From: Florence Devouard <anthere(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: September 27, 2007 12:30:09 AM GMT+03:30
To: Sabine Cretella <scretella(a)wikimedia.org>
Cc: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>rg>, Sandra Ordonez
<sordonez(a)wikimedia.org>rg>, Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org>rg>,
Cary Bass <cbass(a)wikimedia.org>rg>, Hessam Armandeh
<armandeh(a)gmail.com>om>, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen(a)openprogress.org>
Subject: Re: fa.wikipedia and me wearing two hats this time
Reply-To: anthere(a)wikimedia.org
Sabine Cretella wrote:
Hi, I will write inbetween the lines :-)
Florence Devouard schrieb:
I am sorry if I appear a bit obtuse, but I am not sure I fully
understand what the proposal is. Can you clarify ?
From what I understand
1) 147 articles were translated in farsi, from english wikipedia,
by two professional translators, who were paid by Open Progress
2) the translated articles were not put in the main space, but
set up in a separate namespace.
(this was about a year ago. I remember there were some
disagreements from the fa community, who did not want to accept
the articles)
3) a donor wants to give 1470 EUR (more or less) to WMF, to make
sure the articles would be completed (with links) and moved to
the main space
What I do not understand is
A) do you expect the WMF to pay 10 euros to the translators to
move and complete the articles ?
No Open Progress will receive the money and it
will be paid to WMF
after conclusion of the move and insertion of links.
B) do you expect the WMF to pay some editors to
move and complete
the articles ?
No WMF does not have to do anything - this mail was just to inform
you about what is going on. We don't want to do things without you
knowing about it.
C) do you expect the move to happen all by
itself, and WMF simply
keep the donation ?
Open Progress wants to co-operate with fa.wikipedia in this
case.
This means we agree on a feasable period of time in which things
should be done - for example one month. What is done after that
period is going to be paid for - what not: well, that than depends
on who wants to donate the money.
D) something else ?
In short, will someone be paid ?
WMF will get money in terms of a donation if we
can co-operate
with fa.wikipedia. Another solution for the donor could be to pay
people outside even not through us, something we would like to
avoid. co-operation brings better results.
By who ?
Open Progress will receive the
money from the donor and will pay
it then to the WMF.
Who will coordinatate the move and completion ?
Open Progress together with the fa.wikipedia community.
Who will decide the job is well done ?
We
have various people who can look at it - among these one person
in the donor's office and of course the translators who originally
did the job - of course we can also contact some more people in
universities etc. I suppose that if we have a close co-operation
with fa.wikipedia and Hessam things will simply go smoothly. I
mean that after having had not so nice discussions with Hessam in
the past and having had also very positive ones on the other hand
I know him good enough to be sure that we will get a good job on
the way since he will simply talk if there is anything that does
create a problem. That is: I trust him to do really good in this.
Should the links be "controlled" by the
donor ?
Well the links are quite easy to control - even for people not
speaking Persian. You have the list of incoming wikilinks by
clicking on "What links here" and one can easily see the blue
outgoing links and just count if there are three or eight. Even I
could do that and probably I will be asked to do it.
Hello,
I guess my question was not clear... Let me say it differently.
What will the donor get in exchange of giving the money ? Will he
name the articles he wants improved ? Will he have a say on the
final articles ? Will he get a link to a certain website as a
"thank you" ?
In short, what does he gain from the deal ? How much control does
he have ?
If the donor wants to be publicly mentionned, how will that happen ?
If I understand well, you are not waiting anything from WMF ?
Simply informing us ? Right ?
Best
Ant
Who is
paying ? Open Progress or WMF ? What is Open Progress role
here ?
Open Progress has just a co-ordinating role. We will, also in
future have situations when there is funding through a donor who
wants to get certain things done and instead of involving people
from outside we would very much like to reach the situation that
instead of paying single people the money can go to the WMF as a
donation. The donor may be a person or organisation that wants to
remian anonymous or a person or organisation that can be publicly
mentioned. It is one of many ways to get funding on the way - this
is one of the first experiences with it, for the WMF and for Open
Progess. We should try to make it a positive experience for all by
co-operating in the best way possible.
We will have a meeting on Friday morning concerning this. I am
obviously involved since I co-ordinated the project last year. It
would be great if we could already give the OK for a "we can do it
by co-operating with fa.wikipedia".
Does this help? Please don't hesitate to ask further questions if
something is still not clear. Often things might seem obvious to
me, but they are not too all.
Thanks and have a great day!
Ciao, Sabine