  are
>a volunteer organization devoted to creating free content--not a
>translator's bulletin board. What you and Gerard are proposing will harm the  volunteer
>spirit of the project by creating unnecessary hierarchies within it of  paid
>writers and volunteers. This is completely against everything we have  succeeded
>in doing so far.
>
>Danny
>
>
Hoi,
Your response proves that we do not talk about the same thing. Sabine
does not suggest that the WMF should pay for content. What she already
does is offer payment for particular articles that she is interested in.
Articles where it is important for her to have translations in languages
like Russian or Japanese or ... What she proposes is that outside of the
WMF she offers a service where this is organised; people or
organisations offer money or services for the translations of specific
articles.

If you are interested in translating an article for money than you can
but it will be only for the articles that a premium is offered for. In
this proposal there is no involvement of the WMF, it is something that
helps Sabine in her activities and it helps Free content as well. The
quality of the articles have to be good in order for it to make sense to
pay for but as far as anyone else is concerned this is something between
the person who wants a translation and a person who is able to provide a
translation.

Your assertion that this is about the WMF paying for content is wrong.
However, your assertion that we are doing a great job for all people on
this planet is very debatable. We have little or no content for many
languages and I would think it a fallacy to reject paying for content in
languages like Bambara or Ossetian out of hand just because we can get
content in languages like English, Dutch or Plattd??tsch. The defenition
of Wikipedia is: *"Wikipedia* is a project to build free encyclopedias
in all languages of the world based on a neutral point of view." On
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia it does not say that we will
always be a volunteer organisation. If anything, we are slowly getting
more professionals in to make sure that what we do will grow and
prosper. The discussion on paying for content has been going on for
quite some time. Many people are really happy that there is some
movement in getting content in languages like Bambara or Ossetian. In my
opinion, it makes more sense to spend money on Bambara than on
Plattd??tsch. Research on languages like Bambara are comparatively so
underfunded.

It is great to see what we have achieved but there is so much more that
we need to achieve to make our goals happen. It will take time effort
and also money before we can truly say that we provide Free information
to all the people of this world.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiProject Decency

body:
Could it be possible that Lir was gone enough to have developed a
completely different style before coming back as -Ril-? Who in there
right mind would pick a nick so similar to someone that's banned?

On 8/18/05, Geoff Burling <geoff at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Aug 2005, David Gerard wrote:
>
> > Geoff Burling (llywrch at agora.rdrop.com) [050818 20:35]:
> >
> > > Disclaimer: Yes, I have contributed material towards both. However, I
> > > learned of both by accident; there is no organized group out to get -Ril-,
> > > just an increasing number of people who have grown weary of him. And
> > > many of whom no longer care -- if they ever did -- that David has
> > > determined he is not a sockpuppet for Lir.
> >
> >
> > To be precise, I could see no evidence he was. I should add that -Ril-
> > doesn't edit anything like Lir IMO - I see no reason to assume -Ril- is
> > anything other than what he appears and claims to be, an ordinary
> > good-faith editor with a strong interest in ancient Egypt, who has
> > unfortunately been conflicting with quite a few people (whoever may be
> > considered to "blame" for this).
> >
> And for the record, from his style alone I never thought he was Lir.
> -Ril- has always demonstrated that he is informed or knowledgable -- but
> resolutely opinionated about the articles he contributes to.
>
> He has simply repeated this exoneration enough times -- & in at least
> one circumstance where it wasn't relevant -- that he is in danger of
> raising people's suspicions that he _might_ actually be Lir unless he
> stops. Or at least should someone mention it, limit his response
> to a terse reply like "That was proven false; look at my Talk page for
> the details."
>
> I didn't mean to cast doubt on David's abilities, & apologize if I
> gave that impression.
>
> Geoff
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Theo Clarke

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Objectionable material

body:
Hi Theresa

I feel enlarged by your constructive post but the real reason for this email is to thank you for my laughter at "apart from it's yucky".

Bless you!

Theo

>?It's not art though. It's educational in the sense that is shows
>?what
>?autofellatio is in the same way as a photo of a microscope shows
>?what
>?a microscope is. It doesn't harm anyone. it doesn't show something
>?will give people nightmares . It doesn't exploit anyone or show
>?someone being harmed and it doesn't depict an unsafe act. I wonder
>?what people's objection's to it might be (apart from it's yucky).


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Boris Lohnzweiger

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Poll so far

body:
Hi Mark!

My basic concern was that we should take a "step by step" approach here because the Sinitic issue is such a tricky one. The issue has revolved in circles for quite a while and so I'm happy we have reached a point where this poll can take place. The more languages we talk about the less unambiguous the result. Once Cantonese and Wu are launched one could start a new poll on further idioms.

Boris

wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org schrieb am 17.08.05 00:07:17:

You're quite right Boris what it says.

I'd forgotten.

But, I do not think we should ignore it if people vote explicitly for
the creation of further Sinitic Wikipedias, such as Hakka, Classical
Chinese, or even others which have not been contemplated much such as
Jin or Gan.

However, it certainly makes sense that unless people make it explicit
that they support or oppose more than just the exact proposal, we
should count them as supporting (or opposing) Cantonese [immediate]
and Wu [near future] only.

Cheers
Mark

On 16/08/05, Boris Lohnzweiger <BorisLohnzweiger at web.de> wrote:
>
> The poll is surely a step in the right direction but the voting itself really is a bit obsure. When I cast my vote - having read the instructions twice - I was pretty sure to ballot only on Cantonese (creation "right away") and Wu (creation "in the near future"). The way I got it the poll was not supposed to make a decision on any other Sinitic languages ("not exclude the possibility of Wikipedias in other Sinitic languages", i. e. a neutral attitude). Now, however, some users extend their vote to other languages. IMHO we should only count votes for Cantonese and Wu here.
>
> Boris
>
>
> wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org schrieb am 16.08.05 03:47:29:
>
> Hi all,
>
> The current results of the poll on Sinitic linguistic policy at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_for_Sinitic_linguistic_policy
> :
>
> 25 support - 6 oppose (overall)
>
> Some people expressed support or lack thereof for other
> Sinitic-language Wikipedias, mostly Wu, Hakka, and Classical Chinese.
>
> The voting instructions say that if you only want to support one of
> them, but not the others, you should note it with your vote.
>
> I don't know if people followed these instructions exactly, but if they did:
>
> One person explicitly supported Cantonese and Wu but didn't support
> Hakka, making the balance for Hakka:
>
> 24 support - 7 oppose.
>
> One person who voted in the "oppose" section, noted that although they
> are opposed to Wikipedias in Cantonese, Wu, and Hakka, they support a
> Wikipedia in Classical Chinese.
>
> I would like to close with a quote from that page from Jogloran, which
> to me indicates the true nessecity for these Wikipedias:
>
> "And one more thing. My mother tongue is Cantonese, not Mandarin, not
> 'Chinese', but specifically Cantonese. When I read through the sample
> articles in Cantonese linked above, I was struck by how much clearer
> it was to my mind. When I read a text written in standard language, it
> takes a little longer for the exact meaning to become apparent."
>
> Cheers
> Mark
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
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from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [Foundation-l] Information flow

body:
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Puddl Duk wrote:

> Well, let's start with the non-public mailing lists. I'm aware of the leagal
> one. What other non-public mailing lists are there[?]

In the interests of openness and transparency, although I'm not really
sure it quite applies in this context, I hereby note that there is a
private mailing list for the Arbitration Committee of the English
Wikipedia, and has been for over 20 months now. The members of this are
the Arbitrators as well as Jimbo and a few former Arbitrators who
continue to give their insight. The need for the list's private status
is, I would think, self-evident, and it gets referred to every now and
then by people on, say, wikien-l, so it's existance is obviously
somewhat well-known.

Yours,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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subject: [Foundation-l] Information flow