LSS/foundation-l-archives/2006 10 29-11 04

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This issue covers (roughly) 2006 October 29-November 04

Threads

• [1] Erik Möller noted that volunteers had cleaned the 9/11 memorial wiki, making it ready for publication as a static website. Jeff Merkey, who volunteered to host the site, made it active.
• [2]Effe Iets Anders posted detailed ideas about per-continent and national Wikimedia events to complement Wikimania. Ray Saintonge pointed out some cultural/geographical differences that might make the specifics of organising these events different, and suggested review of the role/purpose of Wikimania.
• [3]Prior discussion on work on project goals and the Foundation mission statement, relating to the board retreat, continued.
• [4]Geni made an argument that, with Jimbo no longer at the head of the Foundation board, that the Arbitration Committee on the English Wikipedia is now appointed by and responsible to the community. Sam Korn and David Gerard argued that the Foundation head role is distinct from Jimbo's role as project founder on the English Wikipedia, and that changes there are unaffected. Further discussion was stopped by a suggestion that it be moved to a discussion list relating to the English Wikipedia.
• [5]Anthony noted that Google bought Jotspot (a company that makes wiki software).
• [6]Aphaia announced that the translation committee has a newsletter.
• [7] Angelina Markovic noted that the U.S. Intelligence community has created Intellipedia, an internal wiki (using mediawiki) used to collaboratively manage intelligence information. It was noted that there was a presentation at Wikimania2006 on a related topic - management of diplomatic information.
• [8]Mathias Schindler announced that the German tax office approved Wikimedia Deutschland (The German Wikimedia chapter) as being tax-exempt. He also reported that the chapter had spent over €50,000 to locally purchase 15 web proxy servers for their network centre in Amsterdam
• [9]Anthere noted that the Foundation benefactors page was outdated, suggesting updates, changes to page layouts, and inclusion of credit to those responsible for the German Wikipedia Chapter's donors.
• [10]Anthere announced that the Wikimedia Foundation next week will make a one-time donation of $5000USD to the organisation that manages Freenode (on which the various Wikimedia IRC channels reside).
• [11]Shi Zhao said that, according to some people, all Wikimedia projects are again blocked from China.
• [12]Danny Wool provided a lengthy report on the English Wikisource. David Gerard asked about its relationship to Project Gutenberg, and [13]Danny explained.
• [14]Virgil Ierubino proposed a Lookup Directory Wiki, under which information about any organisation or person would reside and be collected. It was suggested by Brion Vibber and David Gerard that this is outside of the Foundation's goals and would likely be used for stalking or other such ill use.
• [15]The Wikimania 2007 team gave their weekly report on progress towards organising next year's conference. Gatto Nero was concerned about the large overlap between the committee that selected Taipei for Wikimania 2007 and the programme committee. Anthere suggested the overlap was a strength and also was very similar to the programme committee that organised Wikimania 2006. She noted that it would be nice to have more diverse representation on the committee, asking for interested South Americans, Japanese, or Russians to get involved (further noting that the Russian Wikipedia, despite being fairly large, as a community has had minimal interaction with inter-wiki matters).