Ting Chen | 2 Nov 2008 12:54
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Baidu Baike changed their licensing policy

Without any explaination and announcement had Baidupedia changed its 
licensing policy (http://www.baidu.com/search/baike_help.html#n10). From 
my view point there are three major changes.

At first, instead of earlier, when you must search through many pages to 
find their copyright declerations and licensing policies now the 
licensing policy is directly linked at the bottom of every page.

The second change is in stead of earlier, where the licensing policy and 
the copyright declerations were seperated into at least two pages and 
one must puzzle together the often contradictory statements tother the 
new licensing policy is now concentrated on one page, but not less 
confusing, as I will state beneath.

The third change is that they now say that their licensing policy orient 
according to CC. But it does not say which CC. The text at this point is 
not understandable. It makes the impression as if the user can select 
between the different CC-policies, but actually the user can not. So 
actually there is no choice for that and none of their content page has 
any CC-declaration on it, except the well known © 2008 Baidu at the 
bottom of the page.

My *personnal* interpretation is that they say: Dear user, you can put 
any CC-licensed content on our page according to that license 
decleration. We support that license. But actually none of their user 
declare which license he or she want to use, or which license the 
content, which they had copy and pasted, use. So the whole thing has in 
the pracise no effect.

Everyone in the chinese community with whom I talked with say that they 
(Continue reading)

Gerard Meijssen | 2 Nov 2008 13:48
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Re: About writing on this list and, some news

Hoi,
I have blogged about my presentation at the Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland;
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2008/11/presentation-at-wcn-2008.html
The presentation is also available on Commons.. ;
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:WCN_2008_-_GM.pdf
Thanks,
       Gerard

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 9:42 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen@...>wrote:

> Hoi,
> In the thread started about the decline of mailing lists, it is written
> that many people are blogging instead. I am one of those who does exactly
> this. On one level I got frustrated about people stating that to much was
> written and, that because of my frequent contributions I "should" reduce
> what I had to say. For those who are interested in what people write on
> blogs, there are ways of following this in a reader.
>
> Some news.. news that is not only interesting to blog about ..
>
>    - I have learned that Steve Slevinsky has started work on an extension
>    that will enable SignWriting in a MediaWiki environment.. He has started a
>    Wiki where he is show casing his progress.
>    http://www.signpuddle.net/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page
>    - I learned that Sourceforge gives the maintainers of a project the
>    choice to have a MediaWiki environment. I think this is yet another great
>    example of MediaWiki being used outside of the WMF.
>    - On the Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland i will give a presentation
>    about a Commons that supports search and categories in multiple languages.
(Continue reading)

Florence Devouard | 2 Nov 2008 14:01
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Re: "Expertise" board seats: the NomCom invites your feedback

Sue Gardner wrote:
> Hey folks,
> 
> As you know, the board recently created a Nominating Committee to help
> it identify, research and recommend candidates for the appointed Board
> of Trustee positions involving "specific expertise." The members of the
> committee are me, Michael Snow, BirgitteSB, Milos Rancic, Melissa
> Hagemann and Ting Chen.
> 
> We've brainstormed a list of selection criteria here
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee/Selection_criteria -
> and now need to cut it back from about two dozen to eight.
> 
> If you're interested, we'd like your help. Please comment on the talk
> page re which criteria you think are most important, and also let us
> know if you feel anything is missing.
> 
> Thanks,
> Sue
> 
> Our rough timeline, in case you're interested:
> 
> 1.Michael Snow, on behalf of the Board, will brief the Nominating
> Committee regarding its role, the restructuring, and the board's
> assessment of its own strengths and skills gaps. By August 30 DONE
> 
> 2.Based on that briefing, the Nominating Committee will generate a set
> of criteria for potential “specific expertise” board members. By
> September 15
> 
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Thomas Dalton | 2 Nov 2008 14:11
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Re: "Expertise" board seats: the NomCom invites your feedback

> Talking about board seats...
>
> Sue...
>
> I'd like to acknowledge the fact that local associations are apparently
> unable to create a separate mailing list for discussing the nomination
> of chapter representatives. It did not appear to me to be a huge
> unaccessible task, but unfortunately, that's a fact. Not the right
> infrastructure I guess.
> I even envisionned to create a Google list, that the idea really turned
> me off :-)

What have you tried? A request on bugzilla.mediawiki.org would be the
best way, I think (I've searched and can't find one there). Unless the
sysadmins have orders from on high not to give you a mailing list, I
can't see why they wouldn't be able to do it pretty quickly.

> Hopefully, in two years from now, for next elections (we can set it up
> for ourselves as a GOAL), we'll be able to host a list to discuss WMF
> rep, but since that's not the case right now, I'd like to officially
> (and humbly) ask that the WMF set up a wiki for us to discuss the issue.
> After much thinking, it seems to me that setting up a list would not be
> the easiest way to come to a consensual agreement, whilst a wiki could
> host at the same time, discussions and votes if necessary.
>
> This wiki would not be public. Its members would be chapter board members.

The way I see it, there are two things the chapters need to decide. A
method for selecting chapter reps to the WMF board, and then actually
selecting them. I can see why the latter may need to be private (that
(Continue reading)

Gerard Meijssen | 2 Nov 2008 14:15
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Re: "Expertise" board seats: the NomCom invites your feedback

Hoi,
When you are at, please create the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia that is
currently waiting for 108 days now.
Thanks,
       GerardM

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 2:01 PM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9@...>wrote:

> Sue Gardner wrote:
> > Hey folks,
> >
> > As you know, the board recently created a Nominating Committee to help
> > it identify, research and recommend candidates for the appointed Board
> > of Trustee positions involving "specific expertise." The members of the
> > committee are me, Michael Snow, BirgitteSB, Milos Rancic, Melissa
> > Hagemann and Ting Chen.
> >
> > We've brainstormed a list of selection criteria here
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee/Selection_criteria -
> > and now need to cut it back from about two dozen to eight.
> >
> > If you're interested, we'd like your help. Please comment on the talk
> > page re which criteria you think are most important, and also let us
> > know if you feel anything is missing.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Sue
> >
> > Our rough timeline, in case you're interested:
> >
(Continue reading)

geni | 2 Nov 2008 14:51
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Re: Baidu Baike changed their licensing policy

2008/11/2 Ting Chen <wing.philopp@...>:
>I cannot say why they introduced that peace of paper which is
> totally inunderstandable, by assuming good will I suggest that is
> because they are clueless and don't understand the cc-license

They are big enough to afford serious lawyers if they want to
understand the license they would have no problem doing so. I suspect
that they want more original content and have picked up that in some
cases free content licenses can help in this area.

It is also likely the case that for the time being Baidu Baike is more
concerned about Hoodong than us.

--

-- 
geni

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Brianna Laugher | 2 Nov 2008 15:13
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Re: Analysis of lists statistics: community in decline

Hi,

Milos, thanks so much for this analysis and your opinions about it.

2008/10/31 Brion Vibber <brion@...>:
> Indeed, volume alone isn't inherently a positive thing. A reduction in
> volume may signal a loss of interest in participation, or a change in
> signal-to-noise ratio, or a shift in participation to other forums, or a
> combination of all of these things.

It's true, but Milos' initial thesis was that the reduction in mailing
list traffic reflected the reduction in new community members.

Does anyone feel that the community in general is more vibrant and
spirited than it was two years ago? Does anyone feel that there are
more new people coming through the ranks? And this activity dropoff is
actually an anomaly rather than a reflection of reality?

I don't.

Is wiki editing not the cool internet habit that it used to be? Is
Wikipedia too popular, too fossilised now? Why aren't we enrapturing
the college students that we were just a few years ago?

Is it a genuine concern or are we looking too locally? Does everything
still look cool on the 20 year scale?

> The common wisdom is that mailing lists in general have been falling out
> of favor on the net for a while. Outside the wiki itself I see lots of
> Wikimedia-related activity on blogs, chat, and microblogging services
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Pharos | 2 Nov 2008 15:39
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Re: Analysis of lists statistics: community in decline

Hi Brianna,

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 9:13 AM, Brianna Laugher
<brianna.laugher@...> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Gosh, it would suck if Wikimedia slowly died in the arse because of a
> lack of decent communication tools. That would be tragic, but that
> does seem to be what we are missing. The right tool is like a bullet.
> I don't even have an easy way to, say, contact all the Wikimedians in
> my home city. Sure I can edit a city wikiproject page, and a meetup
> page, but relying on the right people to be watching them is a bloody
> long shot. And that's just people I would probably be familiar with.
> Or I could somehow construct a list of users and then contact a bot
> operator to leave them all a message?... ugh. What if I wanted to
> reach a X-language speaking admin in two different projects? Probably
> impossible. Too much effort in the face of very likely defeat to even
> be worth trying.
> Is it too much to say we need our own Facebook? If only Ning was open source.

We've actually been using some tools like this for not-yet-official
Wikimedia New York City on the English Wikipedia.

Here's a fantastic tool for contacting local folks by IP address
called "Geonotice":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geonotice

It's currently not operational, but we have plans to revive it soon.

(Continue reading)

Pharos | 2 Nov 2008 16:31
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Re: Analysis of lists statistics: community in decline

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 9:13 AM, Brianna Laugher
<brianna.laugher@...> wrote:
> Is it too much to say we need our own Facebook? If only Ning was open source.

I've done some a little research on this issue, and this appears to be
the most promising option:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgg_(software)

It's open source, relatively popular, and is used in academic communities.

Thanks,
Pharos

> Brianna
>
> --
> They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
> http://modernthings.org/
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@...
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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Milos Rancic | 2 Nov 2008 17:06
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Re: Analysis of lists statistics: community in decline

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria@...> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 9:13 AM, Brianna Laugher
> <brianna.laugher@...> wrote:
>> Is it too much to say we need our own Facebook? If only Ning was open source.
>
> I've done some a little research on this issue, and this appears to be
> the most promising option:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgg_(software)
>
> It's open source, relatively popular, and is used in academic communities.

I think that it should be solved differently. Wikia already has some
kind of extended profile which includes some basic social networking
abilities.

It is expensive (in the sense of contributors' attention) to run two
different models. Even keeping blogs at Planet Wikimedia (officially)
and at Open Wiki Blog Planet (unofficially), as well as at some other
places (unofficially in different languages; I know, at least, for
French version) -- is expensive.

At the other hand, MediaWiki is able to be extended in that direction
(which Wikia used extension shows). Also, contributors would be able
to ask for new features more dynamically, as well as it would be a
significant development path for MediaWiki itself.

In other words, I would like to see a very rudimentary extension (like
Wikia's) with solved inter-project issues for the beginning. When we
have that, we would be able to think about improvements.
(Continue reading)


Gmane