Re: [Foundation-l] A discussion list for Wikimedia (not Foundation) matters
On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 4:14 AM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: We currently have this public list for Wikimedia Foundation matters, as well as a private list called internal-l which in practice is in large part used for WMF/chapters discussions, because chapter board members are added to it by default. I thought internal-l was used because people find foundation-l unpleasant, or because they want their discussions to be semi-private. This proposal seems fine to me, but I'm not sure it will address the issue you seem to be targeting (that discussions aren't held publicly). ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Call for nominations: chapter-appointed seats on the WMF Board of Trustees
On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 10:23 AM, Stuart West stuw...@gmail.com wrote: The hope was to attract/identify Board candidates who could add a lot of value to the movement but who, for one reason or another, would NOT typically be candidates in election. That might be because they aren't well-known in the editing community that decides elections. Or as Thomas mentions that they wouldn't be interested in going through the sometimes grueling election process. How is this different from the rationale for the expertise seats? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Vendetta?
On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 9:14 PM, Robin McCain ro...@slmr.com wrote: I've just been subjected to a rather bizarre bunch of activity by Mythpage88, who seems anxious to delete everything I've written over the years in WP on the basis that it isn't notable. It looks like he nominated one article which you edited a few years ago, trimmed another one, and added tags to a few others. You should try talking to him about it. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Blanking a Wikipedia, a very bad idea
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 5:10 PM, Mathias Schindler mathias.schind...@gmail.com wrote: Then can you specify the threshold for the community-ratio that is in your opinion required for some Wikipedians to vandalize a language edition of Wikipedia in such way? Unless the WMF decides it should intervene, the de facto threshold is whatever allows them to get consensus and have an admin make the necessary changes and not be reverted. As a practical matter, the Kiribati-based community would not be able to do something like this on the English Wikipedia. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Inviting some 'outsider candidates' into the movement in the way they wanted
On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 3:54 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Don't forget that we do already have routes onto the board (chapter selected and expert seats) other than the elections for precisely the reason that the elections don't necessary get the breadth the board needs. And now http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Board_visitors ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Big problem to solve: good WYSIWYG on WMF wikis
On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 6:50 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: So, the payoffs could be ridiculously huge: eight times the number of smart and knowledgeable people even being able to *fix typos* on material they care about. Jan Paul Posma's inline editor seems pretty promising. It's not exactly WYSIWYG, but people would be able to fix typos with it. And since he's working on it for school, I suspect he might not even be getting paid. :-) http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/205322 http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/208128 http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/213447 http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/216940 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Executive Director?
On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 5:32 PM, Benjamin Lees emufarm...@gmail.com wrote: I admit I haven't been following the fundraiser process very carefully, but is there any place where people can see and comment on fundraising banners before they go live? I've only been able to find such a page for user-submitted banners. No one replied to this. Is that a no? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] should not web server logs (of requests) be published?
On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 12:38 PM, Domas Mituzas midom.li...@gmail.com wrote: Logs cannot be read by wikipedia owners or us government because they don't exist. There aren't any raw logs? On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 2:30 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: Each web server, of which the WMF has a few, collects details on the behaviour of IPs, in logs. Those logs can be and probably have been requested by certain government officials, most likely for the purpose of tracking down who is behind a certain Bad posting to a BLP. Presumably they would usually just use CheckUser data for that. On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 2:30 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: I'm still not clear why we would want to know the IP exactly for analytical purposes. Some intrepid programmer could write a program which would simply collect detailed analysis of a person's in-world behaviour and call them Bob992 instead of 13.42.204.192 or whatever. Making the information packets anonymous. That would still allow any sort of analysis the Tatars want to make, and not reveal any private information. It's a bit more complicated than that. Sometimes anonymous isn't anonymous enough: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Survey about recent ban
On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 2:11 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, It does not work for me. The poll that is.. The ban of Mr Kohs works for me. Thanks, GerardM Pressing Enter doesn't work as you'd expect on that site (it seems to activate the Sign In button, rather than Continue). ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy one language - one Wikipedia
On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: On 24 June 2010 15:04, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com wrote: - Scope and name: Maybe it would practically make no big difference whether the project is called simple or for kids. Poor readers and adult beginning readers (natives or not) tend to read texts that are meant for children anyway. It could make a difference in promoting, though. A scope question can also be whether certain kinds of explicit images are allowed. I strongly disagree. There is a big difference between simple language and simple concepts. Children need simple concepts (basically, you can't assume as much prior knowledge because they haven't had time to learn things that adults consider to be common knowledge). Adults that are just learning a language need simple language because they haven't learnt complicated vocabulary yet. Said what I was going to say. One problem I've noticed with the Simple English Wikipedia is that they seem not to have truly decided whether they're for children or for ESL adults. There are irreconcilable differences between these two groups in terms of background and conceptual understanding, as you said, which bleed into issues of what content is acceptable for a given age group: far beyond explicit pictures, you need to decide how to cover topics like sex, religion, death, war, and rape--if they should be covered at all for that age group. I think a single project devoted to children would fail unless it was well-segmented: material designed for a 6-year-old should be very different from material designed for a 12-year-old (in terms of what we expect them to know, what we expect them to be able to grasp, and what content is acceptable). On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 4:30 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: If you don't have a strong background in a field then drinking from the fire hose of full-complexity concepts is hard no matter if you are a child or not. If you do have a reasonable background a simplified article will be patronizing and, worse, not especially useful. I don't think there's anything wrong with making assumptions about what a person of a given age is likely/expected to know: school curricula are based upon such assumptions, after all. Children who find kiddie books patronizing and useless can choose to access the grownup versions instead. It has been ever thus with precocious youth. But I certainly agree with you that we shouldn't expect kids to know/be able to grasp less about everything; we should expect kids to know more about things that kids tend to know more about. I hope the study that the Board is commissioning consults with educators who teach at any age levels we might think about creating new projects for. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Community, collaboration, and cognitive biases
On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 6:55 PM, Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.comsimetrical%2bwikil...@gmail.com wrote: 2) Make sure that every paid developer spends time dealing with the community. This can include giving support to end users, discussing things with volunteers, reviewing patches, etc. They should be doing this on paid time, and they should be discussing their personal opinions without consulting with anyone else (i.e., not summarizing official positions). Paid developers and volunteers have to get to know each other and have to be able to discuss MediaWiki together. [...] The basic attitude has to be that paid developers are treated identically to volunteers, except that you can tell the former what to do and expect them to put in more time. There should not be communication between paid developers and the community, paid developers should be an integral *part* of the community rather than a separate group of people. I really agree with this sentiment, but it seems difficult to get staff to really be part of the community unless they're _from_ the community. The developers I've seen discuss their personal opinions on public fora (especially in ways that are accepted in an open community but not in a business environment—one example would be criticizing their co-workers) have been those who were recruited from the community. There's nothing wrong with having outsiders as employees, but communication is rather different in the outside world, and I get the sense that a lot of the people hired from elsewhere aren't necessarily familiar with the Wikimedia Way™ of discussing things—and even if they understand that it's there, I'm not sure they always understand that they're supposed to join in. I recall someone once suggesting that all employees be required to choose a Wikimedia project and get involved in it. I haven't thought through the practical implications, but it always seemed like a cute idea, at least. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Amory Meltzer amorymelt...@gmail.comwrote: This is nuts. Literally, nothing has changed. Stuff on Wikimedia sites needs to be either educational or aimed at furthering the goals of the project and the foundation. We don't host articles about my her breasts or his penis, and we don't need to host images of them either. Arguing otherwise is just looking for a webhost. ~A It's rather unfortunate that Jimbo went beyond deleting low-quality photographs of penises and deleted what are obviously works of art or educational illustrations. Had he stuck to the former, he would have had the support of a lot of people who are now upset. If he were to admit that it was a mistake to delete things that weren't clearly at the bottom of the barrel (rather than wheel-warring over them!), it would go a long way toward showing that this actually is about improving the quality of the project and not about PR or appeasing donors. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's authority (on global bans)
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 4:33 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.comwrote: There has been no organized or widespread attempt to either ask Jimmy to give it up or to take it away. I can name a number of individuals who assert that should happen, but there's no poll, no project, no policy proposal to do so. There is now: * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Remove_Founder_flag*http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Founder/Proposal_to_the_rights_removal ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How to kill a mailing list
On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 12:32 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Anthony wrote: August 2009: 1030 September 2009: 791 October 2009: 326 November 2009: 513 December 2009: 234 January 2010: 207 February 2010: 213 March 2010: ??? And your point. Are you claiming credit? Or are you claiming to be the victim? The autopsy indicates that it was a suicide. Presumably he feels that the way the list has been managed has contributed to its decline. I don't disagree in that regard. On the other hand, raw message counts can be misleading: are 200-message threads a good thing? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment
On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 11:32 AM, Teofilo teofilow...@gmail.com wrote: How about moving the servers (5) from Florida to a cold country (Alaska, Canada, Finland, Russia) so that they can be used to heat offices or homes ? It might not be unrealistic as one may read such things as the solution was to provide nearby homes with our waste heat (6). I imagine the average Wikimedia user is more concerned with whether his requests are optimized to be fast than with whether they're optimized to be environmentally friendly. Or, to add a coat of greenwash, remember that power consumption is going to be greater if you have more latency. If the WMF had $130 million lying around, I would rather they used it to actually serve their mission. I think Domas hit the nail on the head in May: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-May/051656.html ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Pedophilia and the Non discrimination policy
I am going by the text. The Credit Card Usage Policy and the Pluralism, Internationalism, and Diversity Policy also carry that boilerplate, but they very clearly do not apply to the projects. Indeed, the Code of Conduct Policy specifically states that it not a policy for community members. Still, I agree with you that an official statement would be welcome. On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 5:11 PM, Jake Wartenberg j...@jakewartenberg.comwrote: This would be a great thing for the foundation to clarify. We should probably go by the text and not by how the policy is linked to on a template. It states *This policy may **not be circumvented, eroded, or ignored on local Wikimedia projects.* On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Benjamin Lees emufarm...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think the non discrimination policy should be construed to apply to the communities: the policy says that it applies to the Wikimedia Foundation and makes no mention of the projects or volunteers. Note also that it is listed under Board and staff on the navigation template (the policies that apply to the projects are listed above). In any event, paraphilias are not legally protected characteristics. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal: foundation-announce-l
On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 12:30 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: I propose the foundation-announce-l mailing list be set up with the following posting rules: 1) One post per person per thread. That includes the initiator of the thread. That's not how announcement lists work. The whole point of an announcement list is that the only posts on it will be announcements; and for the list to be useful, the announcements have to be limited to those that are important to the list's topic (which is usually narrowly defined) and of interest to the subscribers—which generally means that only people in positions of authority are allowed to post. mediawiki-announce and toolserver-announce are good examples. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Report to the Board April 2009
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 6:46 PM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Covering: April 2009 Prepared by:Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation Prepared for: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees I really like these reports, but they'd be more useful if they came sooner after the events they describe. Will you be able to catch up to a 1-month delay in the near future? (I wouldn't mind if the reports for May, June, and July were condensed, if that's what it took.) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Upcoming tech hiring: CTO position split
On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 1:49 PM, Brion Vibber br...@wikimedia.org wrote: With the increase in administrative and organizational duties, I've been less and less able to devote time to the part of the job that's nearest and dearest to me: working with our volunteer developer community and end users -- Wikimedians and other MediaWiki users alike -- who have bugs, patches, features, ideas, complaints, hopes and dreams that need attention. The last thing I want to be is a bottleneck that prevents our users from getting what they need, or our open source developers from being able to participate effectively! Multicore brain upgrades aren't yet available, so to keep us running at top speed I've suggested, and gotten Sue Erik's blessing on, splitting out the components of my current CTO role into two separate positions: This is great news. I look forward to upping my daily dose of vitamin B (the supplements just didn't cut it). ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Voluntary self-regulation of multimedia service providers
On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 8:59 PM, private musings thepmacco...@gmail.comwrote: Hi all, Just wondering what folk think about the WMF heading towards compliance with things like this; http://www.gsmeurope.org/documents/eu_codes/fsm_code_en.pdf This is a german code of conduct - but there are many more (I've also spoken with these chaps =- http://www.iia.net.au/ - and I got the feeling that they'd very much like to engage with both communities, and the foundation as the 'service provider') My interest stems from discussing sexual content on wikimedia foundation projects, but obviously engagement with such external bodies / codes of practice etc. is far from limited to that sphere, best, Peter, PM. The sexual content issue aside, that code prohibits, among other things: Propaganda and other material issued by anti-constitutional organisations, as defined in § 86 of the German Criminal Code, § 86 a of the same code, and § 4, sect.1, subsections 1 and 2 of the Interstate Treaty on the Protection of Minors in the Media Portrayals of violence, as defined in § 131 of the German Criminal Code, and § 4, sect. 1, subsection 5 of the Interstate Treaty on the Protection of Minors in the Media Affronts to human dignity, as defined in § 4, section. 1, subsection 8 of the Interstate Treaty on the Protection of Minors in the Media This doesn't seem consistent with our goals and principles. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: How do you fully consult the community consensus?
On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 9:19 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: Sorry, where I said AbuseFilter I meant to say FlaggedRevisions. I'm not sure on how AbuseFilter came to be agreed on. On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 7:15 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 6:59 PM, Jennifer Riggs jri...@wikimedia.org wrote: I'm curious. In your perspective who is doing the central management that makes it difficult for ideas to percolate up? WMF, Jimmy, Board, select administrators/highly involved community members? In your opinion, is there an infrastructure barrier or a personalities one? jriggs It's an infrastructure, policy and outreach issue. I assume that every single person has the very best for the projects in mind and is doing it for the right reasons. That said, I see the definition of community being interpreted very narrowly. I liked what I saw with AbuseFilter but that was a singular case. Filtering edits is almost on the same level as showing advertisements. In these rare cases any change you try to make will quickly make its way through the community because many people will be outraged. There are a lot of other situations that don't propagate as well, not because they aren't very important, but because people just don't know about them. I really like the ParserFunctions example. Enabled with hardly any discussion and now used 500,000 times on the English Wikipedia. It had a major effect on Wikipedia that made it much harder to use. And now we are stuck in a programming mindset and we all assume that we all agreed to come here. It just isn't the case. You won't be able to find where that agreement happened. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l On which wiki do you mean, for FlaggedRevs? For the English Wikipedia, my understanding is that consensus was reached in favor of a limited trial for FlaggedRevs three months ago, but it hasn't been enabled yet because the tech team is still tidying things up and checking that everything works http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-May/043187.html. This was not a matter of the Foundation consulting the community—the community petitioned the Foundation, from what I can tell. I realize that 324 people voting might not qualify as the community for you, but this is the way changes get made on the English Wikipedia: people debate for a while (an extremely long while, as the case may be), proposals get tossed around, and eventually consensus forms among the portion of editors that is active in policy discussions. This system is not ideal, but it's the system that's in place. If you want to call the validity of the English Wikipedia's decision-making processes into question, then do so, but I don't think you should frame the discussion as being about the Foundation or software changes. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
