LSS/foundation-l-archives/2007 week 6

2006
September	October
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November	December
45•46•47•48	49•50•51•52
2007
January	February
1•2•3•4•5	6•7•8•9
Inactive March - June
July	August
27•28•29•30	31•32•33•34
September	October
35•36•37•38•39	40•41•42•43•44
November	December
45•46•47•48	49•50•51•52

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This is part of LSS, a mailing list summary service. It is a summary of foundation-l. Most posts whose authors are named have links to the full e-mail in the archive. However not every post is archived and the archive itself is so unstable that the urls will periodically be reassigned breaking the links in this summary. While edits to correct inaccuracies are welcome, changes to style or focus should first be discussed on the talk page. Decisions on whether to refer to people by their Wikipedia handle or their email name is arbitrary and may not be completely internally consistent. Some genders may be accidentally incorrect.Incorrect or not, this standard is used all around the net, for business or projects.

This issue covers (roughly) 2007 February 5-11

[1] Brianna explains the various effots to welcome new users at different wikis using both templates on talk pages and Mediawiki:Welcomecreation which is shown after account creation. Her "best of" list includes:

She also explains a common problem with efforts to welcome new users is giving too much in information all at once. She suggests these efforts should focus only on the most common mistakes made by new users. [2] RB suggests adding a note "If you don't understand XXXX, see here" to welcome messages for those who do not speak the local language well. Discussion follows on setting up separate introduction on non-Wikipedia wikis for editors already familiar with Wikipedia and those new to WMF projects and how to research the success of these welcoming efforts. This effort continues at Cross-project comparisons/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation and Template:Welcome comparisons

[3] Robert Rohde informs the list that WMF logos, which are copyrighted, are being used on the wikis in places where a copyrighted images would not be acceptable. He asks in particular if promotion tools like banners are an appropriate use of WMF logos. Responses follow also asking for more clarification on this issue. [4] TOR explains that there are open-use community logos, although they are not widely recognized yet, atcommons:Category:Wikimedia Community Logos. [5] Anthere explains the logos will not be released under a free license because WMF needs to prevent misuse of the logos which could damage the image of WMF and it raises money by licensing these logos. [6] SJ asks if these two problems could not be solved with trademark protection for any misuse and a less restrictive license that allows money to be raised while still allowing derivatives for non-commercial use.
[7] Lennart informs the list of POV-fork of sv.WP, which he believes is similar enough in appearance to sv.WP to confuse people into believing they are connected. He asks for advice on how to protect the reputation of sv.WP from this "evil twin". [8] Robert Scott Horning suggests making certain they are following the GFDL and otherwise ignoring them, as they would likely be pleased by any attention.
[9] David Gerard asks for feedback about his efforts on enterprise article problems at w:Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/Factual error (from enterprise)
[10] Kat Walsh informs the list that a board resolution clarifying acceptable media license will forthcoming. She explains that the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to develop "free content", and must have no significant legal restriction on people's freedom to use, redistribute, or modify the content for any purpose. commons:Commons:Licensing discusses many licenses which are acceptable for this purpose. All media on Wikimedia sites which are used under terms that specify non-commercial use only, no-derivatives only, or permission for Wikimedia only, need to be be phased out and replaced with media that does not have these restrictions. Some Wikimedia projects use media that is not free at all, under a doctrine of "fair use" or "fair dealing". Because of WMF's commitment to free content, this non-free media should not be used when it is reasonably possible to replace with free media that would serve the same educational purpose. Individual projects may choose to be more restrictive than Foundation policy, but no project may have content policies less restrictive, or that allow licenses other than those allowed on Wikimedia Commons and limited fair use. [11] Brianna explains that attaching WMF policy to what is decided at on wiki (Commons) could be difficult, especially because of the close decisions made there on the issue of whether certain country-specific arguments for public domain are acceptable. She asks if the WMF will help by supplying some legal assistance from time to time for Commons? [12] Erik explains that the current draft resolution makes reference to the "[Definition of Free Cultural Works http://freedomdefined.org/Definition]" for the purpose of identifying free licenses rather than Commons. [13] (also other emails) Gatto Nero suggested this policy unfair because it allows the exemption they have used to host un-free content (which is not legally sound in Italy) while dis-allowing the exemption it.WP has been using (which is legally sound in Italy). [14] Marco explains it.WP can adapt by hosting images which use the "fair use" exemption to meet WMF policy and use other reasoning (such as a non-commercial license) to be compliant with the national laws.
[15]Robert Rohde informs the list that the last image dump for any project was November 2005, nearly 15 months ago; and feels that this denial of access is a much more fundamental strike against our freedom than the general debate around which images are free enough. [16] Brion informs the list that he got some new file servers in recently. He suggests less seriously that the dumps would be so huge that no one will actually be able to get or use them anyway. [17] Gregory Maxwell suggests that the dumps will be possible and much easier than downloading each of the images one by one. [18] SJ informs the list he is willing to provide dumps by mail at the cost of the disks at Requests for dumps.
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