references:
<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKOEGEIKAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<44DBFB21.9050609@pobox.com>
	<f1c3529e0608110152t78a10babpde43b8fe8443bd27@mail.gmail.com>
	<44DCA33F.40906@pobox.com>

body:
On 8/11/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> We should have a FAQ for this. :)
>
> /me digs up an old response
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-November/032619.html

Ok, that actually makes sense. Summarising: You have two options. Either:

a) It hard redirects you, and there's absolutely no link back to where
you came from. Very bad for maintenance, working on the redirect
itself etc.
b) It redirects you, but leaves the link back to the original
redirecting page. But the only way to make that work is to have a
parameter on the URL, like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W_Bush&redirectedfrom=George_Walker_Bush,
which totally kills the point of the whole exercise (having a clean
URL).

The one suggestion I might make would be adding a *forward* link as
well as a backward link. So, when you get soft-redirected like that,
you would end up with a link to the actual page (without the backwards
redirect. Maybe that's what I'm missing. It'd just be convenient if
there was a way to get to the actual page, in order to bookmark it or
copy the URL or something. Currently I end up copy-pasting the title
into the navigation box.

Steve


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Break out links-How are they done?

body:
On 8/11/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> One of the fundamental original principles of the web was that
> links were cheap and could take you anywhere.  People understood

Yeah, back in 1984 or whatever. Things changed a lot. I notice that
now we have very different styles of link behaviour, and what you
expect from a link changes a lot. On a blog, I expect every second
word to be randomly linked to some random site. On a corporate site, I
expect 95%+ of links to be internal. It's gotten pretty much to the
stage that unannounced external links are surprising to me.

> this, and in fact they thought nothing of it, because what we now
> call "external links" were essentially the norm.  The concept of
> an integrated web "site" that you either wandered around within,
> or made some kind of a conscious decision to "break out" of,
> hadn't been developed yet.

Websites were also small then. They didn't have a lot of content of
their own. They certainly didn't have a behemoth the size of
Wikipedia.

>
> The related notions of
>
>         * I must control my user and not let him leave My Domain.
>
>         * It is easy for someone new to computers to head to a.
>           new link and forget what they originally were looking for.
>           Then they leave our wiki.
>
>         * When I send someone to an external link, I am not
>           responsible for the content of that external site.
>           Sometimes newbies may think that I created the external
>           pages, too.
>
> are all comparatively recent, and although mechanisms like

I'm dying to see the word "newfangled" in this discussion somewhere...

> (On the other hand, though, I have to confess that a well-chosen
> target=new can be really handy sometimes, when a page designer
> "got it right" in terms of using it just where I would have
> wanted a new window anyway...)

It may just be the way I browse the web, but I don't have any gripes.
I tend to open *every* link in a new tab, so it doesn't make much
difference whether they were planning for a new window or not.

Steve


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

references:
<ebfkoi$bup$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ebflq6$fkg$1@sea.gmane.org>	<71cd4dd90608101016y80834albe8cb906c2bc5c@mail.gmail.com>	<453b6e50608101058p518c54dcg1a84b8efa8615c33@mail.gmail.com>
	<71cd4dd90608101157n5465cf51n7e5886e07cda7cb@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Anthony wrote:
> On 8/10/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I sincerely hope that the international and cross project community
>>will get organized and vote on this election, so as to balance the
>>natural weight of the English Wikipedia and make sure that the person
>>elected on the board has the skills necessary to the position.Whether
>>they are or not from the English Wikipedia is indeed, irrelevant.
>>
>
> If it's irrelevant, then why is it being brought up?
>
> With only one seat up for grabs, I don't really think it matters what
> project the board member winds up spending most of his or her time on.
>
> As for whether or not they speak English, I frankly don't think it's
> possible for someone who doesn't read and write English well to be an
> effective board member - unless maybe they have the money to hire
> their own personal translator.
>
> Anthony

I agree the future board member must be able to speak english. That's an
obvious requirement.

By the point of my initial comment (But for Arno, absolutely all
discussion pages for board candidacies on the english wikipedia) is

... we have meta, as the central place to meet together. Once a
candidate publish his discussion page on a specific project, it somehow
reduce the number of questions given by participants from other
projects. It also reduces readability greatly, when the page mentionned
in the talk page of the user, where a multiplicity of questions,
relevant or not relevant to the elections also stand. It also prevents
translation. And finally, it raises the question of whether the
candidate even know what meta is.

ant


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


list: commons-l

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Commons-l] Deletion of still-used images

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> On 11/08/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> As for checking usage, in obvious
>> copyvio cases, it's a nice thing to do, but IMHO not the admin's
>> responsibility -- someone will remove the red link soon enough.
>
> There is some vehement disagreement on this point, though. It does not
> seem like something that should be left to the whim of the
> administrator, to me.
>

What we really need are links on local projects to the deletion log on
Commons for the "no such image" pages... there's nothing like a redlink
to make people ask "Whoa! What happened to that image?", but unless they
can find a reason (cf. the deletion record on Commons saying that
something was a copyvio) they're going to get angry.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws

body:
It seems that amongst the most important and urgent issues we have to
fix, are.... the bylaws.

And after thinking deeply about it, I have decided that
* I would like the feedback of the legal-able on the current version.
* I would like the feedback of the community on the whole "membership"
issue.

'cause right now, the "membership" issue is in limbo. And being in
limbo, the new bylaws can't be approved.

If you guys could come up with a
* decent
* reasonable
* legally feasible
* technically implementable

solution...

That would be really cool.

Please try to not troll. This is serious business. But for the legal
able, please avoid editing the live version, but rather edit the
discussion page. Be practical (submit a solution rather than just
complain or grumble).

Of course, current candidates are *more* than welcome to have an opinion
on this.

It is here ------> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws_update


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Fri, Aug 11, 2006 at 11:29:20PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/11/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > That one's a slightly bigger issue, but only slightly.  I liken it to
> > people having to understand how roads and signs work to be able to
> > drive.  Why we enable such people who proudly decline to learn how to
> > use their tools completely eludes me.
>
> I get the impression that to you, many things are "tools", that to
> most people are just boring facts of life. Like traffic lights, income
> tax forms, cars and mail boxes, web browsers are to most people just a
> necessary evil in life, rather than some fascinating "tool" they're
> interested in spending time learning about it.

Didn't say it was fascinating.  Just that it's a tool, and if you want
to use it efficiently, you need to learn how.

> Get over yourself. A little bit. Please?

Sorry you consider that something I need to get over; I didn't realize
self-reliance was a bad thing now.

I'll leave you alone.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


list: wikien-l

from_name: maru dubshinki

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Wikipedia Empire Based on Open Source Worst
	Practices?"

body:
On 8/11/06, Gareth Hughes ([[User:Garzo]]) <garzohugo+wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are a few good points in the blog (let's not call it an essay!).
> I particularly like the description of Wikipedia as a 'semi-anarchic
> feudal state'. Perhaps we should put that on a banner somewhere ? your
> fiefdom or mine? The comparison of Wikipedia with Linux distributions
> is a bit misplaced. The main objection to this approach is that,
> simply put, they are very different beasties. One has to do with facts
> and information, the other has to do with software programmes. How
> would we modularise the article on [[cactus]]? Extracting anything
> more useful from this is dasht difficult.
>
> ? Gareth Hughes ([[User:Garzo]])

True, his general idea of Wikipedia as a semi-anarchic feudalism
certainly is one of the better descriptions I've seen, but his whole
article squatters thing is misguided. Yeah, most articles have a
quasi-expert or interested-lay person interested in them who maintains
them - but I strongly dispute the idea that  they are as bad as he
thinks they are:
"Article squatters are the feudal lords of Wikipedia and the only way
to displace someone is to spend a great deal of time fighting with
them, possibly escalating through the central authority. No doubt
there exist article squatters who make it there mission to work with
others to improve content but, in my samples, the trend is more
towards censorship."

I mean, he's arguing that we should move closer to open source
practices, and what is an "Article squatter" (note the inaccuracy of
the derogatory term 'squatter') but a really *weak* form of a
program's (or package's) maintainer? Article squatters can't revoke
the edit bit like all program maintainers generally can, for example,
or change a program's license, or the website in general and so on and
so forth.

~maru


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Anthere wrote:

>daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>
>>I am confused by this thread. It is starting with false assumptions (Board
>>members are required to spend their own money for things)
>>
>>
>Sorry Danny, but it is not a false assumption.
>
In that case there appears to be a difference between theory and
practice.  Some of us who believe strongly in the principles of
volunteerism will judge ourselves too harshly when there is an issue of
fair compensation for what we do.  We can set standards that are
impossibly high, and feel stressed when others do not hold themselves to
the same standards.

>I am currently required to spend my own money to go and give speeches.
>This has been the case for over 2 years now. Until last december, I had
>a job and it was not an issue to use my own savings. It has become an
>issue. And yes, Jimbo took it lightly during the board panel when I
>stupidely commented the issue. And yes, Andrew made fun of it saying
>that Thomas was taking care of by yourself during Wikimania in any
>cases. And yes, I felt humiliated. And yes, it is getting up to my
>throat right now. Badly. Everyday a little bit more. Each time I have to
>find a different way to organise myself to limit costs as much as I can,
>and each time it takes hours to find the best solution. Usually illegal,
>as legal is too expensive. And each time my husband talks to me angrily
>because my poorly built-up solutions impair his own working time. And
>each time I cut on something I could have offered to my own kids. And
>each time I am more angry.
>
I hope somebody got a photo of Thomas and the gorilla. :-)

You are a key person in the running of a billion-dollar global
enterprise!  Accept what you are worth.  Under these circumstances the
virtue of frugality can become counterproductive.  Accept the proper
reimbursements, because putting yourself or your family at a
disadvantage does no good to anyone.  If those little bits of stress
build up to where we you give up we would all lose.

>So rrrrright, so much for the false assumptions. The expenses of Board
>members relating to Foundation work are not entirely covered by the
>Foundation. That's not a false assumption. That's a fact.
>
Are you submitting all of your expenses?

>This said, Michael wrote yesterday that I should ask for my child care
>costs to be covered. Does that need a resolution ?
>
By itself the $285 that you mentioned at the panel would not normally
need a resolution, but this really depends on what general policy
resolution the Board has passed on the matter of reimbursements.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
> I am confused by this thread. It is starting with false assumptions (Board
> members are required to spend their own money for things)

?

Sorry Danny, but it is not a false assumption.
I am currently required to spend my own money to go and give speeches.
This has been the case for over 2 years now. Until last december, I had
a job and it was not an issue to use my own savings. It has become an
issue. And yes, Jimbo took it lightly during the board panel when I
stupidely commented the issue. And yes, Andrew made fun of it saying
that Thomas was taking care of by yourself during Wikimania in any
cases. And yes, I felt humiliated. And yes, it is getting up to my
throat right now. Badly. Everyday a little bit more. Each time I have to
find a different way to organise myself to limit costs as much as I can,
and each time it takes hours to find the best solution. Usually illegal,
as legal is too expensive. And each time my husband talks to me angrily
because my poorly built-up solutions impair his own working time. And
each time I cut on something I could have offered to my own kids. And
each time I am more angry.

So rrrrright, so much for the false assumptions. The expenses of Board
members relating to Foundation work are not entirely covered by the
Foundation. That's not a false assumption. That's a fact.

This said, Michael wrote yesterday that I should ask for my child care
costs to be covered. Does that need a resolution ?

Ant

and builds on that to
>  create further false assumptions (we have enough dot com millionaires on the
>  Board).
>
> To the best of my knowledge:
> 1. The expenses of Board members relating to Foundation work are covered by
> the Foundation. They do not come from the individual Board members' "personal
> savings."
> 2. We currently have no dot com millionaires on the Board.
> 3. Paying Board members for Board-related activities can be perceived  as a
> potential conflict of interests.
> 4. In many non-profit organizations in the US--but not the WMF--Board
> membership is actually contingent upon making a significant donation to the
> organization.
>
> Please get the facts right when complaining about the Board and its  members.
>
> Danny
>
>
> In a message dated 8/11/2006 1:25:49 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> erikzachte at infodisiac.com writes:
>
> Walter  van Kalken:
>
>>I personally feel that one of the big issues is that  people are required
>>to spend their own money for things. This means  that if you life outside
>>of the US, even outside of Florida that your  costs will be prohibitively
>>high. I personally find that one of the  most prohibitive requirements.
>>Many people whom would have the time  and the enthousiasm do not have a
>>bankaccount for that. And that is  one of the reasons I have a lot of
>>respect for Angela and Anthere.  They are willing to spend their personal
>>savings for the betterment of  the projects. People should realize that
>>the next time they start  complaining with them.
>
>
> I concur with this entirely. We have enough dot  com millionaires on the
> Board, and the Advisory Board might add  some.
> This is not personal to anyone, those concerned probably just got  their
> priorities right.
>
> What 'saddens' me however is the way Anthere  was treated during the Board
> session last Sunday when the issue of paying  board members was brought up.
> Jimbo made a casual remark to the effect of  "(I'm not sure) we want to pay
> board members, besides it is not allowed by  the bylaws" (paraphrasing here).
> Easy to say in his position. Then someone  made a witty but badly timed joke
> about the situation, the chairman of the  Board might have intervened at that
> moment. I feel it was humiliating for  Anthere. Maybe the bylaws allow other
> board members than Jimmy to accept  well paid invitations for keynote
> speeches?
>
> Erik  Zachte


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


body:
Samuli Lintula wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Aug 2006 13:04:00 +0300, Alphax (Wikipedia email)
> <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> What we really need are links on local projects to the deletion log on
>> Commons for the "no such image" pages... there's nothing like a redlink
>> to make people ask "Whoa! What happened to that image?", but unless they
>> can find a reason (cf. the deletion record on Commons saying that
>> something was a copyvio) they're going to get angry.
>
> The red link behaviour is quote awful in my opinion, too. I'd like to
> mention, just in case, that CommonsTicker also tells a reason why an image
> was deleted. So it's always a good idea to tell the reason when deleting
> as file.
>

We're supposed to be doing that already.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

references:
<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNKEKLDCAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>
	<44DCEBD5.7010509@telus.net>
	<49435.80.195.239.72.1155330212.squirrel@webmail5.pair.com>
	<ebj8c4$8fu$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
There could be partial reimbursements for cases like these.

On 8/11/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Alison Wheeler wrote:
> > On Fri, August 11, 2006 21:43, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >
> >>There is a clear distinction between paying a salary to a board member,
> >>and reimbursing him for out-of-pocket expenses.  The specific quote from
> >>Jimbo is "I have no interest in being paid."  I would not extrapolate
> >>from that comment an inference that no-one should be paid.  On the other
> >>hand paying the airfare for key people to travel halfway around the
> >>world is perfectly acceptable.
> >
> >
> > There is a test in the UK that the Inland Revenue (Taxation) use, which
> > basically tests an expenses payment as (I paraphrase) "was this cost
> > incurred wholly and directly as a result of an activity required by
> virtue
> > of the employment". This principle can be easily and clearly applied to
> > consideration of personal expenses in our situation; any costs in excess
> > of what the individual would have spent if they had not been carrying
> out
> > an activity on behalf od the Foundation is clearly covered.
> >
> > Conversely, I would *totally* disagree with
> >
> >>If someone wants to generously pay a board member to give a keynote
> >>speech that board member is entitled to keep it.  This is not a matter
> >>for our by-laws.
> >
> > If someone is given a speech *because* they are from the WMF and
> > *representing* the WMF at that presentation, then any fees received are
> > the 'income' of the WMF. Obviously, the costs involved with attending
> the
> > location to give that speech (which might include travel, hotel, etc)
> > would be payable by the WMF. One can't have it both ways (ie get a fee
> > *and* claim expenses)
> >
> > Alison Wheeler
>
> Yes
>
> BUT.
>
> The drawline is "being from the WMF" and "representing the WMF"
>
> It is somehow difficult to define when someone is giving speech because
> he is from the WMF and representing the WMF, when this person may also
> be giving the speech as the representant of another organisation (such
> as Wikia for example), or when this person may also be invited to give a
> speech just due to him being famous and having a good vision interesting
> people.
>
>
> If WMF, then WMF should pay the costs and receive the fee.
> If Wikia, then Wikia should pay the costs and receive the fee possibly.
> If "self", then speaker should pay the costs and speaker gets the fee.
>
> Sometimes, it is really hard to know.
>
> ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
> Danny:
>
>>In many non-profit organizations in the US--but not the WMF--Board
>
> membership is actually contingent upon making a significant donation to the
> organization.
>
> One of the reasons I have my reservations about the US leading the world by
> example is how they often seem to fail to separate money and politics.
> Should I comment on how a US presidential candidate also has little change
> to serve his country if not backed up by millions of dollars to get his
> message across? The world can learn a lot from some of their core values,
> but they could learn from those of others. The notion that people would have
> to buy into non-profits is pretty detrimental and extreme to me. I would
> expect rich people who give a generous donation to be honoured for it. I
> would not expect in most cases they are the experts per se on how to spend
> it well for the cause at hand.

We may well meet a big cultural difference between usa and europe here :-)
It seems to be indeed frequent that in the usa, someone giving a big lot
of money to an organisation, is offered to have an eye and hand on how
it is spent, through the seat in the organisation board. Jimbo several
times mentionned that.

What would we do if B. Gates Foundation gave us 1 000 000 dollars ?

(that's a serious question)

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


subject: [WikiEN-l] Are TV screencaps reputable sources?

body:
Joe Anderson wrote:
> Cool Cat recently created an article called Starfleet
> Uniforms<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfleet_Uniforms>,
> and it was nominated for deletion as cruft and OR.
>
> The screencaps/promo photos in the article, IMO, acted as a reputable
> source. I mean, how else (canonically) are you going to know about the
> uniform switch between TOS and TNG? Using a book is not canonical, and
> therefore is surely not [[WP:V]].
>

There are such things as Star Trek encyclopediae, which report canon and
real life (and probably not fanfic/other non-canon).

While the TV shows are canonical (as are the movies (except where
continuity fails, cf. /Enterprise/)), using a screencap is close to
original research and on dangerous ground wrt. using "fair use" as an
excuse for copyright infringement.

> As for fancruft, how is an article about Starfleet uniforms fancruft. In
> some people's opinion, any article to do with any fictional is fancruft. But
> is the article on Jean-Luc Picard fancruft? I think not.
>

:)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 11/08/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What we really need are links on local projects to the deletion log on
> Commons for the "no such image" pages... there's nothing like a redlink
> to make people ask "Whoa! What happened to that image?", but unless they
> can find a reason (cf. the deletion record on Commons saying that
> something was a copyvio) they're going to get angry.

I just had this brainwave myself, a week ago. See [[Bugzilla:6909]]:
Link to deletion logs, etc. on Special:Upload if the file once
existed.

Brianna


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

references:
<44DC5C85.7030405@wikia.com>	<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNKEKPDCAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>
	<44DCD134.5030800@yahoo.com>

body:
Anthere wrote:

>>Danny:
>>
>>
>>
>>>In many non-profit organizations in the US--but not the WMF--Board
>>>
>>>
>>membership is actually contingent upon making a significant donation to the
>>organization.
>>
>>One of the reasons I have my reservations about the US leading the world by
>>example is how they often seem to fail to separate money and politics.
>>Should I comment on how a US presidential candidate also has little change
>>to serve his country if not backed up by millions of dollars to get his
>>message across? The world can learn a lot from some of their core values,
>>but they could learn from those of others. The notion that people would have
>>to buy into non-profits is pretty detrimental and extreme to me. I would
>>expect rich people who give a generous donation to be honoured for it. I
>>would not expect in most cases they are the experts per se on how to spend
>>it well for the cause at hand.
>>
>>
>We may well meet a big cultural difference between usa and europe here :-)
>It seems to be indeed frequent that in the usa, someone giving a big lot
>of money to an organisation, is offered to have an eye and hand on how
>it is spent, through the seat in the organisation board. Jimbo several
>times mentionned that.
>
>What would we do if B. Gates Foundation gave us 1 000 000 dollars ?
>
>(that's a serious question)
>
First, say, "Thank you."
Second, tell him that Wikipedia is not for sale.

One of our speakers mentioned several volunteer projects that ended up
absorbed by a for-profit company.  IMDB by Amazon, etc.  My greatest
anxiety about the project is that the many hours of dedication and
effort put in by thousands of volunteers would in the end serve only to
enrich a little corner of corporate America.  Of the present Board
members I see you as the one most likely to have the courage to stand up
against such temptation.  In my view the primary responsibility of the
Board should be to insure not only that it won't happen, but that it
can't happen.

The idea of an advisory board is good.  The members of that board will
need to keep in mind that they only act in an advisory role without any
direct decision making powers.  Their advice will not be binding, but if
that advice is too frequently at odds with our principles then maybe we
have the wrong people appointed to that board.

The Board needs to get its operational house in order.  Much of what we
are doing, and many of our most profound goals bring us into a broad
uncharted sea with many legal and other uncertainties.  We won't be able
to cope with that if we don't have clearly established decision making
processes.  If our representatives make deals they need to feel
confident that their decisions are fully consistent with the principles
and policies that the Board has adopted.  They should never be put in a
position where when they report to the Board they must face the doubts
and hesitancy of a Board that is afraid to think big, or is unable to
evaluate the importance of an issue.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


from_name: Julien Lemoine

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Hello,

    I transformed the TcpQuery to send output in json (without the url)
and I added Nick Jenkins great autocomplete feature.
Results for english and french are available at
http://suggest.speedblue.org/ (includes the heuristic to choose the
correct redirection and the handle of articles with different
capitalization).

    The format of fsa.bin and articles.bin is now a little bit
different, so you need to redownload them from :
English :
http://www2.speedblue.org/download/WikipediaSuggestCompiledEN.tar.bz2
French :
http://www2.speedblue.org/download/WikipediaSuggestCompiledFR.tar.bz2

    The latest version of the sources with all these modifications is
available at :
http://suggest.speedblue.org/tgz/wikipedia-suggest-0.31.tar.gz

I hope you will enjoy all these modifications and I am open to any kind
of suggestion/modification.

I have done some benchmark of TcpQuery with MemoryQuery backend and 5
threads on my computer (Pentium D930). I used 10 threads to simulate
queries. I handled 154000 random queries in 24.7 seconds with CPU usage
of 100% (about 6234 queries per second).

I plan to wrote an analyzer more dedicated to Wikipedia, but I do not
know now to get titles/redirections/links for the moment.
Do you know how to get the target of redirections in the sql database ?
Do you think taking pages-articles.xml.bz2 and update index  every month
is acceptable ?

Best Regards.
Julien Lemoine

Nick Jenkins wrote:
>> But the url need to be
>> added since it is different of the title
>>
>
> Yep, but you can work out the url from the title:
> ------------------------------
> function titleToUrl(title) {
>   var chr, url = "";
>   for (var i=0; i<title.length; i++) {
>      chr = title.charCodeAt(i);
>      url += (chr == 32 ? "_" : escape(String.fromCharCode(chr)));
>   }
>   return url;
> }
>
> // quick test:
> var test_data = ["Roman Catholic Church", "cat (disambig)", "\"!@$^&*))(_--{}"];
> for (var i=0; i<test_data.length; i++) {
>    document.write(test_data[i] + " equals: " + titleToUrl(test_data[i]) + "
\n");
> }
> ------------------------------
>
> Output is:
> ------------------------------
> Roman Catholic Church equals: Roman_Catholic_Church

> cat (disambig) equals: cat_%28disambig%29

> "!@$^&*))(_--{} equals: %22%21@%24%5E%26*%29%29%28_--%7B%7D

> ------------------------------
> (which seems identical to what the Wikipedia gives too).
>
> Don't have to do it this way though, and if you'd prefer to do it on the server side, then do that.
>
> I just thought that transmitting less data and potentially storing less data might help.
>
>
>> Did you used json in EMCAsript/javascript ?
>>
>
> Nah, I just make this stuff up as I go along. ;-)
>
> Should work fine though:
> ------------------------------
> var json_data = eval("[\"cat\",[\"Catholics\", 7505, \"Roman Catholic Church\"],[\"Catholic Archibishop\", 4484,
> \"Bishop\"],[\"Catholic\", 4200, ],[\"Catholic\", 3269, ][\"CATV\", 2347, \"Cable television\"],[\"Catalogue astrographique\", 2095,
> \"Star catalogue\"],[\"Catholic Encyclopedia\", 1956, ],[\"Catalonia\", 1740, ],[\"Cattle\", 1604, ],[\"Catholicism\", 1527, ]]");
> alert("length: " + json_data.length + " data: " + json_data);
> ------------------------------
>
> I.e. you may have to get rid of the newlines in the data stream.
>
> All the best,
> Nick.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: ATR

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
 --- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>  wrote:

 <...snip...>

>>--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> So rrrrright, so much for the false assumptions. The expenses of Board
>> members relating to Foundation work are not entirely covered by the
>> Foundation. That's not a false assumption. That's a fact.

>As far as I know (and I should know a thing or two about this), being
>reimbursed for Wikimedia-related expenses is just a matter of requesting
>reimbursement and providing the necessary documentation where needed.

>If you have been denied reimbursement for Wikimedia-related expenses after
>submitting a reimbursement form, then PLEASE tell me (for the form, see
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Reimbursement_request_form.xls ).

>Setting up an explicit per diem policy to cover food/lodging/transit would
>only make such requests easier (no need to get many small receipts).

>> This said, Michael wrote yesterday that I should ask for my child care
>> costs to be covered. Does that need a resolution ?

> It seems perfectly reasonable to be reimbursed for child care obtained to
> cover times you are traveling on Wikimedia-related business. I don't see
> why reimbursement of
> that expense would need a resolution.
>
>-- mav

<..snip..>

To quote from the IRS web site about Exempt Organizations (EO, WMF = EO):

"Many exempt organizations have officers who are volunteers and not paid for
their services.  These officers may receive reimbursement or an allowance
for out-of-pocket expenses.  For example, if an officer is required to
attend a convention representing the EO, the EO might pay for the trip.
Similarly, an EO may provide a monthly allowance to an officer for
automobile use."
 - http://www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=131083,00.html (accessed
today)

The basic rule for NPOs is that while someone is not compensated for serving
as a director/trustee on an NPO they can be compensated for being employed
by the NPO (subject to the rules on
Intermediate Sanctions).  And for all work of officers as volunteers, such
volunteers can receive reimbursement or an allowance for expenses that can
either be  "accountable" or "unaccountable".

The important issue is that it is allowable by the organization if the
organization wishes to make such compensation, it is not mandatory under
the law.

IRS publication P535 deals with business expenses, see Chapter 13
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p535.pdf , and strangely enough in this
context Wikimedia is considered to be no different than another business in
how travel, lodging and entertainment expenses are related to the
 "business" (in the US interstate commerce includes activities of charitable
organizations this is how WMF's TM can be registered as a "mark of
commerce")
of the Wikimedia Foundation.

It would seem that babysitting expenses incurred as a cost of Anthere
attending any activity as WMF volunteer board member are "out of pocket
expenses" that _may_ be reimbursed by WMF.

Perhaps the expense should be submitted to see if the executive staff pays
it
or asks for the board's approbation before payment is made. I don't think
every board member should be required to remember every board resolution,
usually it is the staff of an NPO that has the job of submitting payment
vouchers
and dealing with day-to-day bookeeping issues such as reimbursement of
trustee/officer meeting/travel related expenses/reimbursement.

Alex T. Roshuk
Lawyer/avocat (and former NPO Executive Director/coordinateur generale)


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Future avenues of garnering participation;
	or, How Wikipedia is currently a crappy/crack-tastic game

body:
(Warning: blue sky speculation and impratical idea-slinging follows)

So, I was watching a downloaded copy of an interesting talk sponsored
by Google (and available on Google Video, natch:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143&q=Human+Computation
 ) called "Human Computation". It was given by [[Luis von Ahn]], and
it was largely about his ideas on [[Human-based computation]], with a
lot of attention given to [[ESP Game]] and PeekaBoom.

ESP Game, to summarize, is a quest to label images on the Web by
making describing the image the product of a game in which two players
negotiate the description.

In his talk, I think he estimated that 5000 players could label every
image on the web in about 2 months.

Now, what struck me about this (aside from the ingenuity of figuring
out a way to put human cycles to work) was how currently *pointless*
this quest was.  So Luis now has a database with descriptions of a
portion of the web's images.  He can make an alright image search
engine. Maybe sell the data to Google who could obviously make use of
it. Image search might improve a few percent (let's be optimistic). He
even admitted as much in the questions section, that the loop isn't
closed, but that it's just an "engineering perspective" (should I make
a joke about academics here?).

The essential point is that this is an instance where the famous
"Read-only Web" or Web 1.0 is a serious barrier to actually using the
gathered info on a large scale, since you can't go in and add the
devised descriptions to those images lacking them (which is useful for
among other things, screen readers). The HTML and images are static.
You can't analyse the relevant object and improve it. The source is
closed.

But we here are fans of wikis, good ol' Web 2.0, the RW web.  Why not
apply these ideas to Wikipedia? Disambiguations are one possibility;
categorization is another; image tagging or pace ESP Game,
descriptions (I know we have to have a bunch of images on en or
Commons which need descriptions; even a few disjointed words are an
improvement on nothing).  It's too bad Luis probably wouldn't want to
use Commons instead of Google's image search, since he has everything
all set up already. I mean, already we've got plenty of bots and
rather complex software specialized for various obscure tasks. Why not
a game?

I mean, critics are always saying Wikipedia is a crappy text-based
MMORPG masquerading as an encyclopedia... why not prove them wrong and
show that Wikipedia is a mediocre text-based puzzle game masquerading
as an encyclopedia? :)

~maru


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Michael Davis wrote:

>
> This determination should be the responsibility of the communications
> committee.  Outside requests for a speaker to represent the foundation
> should be directed to them.  It's their job to review speaker requests
> and then identify the best candidate from the organization and
> community to represent the foundation.  We have a number of great
> people in the community who should be encourage to handle these
> speaking requests.  All reasonable expenses incurred by any speaker on
> behalf of the foundation will be reimbursed by the foundation through
> the communications committee's PR budget.  The communications
> committee has already started moving in this direction.  They're not
> 100% there yet but they are getting closer.
>
> Anthere is correct - if a speaker is representing WMF then WMF
> receives the fee.  The board should enact an ethics policy stating
> this principle.
>
> Michael

It would sure clarify all this banter to publish a policy for expense
report submission, mileage, hotel, cell phones, etc so the lines get
drawn.    This seems like business 101 stuff.   I guess the word
"reasonable" sums it up.

J


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


from_name: effe iets anders

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws

body:
Hi,

As I have very little legal expertise, I can only give my view on the
membership.
Having members will change the whole functioning of the Wikimedia
Foundation, would change it's nature. However it is very nice from the
democratic point of view, I don't know whether it is something that
would add a lot of value to the existing structure. At the moment we
have in fact a lot of unofficial members, the
Wikimediaprojects-community. They are allowed to vote on two members
of the board of the wikimedia Foundation, and when they give an
"advice", it is usual that the board listens to that. On the other
hand there is still an independant Board, which is in fact allowed to
make all decisions by itself.

When the membership of the Wikimedia Foundation would be introduced,
the board would have to be chosen by the members, and would have to
listen to it's desisions. Besides the problematic General Assamblee
every year (Wikimania?) and other problems because of the
worldwide-ness of the foundation, I think it is a hard question
whether the foundation would gain democratic values at all. Because
while in the current situation people don't have to join the
Foundation as a member, and don't have to pay money for it, in a
situation with members, only a very select group of users, probably
mostly the somehow richer people, will be able to have the overall
power in the Foundation. (However I don't doubt there are lots of
legal tricks to prevent "bad decisions" by the members) What is more
democratic: A foundation where a board rules with two *community*
representatives and a third who promises to vote with them if they
agree, or a board elected by a maybe more select group of members? I
am not sure, but I think this is the kind of questions whe should
think about. Maybe it is even more democratic to add one more
community representative when a non-representative member wouldstep
down (I understood at the end of this year that might happen anyway?),
or to expand the board, and add that way two more community
representatives, and gain a majority that way.

That of course all besides the question whether it is ok to have this
kind of an important foundation democratic in the idea of "can we
trust those people?".

Greetings, Lodewijk aka effe iets anders

2006/8/11, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>:
> It seems that amongst the most important and urgent issues we have to
> fix, are.... the bylaws.
>
> And after thinking deeply about it, I have decided that
> * I would like the feedback of the legal-able on the current version.
> * I would like the feedback of the community on the whole "membership"
> issue.
>
> 'cause right now, the "membership" issue is in limbo. And being in
> limbo, the new bylaws can't be approved.
>
> If you guys could come up with a
> * decent
> * reasonable
> * legally feasible
> * technically implementable
>
> solution...
>
> That would be really cool.
>
> Please try to not troll. This is serious business. But for the legal
> able, please avoid editing the live version, but rather edit the
> discussion page. Be practical (submit a solution rather than just
> complain or grumble).
>
> Of course, current candidates are *more* than welcome to have an opinion
> on this.
>
> It is here ------> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws_update
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
George Herbert wrote:

>On 8/11/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>What would we do if B. Gates Foundation gave us 1 000 000 dollars ?
>>
>>(that's a serious question)
>>
>>
>Not serious response: race to semi- or fully protect the Bill Gates
>Foundation and Bill Gates articles, before the vandals accusing them of
>trying to buy Wikipedia could hit?
>
This is a great example of the difference between WikiPedian and
WikiMedian thinking.

>Serious answer: I have been watching how Bill is donating money; he seems to
>be very selective and very engaged in the decision process of who to give
>money to, but conversely isn't (that I can recall) generally insisting on
>becoming engaged in the management of organizations he is funding.
>
That's a more likely scenario.  There's a physical limit to the number
of boards that the guy can sit on.

>That is not to minimize the question - if we generalize, if Joe Random
>Billionare comes to the WMF with a million dollar donation check and asks
>for a board seat in return, it's still a completely valid policy question.
>And could well be a realistic problem.
>
This is where the advisory board comes in.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Invited by admin to leave en if concerned about free
	reusability

body:
On 11/08/06, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:

>   It seems that I was recently invited by an admin to leave the en:wikipedia
> project...
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3ARequests_for_comment%2FKelly_Martin2&diff=68969013&oldid=68968296

Let's read and quote what it actually says there, shall we?

"If you're here to do other things than make the best possible free
encyclopedia, then -- to borrow a nauseatingly common theme from the
other side's advocates -- the door's right over there."

I think every word of that is the case and needs to be drummed into
people's heads, myself.

Note also it's an if-then. Your offence at the statement implies you
meet the condition, and hence are here for some other reason. Is that
what you meant?

- d.


from_name: Alison Wheeler

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
On Fri, August 11, 2006 19:01, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I think it is much worse in other countries.  I know that it is not
> possible to be both an employee and a
> board member at a UK charity,

Just to clarify, this isn't exactly accurate in the case of a UK
non-profit. If the Articles of Association and the Memorandum permit a
director to be paid for some services then they may be, though there are
limits to what may be covered.

In the case of the UK chapter, we have the Memorandum entry:
| ix. to employ and remunerate such staff as are necessary for carrying out
| the work of the Company. The Company may employ or remunerate a Director
| only to the extent it is permitted to do so by Clause 5 and provided it
| complies with the conditions in that Clause;

Clause 5 in this instance is rather long, so I won't copy it here (you can
read it at
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/5/5f/Wikimedia_UK_-_Memorandum_of_Association.pdf
)

In respect of Anthere's posting about the WMF bylaws I have felt for a
long time that they are need of serious revision, in part because of what
they do (did) say, in larger part because of what they don't. They cannot
be redraughted though without my knowing (a) what limitations Florida law
places on the amendment of the legal basis (ie bylaws) of a registered
organisation (I am aware that it varies by country whether you can 'delete
all and insert' or may only make 'minor' amendments) and (b) what
direction the (present/future) Board would wish to see the Foundation
targetted at.

Having drawn up the legal documents for a number of organisations over the
years, and with a level of knowledge and experience about multi-national
organisations and contracts, I would relish trying to put together a
replacement that would meet with general approval whilst permitting and
encouraging the operations of the Foundation to become more professional
in tone, as opposed to the infighting and 'falling about' that seems to be
the case of late.

Alison Wheeler


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

references:
<44DC5C85.7030405@wikia.com>	<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNKEKPDCAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>	<44DCD134.5030800@yahoo.com>	<38a7bf7c0608111207j5f37fd52h6847e3e2d87a196f@mail.gmail.com>	<44DCE1B4.5020101@wikia.com>
	<44DCE4DC.5070309@wikia.com>
	<38a7bf7c0608111333i2e002033sba9c53ad136c1736@mail.gmail.com>

body:
George Herbert wrote:

>If it really were Bill Gates and he really did demand a board seat, there
>are certainly a lot of people who would worry about his motives: though they
>could be benign, it would certainly be controversial.
>
>What if it was (purely random example) Elon Musk, though, and he just said
>that he wanted to make sure that the organization was being run well after
>he donated that much money?  What if it was Mitch Kapor, also saying that he
>just wanted to make sure it was spent well?  Or Sergei or Larry from Google?
>
I don't think that this speculation about various individuals gets us
anywhere.

>Part of the reason for large donators to want involvement is to get
>assurance as to the continuing management of the organization.  Which is
>legitimately a concern, not in particular to Wikimedia, but generally
>regarding nonprofits.  Some donations are structured as a committment over
>time, with the ability to back out of future donations if the organization
>fails to continue to perform well.
>
That's fair enough, but it doesn't require a Board seat.

>With others, the donator just prefers to
>have a board seat level of involvement.
>
To glorify his ego?

>Is it in the best interests of the Wikimedia foundation and the various
>subprojects that the policy now be that the board has to stay completely
>independent?
>
>Some benefactors have helped the management and productivity of nonprofits
>significantly, when they engaged and spent a lot of time helping with
>management and planning and such.  There is value beyond money (management
>skills, contacts and additional in-kind resource donations that they can
>generate, etc) in some of these people who might conceivably be interested.
>
There is some comfort  to being in a position where we can say "no" to
these offers when they have strings attached.

>I think it's worth thinking about and talking about.  It's hypothetical now,
>but if it stopped being hypothetical some day, making those decisions on the
>fly would probably be bad decisionmaking process.
>
Absolutely.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


from_name: John Lyden

body:
On 8/11/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> I mean, critics are always saying Wikipedia is a crappy text-based
> MMORPG masquerading as an encyclopedia... why not prove them wrong and
> show that Wikipedia is a mediocre text-based puzzle game masquerading
> as an encyclopedia? :)

You mean it's not?

I thought I just levelled up, too.

--
John Lyden - rasputinaxp at gmail.com
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to
live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same
time..." -Kerouac


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Alison Wheeler wrote:

>On Fri, August 11, 2006 21:43, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>Conversely, I would *totally* disagree with
>
>
>>If someone wants to generously pay a board member to give a keynote
>>speech that board member is entitled to keep it.  This is not a matter
>>for our by-laws.
>>
>>
>If someone is given a speech *because* they are from the WMF and
>*representing* the WMF at that presentation, then any fees received are
>the 'income' of the WMF. Obviously, the costs involved with attending the
>location to give that speech (which might include travel, hotel, etc)
>would be payable by the WMF. One can't have it both ways (ie get a fee
>*and* claim expenses)
>
This is as much a matter of who is paying for the expenses.  My comment
was rooted in the presumption that in such circumstances the host
organization was also paying the expenses in addition to the speaker's fee.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


body:
On 11/08/06, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:

> > Let's read and quote what it actually says there, shall we?
> > "If you're here to do other things than make the best possible free
> > encyclopedia, then -- to borrow a nauseatingly common theme from the
> > other side's advocates -- the door's right over there."

>   Free as in speech, or free as in beer?  Did you read the actual thread?

Free as in speech. What did you think it meant?

- d.


body:
On 11/08/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> Copyright law sometimes causes freely redistributable things all sorts of
> pain and suffering.  If you want to work to change the law, feel free,
> either through lobbying or court cases or whatnot.  Taking a too-free
> interpretation of existing copyright law right now, though, could easily get
> Wikipedia in a world of hurt.  There have been copyright cases with damages
> and legal fees which exceed the net value of WMF.

OTOH, that doesn't mean shy away from specious examples like the
National Portrait Gallery's specious legal threats.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
On Fri, August 11, 2006 21:43, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> There is a clear distinction between paying a salary to a board member,
> and reimbursing him for out-of-pocket expenses.  The specific quote from
> Jimbo is "I have no interest in being paid."  I would not extrapolate
> from that comment an inference that no-one should be paid.  On the other
> hand paying the airfare for key people to travel halfway around the
> world is perfectly acceptable.

There is a test in the UK that the Inland Revenue (Taxation) use, which
basically tests an expenses payment as (I paraphrase) "was this cost
incurred wholly and directly as a result of an activity required by virtue
of the employment". This principle can be easily and clearly applied to
consideration of personal expenses in our situation; any costs in excess
of what the individual would have spent if they had not been carrying out
an activity on behalf od the Foundation is clearly covered.

Conversely, I would *totally* disagree with
> If someone wants to generously pay a board member to give a keynote
> speech that board member is entitled to keep it.  This is not a matter
> for our by-laws.
If someone is given a speech *because* they are from the WMF and
*representing* the WMF at that presentation, then any fees received are
the 'income' of the WMF. Obviously, the costs involved with attending the
location to give that speech (which might include travel, hotel, etc)
would be payable by the WMF. One can't have it both ways (ie get a fee
*and* claim expenses)

Alison Wheeler


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


from_name: Filip Maljkovic

subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary

body:
I'm replying to myself now

Filip Maljkovic wrote:
> Kelly Martin wrote:
>> I have long been concerned about srwiki, ever since I had one of their
>> admins try to get me deadminned on English for refusing to support the
>> "consensus of admins on srwiki" with regard to a content issue on
>> enwiki.
> I wonder who that might be. Seriously, who was it?
I've just found out. It's Bormalagurski, the guy who did this whole
shenanigan (i.e. he was desysopped a couple of weeks ago and he's the
one who started this scandal at meta.) The guy is a notorious liar and
he's been scolded for representing the community all by himself in a
mischievous way. Anyway, we're about to block him indef. and he should
not be listened to. I mean, I don't want you to get the wrong impression
about our community. The guy is a nutjob and cannot represent a
community (just like any other person).

Filip


subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary


from_name: Michael Davis

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Alison Wheeler wrote:
>
>> On Fri, August 11, 2006 21:43, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>
>>> There is a clear distinction between paying a salary to a board member,
>>> and reimbursing him for out-of-pocket expenses.  The specific quote from
>>> Jimbo is "I have no interest in being paid."  I would not extrapolate
>>>
>> >from that comment an inference that no-one should be paid.  On the other
>>
>>> hand paying the airfare for key people to travel halfway around the
>>> world is perfectly acceptable.
>>>
>> There is a test in the UK that the Inland Revenue (Taxation) use, which
>> basically tests an expenses payment as (I paraphrase) "was this cost
>> incurred wholly and directly as a result of an activity required by virtue
>> of the employment". This principle can be easily and clearly applied to
>> consideration of personal expenses in our situation; any costs in excess
>> of what the individual would have spent if they had not been carrying out
>> an activity on behalf od the Foundation is clearly covered.
>>
>> Conversely, I would *totally* disagree with
>>
>>
>>> If someone wants to generously pay a board member to give a keynote
>>> speech that board member is entitled to keep it.  This is not a matter
>>> for our by-laws.
>>>
>> If someone is given a speech *because* they are from the WMF and
>> *representing* the WMF at that presentation, then any fees received are
>> the 'income' of the WMF. Obviously, the costs involved with attending the
>> location to give that speech (which might include travel, hotel, etc)
>> would be payable by the WMF. One can't have it both ways (ie get a fee
>> *and* claim expenses)
>>
>> Alison Wheeler
>>
>
> Yes
>
> BUT.
>
> The drawline is "being from the WMF" and "representing the WMF"
>
> It is somehow difficult to define when someone is giving speech because
> he is from the WMF and representing the WMF, when this person may also
> be giving the speech as the representant of another organisation (such
> as Wikia for example), or when this person may also be invited to give a
> speech just due to him being famous and having a good vision interesting
> people.
>
>
> If WMF, then WMF should pay the costs and receive the fee.
> If Wikia, then Wikia should pay the costs and receive the fee possibly.
> If "self", then speaker should pay the costs and speaker gets the fee.
>
> Sometimes, it is really hard to know.
>
> ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>

This determination should be the responsibility of the communications
committee.  Outside requests for a speaker to represent the foundation
should be directed to them.  It's their job to review speaker requests
and then identify the best candidate from the organization and community
to represent the foundation.  We have a number of great people in the
community who should be encourage to handle these speaking requests.
All reasonable expenses incurred by any speaker on behalf of the
foundation will be reimbursed by the foundation through the
communications committee's PR budget.  The communications committee has
already started moving in this direction.  They're not 100% there yet
but they are getting closer.

Anthere is correct - if a speaker is representing WMF then WMF receives
the fee.  The board should enact an ethics policy stating this principle.

Michael


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


subject:
[Foundation-l] Native Cherokee Language Translations Posted for
 enwiki-20060810 XML Dumps

body:
Native Cherokee Language XML Dumps have been posted to

ftp.wikigadugi.org/wiki/xml

phwiki-20060810-pages-articles.xml.bz2 - Cherokee Language XML Dump in
Text Phonetics
sylwiki-20060810-pages-articles.xml.bz2 - Cherokee Language XML Dump in
Sequoyah Syllabary

The Native Cherokee Language Project is a work in progress.

Jeff V. Merkey


body:
On 11/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Tisk tisk David, have you forgotten that context counts.
> I hope that this is just a case of you failing to read before running
> your mouth.

Whoops, looks like it was. My apologies to jkelly. I was wr- wr- that word.

- d.


from_name: Ligulem

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wysiwyg debate

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> In my experience wikitext markup isn't frightening to many people
> until you are faced with templates.... which are, unfortunately, the
> first bit of wikitext source that many editors see.

Until one of us if proven to be wrong, let me claim the opposite ;)

Looking at the plain table wiki-code is sure more frightening than the
clean abstraction presented by an infobox template call.

If you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash those
template parameters are much easier to understand than the table at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazleton_Mountaineers.

--Ligulem


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] MyWikiBiz

body:
On 8/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/9/06, Ed Sanders <ejsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> > His business model still works if the material he writes get used on
> > Wikipedia - the agreement just means now he won't upload it unless we
> > approve it first... as far as I understand it.
>
> I don't like this middle ground at all. We need to be firmly either
> *for* or *against* paid editing. If we equivocate as we currently do,
> then you'll have people figuring out which articles are coming through
> this process and AfDing them all "because Jimmy said it was a conflict
> of interest". Either welcome it or ban it - where the hell do we stand
> right now?

Why do we have to have a clear position? I much prefer a society
primarily made of equivocators than ideologues.

I don't see paid editing as necessarily sullying the editing in any way.

There's no need to be anti-capitalist.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] FYI/FYA: Wikipedia,
	proudly supporting the war on terrorism

body:
You're no fun at all.

On 8/10/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> NPOV is about the content of the article, not who is using it.
>
> On 8/10/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,20080119%5E15318%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html
> >
> > A DETECTIVE involved in the prosecution of 13 accused terrorists has
> > told a court he gleaned much of his knowledge of terrorism from the
> > internet and admits he's no expert on the subject.
> >
> > "The witness said he had used internet resources like Google and
> > Wikipedia to research terrorism and Muslim extremists."
> >
> >
> >
> > In order to maintain the NPOV, we certainly need an islamic terrorist
> > to testify that he used Wikipedia for his evil purposes, right?
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>Alison Wheeler wrote:
>
>
>
>>On Fri, August 11, 2006 21:43, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>Conversely, I would *totally* disagree with
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>If someone wants to generously pay a board member to give a keynote
>>>speech that board member is entitled to keep it.  This is not a matter
>>>for our by-laws.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>If someone is given a speech *because* they are from the WMF and
>>*representing* the WMF at that presentation, then any fees received are
>>the 'income' of the WMF. Obviously, the costs involved with attending the
>>location to give that speech (which might include travel, hotel, etc)
>>would be payable by the WMF. One can't have it both ways (ie get a fee
>>*and* claim expenses)
>>
>>
>>
>This is as much a matter of who is paying for the expenses.  My comment
>was rooted in the presumption that in such circumstances the host
>organization was also paying the expenses in addition to the speaker's fee.
>
>Ec
>
>
>
>
Man, there is a total disconnect on this whole thing with you folks.

WMF is a non-profit corporation. If you serve on the Board, you have a
Fudiciary Duty of Loyalty to the Foundation in exchange for being allowed
to use its goodwill and other consideration (go look that up on
Wikipedia). ALL of the money goes to them. You can submit expense reports
BASED ON APPROVED POLICIES by the mangement and Board. It's a
corporation, not a pirate ship where everyone gets to split up the booty.

Whatever consideration they offer (this is normally salary but can be
any good consideration, like using their good name, privileges, etc.)
creates
obligations under the LAW and you are required to honor their LEGAL
RIGHTS and protect them.

You guys need to get this part. You should ask for two things and only
those two things are something you are ENTITLED TO under the LAW
and they are OBLIGATED to provide.

1. Defining the consideration for your participation (at present this is
a board seat and offer to pay expenses and allow you to trade on their
goodwill as
a representative for promoting yourself as a member of their Board and
expenses).

2. Policy on expenses reimbursement.

That's it. Whatever else they are offering or providing is based on
their generosity and kindness (and all of the folks in WMF, from my
observation are kind and generous folks).

You guys need to stop viewing it like you get to stick your hands in the
foundations pockets and divert donations to yourselves. I am certain
there will
be a lot of fallout for representing them and opportunities to come to
whomever does this job, but you have to stand with your hat in your hand
and let them decide your value. All of this other talk about poaching
speakers fees would be breach of fiduciary duty -- not a great way to start
a business relationship that will build trust.

Anyway,

Love all of you,

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject:
[Wikitech-l] 404 on en.wikipedia.org: Server-side HTTP header
	instead of client-side meta-refresh?

references:
<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKOEGEIKAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<44DBFB21.9050609@pobox.com>
	<f1c3529e0608110152t78a10babpde43b8fe8443bd27@mail.gmail.com>
	<44DCA33F.40906@pobox.com>
	<f1c3529e0608111008i713ab8e0n99105ff93cbcf1e1@mail.gmail.com>
	<7c2a12e20608111154h61d9c063rc6fa0fbb89ce51c0@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 8/11/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> Click the "article" tab.

Ta.

Steve


body:
On 8/11/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> That one's a slightly bigger issue, but only slightly.  I liken it to
> people having to understand how roads and signs work to be able to
> drive.  Why we enable such people who proudly decline to learn how to
> use their tools completely eludes me.

I get the impression that to you, many things are "tools", that to
most people are just boring facts of life. Like traffic lights, income
tax forms, cars and mail boxes, web browsers are to most people just a
necessary evil in life, rather than some fascinating "tool" they're
interested in spending time learning about it.

Get over yourself. A little bit. Please?

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wysiwyg debate

body:
On 8/11/06, Ligulem <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:
> Looking at the plain table wiki-code is sure more frightening than the
> clean abstraction presented by an infobox template call.

>From the "don't scare the user" point of view, the best is a template
substition that hides *everything*, like if the first thing you see
is:

{{Paris infobox}}
'''Paris''' is a city in France that...

Of course, many purists hate this apparent abuse of one-use templates...

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] MyWikiBiz

body:
On 8/9/06, Ed Sanders <ejsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> His business model still works if the material he writes get used on
> Wikipedia - the agreement just means now he won't upload it unless we
> approve it first... as far as I understand it.

I don't like this middle ground at all. We need to be firmly either
*for* or *against* paid editing. If we equivocate as we currently do,
then you'll have people figuring out which articles are coming through
this process and AfDing them all "because Jimmy said it was a conflict
of interest". Either welcome it or ban it - where the hell do we stand
right now?

Steve


body:
On 8/11/06, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> ...over my apparantly too-conservative approach to unfree content or my
> understanding of Wikipedia as part of the free culture movement.  The comment
> was strangely phrased, because it ended with "If you're here to do other things
> than make the best possible free encyclopedia..." while the rest of it was
> railing against "some la-di-da free culture movement love-in", so I may be

The way I see this is, if your actions have an overall positive impact
on our mission of producing a high quality free encyclopaedia, then
your motivations aren't really relevant to anyone. You can be here as
part of a free culture movement, or you can be here as part of an
insidious plan to educate the world on the joys of stamp collecting,
but as long as your edits advance *our* goals, then who cares?

Also, some people are twats.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wysiwyg debate

body:
On 8/11/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think tables are just as bad as infoboxes, okay fine.. a concession:
> they are indeed worse. The point I was trying to make was more along
> the lines of "when someone wants to edit the intro and they get
> something which is not the intro it leads to confusion".

Yes. Footnotes sometimes have this effect too, as do excessive use of
arcane page layout formatting.

Steve


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Foundation-l]   board candidacies

body:
Ray Saintonge
> I can also look at the joke in the spirit in which it was
> intended, and not as a real criticism of anybody.  Anyone there who
> actually saw the tiny baby in the gentle hands of a gorilla would have
> laughed.

Yes, I agree now on the joke being innocent by itself and, as I said
earlier, witty.

But I can relate to the fact that when one has just explained a difficult
personal situation in front of a few hundred people and a camera or two,
by the way this was after Jimmy gave his initial response, and those people
have a good laugh and then switch topic, one might feel even more alone than
when no reaction is given at all.

I would not have thought of mentioning it when anyone (me including of
course) would have followed up with a serious comment.
It was the situation rather than the joke by itself that was somewhat
embarassing.

Erik Zachte


subject: [Foundation-l]   board candidacies


subject: [WikiEN-l] MyWikiBiz

body:
On 8/11/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Whats so hard about "we welcome text which is good, no matter who or
> how it was created and we reject or repair text which is bad."?

I thought that *was* our credo - presuming "good" rules out copyright
infringement. I would like to hear more of an explanation behind this
rejection of apparent "conflict of interest". There's got to be more
to this than that. I agree with Jimbo on almost everything he does, so
I'm hoping I will end up understanding where he's coming from in
acting so swiftly and so strongly in blocking (at first) an editor
apparently contributing useful text.

> For or against paid editing? Paid editing is an orthogonal issue. I
> wish all of our contributors could be better compensated for their
> fantastic contributions.

Yeah!

> If we can't cope with bias coming from known-interested sources then
> we have no hope... most biased sources do not announce their
> intentions.

Exactly. One of the reasons I found it bizarre to block the US
Congress. Much better just to watch it. Then you give people two
options: edit openly and responsibly from their real IP address, or
find a different IP address and do whatever the hell they want.

Steve


body:
On 8/11/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Also, some people are twats.
>
> I think the proper term is "twits," but I often use
> the mispelled version myself.

Quoting you-know-who, "Twat is a vulgar term for the human vagina,
which can also be used as a derogatory epithet."

Steve


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-08-12

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 413 of 429 tests (96.27%) FAILED!


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
If it comes to the point in this until now hypothetical situation that
to get a lot of money the independence of the WMF is affected by selling
a place on the board then advertisement should be reconsidered.

Myspace.com , Alexa ranking global the 7th place has made a deal with
google for advertisement for the amount of at least 900 million dollar
for 3 years. $ 900.000.000.  That is a lot.

Wikipedia is now on the 16th place. I have no idea how much money the
WMF could get form a deal with google or yahoo, even if it where a
limited amount of adds and not (to) annoying. But it can not be anything
other then a very impressive large pile of money.

The Wikimedia projects are ad free. That is fantastic. I wonder on what
ranking place the next ad free website is listed. The wikimedia websites
are probably unique in that aspect. It could have been something form a
Seince Fiction movie about a paralleluniversum where there are not ads
on the internet.

Nevertheless it is so that Wikimedia has a gold mine. The gold is not
used out of principle. Instead of living in a castle the WMF lives in
very modest house but can manage by donations of visitors. And things
are going better. There is some money in the savings account. There are
no loans to pay off. There is hope to get some new money without strings
on. (grands)  And the WMF is still independent. If very large amounts of
money could go to the WMF but by accepting so the WMF would lose part of
its independence then I believe putting pride aside and selling some ads
is much better then selling your soul.

Ofcource this is all hypothetical. There is (so far I know) no offer
from Bill Gates or similar to give a large truck load of money with a
end-user-agreement attached to it.

--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


from_name: Sherool

body:
On Thu, 10 Aug 2006 23:47:57 +0200, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Returning to the idea of how to delete, and the problem communities have
> against  'intruder bots' i propose the following:
> Both if deletions are no source/license or at COM:DEL, real deletion will
> wait at least 7 days, so a bot would:
> -Wait two days as the uploader may read the message on its discussion and
> fix it. I have found Orgullobot removing images too early.
> -The third day the bot posts a {{WarningCommonsDelete|BadImage}} on the
> articles discussion. if someone watches that article, should notice it
> and
> be able to manually fix it. These templates would be per-project
> translated,
> as the CommonsTicker's.
> The following templates would be used:
> *Image lacks source/license.
> *Image has been listed for deletion, see [[...]]
> *Superseeded image.
> They would at the end explain the bot behaviour if no action is taken.

<snip>

> *What should do the bot if it doesn't find the image? (e.g. the image is
> generated through template syntax).

<snip>

That should be fairly straight forward, simply delink from all the
templates fist, then you can either make the bot smart enough to check the
local job que and go to sleep for a reasonable amount of time (length of
job que * X seconds imedeately after delinking from the last template),
and then reload the list of articles it's used in. Alternatively simply
keep going though the list once it has delinked from the templates and
just skip to the next one (alternatively do a null edit first if you don't
feel like waiting for the job que to finish to verify that the image is
gone) if the image is not found in the current article.

For bonus credit the bot might chek whatlinkshere from the templates the
image is used in first and post an alternative warning message to the talk
page of the articles that use it along the lines "Image XXX (included via
<templatename>) is listed for deletion on Commons ..." to make it easier
for editors to track it down. Only problem is it might result in some
unnessesary "spam" if the image is used in something like a stub template.

--
[[:en:User:Sherool]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Wikipedia Empire Based on Open Source Worst Practices?"

body:
Can anyone extract useful ideas from this blog entry:

http://thomas-lord.blogspot.com/2006/08/wikipedia-empire-based-on-open-source.html

There is the usual suggestion that if Wikipedia adopts article forks
then all will be well because then the obnoxious editors who don't
want to work with others will be appeased and something about power
structures. Etc etc.

But there are some vague notions of *lots* of alternate Wikipedia
distributions (rather than "forks"), analogous to Linux distributions.
This bit seems like an interesting idea, but I'm not quite sure how
one would approach it. Categories as packages? (like an .rpm or a .deb
.) Is there something here that's the seed of a useful idea?

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:

>Ray Saintonge schreef:
>[cut]
>
>
>>While it is also possible that there can be rogue bureaucrats, these
>>will be proportionally rarer than rogue admins.  Anyone who has become a
>>bureaucrat has a very high degree of trust in the community, and
>>especially in relatively larger communities there is sufficient
>>oversight to prevent the abuses that may be more common with the
>>untested bureaucrats of tiny communities.  Speaking arbitrarily, one
>>could define a larger community, as one with at least 50,000 articles
>>and/or 2 active bureaucrats.
>>
>>Ec
>>
>>
>
>Not all wikis are the same. You can not project the situation of EN to
>all other wikis.
>
>I have just done a de-sysop/de-bureaucrat on the Serbian Wikpedia. There
>the have (now) 40 sysops and of those 25 are bureaucrat.
>
>That is from my POV an irresponsible number of bureaucrats. I do not
>know how many active user there are. The have 34700 articles.
>
25 bureaucrats on such a small project doesn't make sense considering
the limited duties that are reserved for bureaucrats.  Still it's up to
the sr community to sort that one out.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary


from_name: Gareth Hughes ([[User:Garzo]])

body:
There are a few good points in the blog (let's not call it an essay!).
I particularly like the description of Wikipedia as a 'semi-anarchic
feudal state'. Perhaps we should put that on a banner somewhere ? your
fiefdom or mine? The comparison of Wikipedia with Linux distributions
is a bit misplaced. The main objection to this approach is that,
simply put, they are very different beasties. One has to do with facts
and information, the other has to do with software programmes. How
would we modularise the article on [[cactus]]? Extracting anything
more useful from this is dasht difficult.

? Gareth Hughes ([[User:Garzo]])

On 12/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can anyone extract useful ideas from this blog entry:
>
> http://thomas-lord.blogspot.com/2006/08/wikipedia-empire-based-on-open-source.html
>
> There is the usual suggestion that if Wikipedia adopts article forks
> then all will be well because then the obnoxious editors who don't
> want to work with others will be appeased and something about power
> structures. Etc etc.
>
> But there are some vague notions of *lots* of alternate Wikipedia
> distributions (rather than "forks"), analogous to Linux distributions.
> This bit seems like an interesting idea, but I'm not quite sure how
> one would approach it. Categories as packages? (like an .rpm or a .deb
> .) Is there something here that's the seed of a useful idea?
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 12/08/06, Gareth Hughes ([[User:Garzo]]) <garzohugo+wiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> There are a few good points in the blog (let's not call it an essay!).
> I particularly like the description of Wikipedia as a 'semi-anarchic
> feudal state'. Perhaps we should put that on a banner somewhere ? your
> fiefdom or mine? The comparison of Wikipedia with Linux distributions
> is a bit misplaced. The main objection to this approach is that,
> simply put, they are very different beasties. One has to do with facts
> and information, the other has to do with software programmes. How
> would we modularise the article on [[cactus]]? Extracting anything
> more useful from this is dasht difficult.

Some categories would make useful modules. In print form we've been
calling these "wikireaders."

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wysiwyg debate

body:
On 8/12/06, Daniel Schwen <lists at schwen.de> wrote:
> > Of course, many purists hate this apparent abuse of one-use templates...
>
> Wouldn't that be a great use for subpage-templates? Have the Infobox at
> Paris/infobox and just include it as a template.

That sounds nice actually. Technically we have a rule against
mainspace subpages, but that sounds like a good reason to change the
rule.

Steve


from_name: Christopher Larberg

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Wikipedia Empire Based on Open
	Source	Worst	Practices?"

body:
On Sat, 2006-08-12 at 17:56 +0930, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> PS. -1 x -1 = 1 is stupid and evil. Double points for /that/ reference!

Come on, everyone knows that's true. Unless they were educated stupid,
in which case they cannot comprehend opposite creation. Academic
singularity is damnable lie!
--
Christopher Larberg [[w:en:User:Slowking Man]]
<christopherlarberg at gmail.com>
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from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 8/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm wondering where he had a run-in or several.

Clearly a selection of controversial or obsessive topics ...

-Matt


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Alison Wheeler wrote:
> On Fri, August 11, 2006 21:43, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>There is a clear distinction between paying a salary to a board member,
>>and reimbursing him for out-of-pocket expenses.  The specific quote from
>>Jimbo is "I have no interest in being paid."  I would not extrapolate
>>from that comment an inference that no-one should be paid.  On the other
>>hand paying the airfare for key people to travel halfway around the
>>world is perfectly acceptable.
>
>
> There is a test in the UK that the Inland Revenue (Taxation) use, which
> basically tests an expenses payment as (I paraphrase) "was this cost
> incurred wholly and directly as a result of an activity required by virtue
> of the employment". This principle can be easily and clearly applied to
> consideration of personal expenses in our situation; any costs in excess
> of what the individual would have spent if they had not been carrying out
> an activity on behalf od the Foundation is clearly covered.
>
> Conversely, I would *totally* disagree with
>
>>If someone wants to generously pay a board member to give a keynote
>>speech that board member is entitled to keep it.  This is not a matter
>>for our by-laws.
>
> If someone is given a speech *because* they are from the WMF and
> *representing* the WMF at that presentation, then any fees received are
> the 'income' of the WMF. Obviously, the costs involved with attending the
> location to give that speech (which might include travel, hotel, etc)
> would be payable by the WMF. One can't have it both ways (ie get a fee
> *and* claim expenses)
>
> Alison Wheeler

Yes

BUT.

The drawline is "being from the WMF" and "representing the WMF"

It is somehow difficult to define when someone is giving speech because
he is from the WMF and representing the WMF, when this person may also
be giving the speech as the representant of another organisation (such
as Wikia for example), or when this person may also be invited to give a
speech just due to him being famous and having a good vision interesting
people.

If WMF, then WMF should pay the costs and receive the fee.
If Wikia, then Wikia should pay the costs and receive the fee possibly.
If "self", then speaker should pay the costs and speaker gets the fee.

Sometimes, it is really hard to know.

ant


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>>I am currently required to spend my own money to go and give speeches.
>>This has been the case for over 2 years now.
>
> The board passed a budget for your expenses and to my knowledge, you
> have never used it all up, nor have you asked
> for an increase, nor have you ever submitted any claim for expenses
> which has been denied.  Standard policy has always
> been that board members should be reimbursed upon request for reasonable
> travel expenses.
>
>
>>This said, Michael wrote yesterday that I should ask for my child care
>>costs to be covered. Does that need a resolution ?
>>
>>
>
> No, it just requires you to submit your request.  As always.
>
> --Jimbo

Hmmmm. Right.
/me notes.

Just for the info (some might wonder after all), the current policy,
approved 2 years ago, is 1000 dollars per quarter for Angela and I. 3000
dollars per quarter for Jimbo.

I suggested a revision of this policy in december 2005, which may be
found on meta (it was before we moved to the private board wiki) :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_policy:_Travel_expense_reimbursements

The new amounts suggested by Mav were removed, as they were to be
included in the budget. I am not fully sure what these were, but I think
it was 5000 for Jimbo and 3000 for other board members.

We did not make any budget in 2006 (we could never agree on one).
And this policy was never passed.
I do not know how far we exceeds (or not) the 1000 Angela/Anthere and
the 3000 Jimbo budget.

ant


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Anyone there who
> actually saw the tiny baby in the gentle hands of a gorilla would have
> laughed.

errrr.

by the way, here is a picture of one of our current candidate :
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:IMG_5544.JPG

I like this one as well :http://www.flickr.com/photos/zuirdj/206009045/

As for
Q: Why is Angela leaving the board? She says it's become less
collaborative. How? A: (Angela) E.g., we vote on a wiki rather than
having discussions.

She has it right on spot. Before, we talked. And after, we were unable
to remember exactly what was decided and when.
Now we vote. And we are nearly unable to settle on a proposition which
makes sense to all of us precisely because it is in written format.

tough, eh :-)


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Permissions email?

body:
On 8/12/06, Nathaniel <spangineer at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry, I can't remember--anyone know the wikimedia email address for
> confirming that an image is released under a free license by its creator
> when it's uploaded by someone else?  Is it permissions at wikimedia.org or
> permission at wikimedia.com or what?  I've looked around on various image
> policy pages on en and commons and can't find the address anywhere.

permissions at wikimedia.org

The following pages are all related, and they do mention that address:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Successful_requests_for_permission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requesting_copyright_permission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Example_requests_for_permission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:ConfirmationOTRS

Angela.


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Foundation-l] board, babysitting, speaking engagements, etc.

body:
This conversation had jumped back and forth from single-instance expenses
(eg. babysitting costs) to much larger issues such as speakers fees. With the
number of speaking requests pouring in to the Foundation (and they come in at
an  ever increasing rate), I want to suggest the following guidelines for board
 members and others giving talks about the Foundation. Much of this is based
on  my belief that it is possible to say no to speaker requests too. We are
big  enough to set the terms by which we offer to send speakers, and the
benefits of  participating in various conferences etc. should be weighed against the
real  needs and interests of the Foundation. My proposal is as follows.

1. Requests for speakers from the Foundation will be approved by a
subcommittee of the Communications Committee to be known as the "Speakers
Subcommittee.".
2. The Speakers Subcommittee will determine whether and how fulfilling the
request furthers the goals of the Foundation. This will be called Speaker
Objectives.
3. The Speakers Subcommittee will then determine whether the Speaker
Objectives are equal or greater to the costs involved in sending a speaker to  the
event.

4. The Speaker Subcommittee will then determine which representative of the
WMF is best suited to deliver the talk, based on considerations of language,
geography, skills, conference needs, availability, etc.

5. Basic costs for speakers will include
    a. transportation
    b. per diem (hotel, food)
    c. ancillary (babysitting, formal wear such as  renting a tux, other)
6. The Speaker Subcommittee will negotiate with the requesting organization
to ensure that they cover as much of these costs as possible. Should the event
 be deemed worthwhile, but the requesting organization is unable to cover
these  basic costs, the Speakers Committee will determine a budget for the
speaker to  participate.
7. The Speaker Subcommittee will also request an honorarium, to be paid to
the Foundation, for providing a speaker.
8. A calendar of speaking engagements and speakers will be maintained  in a
public space, such as wikimediafoundation.org.
9. Only speakers approved and appointed by the Speakers Subcommittee will  be
entitled to speak on behalf of the Foundation in such public forums and to
make use of Foundation property such as logos, registered tm's, etc. in their
presentations.
10. Upon completing their speaking engagement, speakers will provide a
written report to the Speakers Subcommittee in which they describe whether and  how
the Speaker Objectives were met.
11. The written report will include a summary of the talk, major questions
asked, and a copy of handouts, PowerPoint presentations, etc. as  necessary.
12. These materials will be made easily available to other speakers so as  to
enhance their own presentations.
13. Upon completing their speaking engagement, speakers will also  submit any
receipts for *approved* expenses.
14. Upon submission of receipts, the written report, and ancillary
materials--and only upon their submission--the speaker will be reimbursed for  any
out-of-pocket expenses.

While this may seem bureaucratic to some, I believe that it is a common
sense approach to dealing with the growing influx of requests for speakers that
the Foundation is facing. It will help us to avoid what Mr. Merkey wisely
called  "poaching speaking engagements," and ensure that previous experiences as a
speaker are shared with others.

Rather than dwell upon what happened in the past, let's move forward by
improving this initial proposal and submitting it to the Board for vote.

Danny


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

references:
<ebfkoi$bup$1@sea.gmane.org> <ebflq6$fkg$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<71cd4dd90608101016y80834albe8cb906c2bc5c@mail.gmail.com>
	<453b6e50608101058p518c54dcg1a84b8efa8615c33@mail.gmail.com>
	<71cd4dd90608101157n5465cf51n7e5886e07cda7cb@mail.gmail.com>
	<ebievm$ukr$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 8/11/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ... we have meta, as the central place to meet together. Once a
> candidate publish his discussion page on a specific project, it somehow
> reduce the number of questions given by participants from other
> projects. It also reduces readability greatly, when the page mentionned
> in the talk page of the user, where a multiplicity of questions,
> relevant or not relevant to the elections also stand. It also prevents
> translation. And finally, it raises the question of whether the
> candidate even know what meta is.
>
The biggest problem with using meta is that none of the standard tools
work across wikis.  You don't get notifications of talk page changes
on meta when you're hacking on Wikipedia, or Wikibooks.  The watchlist
feature covers one project at a time, etc.

This should have been fixed years ago.  It hasn't been.  Hopefully one
of the achievements of the new board will be to integrate the projects
better.

But in the mean time, I don't think it's at all unusual for a
candidate to publish his or her discussion page on a particular
project.  Checking meta all the time is just ridiculous.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

references:
<ebfkoi$bup$1@sea.gmane.org> <ebflq6$fkg$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<71cd4dd90608101016y80834albe8cb906c2bc5c@mail.gmail.com>
	<453b6e50608101058p518c54dcg1a84b8efa8615c33@mail.gmail.com>
	<71cd4dd90608101157n5465cf51n7e5886e07cda7cb@mail.gmail.com>
	<ebievm$ukr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<71cd4dd90608120459v4abdd59dhec68589a5c6d650c@mail.gmail.com>
	<ae4e17e00608120510w42ee72dcmfff8a39b34017fdc@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 8/12/06, Jack <jackdt at gmail.com> wrote:
> > But in the mean time, I don't think it's at all unusual for a
> > candidate to publish his or her discussion page on a particular
> > project.  Checking meta all the time is just ridiculous.
> > -- Anthony
>
> Don't board members work mostly on meta? (with side orders of
> wikimediafoundation.org and projects?)

Comparing http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jimbo_Wales
with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jimbo_Wales,
I'd say no, definitely not, at least not in the case of all board
members.  Do all the board members even *have* an account on meta?
I'd check, but I don't even remember one of their names.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

references:
<ebfkoi$bup$1@sea.gmane.org> <ebflq6$fkg$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<71cd4dd90608101016y80834albe8cb906c2bc5c@mail.gmail.com>
	<453b6e50608101058p518c54dcg1a84b8efa8615c33@mail.gmail.com>
	<71cd4dd90608101157n5465cf51n7e5886e07cda7cb@mail.gmail.com>
	<ebievm$ukr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<71cd4dd90608120459v4abdd59dhec68589a5c6d650c@mail.gmail.com>
	<ebkh0n$tvq$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 8/12/06, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> Anthony schreef:
> [cut]
> > The biggest problem with using meta is that none of the standard tools
> > work across wikis.  You don't get notifications of talk page changes
> > on meta when you're hacking on Wikipedia, or Wikibooks.  The watchlist
> > feature covers one project at a time, etc.
>
> That problem can be fixt directly more or less. MediaWiki supports the
> function that you get an email when;
>
> [ ] E-mail me when a page I'm watching is changed
> [ ] E-mail me when my user talk page is changed
> [ ] E-mail me also for minor edits of pages
>
> That is only a matter of switching that function for meta. The you can
> select that in you user option.
>
Good point.  Maybe we should force all the candidates to use meta for
their discussion page, and let them know about that feature to head
off any complaints.  Anyone second the motion?

I still don't think it's significant that most/all candidates have
chosen to use the discussion page on the project they use the most,
when no one told them any advantages of doing otherwise.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies