As opposed to the overreaction against SOPA, this Russian legislation actually is dangerous and is a bald-faced attempt to curtail free speech that the Kremlin doesn't like. Kudos to ru.wp for the blackout. Magog the Ogre (talk) 12:08, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's difficult to understand another country's politics. And the sentence "In an echo of the worldwide blacking-out of the English Wikipedia on 18 January as a protest against two bills before the US Congress ... the proposed new law introduces a mechanism to block IP-addresses and DNS records." looks like it's garbling together two different ideas. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 13:21, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I hope it's fixed now; thanks for pointing out poor sentence construction, Seth. The breaking news was put together mighty fast to make the publication deadline. Tony(talk) 15:04, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
All WMF project deal to some extend with commercialization (for example articles on companies or medications on Wikipedia). A travel guide will be no different. There are some commercial links that are important and some that are simple spam and it takes common sense to distinguish between the two. Wikitravel is also currently without the benefits of the many tools we at Wikipedia have to help us try to achieve an appropriate balance. As mentioned I see this as a great opportunity for the Wikimedia movement not only to expand our numbers but to play a role in bringing two communities of editors back together.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (please reply on my talk page) 13:26, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting report. Regarding the Wikidata logo, to avoid giving any hint of preference to one logo, I would have preferred that the Signpost include all of the logos or none of them. The Signpost could have included a single image with icon-sized versions of each of the logos. Pine✉19:37, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"Commercialization fears unaddressed"?? Did anyone attempt to raise these "fears" with the community before splashing them all over the Signpost and pretty much stating that they're being ignored? PowersT20:57, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to say that it is not a 'Wikitravel proposal', but rather a proposal for a travel guide. As you mention correctly, Wikivoyage is free from any form of advertising. This will also be the case for the new travel guide, in fact, as is holds true for any other Wikimedia project.--Aschmidt (talk) 00:42, 11 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I was a bit surprised with the titles about the travel guide proposal, since I didn’t see major concerns in the proposal as these titles suggest it (speaking as a non-native speaker, when you see "down" or "fears" you expect very bad news). ~ Seb35[^_^][fr]07:29, 11 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The reason it's being called the "Wikitravel proposal" is because it is a proposal for the WMF to support a duplicative fork of an existing, functional and hugely successful Wiki: Wikitravel.org. And that fork would be not just a duplication of all Wikitravel content, but a wholesale shanghai of the entire existing administrator community, who (understandably or not) would prefer to work under the auspices of the WMF umbrella, whether or not that turns out to be to the benefit of the WMF, the seven million monthly Wikitravel users, or the admins themselves. Thus this proposal is the farthest thing from the creation of a new travel wiki; it is the forking and fracturing of Wikitravel.org.IBobi (talk) 22:39, 11 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
How surprising that the "community manager" at Internet Brands would say such a thing. The Wikitravel folks didn't just get up one day and decide they wanted to join the WMF, it's the result of a long period of neglect and inattention from IB. Lankiveil(speak to me)09:32, 13 July 2012 (UTC).[reply]
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