LSS/foundation-l-archives/2009 August 1-31

• What is this? A summary of the topics discussed on the mailing list foundation-l, grouped roughly by topic & chronological thread.
• Time period: August 1-31, 2009
• NOTES: Each link is to the first post on that topic in the selected time period that was found. In the effort to group topics together, some threads are listed out of chronological order.
• If you want to know more please click the links to the list archives. Many discussions are very long and complex. Navigate to other posts in the threaded discussion by clicking "next" or "previous" in the archives (you must be viewing the archives in thread view for this to work). Note that sometimes threads jump around -- view the whole monthly archive by subject if you want to make sure to read every message on a topic.
• Important topics: Topics that generated a lot of discussion or that are especially important are bolded.
• Announcements: Topics that are official WMF board, staff or chapter announcements or reports are also underlined.
• P.S. list authors are not responsible for any clumsy summaries. Please edit if something is misrepresented. Suggestions? Comments? Please post at the LSS talk page.

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Summary

1. Announcements and reports
   1. strategic planning office hours [1], [2], [3]
   2. New Wikizine -- Wikizine 114 [4]
   3. upcoming tech hire: CTO position to be split, Brion to take "Senior Software Architect" position and Chief Technical Officer position to be hired [5]
   4. Translatewiki newsletter -- a new translation rally has begun [6]
   5. Report to the Board of Trustees from Sue Gardner-- April 2009[7]
   6. donation button upgrade report [8]; delaying implementation and testing of buttons until after Wikimania [9]
   7. report to the Board of Trustees from Sue Gardner -- May 2009 [10]
   8. New language Wikipedias and Wikinews (making around 270 Wikipedias and 28 Wikinews altogether) [11], discussion [12]
   9. New Wikizine -- #115 [13]
   10. hiring new multimedia usability project manager [14]
   11. $500,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation [15]
   12. New Board members (Matt Halprin & Sj) and roles [16]
   13. $2M grant from the Omidyar Network [17], Press release and FAQ: [18], what are the terms of the grant [19]
   14. IRC questions accepted for the board panel at Wikimania [20]
   15. Wikizine #116 [21]
2. Chapters and community
   1. What are your favorite new project ideas? Please list them on the new strategy wiki [22]
   2. Presentations & events marketing [23]
   3. is WP:NOT a global policy; how to interpret it for ja.wp? [24]
   4. And followup to above/summary of responses: WP:NOT, consensus, and the global pillars: [25]
   5. Stevertigo's block/moderation on lists generally [26]
   6. more on moderation: a request to moderate foundation-l [27]
   7. More about Open Library-type projects & Wikisource [28]
   8. Why do some languages have more articles/page views than others? Some numbers [29]
   9. New research from Ed Chi -- number of articles being added is slowing down [30]
   10. is there a lack of research on Wikipedia [31], jump: [32]
   11. Should there be a policy about closing projects [33], summary [34]
   12. How much of Wikipedia is vandalized? About 0.4% of articles [35], with traffic data [36]
   13. About Wikispecies [37]
   14. Why is Encyclopedia of Life doing better than Wikispecies? [38]
   15. A suggestion for expert Board members [39]
   16. Chapters as intermediaries between WMF and communities [40]
   17. Flaggedrevs on the Hungarian Wikipedia [41]
   18. Proposal for foundation-announce-l [42]
   19. opt-out global sysop proposal [43]
   20. mo.wikipedia still in cyrillic [44]
3. Board elections
   1. emails reminding voters about the Board elections -- are they spam? discussion ensues. [45] Also discussion about emails sent to bots, blocked users; general discussion about how to make the election better. [46]
   2. update on why some votes were struck [47]
   3. more about the Board Election strikes [48]
   4. Election results [49]
   5. Wikivoices interview with board candidates gone missing [50]
   6. where's the raw data for the elections? [51], [52]
4. Commons and Gallery, Libraries, Archives, Museums (GLAM) issues
   1. Licensing of media files, cont. (can one upload GFDL-only files?) [53]
   2. report on GLAMWiki event [54]
   3. about hotlinked images (was GLAMwiki report) [55]
   4. RFC on possible multimedia workshop with Wikimedia France [56]
5. Miscellaneous/other
   1. IdeaTorrent status? [57]
   2. Any Wikimedians going to the Free Culture forum? [58]
   3. UNESCO report on Open Educational REsources [59]
   4. Is Apple censoring Wiktionary? [60]
   5. voluntary regulation of 'multimedia service providers' to protect minors [61]
   6. Commentary on Knol, a year later [62]; more commentary on Knol: [63]
   7. link to Unicef report: "UNICEF: State of World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2009" [64]
   8. two videos about handling difficult people [65]
   9. Google has a new search algorithm; preview available [66] Followup: thoughts on Google's new search engine pushing Wikipedia entries down? [67]
   10. Wikimedia wins praise in web privacy study [68]
   11. why hasn't the localizationupdate/translations been added to the Vector skin [69]
   12. Alphascript Publishing has published over 1900 books that are for sale on Amazon that are computer-generated copies from Wikipedia [70]
   13. Wiktionary contest logo makes newsletter [71]
   14. Can we fix the email list archives? [72]
   15. Mediawiki IRC cloaks are now available for all developers with svn commit [73]
   16. Talis grants for open education available [74]
   17. costs and benefits of releasing map data -- leaked UK report [75]
   18. New reviews project (non-Wikimedia) -- opencritics [76]
   19. Regiowikicamp, Sept. 25-27, Germany [77]