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Philippe Beaudette | 1 Mar 2010 17:25
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Strategic Planning Office Hours


> Hi everyone,
>
> The next strategic planning office hours are:
>
> Wednesday, 04:00-05:00 UTC, which is:
> -Tuesday (8-9pm PST)
> -Tuesday (11pm-12am EST)
>
> Office hours will be a great opportunity to discuss the work that's
> happened as well as the work to come.
>
> As always, you can access the chat by going to
> https://webchat.freenode.net and filling in a username and the channel
> name (#wikimedia-strategy). You may be prompted to click through a
> security warning. It's fine. More details at:
>
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours
>
> Thanks! Hope to see many of you there.
> ____________________
> Philippe Beaudette	
> Facilitator, Strategy Project
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
> philippe <at> wikimedia.org
>
> Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
> the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!
>
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David Gerard | 2 Mar 2010 01:19
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Fwd: [Foundation-l] [Announcement] Extension of user experience work

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Erik Moeller <erik <at> wikimedia.org>
Date: 2 March 2010 00:14
Subject: [Foundation-l] [Announcement] Extension of user experience work
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org>

Hello all,

our very positive revenue perspective (we have already exceeded our
fundraising targets for the fiscal year, and received the additional
$2M from Google) allows us to do something we've hoped to be able to
do: make our investment in user experience work permanent, as opposed
to releasing most of the current user experience team and ending the
project.

It makes obvious sense for any major website to have a permanent team
focused on user experience improvements in the broadest sense. This
includes eliminating obvious barriers to entry, but beyond that, we
want to improve the experience as a whole for both readers and
editors.

We're now referring to this work as "user experience" (UX) work, which
includes usability.

Naoko will be Head of UX Programs, while Trevor will be the lead
front-end developer on the team. Congratulations to both of them. :-)
Naoko is currently assessing the remaining contracts and will share
further information as these decisions are finalized.

In the immediate future post-April, we'll be concerned with tying up
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Techman224 | 3 Mar 2010 03:50

Texas Instruments signing key controversy

It has come to my attention that the Wikimedia Foundation through its "Office actions" policy removed and
oversighted the signing keys for Texas Instruments calculators under a DMCA takedown notice on October
7, 2009. Cary Bass then oversighted all revisions that had the signing keys. Let me just say it might not be
necessary to continue to block the signing keys. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has reported that
they warned Texas Instruments about the DMCA notices as noted, "the DMCA explicitly allows reverse
engineering to create interoperable custom software like the programs the hobbyists are using." [1].
Further Texas Instruments failed to respond to the letter and the deadline, so the bloggers who put up the
codes put them back up. [2] Also a student at a university who posted the
  keys to his own personal page at the university filed a DMCA 512 counternotice. With all of this is mind, as
since the keys are still up today, could we please remove the Office action and allow the keys to be posted,
and un-oversight all the revisions so we could end all this vandalism and controversy on-wiki? It would be
a good step to tell Texas Instruments that this is just a "Baseless Legal Threat". Also, if it's not lifted,
could the Foundation explain why isn't removing the Office action? If we do allow the keys on Wikipedia, I
pretty much think the EFF would support us all the way.

Thanks,

Techman224

Links:

[1] http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/10/13
[2] http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/10/texas-instruments-stop-digging-holes
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Techman224 | 3 Mar 2010 03:57

Re: Texas Instruments signing key controversy

Re-sending message, the mail server doesn't like html :(

It has come to my attention that the Wikimedia Foundation through its "Office actions" policy removed and
oversighted the signing keys for Texas Instruments calculators under a DMCA takedown notice on October
7, 2009. Cary Bass then oversighted all revisions that had the signing keys. Let me just say it might not be
necessary to continue to block the signing keys. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has reported that
they warned Texas Instruments about the DMCA notices as noted, "the DMCA explicitly allows reverse
engineering to create interoperable custom software like the programs the hobbyists are using." [1].
Further Texas Instruments failed to respond to the letter and the deadline, so the bloggers who put up the
codes put them back up. [2] Also a student at a university who posted the
  keys to his own personal page at the university filed a DMCA 512 counternotice. With all of this is mind, as
since the keys are still up today, could we please remove the Office action and allow the keys to be posted,
and un-oversight all the revisions so we could end all this vandalism and controversy on-wiki? It would be
a good step to tell Texas Instruments that this is just a "Baseless Legal Threat". Also, if it's not lifted,
could the Foundation explain why isn't removing the Office action? If we do allow the keys on Wikipedia, I
pretty much think the EFF would support us all the way.

Thanks,

Techman224

Links:

[1] http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/10/13
[2] http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/10/texas-instruments-stop-digging-holes
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ahmed algohary | 2 Mar 2010 21:42
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wikipedia 2007 dump

Hi,

I need to download wikipeida 2007 dump as the current dump is quite large.
So, I wander if it's still available for download as I could only find 2009
and 2010 dumps on the download page!

--
Ahmed Elgohary
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Martin Møller Skarbiniks Pedersen | 3 Mar 2010 23:46
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Re: wikipedia 2007 dump

On 2 March 2010 21:42, ahmed algohary <algoharyalex <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I need to download wikipeida 2007 dump as the current dump is quite large.
> So, I wander if it's still available for download as I could only find 2009
> and 2010 dumps on the download page!

Have a look at http://static.wikipedia.org/downloads/

Regards
Martin

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Gwern Branwen | 4 Mar 2010 21:15
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Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction

The [[dwm]] deletion discussion has caught the interest of some of the
more nerdy online communities:

- http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/b8s29/the_wikipedia_deletionists_are_at_it_again_this/
- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1163884

It's interesting to see the general levels of disgust and how few
current editors there are in comparison to former, and read the
dislike of WP:N.

I certainly hope the usability initiatives bear fruit and entice
regular people into becoming editors, because we're burning our
bridges among our original techy contributor base.

([[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dwm (2nd nomination)]] is trending
keep, but many FLOSS articles have been deleted lately, and many will
yet feel the axe.)

--

-- 
gwern

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Carcharoth | 4 Mar 2010 21:38

Re: Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction

Hopefully someone will write a proper history of the FLOSS
(free/libre/open source software) movement someday. As someone who has
sometimes tried to find sources on early 20th century stuff where it
seems no-one wrote a history, I certainly hope the FLOSS history
doesn't end up the same way.

Carcharoth

PS. But (having had to find out something about swings) at least we have these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_%28seat%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_boarding

On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 8:15 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> The [[dwm]] deletion discussion has caught the interest of some of the
> more nerdy online communities:
>
> - http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/b8s29/the_wikipedia_deletionists_are_at_it_again_this/
> - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1163884
>
> It's interesting to see the general levels of disgust and how few
> current editors there are in comparison to former, and read the
> dislike of WP:N.
>
> I certainly hope the usability initiatives bear fruit and entice
> regular people into becoming editors, because we're burning our
> bridges among our original techy contributor base.
>
> ([[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dwm (2nd nomination)]] is trending
> keep, but many FLOSS articles have been deleted lately, and many will
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K. Peachey | 5 Mar 2010 00:53
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Re: Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction

Perhaps in future we could send these to the incubator (unless their
BLP or the like) instead of deleting then see if the people want to
work on them?

-Peachey

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Charles Matthews | 5 Mar 2010 11:58

Re: Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction

Gwern Branwen wrote:
> The [[dwm]] deletion discussion has caught the interest of some of the
> more nerdy online communities:
>
> - http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/b8s29/the_wikipedia_deletionists_are_at_it_again_this/
> - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1163884
>
> It's interesting to see the general levels of disgust and how few
> current editors there are in comparison to former, and read the
> dislike of WP:N.
>   
As usual, one has to sift the arguments. Why aren't blogs included under 
RS? That would be because they are generally unreliable? Why does a 
snowboarding slalom event not have its own article? That would be 
because no one has started one, I guess. Why does someone who left in 
2006 still bring it up? Elephant's memory for grudges, I suppose.
> I certainly hope the usability initiatives bear fruit and entice
> regular people into becoming editors, because we're burning our
> bridges among our original techy contributor base.
>   
Yes, the logic should be that the encyclopedia during the next decade 
gets its priorities in line with the human race in general, or at least 
anglophone online members in general, rather than those of the geeky end 
of the spectrum. Whatever those are owed (which is much). Perhaps then 
we might get more of the perspective that writing off a database of 
three million articles because of the absence of the three of particular 
personal interest is a trifle blinkered. Though I'm not so sure about 
that ...

Oh yes, and what Carcharoth said about FLOSS history needing the
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Gmane