Talk:Special projects committee (2006-2009)

Scope

1. Distribution of Wikimedia project's content (DVDs, print, mirrors...), with or without partners (e.g., a publishing company)
2. Coordination of Wikimedia projects with partner projects to share and connect content (e.g. the Internet Archive, Project Runeberg, libraries, dictionary data for Wiktionary, movies and images for Commons, geographical data...)
3. Coordination between other committees and researchers to analyse the projects, in particular when technical or legal issues are involved (e.g., analyzing logs, generating statistics...)
4. Coordination of projects between outside agents and the Foundation for technical or financial benefits of parties (e.g., feeds to mirror sites, which pay the Foundation regularly for our materials, answers.com, yahoo search)
5. Assistance in improving/financing/starting a new project proposal (wikiversity, wikidata, &c.), with or without outside parties
6. Evaluation and incubation of other projects, new concepts, new events, and ideas, to be handled to other committees if considered interesting (eg, a conference in arab country next year to event committee)
7. Pursuing grants and other sources of funding to develop specific projects within the scope of this committee (e.g., a Wikijunior grant)
8. Assisting the Foundation in fulfilling its philanthropic mission of providing free knowledge to people everywhere.

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1. Philanthropic activity is an essential part of our mission. Providing resources to needy populations, especially populations in developing countries is precisely the mission of the Foundation as per our mission statement.
2. Grants are an essential part of this. People give us grant moneys to conduct projects, not because we are nice. We cannot accept grant moneys if we do not complete these projects. Worse, we may have to return the moneys.
3. Over time, we will be cooperating more and more with other organizations. Some initial contacts were made in Tunis and earlier. This committee is intended to ensure that we do not lose contact with potential strategic alliances.
4. Wikimedia may decide to found new projects, such as Wikiversity, etc. It is premature, and beyond the scope of the founding group, to decide that there will be no new projects.
5. Special offers to the Foundation is essential to running a successful website. For instance, we were recently offered 4,000 hours of valuable video. Do we take it? What does that entail? How do we make the best use of it?
6. This committee is the address for people to turn to with new ideas, to see if they are feasible. Yes, you are allowed and even encouraged to have ideas. This committee helps bring the good ideas to fruition.

Ideas

Originally posted to Communications list, more of your domain

Hi all,

Looks like the goofy suggestion of a plaque commemorating the 1m article on EN isn't going to blow over, and we're pretty much obliged to do it now.

So what steps do we need to take?

Dbiv, David Boothroyd posted the following message:

My job is to persuade local councils to grant planning permission for things and I am myself a local councillor who serves on a planning sub-committee deciding on these things. If you want a plaque, the thing to do is to get in touch with the people who own the station (Transport Scotland I think - email their press team at media@transportscotland.gsi.gov.uk) and the people who operate it (First Group - scotrail.enquiries@firstgroup.com) to see if they would allow a plaque to be put up. If they say yes, then you need a planning application to Glasgow City Council [1] to be approved. David | Talk 22:21, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I removed the specifics off the page it was posted to.

So far, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jordanhill_railway_station/Commemoration seems to be gathering steam, with many people signing.

Should we have a seperate fundraiser for this plaque and near future maintainence? I doubt many donators to Wikimedia would be thrilled to know their money isn't being spent on running the project, but instead putting up a plaque in a relatively non-notable commuter train station.

Nick

Services

Assistance to set up a wiki

Our software is called "MediaWiki" and you may consult this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki

It is "free software"; you may download it for free.

The Wikimedia Foundation is a nonprofit and does not offer consulting services for using MediaWiki. However, I suspect that some of our volunteer developers would want to offer such services to you, of course for a fee. What I suggest is the following:

• Go to mail.wikimedia.org, subscribe to wikitech-l and send an announcement

to that list that you wish to hire MediaWiki experts as consultants.

• Perhaps contact Wikia.com; I know they run commercial wiki services, they

may also do consulting work.

Make any of our services available as web services (XML)

Please could you inform me if you make any of your services available as web services (XML) or if you intend to introduce such as service in the near future. If so please could you also inform me what they attached costs would be.

I'm afraid we don't, and we don't have projects for such services in the near future. (I'll ask anyway, but..)

However, we do make dumps of the database available on

• http://download.wikimedia.org and
• http://static.wikipedia.org

Perhaps you can use them for your purposes.

I am interested in developing an application that uses Wikipedia to look up certain key words. When my application processes certain words, I want to hit a Wikipedia web service and pull up a short descriptive paragraph for the phrase. Is there an SDK for Wikipedia? I know that the program Trillian has some type of method of externally querying the Wikipedia database and pulling information for certain keywords. Is this available to developers such as myself?

Wikiversity

I've made some changes at Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal - I think it's ok at the moment - but what do you think? Cormaggio ^@ 00:37, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Resolutions

Should this resolution be placed on our page, or have we now superceded it with our own governing resolutions from Sunday? Cormaggio ^@ 08:09, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

English Wikipedia static version

Currently, there's significant work being started on the English Wikipedia to produce a static release, dubbed "Version 1.0". The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has begun identifying which articles are suitable for a release, and guidance from the SPC would be appreciated. Titoxd 05:48, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

How can SPC help with new project proposals?

see How to develop a new project for a proper discussion of this.

Public meetings

The first public SPC meetings was held on August 26, 2006. The second is scheduled for September 3, 2006, 2000 UTC.

See Special projects committee/Meetings for details.

Request for a Urdu Wikiscience

Dear Sir, My name is Afraz and I came to you with a request to start a Wikiscience in Urdu language. Angela have guided me to request here, my talk with Angela CAN BE SEEN HERE. According to the suggestion of Angela, I have tried my best to work on science topics at the Urdu Wikipedia, an example of my work can be seen in the science category taht is cmopletely DONE BY ME. But I strongly believe that a SEPARATE Urdu Wikipedia just for science is absolute necessity. Name can be Urdu Wikiscience, or any if you suggest another one.

• I take the full responsibility of keeping the high standard of the contents.
• I will do my best to make science easy and correct, that can change and improve the minds and life style of people.
• I will do my best to popularize all the different wikimedia projects too.
• I will keep all the minute details of scientific terminology both in Urdu and equivalent English in front of Urdu term in brackets.

Please reply here on the same page or at my User page at Urdu wiktionary. Thank You, Afraz MD PhD

Is the committee active or dormant?

The page says the next meeting will be mid october 2006. Should this page be archived or marked inactive or anything similar? ++Lar: t/c 20:52, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Are the committee disbanded?

What does this mean {{historical|category=[[Category:Former WMF pages]]}} ? Are the committee disbanded?Hillgentleman

i cannot speak on behalf of the spcom, only for myself, but since there has been no activity for a long time, i myself consider the committee to be more or less dissolved. maybe other (former?) members can also react? anyway, imho the mailinglist should also be closed at some point... all the best, oscar 11:29, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

list closed

since this committee has ceased to exist since 2007 and the board resolved to discontinue it in 2009, i now also closed the mailinglist, it can be removed imho. oscar 02:43, 17 March 2010 (UTC)