German politician Lutz Heilmann requested and was briefly granted a court order blocking the redirection of "wikipedia.de" to "de.wikipedia.org", before negative press attention led to the injunction's retraction, upon Mr. Heilmann's request.
The restriction, which prevented Wikimedia Deutschland from linking to "de.wikipedia.org" through their website and search engine at "wikipedia.de", apparently went into place sometime on Friday, November 14, upon the reception of a preliminary injunction in the case. The injunction was issued the day before, upon a request by Heilmann at the Landgericht Lübeck, a German intermediate court. In place of the usual page, readers were instead shown a notice explaining the situation. The message, as translated to English by AxelBoldt, reads:
With temporary injunction from the Landgericht Lübeck of 13 November 2008, obtained by Lutz Heilmann (Member of Parliament for the party Die Linke), Wikimedia Germany is prohibited from "directing the internet address wikipedia.de to the internet address de.wikipedia.org" as long as "de.wikipedia.org contains" certain statements about Lutz Heilmann. Until further notice the service of wikipedia.de in its current form thus has to be terminated. Wikimedia Germany will appeal the decision.
Wikimedia Germany is not the provider of the "Wikipedia" made available under de.wikipedia.org and has no influence on the contents of the online encyclopedia. Rather, Wikimedia Germany is a non-profit charity (Eingetragener Verein) for the advancement of free knowledge which merely informs about the application of Wikipedia. As is explained on the site, the provider of Wikipedia is the Wikimedia Foundation, a foundation incorporated in Florida, U.S. and located in San Francisco.
If you want to help us, you can donate. More information can be found under http://spenden.wikimedia.de/. Thank you very much for your support!
We thank the attorney's office of JBB Rechtsanwälte for their prompt and competent help.
The exact issues that Mr. Heilmann objected to were not widely reported, due to concerns that republishing the material might make media sources the target of a similar lawsuit. Thorsten Feldmann, a lawyer for Wikimedia Deutschland, told Spiegel Online that four claims make up most of the suit's issues. According to Focus Online, some of the claims objected to by Heilmann included a claim that he had not received his university degree, and that he had been involved in a business venture involving pornography. Other purported sources of dispute include the mention of Heilmann's five-year employment with the Stasi (the East German secret police), a fact that he admitted to concealing until 2005, and reports made by German newspapers in October and reported in his article, claiming that he was under investigation for having threatened a former roommate.
The suit received press attention from various German sources, including The Local, Der Spiegel, and Focus Online, and public response was apparently very negative, leading to a request by Heilmann to withdraw the injunction. Upon the formal end of legal proceedings on Monday, the site was restored. However, while Heilmann withdrew the injunction and the lawsuit against Wikimedia Deutschland, a lawsuit is apparently still ongoing against the Wikipedia contributor responsible for some or all of the offending material.
The temporary shutdown draws comparisons to a previous case, involving Tron (Boris Floricic). Floricic's parents filed a lawsuit in late 2005, and received a preliminary injunction that blocked the redirect from January 17 through February 9, 2006, when the injunction was removed. The complaint was rejected in appeal in May 2006 (see archived story).
One interesting aspect of the suit is a significant increase in donations to the German chapter. In the week before the case, with the fundraiser ongoing, donations averaged about €3,450 per day. In the three days that the redirect was active, the chapter received over €42,800, more than four times its fundraiser average. Many of the donors who left comments referenced the controversy. For comparison, in the first ten months of 2008, the chapter received less than €27,000 in online donations.
Following a prolonged dialog with the Wikimedia Foundation, the Free Software Foundation has recently published a new version of the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). This version was specifically released in order to allow Wikimedia projects to relicense their content under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) license.
All text in Wikipedia is licensed under the GFDL. When Wikipedia was first created, this was probably the most suitable free licensing scheme available. However, GFDL was originally designed for software manuals; its applicability to short encyclopedic articles is not always optimal. For example, while one is allowed to print and distribute copies of GFDL-licensed documents, the full text of the GFDL (approximately five printed pages) must be included with each copy.
CC-BY-SA is similar in spirit to GFDL: both allow the modification and reuse of content, including commercial use, as long as the original contributors are attributed and the free license is not removed. One practical difference is that CC-BY-SA allows copying documents while providing only the URL of the license. Many newer non-Wikimedia wikis, such as Wikitravel, Citizendium, and WikiEducator, are licensed under CC-BY-SA, making it unlawful to transfer content to and from these websites.
As a consequence, there has been an ongoing discussion in Wikimedia about the possibility of migrating to CC-BY-SA. Last December, the Wikimedia Foundation formally requested that GFDL be altered to allow this migration (see archived story). This is possible since Wikipedia's license text (like many other GFDL-licensed documents) specifies that the content may be reused under version 1.2 of the GFDL, or any later version.
GFDL 1.3, released on November 3, is the result of negotiations between the Wikimedia Foundation and the Free Software Foundation. This version defines a new concept, "massive multi-author collaboration websites," which refers to any website with "facilities for anybody to edit" its content—in other words, wikis and wiki-like sites. Under some restrictions, the operators of such websites are allowed to migrate all of their content to CC-BY-SA.
Two restrictions on this migration process are relevant to Wikipedia. First, the migration must take place no later than August 1, 2009. Second, GFDL-licensed material which was transferred to Wikipedia from a non-wiki source after GFDL 1.3 was published is not eligible for relicensing. According to the GFDL 1.3 FAQ, this limitation was included to prohibit "gaming the system by adding FDLed materials to a wiki, and then using them under CC-BY-SA afterwards." In a post on foundation-l, Wikimedia Foundation Deputy Director Erik Möller said that the latter restriction "was a key condition for the Free Software Foundation to agree to this change."
Discussion concerning the possibility of CC-BY-SA licensing began on foundation-l moments after GFDL 1.3 was released. The Foundation's plan is to collaboratively construct a re-licensing proposal on meta-wiki, which will release all content under a dual GFDL/CC-BY-SA license. According to Möller, "It is expected that we will launch a community-wide referendum on this proposal, where a majority will constitute sufficient support for re-licensing." Möller has also stated that "either all or no GFDL-licensed Wikimedia wikis will be switched to CC-BY-SA," to ensure that content can be easily transwikied.
Some Wikimedians have expressed worry about the clause prohibiting further inclusion of GFDL-licensed material. In response, Möller said, "If some GFDL 1.2 content that cannot be migrated later is imported by accident, that should not present any great difficulty—we will simply remove it as we would remove any other problematic copyrighted content."
Many Wikimedians and local Wikimedia groups and chapters are active in producing Wikimedia-centered events, from ongoing meetups to annual conferences, and in promoting a Wikimedia presence at outside events. Several Wikimedia events have happened around the world in the past few weeks.
On November 1, 2008, Wikimedia Nederland (Wikimedia Netherlands) had its fourth conference, "De Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland" (WCN for short), in Utrecht. There were around 100 attendees. There were 19 speakers, including WMF board member Jan-Bart de Vreede, Philipp Birken, Erik Zachte, Esther Hoorn (who helped with WMNL's reaction to the EC green paper) and Arnoud Engelfriet (a lawyer specializing in Internet topics).
Some of the topics covered were an introduction to copyright, EU copyright legislation (the green paper by the European Commission was discussed), the German Flagged Revisions system by Philipp Birken, the use of wikis for educational purposes, and language support in Wikimedia Commons.[1] Mindz.com and Kennisnet sponsored the event.[2] Many people blogged about the conference.[3]
Wikimedia Sverige (Wikimedia Sweden) had a "Wikipedia Academy" in Lund from November 12-13, which was a big success, attracting twice the numbers of participants expected[4]. The program featured workshops, discussions, and presentations by Wikipedians.[5] Topics included a basic introduction to Wikipedia, inclusionism/exclusionism, source criticism, the legal aspects of Wikipedia, Wikipedia and education, and others. The conference was put on by a team of Wikimedia volunteers and staff from Lund University library,[4] and was blogged throughout by three participants.[6]
"Wikipedia Academies" were first started in 2006 in Germany. To quote Lars Aronsson, "Wikipedia Academy is a two-day conference and boot camp for academic researchers and teachers, who need to get deeper involved in Wikipedia, and a chance for the Wikipedia community to get in touch with the research community."[7] Past Academies have been held in Germany, France, South Africa, Argentina and Poland.[8]
The second Wikis Take Manhattan event was held on October 4th, 2008, in New York City. To quote from the project page, the event was "a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest coordinated with Columbia University and New York University students and The Open Planning Project, aimed at illustrating Wikipedia and Streetswiki articles covering the wondrous sights of the isle of Manhattan, and all across the Five Boroughs of New York City."[9] The event was co-sponsored by several groups devoted to free culture projects, including the Columbia University chapter of Students for Free Culture, the NYU chapter of Students for Free Culture, the Open Planning Project, Wikimedia New York City and Wikipedia volunteers.
There were 23 teams and over 50 participants, many of whom were not Wikimedians. The end result was thousands of photos contributed to Commons, which helped go towards meeting the goal of taking free photos of over 650 locations in the city.
The success of the first such event in NYC, "Wikipedia Takes Manhattan", which was held last spring, helped inspire a larger project page called Wikipedia Takes The City, which includes advice and suggestions for running similar projects and a list of such events. "Wikipedia Takes The City" events have now been held all over the world, including on Oct. 4th 2008 in Angers, France, and October 18-19, 2008 in Berlin, Germany.
If you are interested in finding out more information about events near you, there are several places to look. For English Wikipedians, the main source is the meetups page at Wikipedia:Meetups, which chronicles ongoing meetups and serves as a place to announce new meetups. Meetups of Wikipedia editors occur all over the world. These meetups range from the very informal -- meeting up at a restaurant or pub to chat socially about Wikipedia -- to the more formal, such as meetups with presentations or a theme. Advice on starting a new meetup for areas without an active group is also on the meetups page.
For larger, international events, there is a page on Meta which lists regional conferences, workshops and symposia[19]. For those living within the area of a Wikimedia Chapter, chapter reports also serve as announcements and discussion of upcoming and past events.[20] Contact the officers of the specific chapter, or visit their website, for more information.
Do you have an event that you would like to be noted in the Signpost? Contact Phoebe with details, for future events roundups.
The Wikimedia Foundation's 2008 fundraiser continued this week, raising nearly $356,000 in its second week and bringing total fundraiser contributions to $882,000 over the first two weeks. Including major gifts, the Foundation had raised over $2.79 million so far this fiscal year (since July 1).
The List Summary Service, a failed attempt to summarize the ongoings on the Foundation's mailing lists, was restarted by Phoebe after nearly 18 months of inactivity. The service summarizes the various topics discussed on the mailing lists, and issues new summaries about twice a month. The main focus is on the foundation-l mailing list, but Phoebe also added a summary for the WikiEN-l mailing list as well.
This week, summaries were added for foundation-l, for the periods of October 1-17, October 18-31, and November 2-15. A summary was also added for WikiEN-l, for November 1-15.
A vote on a new logo for Wikibooks is ongoing on the Meta-Wiki. As of press time, the most popular choice is Logo B, with 67 votes, followed by E with 47 votes, and H with 41 votes. The vote ends on December 1, and following the vote, discussion will focus on minor changes to the selected logo, including colors and branding.
Two editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Euryalus (nom) and Aervanath (nom).
Seven bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: IcalaniseBot (task request), AnomieBOT (task request), CheMoBot (task request), AnomieBOT (task request), Rfambot (task request) and BotPuppet (task request), DinoBot2 (task request).
Eight articles were promoted to featured status this week: Third Battle of Kharkov (nom), 2000 Sugar Bowl (nom), Connie Talbot (nom), U.S. Route 40 Alternate (Keyser's Ridge – Cumberland, Maryland) (nom), Beth Hamedrash Hagadol (Manhattan, New York) (nom), Rings of Neptune (nom), Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (nom), and Tom Crean (explorer) (nom).
Twenty-five lists were promoted to featured status this week: The Office (US TV series) season 4 (nom), List of Philadelphia Phillies team records (nom), List of Bleach episodes (season 6) (nom), List of Nobel Laureates in Literature (nom), List of awards and nominations received by S.H.E (nom), List of mergers and acquisitions by Dell (nom), Rage Against the Machine discography (nom), List of mergers and acquisitions by Red Hat (nom), List of mergers and acquisitions by Condé Nast (nom), List of mergers and acquisitions by Microsoft (nom), List of Veronica Mars episodes (nom), List of Nobel Laureates in Physics (nom), Nashville Sounds team records (nom), Chief Justice of the Common Pleas (nom), List of StarCraft media (nom), List of awards and nominations received by John Legend (nom), List of mergers and acquisitions by Expedia (nom), List of Tennessee Titans head coaches (nom), Annie Award for Best Animated Video Game (nom), Bibliography of S. E. Hinton (nom), List of Marmalade Boy chapters (nom), List of New York Knicks head coaches (nom), List of FA Cup winners (nom), Timeline of the 2003 Atlantic hurricane season (nom) and New York Knicks seasons (nom).
No topics were promoted to featured status this week.
No portals were promoted to featured status this week.
The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page this week as Today's featured article: Volcanism on Io, Ronald Niel Stuart, Joe Sakic, Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany, Surtsey, Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal, Phan Xich Long and Opeth.
Four articles have been delisted this week: William Nelson Page (nom), Augustan drama (nom), Virtuti Militari (nom) and History of Test cricket from 1877 to 1883 (nom).
Four lists have been removed this week: List of spacewalks and moonwalks (nom), List of elements by name (nom), List of elements by symbol (nom) and Towns of Alberta (nom).
No topics were delisted this week.
The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page this week as picture of the day: Maly syrphid fly, Australian WWI Recruitment Poster, Osprey V-22, Rosie the Riveter, Rose Geranium, Palais Garnier, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Abner Doubleday.
One sound was featured this week:
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| The Lost Chord (1913) | (nom) |
One featured picture was demoted this week: Pollen and Gerbera.
Four pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.3 (b4aac1f), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.
The Arbitration Committee opened one case this week, and did not close any, leaving three open.
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