from:"Anders Wennersten"

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Vote now to select members of the first U4C

2024-04-25 Thread Anders Wennersten


Thanks for starting this, so we can have the long awaited group in place

I have just completed my voting and I must say, this vote was by far the 
most demanding voting of all 15 or so I have participated in.


Just to go through all ?30? is quite time consuming, but worse, the 
voting list shows candidate without links and in random order, but  the 
list of candidates with linked statement are in alphabetic order, so for 
each you have to scroll (if you as me start with the alphabetic one).


Would it be possible to do do something in the presentations that make 
the voting a bit easier?


Anders

Den 2024-04-25 kl. 16:10, skrev Keegan Peterzell:


Dear all,

I am writing to you to let you know the voting period for the 
Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open now 
through May 9, 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta 
[1] to learn more about voting and voter eligibility.


The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global 
group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent 
implementation of the UCoC. Community members were invited to submit 
their applications for the U4C. For more information and the 
responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter [2]


Please share this message with members of your community so they can 
participate as well.


1. 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Coordinating_Committee/Election/2024
2. 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Coordinating_Committee/Charter


On behalf of the UCoC project team,

Keegan

--
Keegan Peterzell (he/him)
Lead Committee Support Specialist
Committee Support
Wikimedia Foundation

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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Could the broad use of ChatGPT mean more accesses to Wikipedia?

2023-05-15 Thread Anders Wennersten

Thanks Ziko for your reply, which very much echo my own worry.

If you try the ChatGPTt with the question amended with "Include a link
to Wikipedia" you find the answer is better for questioner and makes a
nice link to Wikipedia.

So if we are worried over your option A, we could enter 10 questions
with that phrase amended, and after this ChatGPT have learnt and will
always answer with a nice link to wikipedia. (but in reality I believe
we will find that the developers of these AI tools themself find it a
very attractive extension and mandatory option)

Anders

Den 2023-05-15 kl. 12:37, skrev Ziko van Dijk:

Dear Anders,

Thank you for your interesting question - we have been wondering for
some time what AI will mean for the future of the (entire) Wikimedia
movement.
Whether your observation is correct is also something I can only
speculate about. Possibly such a growth is rather a sign of
transition. Many people are still skeptical about AI. They then look
it up on Wikipedia to be on the safe side.

But which scenario will prevail?

a) AI-friendly: People will get used to AI very quickly. Of course,
people will affirm that they will always check all AI results. But
practically, no one will do that any more soon. And accordingly,
people will no longer look things up in Wikipedia itself. With all the
negative consequences for us.

b) AI-skeptical: Perhaps, after some scandals, people will not trust
AI. Then the backwardness of Wikipedia becomes a benefit. Then we can
proudly say, "Wikipedia is AI free!" And readers will appreciate it.

My fear is that the first scenario is more likely to come to pass. I
think the trend is that you speak a question into your smartphone.
Then you get a short, correct and understandable answer from an AI.
Will Wikipedia be able to do the same thing?

Best regards,
Ziko

Am Mo., 15. Mai 2023 um 11:24 Uhr schrieb Anders Wennersten
:

The number of accesses to the Wikipedias of de, nl and sw all show a
small increase in March and April compared with 2022 after a half big
decrease in January and February. Could this be related to the broad
introduction and use of ChatGPT at the same time period?

ChatGPT gives an excellent answer, with no use of Wikipedia, to the
question: "Who is the oldest person who has received the Nobel Prize in
chemistry?" but will the effect be that the person who put in that
question, access Wikipedia to read of him? And you get a very nice
answer from ChatGPT if you directly after the question above puts
"Include a link to Wikipedia"

Could my speculation be correct, that ChatGPT will become an important
tool to help us reach our mission, by improving the way to find
information in our projects?

Anders
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[Wikimedia-l] Could the broad use of ChatGPT mean more accesses to Wikipedia?

2023-05-15 Thread Anders Wennersten

The number of accesses to the Wikipedias of de, nl and sw all show a 
small increase in March and April compared with 2022 after a half big 
decrease in January and February. Could this be related to the broad 
introduction and use of ChatGPT at the same time period?


ChatGPT gives an excellent answer, with no use of Wikipedia, to the 
question: "Who is the oldest person who has received the Nobel Prize in 
chemistry?" but will the effect be that the person who put in that 
question, access Wikipedia to read of him? And you get a very nice 
answer from ChatGPT if you directly after the question above puts 
"Include a link to Wikipedia"


Could my speculation be correct, that ChatGPT will become an important 
tool to help us reach our mission, by improving the way to find 
information in our projects?


Anders
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Bing-ChatGPT

2023-02-22 Thread Anders Wennersten

I got the impression from the tech editor who I read the article from, 
that there is a big difference in how ChatGPT is used together with 
Bing. Jimmy Wales here describes my own experience using only ChatGPT, 
if you ask "who is NN#, you get unusable rubbish back.


But when the techeditor asked Bing-ChatGPT "who is Linus Larsson" (his 
name) he got very good result, that only exists in the article of him on 
swwp (no article of him exists on enwp). I can not interpret that in 
other way then that this version looked up Wikipedia, when asked


But I am am not a tech wizard so can be wrong

Anders

https://www.dn.se/kultur/linus-larsson-microsofts-ai-gjorde-slut-med-mig-pa-alla-hjartans-dag/ 



(the article in Swedish, heading says "Microsoft AI ended our relation 
on Valentin Day")


I also like the Ai  is insulting, stating as an answer "are you a fool 
or only stupid?" It seems to need to get trained on our UCoC



Den 2023-02-22 kl. 17:32, skrev Sage Ross:

Luis,

OpenAI researchers have released some info about data sources that
trained GPT-3 (and hence ChatGPT): https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165

See section 2.2, starting on page 8 of the PDF.

The full text of English Wikipedia is one of five sources, the others
being CommonCrawl, a smaller subset of scraped websites based on
upvoted reddit links, and two unrevealed datasets of scanned books.
(I've read speculation that one of these datasets is basically the
Library Genesis archive.) Wikipedia is much smaller than the other
datasets, although they did weight it somewhat more heavily than any
other dataset. With the extra weighting, they say Wikipedia accounts
for 3% of the total training.

-Sage

On Wed, Feb 22, 2023 at 8:19 AM Luis (lu.is)  wrote:

Anders, do you have a citation for “use Wikipedia content considerably”?

Lots of early-ish ML work was heavily dependent on Wikipedia, but state-of-the-art 
Large Language Models are trained on vast quantities of text, of which Wikipedia 
is only a small part. ChatGPT does not share their data sources (as far as I know) 
but the Eleuther.ai project released their Pile a few years back, and that already 
had Wikipedia as < 5% of the text data; I think it is safe to assume that the 
percentage is smaller for newer models:  https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.00027

Techniques to improve reliability of LLM output may rely more heavily on 
Wikipedia. For example, Facebook uses Wikipedia rather heavily in this 
*research paper*: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.03299 But I have seen no evidence 
that techniques like that are in use by OpenAI, or that they’re specifically 
trained on Wikipedia. If you’ve seen discussion of that, or evidence from 
output suggesting it, that’d be interesting and important!

Social: @luis_in_br...@social.coop
ML news: openml.fyi
On Feb 20, 2023 at 1:52 AM -0800, Anders Wennersten , 
wrote:

BIng with ChatGPT is now released by Micrsoft.

And from what I understand they use Wikipedia content considerably. If
you ask Who is A B and A B is not widely known, the result is more or
less identical to the content from the Wikipedia article (but worse, as
it "makes up" facts that is incorrect).

In a way I am glad to see Wikipedia is fully relevant even in this
emerging AI-driven search world. But Google search has ben careful to
always have a link to Wikipedia besides their made up summary of facts,
which here it is missing (yet?). And for licences, they are all ignored.

So if this is the future the number of  accesses from users to Wikipedia
will collapse, and also their willingness to donate... (but our content
still a cornerstone for knowledge)

Anders

(I got a lot of fact from an article in Swedish main newspaper by their
tech editor. He started asking fact of himself, and when he received
facts from his Wp article plus being credited to a book he had noting to
do with, he started to try to tell/learn ChatGPT of this error. The
chatPGT only got angry accusing the techeditor for lying and in the end
cut off the conversation, as ChatGPT continued to teat the techeditor as
lyer and vandal..).
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[Wikimedia-l] Bing-ChatGPT

2023-02-20 Thread Anders Wennersten

BIng with ChatGPT is now released by Micrsoft.

And from what I understand they use Wikipedia content considerably. If
you ask Who is A B and A B is not widely known, the result is more or
less identical to the content from the Wikipedia article (but worse, as
it "makes up" facts that is incorrect).

In a way I am glad to see Wikipedia is fully relevant even in this
emerging AI-driven search world. But Google search has ben careful to
always have a link to Wikipedia besides their made up summary of facts,
which here it is missing (yet?). And for licences, they are all ignored.

So if this is the future the number of accesses from users to Wikipedia
will collapse, and also their willingness to donate... (but our content
still a cornerstone for knowledge)

Anders

(I got a lot of fact from an article in Swedish main newspaper by their
tech editor. He started asking fact of himself, and when he received
facts from his Wp article plus being credited to a book he had noting to
do with, he started to try to tell/learn ChatGPT of this error. The
chatPGT only got angry accusing the techeditor for lying and in the end
cut off the conversation, as ChatGPT continued to teat the techeditor as
lyer and vandal..).

[Wikimedia-l] Re: ChatGPT and Wikipedia

2022-12-25 Thread Anders Wennersten

I have also played around with simpler queries (see below) and find the
same: excellent, easy to read answers, with minor mistakes and sometimes
false, invented info.

But I still see this as the future. If/when this is implemented with
speech recognition (already exists) and good synthetic speech, you have
a new interface for users that will take on the world. For me the only
question is of Google come first (who has better knowledge how to
interface backend knowledge repositories the Wikipedia will become) or
if chatGPT will learn this, that seems for me to be a minor thing for
them compared with getting the answering logic in place that they have
mastered.

And I still believe is is vital for us to understand how this future
will affect or systems as well as how we will need to work in order to
still provide knowledge, even if it is to a repository and not the world
directly.

My test "Where lies Farsta?"

"Farsta is a suburb located in the southeastern part of Stockholm, the
capital city of Sweden. It is situated in the Söderort borough of
Stockholm and is known for its shopping center and recreational areas.
Farsta is easily accessible by public transport, with several bus and
metro lines passing through the area. The suburb is also home to Farsta
Strand, a beach and recreational area that attracts visitors during the
summer months."

*that söderort actually is not a borough is not of vital importance to
the reader.

*the last sentence and to call it recreational areas is just wrong.
Farsta strand is called a satellite town i enwp and is primary a built
up area located close by a smaller lake. There exist a small beach
"farsta strandbad" for local residents, but there are 5-6 better beaches
at cleaner lakes within a 5 km radius. And not a recreation area and
certainly not attracting visitors during the summer months from outside
this place (there are many excellent recreational areas very close by)

Anders

Den 2022-12-23 kl. 16:29, skrev Chris Keating:

On Fri, Dec 23, 2022 at 1:04 PM Paulo Santos Perneta
wrote:

I've been playing with it on over the last week, and my experience
is that that AI is incredibly prone to invent informations that
look credible, while being entirely made up by it. It would
generate inexistent persons, dates, events and places, and build
an entire story out of them that, nevertheless, looks credible.

Indeed; here is another example, after prompting to write an article
about the song "Tomorrow Belongs to Me", which was written in 1966 for
the Broadway musical "Cabaret". ChatGPT attributes it, entirely
fictionally, to a real 1920s German lyricist.

"Tomorrow Belongs to Me" is a song that has been used in a variety of
media, including film, television, and theater. The song is known for
its nationalist and anti-Semitic lyrics, which have made it
controversial and a subject of debate.

The song was originally written by the German composer and lyricist
Hans Leip in the 1920s. It was later adopted by the National Socialist
German Workers' Party (Nazi Party) as a propaganda song, and was
performed at party rallies and events.

In the United States, "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" was popularized by its
use in the film "Cabaret," which was released in 1972. In the film,
the song is sung by a young man at a Nazi rally, and is later
performed by the character of Sally Bowles, played by Liza Minnelli.
The song has since been used in a number of other films, television
shows, and stage productions, often as a means of referencing the Nazi
party or the Holocaust.

Despite its widespread use, "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" has been
criticized for its nationalist and anti-Semitic themes, and some have
called for it to be banned or censored. The song has also been the
subject of legal disputes, with some arguing that its use in certain
contexts may infringe on copyright laws or be considered hate speech.

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[Wikimedia-l] Re: ChatGPT and Wikipedia

2022-12-19 Thread Anders Wennersten

I think we should not underestimate what this could evolve into. We 
thrived because our readers find us "good enough" when it comes to 
finding facts, not the ultimate source.

And the software learns by reading, and can (and have done so) 
Wikipedia, Wikidata etc and represent our data in its own syntax och 
present it in a way so it is not a direct copy. Perhaps data will be a 
bit delayed to the actual content in Wikipedia, but so what - good enough?

Anders

Den 2022-12-19 kl. 14:26, skrev Gnangarra:

AI simply cant descriminate between good research and faked research, 
for any outcome it must provide all of its sources whether they are 
from Wikipedia, Wikidata, WikiCommons, WikiSource or some other 
place.  Otherwise it will answer yes to some asking if the world is 
flat because it'll seek out that answer and find all the nonsense that 
has been produced.

On Mon, 19 Dec 2022 at 06:02, Erik Moeller  wrote:

On Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 5:55 AM Anders Wennersten
 wrote:
> ChatGPT is now making headlines more or less every day and I
perceive
> them to try to position themself  av the "next" google.

I suspect OpenAI will continue to focus on generative applications
(images, code, text for purposes such as copywriting, eventually
music/video) and won't attempt to compete with Google directly, but
we'll see. Currently GPT-3.5 (which ChatGPT is based on) is very prone
to generating nonsensical answers, citations to works that don't
exist, etc. But it is pretty cool if you keep its limitations in
mind--for example, it's quite good at bootstrapping small scripts in
various programming languages (with mistakes and idiosyncrasies).

Google has one of the largest AI research programs on the planet, they
just are extremely conservative about letting anyone try their models
(due to reputational concerns, e.g., that generative AI will spit out
racist output within about 30 seconds of people poking its
guardrails). This blog post from September is instructive about the
direction they're taking with what's called retrieval-augmented
generation; see the paper linked from the post for details:

https://www.deepmind.com/blog/building-safer-dialogue-agents (DeepMind
is part of Google)

That is likely to yield significantly more accurate answers than what
ChatGPT is doing, and is difficult to replicate for folks like OpenAI
without being dependent on the search APIs of big search companies.
It's worth noting that Google has also started to incorporate language
model tooling into how it's presenting search results (e.g.,
summarizing or highlighting different parts of a website to make the
result snippet more useful).

A retrieval-augmented approach that leverages Wikidata could IMO be
quite powerful and could be a useful research program for Wikimedia to
pursue, be it independently or in partnership with others. The
resulting technology should of course be fully open source.

Querying Wikidata via SPARQL is currently still a bit of wizardry (and
the query builder is extremely limited). To pick a completely random
example not at all inspired by current events, if I wanted to see a
list of journalists with Mastodon accounts & a picture, I currently
have to do this:

SELECT DISTINCT ?personLabel ?mastodonName ?pic
WHERE {
  ?person wdt:P4033 ?mastodonName ;
    wdt:P106 ?occupation .
  OPTIONAL { ?person wdt:P18 ?pic . }
  ?occupation wdt:P279* wd:Q1930187 .
   SERVICE wikibase:label {
     bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en"
   }
}

Make a small mistake (a curly brace missing) and you'll get a red
error message. Forgot the * after wdt:P279? A different response set
in ways that are difficult to spot or reason about.

Why can't I type "list of journalists with their picture and Mastodon
account" as a natural language query? (You can try it in ChatGPT and
it'll get you started, but it'll generate nonsense P/Q numbers.) If
such queries could be produced reliably, it could be a very useful
tool for readers as well.

Warmly,
Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: ChatGPT and Wikipedia

2022-12-11 Thread Anders Wennersten

I perceive we have a good dialogue with Google, and where Google show 
respect and also acknowledge Wikipedia role in their fact box etc


ChatGPT is now making headlines more or less every day  and I perceive 
them to try to position themself  av the "next" google. But what about 
our dialogue with them, and respect and acknowledgement, if they are in 
their back end making use of the content of Wikipedia?


And if they are only having a very loose use of Wikipediacontent and are 
building content on their own, have we made an investigation in how it 
will effect us in the short and long term?


Anders

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT


Den 2022-12-11 kl. 13:18, skrev Kim Bruning via Wikimedia-l:

Hello Cuncutator,

I think there's several lines of thought on this.

On what theory would you argue that ChatGPT is violating Wiki[p|m]edia
copyright?

(If you've already posted reasoning elsewhere, or if someone else has
posted an opinion you happen to agree with; I'd be happy to read a link
as well)

sincerely,
 Kim

On Sat, Dec 10, 2022 at 11:23:48AM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:

It's trained on Wikipedia. Here's a 2020 paper from the authors. I would
argue it's violating the copyright but I'm aware the foundation isn't very
interested in defending it.

  https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165

On Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 10:42 AM Anders Wennersten 
wrote:


Is this Ai software using info from Wikipedia directly or indirecly, and
if not is it an alternative way of storing knowledge to the wikiway?

Anders

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[Wikimedia-l] ChatGPT and Wikipedia

2022-12-10 Thread Anders Wennersten

Is this Ai software using info from Wikipedia directly or indirecly, and 
if not is it an alternative way of storing knowledge to the wikiway?


Anders

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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Small joy of the day: Txikipedia

2022-06-23 Thread Anders Wennersten

We have discussed at svwp the target group for our articles and to which 
we should adjust our language.



And we have come to the conclusion 15-16 years old (good) students. If 
younger it is too hard to understand the elements we use in an article 
to describe an issue. And to write without basic elements will make the 
article unreadable. Think of to describe "low pressure" and "coriolis 
force" without using some level of elementary items.



But younger persons can enjoy writing and reading of a limited number of 
subject, like fan pages for sportspeople



Anders




Den 2022-06-23 kl. 16:16, skrev Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga:
About Txikipedia: the age range is 8-12, but is more 10-12 than 8-9. 
The problem is that some of the writers are 8-9 years old, so their 
content is quite simple.


Basque language readers are concentrated in a narrow area. We are in 
two different states, and three different education administrations, 
but we share a common curriculum and things may be different from a 
school to another, but not so different as Alabama-London (following 
your example).


When I read French Vikidia I think that most of the contents are still 
too difficult for 8-9 years old students, but French education system 
maybe more advanced in some issues. Or it might be that Vikidia is 
centered in 8-13 years old, and 13 years old readers are way better 
reading and understanding texts. Klexikon seems very suitable, but 
it's logical, since it is written by educators, and not children or 
whoever wants to write. When we make courses with university students 
who will be the next primary school teachers, they write longer 
articles, but not necessarily better. The main goal there is to 
explain things as easily as possible, and not granting anything for 
known. We advise them to write shorter sentences, without dependencies 
and to explain all technical concepts inline, if possible. Also, they 
normally add boxes of "did you know?" so they can add a layer for 
curious children.


The last issue is accuracy. When you simplify a text, you might 
sacrifice accuracy, but these shouldn't collide with truth/neutrality. 
A good example would be: "Nearly all animals have a mouth, you have a 
mouth, so you are an animal. There are some animals that don't have a 
mouth: sponges. You may know sponges from cartoon, and there they have 
a mouth, but not in reality. Be aware that the sponge you use at home 
may be human-made.". Well, this is an example from the article about 
animals that is both correct and simple.


Best

Galder

*From:* WereSpielChequers 
*Sent:* Thursday, June 23, 2022 3:56 PM
*To:* Wikimedia Mailing List 
*Subject:* [Wikimedia-l] Re: Small joy of the day: Txikipedia
Hi,

I'm curious as to what level of reading skill you are writing this for 
and also what level of understanding/adulthood.


I see these as two different issues and both are likely to vary 
sharply especially between different countries with very different 
education systems.


A childrens' encyclopaedia written for nine year olds would surely be 
very different than one written for thirteen year olds. And content 
that parents of fourteen year olds thought was age inappropriate in 
Alabama might be thought appropriate or even bowdlerised by parents of 
ten year olds in London.


In other words, are you sure that one single childrens' encyclopaedia 
is the answer to either the problem of reading age or age appropriate 
content?


Where I think that Wikipedia could and should change re this is in our 
use of jargon. To my mind a "general interest" english language 
encyclopaedia should be written in plain English. I suspect other 
language versions have similar issues.  Perhaps if we focussed more on 
this we would make it easier for those who wish to create childrens' 
versions.


Regards

WSC

On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 at 13:03, 
 wrote:


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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2022 17:13:33 -0700
From: Neurodivergent Netizen 
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Small joy of the day: Txikipedia
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Message-ID: <8c62ada1-09ee-46ff-b27d-389b6bb3e...@gmail.com>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
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>> That wouldn't be a wise choice that WMF host such a wiki if it
brings the

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Are we losing our readers?

2022-01-09 Thread Anders Wennersten

Thanks for all very interesting comments, I take it as support, that my 
hunch can be correct, that we are losing readers as a consequence of new 
ways to find information on the internet has emerged ("snippets", new 
tools and google code that gives better data then Wikipedia, and that 
links to Wikipedia gets lower priority in search engines).


In my home turf (svwp, 13,5% fewer reads, just as other mature wps) I 
have two examples:


*Our (OK) covidrelated articles have not been among the ten most visited 
pages during the pandemic, but our (good) article on Spanish flu was in 
the first months among top tree. And at searches the svwp articles on 
Covid was way down in the search result. I believe this was correct as 
other provider (including enwp) had better info to give, and Google had 
even their own created data.


*articles on my own speciality, 7500 articles on old administrative 
units in Sweden, have not shown a decrease in reading, but are fairly 
constant or marginally up. For these there are few other data providers 
on internet, and and more and more genealogist and local people learn 
that these articles exist


I am not worried a fewer hits, as our readers have found better info 
elsewhere, and see this fully in line of our aim to provide knowledge to 
all, and that is fulfilled even if this is done by better other means 
the Wikipedia interface.


But as other has indicated, is this also related to fewer contributors 
(as facts indicate, down 10-20%, even when a possible boom in 2020 is 
discarded)? On svwp we have a lot of contributors that gets active on 
"news breaks", and perhaps these articles gets less rewarding when these 
wp articles gets low priority in search engines, as there are better  
infoproviders and/or ways to provide readers with info from WP/WD?


I believe we are and will be best in providing typical encyclopedisc 
text, like of the Spanish flu. And perhaps we will not be best in other 
areas, like providing info in multimedia form


Anders

Den 2022-01-07 kl. 18:41, skrev Anders Wennersten:

When I look at statistics for mature wikipedias: en, de pl, nl they 
all show a decrease of views of 13-15% in last 12 months from a year 
ago, and number of active editors down 10- 20 % (with exception of en).


Has this been analysed somewhere, are we losing our readers and 
contributors or is it mostly Google that access our info "smarter" not 
creating "views"


Anders

https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/de.wikipedia.org

https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikipedia.org

https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/nl.wikipedia.org

https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/pl.wikipedia.org
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[Wikimedia-l] Are we losing our readers?

2022-01-07 Thread Anders Wennersten

When I look at statistics for mature wikipedias: en, de pl, nl they all 
show a decrease of views of 13-15% in last 12 months from a year ago, 
and number of active editors down 10- 20 % (with exception of en).


Has this been analysed somewhere, are we losing our readers and 
contributors or is it mostly Google that access our info "smarter" not 
creating "views"


Anders

https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/de.wikipedia.org

https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikipedia.org

https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/nl.wikipedia.org

https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/pl.wikipedia.org
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Meet the new Movement Charter Drafting Committee members

2021-11-02 Thread Anders Wennersten

Well stated Yaroslav, and congratulation to the people 
elected/selected/appointed


I see this election process as the best yet in the movement. I believe 
the election/selection/ appointed worked very well and gave a well 
balanced group. Looking through the stages of the Single Transferable 
Vote method  I think it worked very well. Raven was 18 at beginning but 
became elected at the end, she being a very good candidate but not so 
well known


Anders

Den 2021-11-02 kl. 09:43, skrev Yaroslav Blanter:

Dear Bodhisattwa,

this is an issue which has been raised at the strategy transition 
group I was part of, and also during the events following these 
discussions which were intended to shape the specific process to draft 
the Charter. Basically, the choice was between two options - either 
have a (relatively) small group elected/appointed fast which would not 
be fully representative but would be efficient and would draft the 
Charter quickly, or to go for representation at the expense of the 
time and possibly also size of the group - if it includes everybody 
needed for representation it would be unworkable. The decision, which 
I personally also supported, was to go for speed and efficiency at the 
expense of representation. I see your arguments, and they have merit, 
but we can not do everything at once. It was clear that the community 
elections would favor North American and East European candidates, as 
for example the board elections always do. There was some hope that 
affiliates would elect more candidates from the rest of the world, 
which is indeed what happened (I am not an affiliate member and I am 
not familiar with the specific selection process). The WMF mitigated 
that even further by appointing one person of Indian background (even 
though residing in the US if I am not mistaken). There are other 
safeguards in place - I assume the draft Charter will be up to the 
community discussion, and if there are omissions they will be noticed. 
But the main idea was to elect/appoint people who understand what they 
are doing and who would implement what is best for the movement, 
taking into account that the Charter is for evetrybody, and not their 
personal vision. Those drafting committee members I know fit this 
definition. This is now our turn, as a community, to make sure that we 
read the draft - when it is out - carefully and make sure it is 
acceptable for everybody.


Best
Yaroslav

On Mon, Nov 1, 2021 at 7:08 PM Bodhisattwa Mandal 
 wrote:



Hi Samuel,

On Mon, 1 Nov 2021 at 21:35, Samuel Klein  wrote:


I don't believe the idea is for anyone to explicitly represent
their geography, affiliations, or organizations -- rather to
draft a meaningful and empowering starting point for us all.


People develop their perspectives based on their environment,
culture and surroundings and it is almost impossible for anyone to
understand comprehensively about what is going on in other places
without dealing with their real situation there. It doesn't matter
how honest or how experienced a person might be, an Western
European will have hard times to understand all the real issues in
South Asia, A South Asian will have little understanding about
what is really happening in Latin America and that is why
geographical representation is needed. If the question or process
is about something global, then it is needed even more. To draft a
document for us all, it is essential to get voices from as many as
possible, if not all. How can a movement charter be drafted if it
does not echo the concerns of all our existing communities clearly?

We chose to follow popular elections which have always brought
North Americans and Europeans on the top of the table and
historically abandoned other parts of the world, even though there
are capable people in those parts too but do not have the voter
base. We have seen it repeated in this election process too. Here
we had 7 seats through community elections, so its almost futile
for Global South candidates to compete there, the proof of my
statement is that only 1 candidate from the Global South actually
made through this election. So, they only have 6 affiliate
selected positions from 8 Wikimedia regions (and 1 Thematic hub),
where they have minimal chance because 6 seats from 8 regions
count to < 1 candidate per hub. So, regions like South Asia,
ESEAP, Sub-Saharan Africa, etc. was extremely lucky to get 1
candidate in the committee, 2 is not at all expected. Don't you
think that this is a totally unfair process from the start for
under-represented communities and affiliates? No wonder, people
here are getting aloof from the movement strategy process.

Of course broad geographic and project backgrounds, and good
language diversity (within the drafting group and through
available tools to support

[Wikimedia-l] Re: An Uzbek praktical joke and Wikimedia Enterprise

2021-10-26 Thread Anders Wennersten

We have an army of volunteers to guarantee correctness and that issues 
of controversies are dealt with in a way that hopefully all parties can 
accept



we have no cookies or technical things that make us follow up on our 
editors, truly believing in the full integrity of our users



our financial and governing set up is fully independent of an third party


Our reading interface works well for our users and on most platforms 
(which is made easier with no technical smarties)



Our interface can be made better for editors, but this does not make it 
as a phenomenon obsolete



In the info war we are in, it is beer to be on the "boring" side with 
few or none smart gadgets then being too smart and open for foul play by 
parties that want to undermine our system by clever hackers



Anders


Den 2021-10-26 kl. 17:37, skrev Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga:

Thanks Anders,
"We are the opposite to obsolete" is a good sentence, because this 
would imply that our platform is the bow of an icebreaker. But we 
still, in 2021, can't do this things (you can help by expanding this 
list):


  * Simultaneous edition
  * Auto-save in sandbox
  * Publishing from sandbox
  * Upload MP4 files
  * Render correctly vectorial files
  * Embed our own Wikidata query results in our own projects
  * Have a modern look
  * Have cross-project templates and modules
  * Visual edit from mobile
  * Create visually interesting cartography
  * Hear the articles
  * Export multiple articles as a pdf/doc (whatever)
  * ...
  * 

Someone will answer to this message talking about the "Wishlist 
survey" every year we have. This scarcity generating system also gives 
funny outcomes. Let's take the 2019 survey. 10 projects were voted. 
Only 4 done: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2019/Results 
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2019/Results>. 
Or the 2017 one: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2017/Results 
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2017/Results>. 
Some projects where done, some not and there are some that are 
external tools that you have to use as a gadget.


Students are relying on YouTube to learn things. We are obsolete. Very 
obsolete.


Galder


--------
*From:* Anders Wennersten 
*Sent:* Tuesday, October 26, 2021 5:23 PM
*To:* wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org 
*Subject:* [Wikimedia-l] Re: An Uzbek praktical joke and Wikimedia 
Enterprise

"We will have more and more and more millions, but we will still...
yes... obsolete." Galder


What phenomenon do you see challenge Wikipedias role as a source for
common knowledge, an encyklopedia for everyone?

I see that for the last 20 years no successful commercial encyclopedia
has been launched.

I see how the social media have a hard time to be a platform for common
knowledge and hard pressed to employ armies of moderators. And Google
very happy to lean and steal from Wikipedia rather the do something
similar themself (which would go down badly in the public)

But the war of information is a reality and heating up. We can be very
glad that so far we have not been a target of all angriness of what is
to be seen as the "correct" information. But that could change, what if
a new administration in US want to control what is written in Wikipedia.
Or China want to set up a parallel in English as the have now in
Chinese. If these thing happen we need to have resources to fight off
these type a of challenges, not only for our own sake but for he people
in the world who is used to turn to Wikipedia for basic facts.

We are the opposite to obsolete, we are in the front seat and driving
for correct facts in the emerging information war we now see

Anders
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: An Uzbek praktical joke and Wikimedia Enterprise

2021-10-26 Thread Anders Wennersten

"We will have more and more and more millions, but we will still...
yes... obsolete." Galder

What phenomenon do you see challenge Wikipedias role as a source for
common knowledge, an encyklopedia for everyone?

I see that for the last 20 years no successful commercial encyclopedia
has been launched.

I see how the social media have a hard time to be a platform for common
knowledge and hard pressed to employ armies of moderators. And Google
very happy to lean and steal from Wikipedia rather the do something
similar themself (which would go down badly in the public)

But the war of information is a reality and heating up. We can be very
glad that so far we have not been a target of all angriness of what is
to be seen as the "correct" information. But that could change, what if
a new administration in US want to control what is written in Wikipedia.
Or China want to set up a parallel in English as the have now in
Chinese. If these thing happen we need to have resources to fight off
these type a of challenges, not only for our own sake but for he people
in the world who is used to turn to Wikipedia for basic facts.

We are the opposite to obsolete, we are in the front seat and driving
for correct facts in the emerging information war we now see

Anders
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Results for the most contended Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election

2021-09-08 Thread Anders Wennersten

A very good set of candidates and a good work done organizing the election.

Elaine, also a very strong candidate was, with a small margin, just
outside. Could she be made a official "reserve" candidate?

In the election 2015 Danny resigned very soon after election, and the
election committee then recommended Maria to take up the vacant seat,
she being with a very small margin just behind the ones elected.

Also in the election for affiliates seats after, Alice did not got
enough votes to stay on, but the Board then let her stay on a board
assigned seat.

Anders

Den 2021-09-07 kl. 20:10, skrev Jackie Koerner:

/Translations can be found on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/2021-09-07/2021_Election_Results
/
Thank you to everyone who participated in the 2021 Board election. The
Elections Committee has reviewed the votes of the 2021 Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees election, organized to select four new
trustees. A record 6,873 people from across 214 projects cast their
valid votes. The following four candidates received the most support:

Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight

Victoria Doronina

Dariusz Jemielniak

Lorenzo Losa

Waiting for the Board’s appointment

While these candidates have been ranked through the community vote,
they are not yet appointed to the Board of Trustees. They still need
to pass a successful background check and meet the qualifications
outlined in the Bylaws. This process can be longer depending on the
country of residence of the candidates. The Board has set a tentative
date to appoint new trustees at the end of this month. The Board also
has approved
a
short extension to the terms of the exiting trustees to allow a smooth
transition.

Thanks to all the candidatesThanks to all candidates for their
participation. They achieved a record in the number of candidates and
regional diversity, with more than half of the 19 candidates from
regions outside North America and Western Europe. This election used
Single Transferable Voting
for
the first time. This system does not indicate a number of votes or
percentage of support. Rather, it shows in which round each candidate
was eliminated. You can review the full results on Meta-Wiki
,
which document the order in which the candidates were mathematically
eliminated.

Thanks to all the election volunteers

The Board of Trustees stressed
the
importance of increasing diversity on the Board. Dozens of volunteers
supported by a team of multilingual facilitators promoted the election
in up to 61 languages. They hosted many conversations about the Board
election in more than 50 languages and encouraged community members to
participate in all areas of the election.

Statistics

The 2021 Board of Trustees election broke new ground in several areas.
The Movement Strategy and Governance team will publish a report with
the most remarkable metrics soon. In the meantime, some statistics
can
be found on Meta-Wiki. Here you have some highlights.

Participation increased by 1,753 voters over 2017. Overall turnout
was 10.13%, 1.1 percentage points more than in 2017.

The highest participation among wikis with at least 5 eligible
voters was seen on the Hausa and Igbo Wikipedias. Both wikis had a
participation of 75% (6 of 8 eligible voters). Other high
participation numbers were seen on the Telugu, Nepalese, and
Punjabi Wikipedias.

The largest increase in participation among wikis with at least 50
eligible voters was the Catalan Wikipedia, on which 36.3% of
eligible voters voted (28 percentage points higher than in 2017).

There were 214 wikis represented in the election. This is
determined by the wiki on which the account was originally created.

A total of 74 wikis that did not participate in 2017 produced
voters in this election.

A total of 226 wikis had at least one eligible voter but produced
no voters. The largest electorate in this group was Cantonese
Wikipedia, with 25 eligible voters.

In the upcoming days, an anonymized list of votes will be released
that will allow deeper inspection and publication of more metrics.

2022 election

The next Board of Trustees election is planned to take place in

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Regional Committees for Grants

2021-05-21 Thread Anders Wennersten

Is it really necessary to start all seven at the same time, and now? 
Would it not be better to start with two or three, where it is possible 
to get a strong committee? And work with these six month or a year to 
learn of challenges and possible improvements, before setting up the rest.


Anders


Den 2021-05-21 kl. 08:06, skrev Julia Brungs:

Dear all,

We hope this email finds you well and safe. The COVID 19 situation 
continues to affect many of us across the globe and our thoughts are 
with everyone affected. We are also aware that there are several 
processes currently in progress that demand volunteer time and we do 
not want to add more work to anyone's plate.


We do want to draw your attention to our new Regional Committees for 
Grants though as they are an opportunity for you to have an active say 
in the future of our Movement!


 So today, we invite you to join our new Regional Committees for 
Grants! 


We encourage Wikimedians and Free Knowledge advocates to be part of 
the new Regional Committees that the WMF Community Resources team is 
setting up as part of the grants strategy relaunch [1]. You will be a 
key strategic thought partner to help understand the complexities of 
any region, provide knowledge and expertise to applicants, to support 
successful movement activities, and make funding decisions for grant 
applications in the region.


Find out more on meta [2].

Regional Committees will be established for the following regions:

  * Middle East and Africa
  * SAARC [3] region (Includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India,
the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka)
  * East, Southeast Asia, and Pacific (ESEAP) region
  * Latin America (LATAM) and The Caribbean
  * United States and Canada
  * Northern and Western Europe
  * Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)

All details about the Committees and how to apply can be found on 
meta [4]. Applications have to be submitted by *June 4, 2021*!


If you have any questions or comments, please use the meta discussion 
page [5].


Please do share this announcement widely with your Network.
Best wishes,
Julia on behalf of the Community Resources Team

[1] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch_2020-2021 

[2] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch_2020-2021/Regional_Committees 

[3] https://www.saarc-sec.org/index.php/about-saarc/about-saarc 

[4] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch_2020-2021/Regional_Committees#How_to_apply 

[5] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch_2020-2021 



--
*Julia Brungs*
Senior Community Relations Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation 


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Update: Wikimedia Endowment reaching the next planned stage

2021-03-01 Thread Anders Wennersten


A truly amazing achievement!

It must have been 10 or 11 years since I was in the group supporting the 
financial person at the board.  And we then discussed how much the 
potential income could be from donations and we also raise the issue of 
an endowment.  Income from donations has since been quadrupled, but even 
more impressive is the development of the endowment fund. Then just a 
dream, now a reality!


Life has its ups and downs and this also goes for organisations and 
projects. It is therefor so assuring there are money if and when we are 
going into hard times, so that our enormous knowledge repositories in 
our projects will not only survive but also be able to go forward 
independent of the big tech-dragons (or government agencies).


Anders



Den 2021-03-01 kl. 18:34, skrev Lisa Gruwell:


Hi all -


I have some good news to share. Five years ago, we launched the 
Wikimedia Endowment  as a permanent 
safekeeping fund to enable us to fulfill the part of our mission that 
says we will provide support to the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity 
. Our goal was 
to raise an initial USD $100 million for the Endowment by 2026, after 
which income earned from investing the fund 
would 
become a new stream of financial support for Wikimedia projects.



Thanks to the incredible generosity of our supporters and the hard 
work of the staff and the Endowment Board, the Endowment now holds $90 
million. We anticipate that we will surpass the $100 million goal next 
fiscal year.



At the outset, the Endowment was established as a Collective Action 
Fund at Tides Foundation, with the plan to move it to a permanent 
structure as the fund neared critical mass. In preparation for the 
approaching $100 million milestone, we are now beginning the work of 
taking the Endowment to its next stage of maturity: establishing it as 
an independent public charity with the mission of providing financial 
support for the Wikimedia projects.



We are grateful to the future-focused community members who began 
considering the idea of an endowment years ago, to those who 
participated in community conversations on meta 
 to help us think 
through initial decisions regarding its launch, to the WMF Board that 
gave the Endowment its full support, and especially to the Endowment 
Board who, among many other 
things, introduced us to their friends and opened their homes to host 
fundraising events for us.



While we look forward to celebrating the achievement of the $100 
million milestone in the next year, the work of growing the Endowment 
will not be over. Our direct fundraising efforts will continue, as 
will our pursuit of planned gifts (such as gifts in wills and other 
legacy gifts). To date, we have over 1,000 members of the Wikimedia 
Legacy Society – donors who have agreed to leave a portion of their 
estate to the Wikimedia Endowment. Their long-term commitment is a 
sign of deep respect for the work of our volunteer communities and of 
a desire to help us reach the ambitious 2030 Strategic Direction.



As we move forward in these efforts, you can follow updates on meta 
, and we welcome 
your questions on the Endowment’s Talk page 
. We started 
this endowment conversation with the community on that page five years 
ago and that is the best place to continue it as we move into this 
next phase. Thank you to everyone who has helped bring us to this 
point in the road.



Best regards,


Lisa Gruwell

Chief Advancement Officer


--



Lisa Seitz Gruwell

Chief Advancement Officer

Wikimedia Foundation 



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board Ratification of Universal Code of Conduct

2021-02-03 Thread Anders Wennersten

The servers are owned by WMF. And they can then state basic rules that 
all must apply to. And especially for hatred and threats they must by 
law enforce a proper policy


We have seen Facebook and Twitter be more proactive and the law in EU  
goes further with demanding  basic acceptable language and behaviour for 
what is being done on a service providers platform.


The community can not override law or what the platform provider deem to 
be necessary. We cab discuss how they came to this decision, but the 
UCoC have been discussed in length and the communities have influence in 
the appointments of a majority of the members in the Board


Anders

So have facebook and Teittwer done
Den 2021-02-03 kl. 10:37, skrev Yair Rand:
@Risker: The Global sysop policy was created through a sequence of 
proposals, considerable debate and editing, and a vote in which over 
1800 contributors participated. The Global ban policy had an RFC on 
Meta. Afaik, the Board also had no involvement in the Steward policy, 
the global checkuser and oversight policies, or the policies for 
Global Rollback, Abuse Filter helpers, or New wiki importers global 
user groups.


The Terms of Use were drafted with a lengthy community editing 
process, although the Board did the final approval. The 2014 amendment 
to the ToU also had a long community discussion, with over 1000 
supporters of the change, with the Board implementing the 
community-supported amendment. The community's decisions were critical 
to these, and the Board did not unilaterally impose anything on the 
community.


I do not see any reason for the community to listen to the Board on 
the UCoC. I doubt anyone thinks that the Board or WMF has a better 
idea of how to put together conduct policies than the community. 
Certainly the complete failure to notice basic flaws in the document 
attest to that. Maybe at some point in the future the community can 
put together a clear set of basic global conduct rules, but the WMF's 
UCoC is not it.


(And a fun fact: The Board approved the UCoC on December 9, the same 
day as the bylaws change, and yet again violated the Board's rules 
about publishing resolutions within a week, for the at least 19th time 
in the past year, out of 24 known resolutions.)


(Also, contrary to the recent WMF blog post on the UCoC, the WMF also 
does not "administer Wikipedia", a mistake they have made for the 
second time now.)


-- Yair Rand




‫בתאריך יום ג׳, 2 בפבר׳ 2021 ב-21:34 מאת ‪Risker‬‏ 
<‪risker...@gmail.com ‬‏>:‬


While I often agree with you, Yair Rand, in this case I think
you're mistaken.  Aside from the long-ago "community vote" on
licensing (which was pretty much required based on the prior
licensing scheme), every Wikimedia-wide policy has been authorized
by the WMF Board of Trustees.  That includes the terms of use and
the privacy policy.  As the technical owners of the
infrastructure, the WMF Board does have the right (if not the
responsibility) to identify the manner in which the websites it
supports and hosts can be used, and I think this principle is
actually pretty widely held, at least in the abstract (i.e.,
hosting organizations can and should apply standards on the
services they host). In every policy-related case that I have
reviewed going back to the very earliest days, there has been at
least some level of community discussion, and there have always
been detractors of every policy the Board has approved; that has
not made the policies either invalid or unworkable.

I've never been convinced that including a mixture of required,
forbidden, and aspirational standards all in one document is a
good idea, and I personally struggle to see how including
essentially unenforceable aspects of the UCoC will do anything
other than weaken the effectiveness of rest of the document.  For
example, I cannot imagine anyone being sanctioned in any way for
"failure to thank" or "failure to mentor", although both of these
are considered expectations in the "Civility" section; and one
thing that a Uniform Code of Conduct would logically have is a
uniform enforcement scheme.

Nonetheless, I do believe that it is within the Board's scope and
responsibility to approve this and other global policies designed
to protect the WMF, the projects, the users of the websites, and
the content managers/editors/etc (what we often call "the
community").

Risker/Anne



On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 17:28, Yair Rand mailto:yyairr...@gmail.com>> wrote:

The community has not approved the WMF's UCoC. It is not a
Wikimedia policy, it is not binding, it has no authority. The
WMF does not control the Wikimedia projects, and has no
jurisdiction in this area.

The community rejected this over and over again. It is harmful
that the Board is pretending they can do this

Re: [Wikimedia-l] A Universal Code of Conduct draft for review

2020-09-11 Thread Anders Wennersten

There are many of us on this list who have given the feedback we find 
that expression offensive and unacceptable.


Do not forget the readers of this list comes from may different cultures 
and if you and the people close to you find it "acceptable" it is not a 
valid judgment for all, and why do you want us to leave this list just 
so you can use a language like that. (I certainly would if that was 
accepted as a norm)


The language on this list is English, it means we non-native have to 
adjust our entries to a unfamiliar language. It mean we have to limit 
our means of expression (we will not be experts on nuances).  You who 
are native English speaker have all the advantages, would it then be too 
hard for you to adjust you language to what is acceptable to us others?


Anders


Den 2020-09-11 kl. 09:31, skrev Benjamin Ikuta:


Please, enlighten me.



On Sep 10, 2020, at 11:39 PM, Ziko van Dijk  wrote:


Am Fr., 11. Sept. 2020 um 08:07 Uhr schrieb Benjamin Ikuta
:

Is there some context that makes this much worse than it seems, or do I have a 
deeply flawed understanding of civility?

Well, are you open to consider the possibility that the latter might
theoretically be the case, at least partially?
Kind regards
Ziko




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A Universal Code of Conduct draft for review

2020-09-10 Thread Anders Wennersten


I want to echo Jackies two mail

The community for svwp is not so big and complicated issues on conduct 
are uncommon. But when they occur we often get caught in argument like " 
you who claim to decide over svwp CoC are just a small kabal of some 
10-120 admins, you are unrepresentative and the enwp CoC says 
otherwise". It will be of big help for us when we need not go into 
detailed discussion over every abuse, but can refer to the UCoC (and not 
just ToU).


And wordings... We consist of people form many different culture and 
language, so what one small group can be seen as acceptable wording can 
be seen as offensive to other.


When I worked in the Swedish global company Ericsson, the interal 
language was English. But in reality that internal vocabulary only used 
5-10% of the English words, and never puns or sarcasm, and often rather 
blunt expressions than too "flowery". I think something similar must be 
what we use in our internal communication of Wikimedia. And that will be 
welcome for all non-native English people, but can be harder for native 
English people. I have given feedback to top WMF people when the used 
too complicated/flowery sentences that made it hard for non-natives to 
understand what was said.


Anders


Den 2020-09-10 kl. 16:16, skrev Jackie:

Dan,

I am so glad you have given us a real-world example as to how a Universal
Code of Conduct would be super helpful. It would provide you with a clear
understanding of how your comments impacted others. It wasn't just your use
of the word "flatulence" (which, funny enough, I had to reference spelling
from your email because I have *never* written this word in any
correspondence). As a parent, I certainly understand the place of such
words in juvenile humor, but your use here was to implicate an organization
of professionals is simply operating in bad faith. That sort of comment is
hostile and denigrates people who *actually* work very hard to empower
people in the free knowledge movement.

This language serves to alienate people from participation and sews
discord. These mailing lists are already missing a lot of the people who
*should* be at the table in these discussions. The mailing lists are rather
homogeneous in participation because of responses like this call for
discussion. I hope the future means we move to something more inclusive and
covered by a Code of Conduct.

In a situation like this where someone has said something offensive, a CoC
would provide a process for everyone to follow and understand. The people
reporting the concern would have avenues on which to do so without facing
public backlash and the steps for reviewing reports would be clear. Based
off of other CoC examples, this often includes who will respond to such
concerns and how they will respond. CoCs often go further to clearly
identify which steps will be taken for certain offenses and what response
and support the original person reporting the issue can receive. I feel
education is a huge part of CoC violation response. Perhaps the person
violating the CoC can do better after becoming aware of how their behavior
impacts others and still be a valuable member of the community.

If you are still genuinely confused about how what you said is offensive, I
am more than happy to discuss this with you via phone or video chat. I find
that text-based communication provides complications for discussions about
emotional topics. I can see you feel passionate about this situation and
upset about the result.

Best,

Jackie

On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 7:23 AM Joseph Seddon 
wrote:


Wikipedia has been a third tier social media platform since its inception.
Luckily we are better known for being an encyclopedia.

On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 10:31 AM Dan Szymborski 
wrote:


I am absolutely flabbergasted that a generic reference of an organization
to flatulence, something we see in rated-G television isn't considered
"collegial" enough yet the actions that the WMF has taken over the last

18

months, many of which were pushed by people on this list *are* considered
collegial.

If a joke that would be appropriate for a four-year-old leads to special
moderation, what action ought be taken for someone on the list pushing

the

failure of a collaborative process that WMF is foisting upon the

community?

One of the people "doth protesting too much" about the reference is also
someone banned from English Wikipedia for a whole litany of *actual*

things

that took up countless hours of community time, including making legal
threats based on finding offense in normal Wikipedia actions.

I am a longtime, accredited journalist, possibly even slightly respected

in

the field -- though there's always that risk of Dunning-Kruger -- who has
written for a ton of outlets and there's not an editor in the world that
I've worked with who would've asked me to change the *very* gentle

wording.

If anything, I was too mild. *I'm* grossly offended by the WMF's actions
over the last 18 months.

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Universal Code of Conduct Drafting Committee - Call for participation

2020-07-31 Thread Anders Wennersten

If you choose to not take active part in he strategy process it it your 
privilege.  But the fact is that the Strategy is the steering document 
now for the nearest activities in the Movement. And the endorsments are 
there to be read.


If you had wanted the endorsement to be visible in the form of a Rfc, 
you missed to express that in an appropriate  moment.


Anders

(This being my third entry, it will be my last)



Den 2020-07-31 kl. 17:38, skrev Todd Allen:

I have read that, but do not see any public RfC nor any individual
statements.

Todd

On Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 9:34 AM Anders Wennersten 
wrote:


Read https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20
and people involved supporting it and endorsing its different phases

Anders

Den 2020-07-31 kl. 17:28, skrev Todd Allen:

Where was the public RfC that these "700 individuals" participated in?

The

one I saw, which took place on Meta, was, again, a very firm "No".

Off-wiki backchanneling stuff doesn't count.

Todd

On Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 9:18 AM Anders Wennersten <

m...@anderswennersten.se>

wrote:


The development of the Code of Conduct is part of the Strategy. The
strategy and this part was endorsed by some 700 individuals representing
more or less all parts of the Movement. And that group is the closest we
have seen resembling a government body of the movement. But as in a
democracy, even if the parliament is unanimous in a decision, it does
not mean all citizens, or even groups of citizens, agree. But is the
best way we know how to come to a decision.

And how to implent it is still open, and will most likely involve all
parties being effected by it

Anders

Den 2020-07-31 kl. 16:28, skrev Todd Allen:

Uh, guys?

That was a firm "No" on any Universal Code of Conduct. There shouldn't

be a

"drafting committee" for it, it was disapproved.

Todd

On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 11:49 AM Christel Steigenberger <
csteigenber...@wikimedia.org> wrote:


Hello everyone,


We are happy to announce that the Universal Code of Conduct drafting
committee has been assembled. We had 26 volunteers apply, either by
publicly signing up on the Meta page, or by sending an email.

Volunteers

from 18 different countries applied, speaking 11 different languages.

We had Wikimedian applicants with different levels of experience

on-wiki,

from someone who started editing only last year to people who have

been

editing for more than 18 years and/or have more than 300,000 edits.
Applicants held a variety of different roles within the movement, and

also

informed us about interesting and relevant experiences in their

real-life

careers. It was very hard to narrow down from this diverse and

extremely

qualified pool of applicants.

For the final selection, two aspects guided the decision making - we

want a

committee that at the one hand will represent important parts of the
movement. Prolific editors as well as Wikimedians whose strength is

more in

organizing events, wikimedians from different demographics,

contributors

from small and large wikis, and people holding different roles within

the

movement. We also wanted a group of people who will collaborate with

one

another effectively and create the best possible Universal Code of

Conduct

for the Wikimedia movement. Experience has taught us that committees

that

are too large find it difficult to work effectively, so we decided to

cap

the number of seats to 6 volunteer seats and 3 staff seats.

More information on the Committee and its new members can be found on

Meta

<


https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Drafting_committee

[1], and a timeline for their work is available on the main UCoC page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct> [2].

Please

note that more chances for engagement are coming up during the

community

draft review period starting from August 24.

Best regards,
Christel

 [1]



https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Drafting_committee

[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct

Christel Steigenberger (she/her)

Trust and Safety Specialist

Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Universal Code of Conduct Drafting Committee - Call for participation

2020-07-31 Thread Anders Wennersten

Read https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20 
and people involved supporting it and endorsing its different phases


Anders

Den 2020-07-31 kl. 17:28, skrev Todd Allen:

Where was the public RfC that these "700 individuals" participated in? The
one I saw, which took place on Meta, was, again, a very firm "No".

Off-wiki backchanneling stuff doesn't count.

Todd

On Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 9:18 AM Anders Wennersten 
wrote:


The development of the Code of Conduct is part of the Strategy. The
strategy and this part was endorsed by some 700 individuals representing
more or less all parts of the Movement. And that group is the closest we
have seen resembling a government body of the movement. But as in a
democracy, even if the parliament is unanimous in a decision, it does
not mean all citizens, or even groups of citizens, agree. But is the
best way we know how to come to a decision.

And how to implent it is still open, and will most likely involve all
parties being effected by it

Anders

Den 2020-07-31 kl. 16:28, skrev Todd Allen:

Uh, guys?

That was a firm "No" on any Universal Code of Conduct. There shouldn't

be a

"drafting committee" for it, it was disapproved.

Todd

On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 11:49 AM Christel Steigenberger <
csteigenber...@wikimedia.org> wrote:


Hello everyone,


We are happy to announce that the Universal Code of Conduct drafting
committee has been assembled. We had 26 volunteers apply, either by
publicly signing up on the Meta page, or by sending an email. Volunteers
from 18 different countries applied, speaking 11 different languages.

We had Wikimedian applicants with different levels of experience

on-wiki,

from someone who started editing only last year to people who have been
editing for more than 18 years and/or have more than 300,000 edits.
Applicants held a variety of different roles within the movement, and

also

informed us about interesting and relevant experiences in their

real-life

careers. It was very hard to narrow down from this diverse and extremely
qualified pool of applicants.

For the final selection, two aspects guided the decision making - we

want a

committee that at the one hand will represent important parts of the
movement. Prolific editors as well as Wikimedians whose strength is

more in

organizing events, wikimedians from different demographics, contributors
from small and large wikis, and people holding different roles within

the

movement. We also wanted a group of people who will collaborate with one
another effectively and create the best possible Universal Code of

Conduct

for the Wikimedia movement. Experience has taught us that committees

that

are too large find it difficult to work effectively, so we decided to

cap

the number of seats to 6 volunteer seats and 3 staff seats.

More information on the Committee and its new members can be found on

Meta

<


https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Drafting_committee

[1], and a timeline for their work is available on the main UCoC page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct> [2]. Please
note that more chances for engagement are coming up during the community
draft review period starting from August 24.

Best regards,
Christel

[1]



https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Drafting_committee

[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct

Christel Steigenberger (she/her)

Trust and Safety Specialist

Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Universal Code of Conduct Drafting Committee - Call for participation

2020-07-31 Thread Anders Wennersten

The development of the Code of Conduct is part of the Strategy. The 
strategy and this part was endorsed by some 700 individuals representing 
more or less all parts of the Movement. And that group is the closest we 
have seen resembling a government body of the movement. But as in a 
democracy, even if the parliament is unanimous in a decision, it does 
not mean all citizens, or even groups of citizens, agree. But is the 
best way we know how to come to a decision.


And how to implent it is still open, and will most likely involve all 
parties being effected by it


Anders

Den 2020-07-31 kl. 16:28, skrev Todd Allen:

Uh, guys?

That was a firm "No" on any Universal Code of Conduct. There shouldn't be a
"drafting committee" for it, it was disapproved.

Todd

On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 11:49 AM Christel Steigenberger <
csteigenber...@wikimedia.org> wrote:


Hello everyone,


We are happy to announce that the Universal Code of Conduct drafting
committee has been assembled. We had 26 volunteers apply, either by
publicly signing up on the Meta page, or by sending an email. Volunteers
from 18 different countries applied, speaking 11 different languages.

We had Wikimedian applicants with different levels of experience on-wiki,
from someone who started editing only last year to people who have been
editing for more than 18 years and/or have more than 300,000 edits.
Applicants held a variety of different roles within the movement, and also
informed us about interesting and relevant experiences in their real-life
careers. It was very hard to narrow down from this diverse and extremely
qualified pool of applicants.

For the final selection, two aspects guided the decision making - we want a
committee that at the one hand will represent important parts of the
movement. Prolific editors as well as Wikimedians whose strength is more in
organizing events, wikimedians from different demographics, contributors
from small and large wikis, and people holding different roles within the
movement. We also wanted a group of people who will collaborate with one
another effectively and create the best possible Universal Code of Conduct
for the Wikimedia movement. Experience has taught us that committees that
are too large find it difficult to work effectively, so we decided to cap
the number of seats to 6 volunteer seats and 3 staff seats.

More information on the Committee and its new members can be found on Meta
<
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Drafting_committee
[1], and a timeline for their work is available on the main UCoC page
 [2]. Please
note that more chances for engagement are coming up during the community
draft review period starting from August 24.

Best regards,
Christel

   [1]

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Drafting_committee

[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct

Christel Steigenberger (she/her)

Trust and Safety Specialist

Wikimedia Foundation 
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[Wikimedia-l] Community open letter on renaming

2020-06-29 Thread Anders Wennersten

I want to express my gratitude to the people who have put up this letter 
on meta [1)


I see it as a much more professional way of expressing movement 
opinions, then the usual Rfc's (that also already exist related to the 
2030 movement brand project).


I do like that both entities (Affiliates, User groups and Chapters) and 
users can express their opinions. And also that with the user 
signatures, there are  info on what projects they are active on and in 
what capacity.


Besides being an very strong message to the Board, I believe this way 
can also indicate ways of governing in the movement. In the strategy the 
creation of a Global Council is recommended. But I wonder if any type of 
representative body works well in our movement, or if it will just 
beanother entity for the "community" to get angry with.


Could this type of expressing the will of the movement be an alternative 
to creating a new body? And if we should learn to evolve this type of 
expressing opinions even further?


Anders

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_open_letter_on_renaming


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] June 4 1800 Maggie Dennis office hour (with a twist)

2020-06-05 Thread Anders Wennersten

I agree. youtube  (+zoom) and chat worked very well. I still had problem 
follow all that being said, and would like the "black" notice to have 
been used more and show (just a few seconds) the question being 
discussed. And besides applauds for Maggie being straight forward, I 
also want to applaud (elene?) for coordinating the questions, and 
forwarding her own - how does it fell for you to be in such a hot spot 
as T has become .


I see this as best practice and hope it will be used for many more 
info/discussion meetups.


Anders

Den 2020-06-05 kl. 09:48, skrev Ciell Wikipedia:

Hi Pine,

1) For me, as non-native speaker, it really helps to see someone speak
while I am hearing them. I applaud Maggie for doing this on screen. There
is no need for recording, but the streaming really adds to my understanding
of what is being said.

2) Though I realise that it may be a case that is still really clear to
you, if she was not the person in charge at the time (Maggie was on leave
as she pointed out) and it's been 11 months, it is not strange that she
cannot recall all the details. I think her answer would have been more
specific when she would have had the time to research the question.
And with the new UCoC, an Ombudsman/audit would also be introduced for the
T cases.  Imho this would be a good way to learn and develop from. For
staff, and for all Wikimedia users involved.

I am really interested in the "outside review for English administrators
and functionaries". Could you please share with me (on or off list) a link
to how that is formed, implemented and carried out?

Ciell
(she/her)


Op vr 5 jun. 2020 09:30 schreef Pine W :


Agreed that office hours are a nice idea, although

1. For privacy reasons,I don't think that they need to be on video.
Sue had them on IRC. In the Wikimedia Cafe several of us use audio
only.

2. I'm digesting what Maggie said about the incidents of last July.
I'm not sure that the version of events that was communicated to her
captures how I would describe the multiple bad decisions that
happened, and I'm not inclined to believe that the problems can be
summed up as poor communications. I don't mean to put words in
Maggie's mouth, and I don't think that she was trying to provide a
comprehensive view of her briefing, but I also have concerns regarding
what I heard in her summary, and I would encourage Maggie to probe
extensively into what happened while she was on leave.

I don't know what all was going on inside of WMF, but I would have
wanted an outsider -- that is, not someone inside of WMF -- to review
the actions of the staff, similar to how police departments are
sometimes reviewed by outside agencies after high profile incidents,
and I would want the report from that review to be public. Given my
perspective on what happened, I think that at least one WMF staff
person probably should have been demoted or fired, and perhaps more
than one, up to and including Katherine. However, I don't have enough
information to decide what accountability measures should have been
taken. I would have more faith in the integrity of WMF if there had
been an outside review as I describe here, including public
accountability for the actions of individual staff, much as we do on
English Wikipedia for administrators and functionaries.

Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )

On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 6:30 AM Natacha Rault via Wikimedia-l
 wrote:

Yes thank you very much. I really liked the sincerity and the straight

to the point amswers. It feels great to be listened at and given sincere
answers.

Make this call a best practice, it rocked.

Warm regards,

Nattes à chat

Envoyé de mon iPhone


Le 4 juin 2020 à 22:16, Tito Dutta  a écrit :

True, (because of connectivity issues I was disconnected for some

time).

Thanks Maggie for answering the questions and clarifying things. All

the

best and good wishes.

Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to

remind

me over email or phone call.



On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 at 01:17, Aron Manning 

wrote:

Thank you, Maggie, Elena and Nick for this meeting!

The event was very well organized on the first try, focused and
informative.
Special thanks to Maggie for tirelessly answering all the questions

and

giving insight to the wide spectrum of challenges.

It was great to hear that transparency will be an important part of

the

processes to be developed and that the communities will be involved in
working out the details. I think this is going in the right direction

to

establish trust and cooperation with the communities and a mutually
agreeable outcome.

Thank you to all participants and I hope there will be more meetings

as

this project progresses!


Aron



On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 23:24, Maggie Dennis 

wrote:

We will post notes from the meeting, with the identity of

question-askers

anonymized, afterward. Questions can be submitted on Telegram [1],

on IRC

[2] or in the YouTube Chat or by email

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: The recommendations are now online

2020-05-12 Thread Anders Wennersten

I find this final version much easier to get to grips with, both in 
language and structure/content. And to condense it into 10 
recommendations instead of 13 complemented with 10 principles is a big 
improvement.


It is a great base on which to build our "new" movement, and I expect it 
will be many more years to discuss and implement this direction.


Thanks to all involved

Anders

But the section Overview seems to need an update (it ends in March)?


Den 2020-05-12 kl. 10:40, skrev Katherine Maher:

Hi everyone,

I hope this finds you all as well as could be. It's been a while since I've
sent a note out about movement strategy; so much has changed in the world
since we started these conversations in 2017, including this global
pandemic. Indeed, much has continued to evolve in our movement too,
including the growth of the projects themselves and the continued expansion
of the global community.

Against this backdrop, and on behalf of the working group members [2], the
team of writers who finalized the content [3, 4], and the core team [5], I
have the honor of notifying you of the publication of the 2020 movement
strategy recommendations, now live on Meta-wiki [1].

*=== The 2030 strategic direction ===*
As you recall, the 2030 strategic direction calls upon Wikimedia to become
"the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and
anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us. This final version of
the recommendations embodies an aspiration for how the Wikimedia movement
should continue to change in order to advance that direction and meet the
Wikimedia vision in a changing world.

They are also the culmination of a tremendous amount of work over many
dozens of places, of many thousands of hours, by many hundreds of
Wikimedians. They are the synthesis of your thoughts, critiques, insight,
and hopes for our work. Thank you, all of you, who have contributed to this
thinking about the future of our movement.

*=== What’s in the recommendations? ===*
These recommendations clarify and refine the previous version, which was
published in January this year. The team that finalized the content has
done an impressive job of reviewing and integrating movement feedback,
refining the recommendations, and making the language as clear as possible.
The result is a 40-page document that outlines 10 recommendations for
change in our movement, along with 10 underlying principles, a narrative of
change, and a glossary of key terms.

These recommendations are intended to` guide our movement over the next
decade. They are at a high strategic level so that the ideas are flexible
enough to be adapted to different global and local settings and will allow
us to navigate future challenges.

*=== How to review the recommendations ===*
The recommendations are online in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German,
Hindi, Portuguese, and Spanish. We also have a summary available in
Catalan, Dutch, Farsi, Hebrew, Polish, and Russian, and we welcome
volunteer translation support for these and other languages.

We encourage you to read the recommendations in your own time and at your
own pace, either online [6] or in a PDF [7]. There are a couple of other
formats for you to take a deeper dive if you wish, such as a one-page
summary, slides, and office hours, all collected on Meta [8]. If you would
like to comment, you are welcome to do so on the Meta talk pages. However
please note that these are the final version of the recommendations. No
further edits will be made.

*=== What’s next ===*
The focus of the movement strategy process will shift toward
implementation. Originally, we had intended to meet in Berlin for the
Wikimedia Summit to discuss and plan how we want to move forward. Due to
the current global health crisis, this is unfortunately not possible.

Instead of a physical event, the Wikimedia Foundation is intending to host
a series of virtual events that will help us transition to the
implementation phase. The goal will be to produce a plan to begin the
implementation — to identify what initiatives must come first, and in what
sequence, and with what resources and support.

This series will not only address Wikimedia affiliates and the Wikimedia
Foundation, but have a wider scope to ensure various parts of the movement
are engaged in different ways. Planning has started, but it will take a few
more weeks. We are mindful that everyone has been impacted by the pandemic
in different ways, and we are therefore taking things one step at a time.
We expect to share more details this month, and begin this work together
through the summer and into the fall.

*=== Thank you ===*
I want to extend my deep gratitude to every single person who has helped
create these recommendations. True to the Wikimedia way, it is through the
contributions of many that we have reached this milestone.

Working group members dedicated more than a year to engaging with movement
stakeholders and developing the draft recommendations.

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: Finalizing the recommendations and further process

2020-04-30 Thread Anders Wennersten

Is there a more definite date when the final recommendations will be
published (as April is over in a few hours time)?

Anders

Den 2020-03-25 kl. 18:57, skrev Nicole Ebber:

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share some updates from movement strategy with you. We are
currently integrating feedback into the recommendations and finalizing
them. However, due to the impact of COVID-19, we have adjusted our work
plan and timeline [1] a little.

== Updates to the movement strategy timeline ==

The COVID-19 pandemic is having an enormous effect on people and their
day-to-day lives, and I want to give the core team, strategy liaisons, and
integrators and writers ample space to adjust to this and take some time
for themselves if needed. This means we have slowed down the pace of our
work and now aim to publish the final recommendations in April.

Discussions about implementation will start at the virtual Wikimedia Summit
[2], which will be held online in May (dates are to be confirmed). This
will be the first in a series of virtual events that move from engaging
with the recommendations and transitioning into implementation. We will, of
course, share further updates about this as soon as possible.

== Status update on the recommendations: integrating feedback ==

Over the past few weeks, a team of Wikimedians [3] has been working to
integrate feedback received from the Movement, the Wikimedia Foundation
Board of Trustees, and former working group members who have been reviewing
the content [4]. They have used this to make the ideas and the language
more concise and clear; identify overlaps in content and combine ideas
where applicable; as well as address areas of debate. A lot of rich input
was received from across the Movement, and this has helped improve the
recommendations further. We are grateful for all the feedback. We are
almost there and excited to share the final recommendations with you in
April.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me.

Stay safe and healthy,
Nicole

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Overview/Timeline
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Summit_2020
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_Groups/Integrators
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_Groups/Reviewers

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Summary of the Brand Project presentation

2020-04-18 Thread Anders Wennersten

I have a background in a telecom supplier, and we were proud to talk of 
us "connecting people" and with 5G (where things also gets connected) 
"interconenctivity" would be a great brand concept for that company.


But for Wikimedia I have never felt this as a relevant brandconcept. To 
"share and spread knowledge"is the core word as far as I see it and have 
been all the time.


Anders


Den 2020-04-18 kl. 18:44, skrev Peter Southwood:

I agree. It did not seem to say anything much.
Cheers,
Peter

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Fæ
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2020 3:06 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Summary of the Brand Project presentation

Have now watched "interconnection". It did not seem to say anything
tangible apart from stuff like you find 'interconnection in nature' in
the 2 minutes. It was produced to a good standard.

Sorry, it was not encouraging. The question remains of how much this
is costing the movement in WMF funding and valuable Wikimedia
community time without any clear outcomes being defined that the
Wikimedia community wants or could use to benefit the core value of
adding to the sum of human knowledge. Why the "rebranding" project
continues at this time remains an enigma.

We have gone ahead and added the video to Commons. If superseded it
will remain useful as a snapshot as of 16 April.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Our_unified_concept_interconnection.webm

Thanks,
Fae

On Fri, 17 Apr 2020 at 09:57, Samir Elsharbaty
 wrote:

Hi everyone,


Yesterday, the 2030 Brand Movement Project presented the unified concept
that will guide the upcoming branding proposals. Thanks to the 224
attendees who watched the presentation live! Participants brought a great
stream of comments and questions (averaging 8 per minute!) that helped
clarify important points.

The unified concept, “interconnection”, was arrived at after many community
workshops, exercises, and conversations. “Interconnection” distills the 23
distinct concepts generated in workshops into a single word that links
together the insights and definitions from the participants, and at the
same time adds more meaning to the answer to the question who are we? This
concept will not be a public or visible part of branding, but rather a
guiding idea.

Take a look at the video explaining interconnection as a unified concept
[1].

You can watch the full presentation video, together with the lively
discussion that accompanied it [2]. Most of the questions were answered
during the presentation (including questions about the project scope, the
upcoming naming convention proposals, and the RfC), but there wasn't enough
time to answer them all. Questions are being compiled on the Brand Network
talk page on Meta [3].

The team will be hosting a follow-up office hour next week to answer the
rest of the questions. Participation details will be shared on the Brand
Network talk page. The session will be recorded and shared, and answers
will be covered on the project pages. If you have a different question
you’d like to ask, feel free to add it to the page or bring it to the
office hour.

PS: As soon as these videos are ready for Commons we will upload them
there, and we will notify about this on the Brand Network talk page as well.

Thanks,

Samir & the Brand Project team

[1]
https://brandingwikipedia.org/2020/04/16/our-unified-concept-interconnection/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS72O6Si94Q

[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brand_Network#Unified_concept:_Interconnection

Samir Elsharbaty (he/him)

Community Brand and Marketing coordinator

Wikimedia Foundation 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Treatment of newbies with mild CoI

2020-02-26 Thread Anders Wennersten

In our case the a few volunteers running (organizing) edit-a-thons, met 
with a few key persons who patrollers to discuss the dilemma. And so 
changes and new variants for the patrollers work were introduced, at the 
same time as the introduction to newbees by  volunteers was somewhat 
changed.


These small changes helped a lot (but not 100%)

Anders



Den 2020-02-26 kl. 11:33, skrev Camelia Boban:

This is not an accusation email to see who is the culprit, but rather a
discussion to see what can be done to improve, since we have a very big
problem of retention and loss of users.

Camelia


--
*Camelia Boban*

*| Java EE Developer |*



*Affiliations Committee - **Wikimedia Foundation*
Diversity WG for Wikimedia Strategy 2030
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Loves Sport  | Wiki Loves
Fashion *
WMIT  - WMSE
 - WMAR
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M. +39 3383385545
camelia.bo...@gmail.com
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*
*Wikipedia  **| **WikiDonne
UG * | *WikiDonne Project
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Il giorno gio 20 feb 2020 alle ore 02:50 Samuel Klein 
ha scritto:


It would be nice to have a tool for long standing editors to clean up a
newbies talk page for them, leave messages for the overeager templaters,
and help them out / welcome them in untemolsted language.

Then a little ML could go a long way in guessing which newbies are in this
situation and generating a queue for newbie-care. ~~~



On Wed., Feb. 19, 2020, 4:35 p.m. Andy Mabbett, 
I have just come across a case on en.Wikipedia where the daughter of
an article subject added details of his funeral (his death in 1984,w
as already recorded) and his view about an indent in his life.

Her six sequential edits - her first and only contribution to
Wikipedia - totalled 1254 characters, and were conducted over the
space of 30 minutes. They were no the best quality, lacking sources,
but were benign, and exactly what one might expect an untutored novice
to do as a first change.

As well as being reverted, she now has three templates on her talk
page; two warning her of a CoI, and sandwiching one notifying her of a
discussion about her on the COI noticeboard. These total 4094
characters or 665 words.

How do other projects deal with such cases?

--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Treatment of newbies with mild CoI

2020-02-26 Thread Anders Wennersten

We are a small version that welcome all contributions that enhance 
value. So we do not use coi to say no, we only use coi when people enter 
biased  statements, or get angry when their contributions gets neutralized.


And we do not use templates in those cases, we do not even have ones, we 
only link to our policy for coi, in a sentence.


But i am fully aware that the challenge for enwp is much different and 
understand other procedure are used


At the same time i would appreciate if the reality of enwp was not used 
to say it represent all communities.


Anders (representing svwp)

Den 2020-02-19 kl. 22:34, skrev Andy Mabbett:

I have just come across a case on en.Wikipedia where the daughter of
an article subject added details of his funeral (his death in 1984,w
as already recorded) and his view about an indent in his life.

Her six sequential edits - her first and only contribution to
Wikipedia - totalled 1254 characters, and were conducted over the
space of 30 minutes. They were no the best quality, lacking sources,
but were benign, and exactly what one might expect an untutored novice
to do as a first change.

As well as being reverted, she now has three templates on her talk
page; two warning her of a CoI, and sandwiching one notifying her of a
discussion about her on the COI noticeboard. These total 4094
characters or 665 words.

How do other projects deal with such cases?



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: Recommendations released, join the conversation

2020-01-21 Thread Anders Wennersten

Sometimes I wonder if we really belong to the same movement or even live
on the same planet.

A wonderful work has been done with the recomendations, and the end
result looks very fine, with only a few minor comments needed as far as
I can see.

And I believe whatever we think of the endresult we should commend the
people who have participated, both their commitment and quality of work.

As a 8 hours-a- day contributor to a project, I know, as all my
colleagues, the importance to have a positive tone in our
communityinternal conversation and always be strong in good faith. And I
meet that positive tone in my activities in the community and when I
meet volunteers and functionaries IRL. But in this list i find
appalling negative entries as i find to be in direct opposition to our
movement values.

So please, please use a better tone and attitude in this discussion of
the recommendations

Andersw

Den 2020-01-21 kl. 11:49, skrev Fæ:

Ziko, we can vote on whatever we want, whenever we want.

Us having a RFC on meta does not need the WMF to approve it or like it. An
openly run RFC could itself recommend a board resolution asking the
community appointed board members (you know, the legitimate ones that are
accountable to us) to reject or amend the 'recommendations' as the
community sees fit. The WMF board and their CEO know it is in their
interest to take on any firm community consensus rather than playing
political games to get around it.

I suggest folks take some time out to re-review the recommendations and
wait for the dust to settle before deciding if we want to start a correctly
community-led process for voting on it.

As others have expressed, I am not in the least bit inclined to give any
feedback on meta. It's a waste of volunteer time, as effective as shouting
out of your office window expecting to make the weather change.

Fae

On Tue, 21 Jan 2020 at 09:54, Ziko van Dijk wrote:

Hello,

We now have the confirmation on a Meta Wiki talk page: the WMF is not going
to let the communities vote on the recommendations.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations#Community_consensus

Kind regards
Ziko

Am Di., 21. Jan. 2020 um 09:39 Uhr schrieb Yaroslav Blanter <
ymb...@gmail.com>:

We will be again talking to the wall. (Would be, I am not going to react
this time).

Best
Yaroslav

On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 5:06 AM Todd Allen wrote:

Katherine,

These are very disappointing. It does not seem like a bit of the

feedback

on earlier versions was taken into consideration at all. Can we expect
anything we say to matter this time around, or will we once again be
talking to the wall?

Todd

On Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 8:24 PM Katherine Maher
wrote:

Dear all,

I wanted to share some news with you: the first version of the

movement

strategy recommendations document has been published on Meta [1]. On

behalf

of the movement strategy working groups and recommendation writers, I

honored to present them to you. We ask you to please take a moment to

read

through, review, and comment.

In 2017, we set about building the future we want, together. In 2020,

your

fellow Wikimedians have written and shared a framework for how we can

bring

to life our vision of becoming the essential support system of the
ecosystem of free knowledge.

== Review the recommendations ==

These recommendations are the result of 18 months of in-depth

discussions

and consultation among global Wikimedia community members and

research

into opportunities for our future. The volunteer working groups [2],
writing teams [3] and strategy liaisons [4] have all invested a

significant

amount of energy into this, and I want to wholeheartedly thank each

and

every person who contributed to creating this work.

I would like to encourage everyone to read this work. There are 13
recommendations (condensed from 89), accompanied by an explanation of

the

principles [5] that underlie the recommendations, an outline of how

these

recommendations work together [6], as well as an overview of how the
recommendations were produced and next steps [7].

The core of this material is online in Arabic, English, French,

German,

Hindi, Portuguese, and Spanish. We also have an overview available in
Catalan, Dutch, Farsi, Hebrew, Polish, and Russian that offers a

condensed

introduction to the recommendations material.

== Share your feedback ==

In order to produce a final document that is representative of and

relevant

to the diverse project communities as well as groups and

organizations

that

make up our movement, we are calling on everyone to review the
recommendations and share their thoughts.

Specifically, we ask you to look at what impact these recommendations

might

have on you and your group or community’s context. Discussions are
happening on-wiki in many languages, as well as in discussion groups

other, off0wiki platforms, and within movement groups and structures.

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: Recommendations and community conversations launching next week

2020-01-14 Thread Anders Wennersten

The people who has written the forthcoming recommendations, have been 
engaged for around two years, and they have spend manmonths of dedicated 
work.

It is not realistic to believe that an outsider (as we others now are) 
can substantially change any of the recommendations. We can though give 
comments based on our different backgrounds. And one or two aspect 
perhaps have such strong weight that it will be of interest for the 
Board to take in when deciding the strategy

Perhaps it is the word "conversation" that is confusing, it is more 
about "asking for comments" as I see it.

And one week to summarise the comment and one week to get feedback to 
this summary could be enough, as an actually discussion of the 
recommendation content as such is not a feasible considering the total 
process

Anders

Den 2020-01-14 kl. 11:03, skrev Paul J. Weiss:

I share the time concerns that Pine and Todd addressed. But my larger
concern is about the purpose of this next community conversation. You say
that the core team will summarize the community input, and then the
community will have a week to "suggest changes to the posted summary so
that it accurately reflects their viewpoints". So it seems that while
WMF wants to know how the community feels about the upcoming strategy
document, it is not giving the community any say, at this point in the
process, of the content of that document. So then why bother having another
community conversation at this juncture? Why take up so much community time
to develop responses to a document that will a priori not change based on
those responses? That seems to be a textbook case of how to get
dissatisfaction and disillusionment. Although I would prefer for the
community to still have a say in things, if the sense is that the document
really is done, maybe it should just be sent to the BOD now, saving 8 or
more weeks of time.  If the community conversation does go ahead, I think
it is very important to make it very clear what will be and won't be done
with the responses, allowing community members to make informed decisions
about how much time and effort to devote to the conversation. It took a
couple of read-throughs for me to realize that there will be a response
summary and suggestions to that document, but no further round of revision.

Thanks,
Paul

At 2020-01-13  11:46 p, you wrote:

I would tend to agree. This process has been ongoing for many months now,
and the community raised substantial concerns about the initial proposals.
Whether deliberate or not, allowing only a week for discussion of the final
product seems an attempt to ram it through. Surely longer than a week can
be allowed for discussion of such a critical item. Todd On Mon, Jan 13,
2020 at 11:25 PM Pine W  wrote: > Hi Nicole, > > After
reading this email, and taking into consideration a discussion that >
happened during the January online meeting of United States Wikimedians, I

feel that the timeline here is aggressive and likely to result in

problems. > In particular, giving the core team one week to review feedback
and giving > the community one week to review the core team's summary seem
risky at > best, even if everyone is communicating in English. When taking
into > account the need for translations,my guess is that one week is an >
impossibly short timeframe for quality work in these phases of the strategy

process. > > I suggesting adding at least one more week to the timeframe

for the core > team to review feedback including translations of comments,
and at least > three more weeks for conversations with the community
regarding the core > team's summary. > > I am concerned that this process
may be heading toward a rushed and chaotic > finish. > > Pine > (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: Synthesizing the recommendations and next steps

2019-11-19 Thread Anders Wennersten


What is the current status?

The final version of recommendation should have been completed by 
November 1, I can not find any published


A new working group should have been formed in order to synthesizing the 
89recommendations. Is it formed and who are its members


Are there any more concrete time plan when the first results from this 
new group will be published?


Anders


Den 2019-10-21 kl. 19:02, skrev Nicole Ebber:

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share some updates about movement strategy with you all.
The core team has spent the last few weeks developing and finalizing a
plan to take forward the work that the nine working groups have done
and, from this, create one set of recommendations.

To ensure enough time to do this effectively and to facilitate
community input on the synthesized recommendations as well as
endorsement, we have adapted the movement strategy timeline.[1]

== What’s next for working groups ==
The nine working groups are currently putting any remaining finishing
touches on the current, second iteration of their recommendations[2].
This version reflects inputs and perspectives that were shared by the
movement online and in person prior to, during, and after Wikimania,
including at many strategy salons and the two regional summits.

Any final bits of relevant research will be integrated, and some
groups may make small refinements to their work. They are also in the
process of ranking their recommendations to indicate which ones, in
their perspective, are the most foundational for driving change in our
movement.

Following this, working group members will conclude the duty that they
signed up for by 1 November. We are incredibly grateful to each
working group member for their tireless efforts and engagement.

In the meantime, the core team and contracted strategy liaisons will
also be working to share back information with online and offline
communities about how their feedback has been reviewed and
incorporated into the existing drafts of recommendations.

== Synthesizing recommendations ==
The focus over the next few months will be on synthesizing the 89
recommendations to develop one set. To help create a product that is
concise and clear, overlaps in the content will be identified to see
where certain recommendations could be merged. Others may be forwarded
for consideration to the implementation process. Others might conflict
and need to be reconciled.

To do this work, a new working group will be formed, comprised of
existing working group members who are interested in continuing to
contribute. This new group will consist of:
* Writers who will synthesize the recommendations and develop one coherent set.
* Connectors who will help writers make sense and further integrate
existing material, research, and input from community conversations,
both past and upcoming.
* Reviewers who will bring in specific additional perspectives,
expertise, contexts, advise at different times of the process.

The sign up process for this new group is currently underway, and best
ways to support the content creation are being assessed. We will
provide updates here soon.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me.

Best wishes,
Nicole


[1] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Overview/Timeline
[2] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New Board of Wikimedia Canada

2019-10-22 Thread Anders Wennersten



Den 2019-10-21 kl. 17:39, skrev Jean-Philippe Béland:

Wikimedia Canada is proud to have a majority of women on its Board. We
believe that we are the only Wikimedia chapter in this situation, please
correct me if I'm wrong.


Well, WMSE has had a majority of women on its board since March 2015, 
this year 5-4


Anders


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation joins the global climate strike

2019-09-23 Thread Anders Wennersten

For work groups experience tells a first meting IRL to get to know each 
other is necessary, but after that video conference works well.


For big events, why not have groups (40-50 persons) get together on 
local level with excellent on-line facilities (wide screens etc) that 
connects to all other sites.


and where is this discussed in the strategy? Are we missing something 
that will be critical for our volunteers in 2030


Anders

Den 2019-09-23 kl. 13:52, skrev Rebecca O'Neill:

Is it, perhaps, that the value a lot of people derive from these events is
not just the conference itself, but the ability to meet fellow Wikimedians
face-to-face and make meaningful contacts and even friendships that may
never otherwise have come about? I'm all about virtual, but there is value
in physical events, and I would say that we should make time and space for
both.

On Mon, 23 Sep 2019 at 12:54, Ilario Valdelli  wrote:


Yes

We dont give all scholarships for that reason while for regional Wikicon we
receive more requests and we fill the amount immediately.

It's not an opinion that in our events people prefer to arrive by train and
not by flight. We see it as soon we receive the expenses report and when we
ask the reason the answer is the climate change.

Kind regards

On Mon, 23 Sep 2019, 13:25 Gabriel Thullen,  wrote:


I am a Swiss member, and I did go to Wikimania (and did a small
presentation).

I think that you need to clarify you statement:
"In Wikimedia CH we cannot give scholarships for Wikimania because people
would not do long trips."

When looking up what was sais for Wikimania 2019 I read:
"Wikimedia CH offers scholarships for active Wikimedians. They cover
transportation, hotel (max 3 nights) from the 16th to the 18th, and
registration fees. To check your eligibility, you can consult conditions

of

eligibility on this page
."

Best regards
Gabe


On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 1:14 PM Ilario Valdelli 
wrote:


Anyways this is perceived by the community.

In Wikimedia CH we cannot give scholarships for Wikimania because

people

would not do long trips.

IMHO the problem is these big events.

For this reason we prefer to give more scholarships for regional

wikicon

than to Wikimania.

This is the reason why you dont see more Swiss people at Wikimania.

Kind regards

On Sat, 21 Sep 2019, 00:51 Samuel Klein,  wrote:


On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 4:00 PM Robert Fernandez <

wikigamal...@gmail.com

wrote:


I think we could drastically lower our carbon footprint by not

using

community digital resources to beat the same dead horse for a

billionth

time.


I laughed out loud.

AND.   I love that the WMF joined the strike, and have some practical
thoughts.

a) Reach out to Stripe
, which

has

a

through self-assessment and a negative-emissions program, and the

Long

Now,

to coordinate efforts.
b) Evaluate the community-wide carbon footprint, which is dominated

by

   b.1) How we run conferences [*mostly in person*]
   b.2) How we choose partners, communicate climate imformation, and
prioritize related policies [*fairly ad-hoc*]
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: Draft recommendations are here!

2019-08-12 Thread Anders Wennersten


I want to express my appreciation for the work being done and the result.

I am not able to get to grips with all parts of the recommendation but 
as I understand there are two key messages:


*To distribute  many of the function now at WMF in SF to different 
locations in the world (whereof 50% in Global south). I find this is 
most appropriate, both to lessen the feeling of We-them, but also to get 
more salaried people spread over the World. It is also a natural 
development as out organisation mature over time


*To really go, without any compromise for the discussion in the movement 
in our communities must be held in a civil tone and in a friendly 
atmosphere  where respect for everyone is a key. I believe also this is 
long overdue and necessary when we now are over 15 years of age.


I love these two issues and hope it will be implemented in full.

 Anders



Den 2019-08-12 kl. 17:51, skrev Nicole Ebber:

Dear all,

We would like to offer further clarification that the recommendations for
Wikimedia 2030 [1] that were shared earlier with you are indeed drafts.
They represent discussions around a wide array of topics that the nine
thematic working groups, affiliates and communities had identified
important for our movement’s future. They are the product of conversations
over many months with a variety of stakeholders, and the working groups are
eager to hear from you. The draft recommendations are neither final nor
complete, but a continuation of an ongoing conversation happening across
wikis, platforms, surveys, meetings, and meet-ups. As such, constructive
feedback and solution-oriented suggestions are welcomed. The draft
recommendations are based on contexts that deserve due review and
reflection, and are the result of the efforts of many, rather than single
individuals.

Many of the draft recommendations underline structural changes needed for
the growth and expansion of a movement like ours. Many are representative
of wider societal, historical and global dynamics around us. Please take
the time to review the draft recommendations in their entirety, pose
questions, hear from others, and in the spirit of collegial collaboration,
offer suggestions that you think can address the issues at hand. This is a
process for all of us to shape our shared future, together; let’s keep
engaging and challenging one another in this same spirit.

Best wishes,
Nicole

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations

On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 at 15:49, Todd Allen  wrote:


"And just to keep this on track, what is your view on how we can
incorporate
indigenous knowledge without it becoming commercialised by the current
licensing scheme?"

We can't and no one can.

Knowledge, ideas, and concepts cannot be copyrighted to begin with. Now,
specific expressions of those ideas certainly can be, but the underlying
facts and ideas cannot. If the expression of those ideas is to be on
Wikimedia, they must be under an open content license, allowing reuse
without regard to purpose. If someone would prefer to put their work under
an NC license, then a free-content project is not the appropriate place for
it. Many other places are happy to accept NC-licensed material. But even
then, reuse of the concepts and facts cannot be prohibited no matter what
one does.

Todd

On Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 5:47 AM Philip Kopetzky 
Please don't generalise frustration with your conduct on this list.

You're

the only one telling people to shut up here.

And just to keep this on track, what is your view on how we can

incorporate

indigenous knowledge without it becoming commercialised by the current
licensing scheme?
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[Wikimedia-l] Distr game on Wikidata

2019-08-04 Thread Anders Wennersten

Since end of June I am following closely (via Listerialists) all changes 
in Wikdata on the 15000 object i have created and have special interest 
in. They are about adm units in Sweden, mostly historical and I had not 
anticipated any big amount of change., But in reality there are lots, 
10-30 a week, and even if mostly on iw-links and update on descriptions, 
it has been positive and rewarding (like a change followed by a 
constructive discussion with a user from Russia)


BUT there has ben a lot of bad edits (around a dozen), mostly 
wellmeaning, but also some a bit worse.  Some by bot, where the user 
undid the changes, but worst has been the merges initiated with hash-tag 
Distr game. Here really stupid and devastating merges has been done and 
crazy totally erroneous updates. And here feedback does not work.


For me it look like children using much too powerful tools, and they 
perceive them as games. (the tools seems to give a list of suggestion of 
things, like merges, and you just press a key to have it done, and when 
it is so easy, it invites unintelligent users to "play" and win points 
by pressing key for whatever suggesting turning up, in my cases anything 
sharing a coordinate, a village, church, adm area etc)


I do hope this is not a misdirected initiative to get new users, by 
letting them go havoc on our data? (the tools could of course be good, 
when used constructively in the hands of competent users, but ?game?)


Anders



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fram en.wp office yearlock block

2019-07-06 Thread Anders Wennersten

I see the main and most important trend just now is the broad usage and 
introduction  of Wikidata in strengthening and extending Wikipedia content.


And Wikidata works against deletionism. All Pokemons shall have separate 
WD objects, independency how it is in Wikipedia articles. And as WD is 
he sum of all version articles, if any version see a a subject worth to 
have a Wikipedia article it will also exist a WDobject for it.


In practice it has meant  for us working in a small version, that we are 
in general going the inclusionist way. We focus more that there exist 
good sources and that the facts will not be changes over time (but it 
must also be known to a substitutional number of people)


I perceive enwp is lagging in the embracing of Wikidata. It could be 
understood considering that enwp has less need to lean on WD objects in 
their article writing then smaller versions, but is interesting it could 
also effect secondary issues like the debate of  inclusionism and 
deletionism.


In my personal vision, in 5-10 years there will exist techniques that 
enable readers to access Wikidata fact in an interface as in Wikipedia, 
extending number of articles you can access in "Wikipedia" in a given 
language  to multiply by perhaps a factor 10  or more, a higher factor 
for a small language an lower for like enwp - truly a way to "spread 
knowledge to all humankind"


Anders



Den 2019-07-06 kl. 12:14, skrev Benjamin Ikuta:


As a strong inclusionist myself, I'm a bit disappointed to see this.

See also: https://www.gwern.net/In-Defense-Of-Inclusionism



On Jul 5, 2019, at 3:15 AM, Todd Allen  wrote:


Well, inclusionism generally is toxic. It lets a huge volume of garbage
pile up. Deletionism just takes out the trash. We did it with damn Pokemon,
and we'll eventually do it with junk football "biographies", with
"football" in the sense of American and otherwise. We'll sooner or later
get it done with "populated places" and the like too.

NN athletes and populated places belong on a list, not as a permastub
"article".

As for A7, it applies only to mainspace. It is the responsibility of any
editor creating an article directly in mainspace to cite appropriate
sources and demonstrate notability on the first edit. If one is not yet
ready to do that, write a draft. A7 does not apply to drafts. But for an
article in the main encyclopedia, the expectation should absolutely be to
show sourcing immediately.

Todd

On Thu, Jul 4, 2019, 7:39 AM WereSpielChequers 
wrote:


Agreeing/asserting that the English Language Wikipedia has a toxic editing
environment is easy. Defining the problem and suggesting solutions has
historically been rather more difficult. Just watch the latest threads at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Civility for examples.

On the English Wikipedia this is clearer than on some projects because we
have annual Arbcom elections, and a candidate can always criticise the
sitting arbs by saying "of the cases accepted and rejected over the last
year or two, ignoring those where we know there was private information,
these are the cases where I would have differed from the existing arbs. I
would have voted to accept cases , and  and
these are the ones where i would have supported a stricter sanction ,
z"

Alternatively you can make suggestions as to how you would change the
community to make it a less toxic environment, in the past I have argued
for, among other things:


   1. A different way of handling edit warring that doesn't go so quickly
   to blocks.
   2. A pause in the speedy deletion process for goodfaith article
   creations so G3 and G10 would still be deleted as quickly as admins find
   them but A7s could stick around for at least 24 hours
   3. Software changes to resolve more edit conflicts without losing edits.


None of these have been rejected because people actually want a toxic
environment. But people have different definitions of toxicity, for example
some people think that everyone who loses an edit due to an edit conflict
understands that this is an IT problem, and are unaware of incidents where
people have assumed that this is conflict with the person whose edit one
the conflict. Others just don't see deletionism as toxic, some deletionists
even consider inclusionism toxic and get upset at editors who decline
deletion tags that are almost but not quite correct.

My suspicion is that the intersection of "everything you submit may be
ruthlessly edited" a large community where you frequently encounter people
you haven't dealt with before, cultural nuances between different versions
of English and a large proportion of people who are not editing in their
native language makes the English Wikipedia less congenial than some other
Wikis. For example, someone who comes from a straight talking culture might
think me as euphemistic and possibly sarcastic, even when I think I'm being
nuanced and diplomatic.

Specifically in the case of

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fram en.wp office yearlock block

2019-06-14 Thread Anders Wennersten


+1

We need to make a reality that Wikipedia workspace is without langauge 
that intimidate users.


Anders

Den 2019-06-14 kl. 14:45, skrev camelia boban:

I quote David and Isaac.
Harassment is a serious thing and hounding another user is out of any wiki
behavior.
Before asking why WMF has banned an admin (and if Fram was not an admin,
all these discussions would not have been done), we need to ask ourselves
why we (other users) have allowed such an attitude without intervening to
stop it.


Camelia


--
*Camelia Boban*

*| Java EE Developer |*

*Affiliations Committee - **Wikimedia *Foundation
Coordinator - Diversity Working Group for Wikimedia Strategy 2030
Chair & co-founder - WikiDonne User Group *| WikiDonne Project ideator*

*Diversity Space @ Wikimania 2019 Co-Lead*
WMIT - WMSE - WMCH - WMAR Member

M. +39 3383385545
camelia.bo...@gmail.com
*Aissa Technologies* * | *Twitter
 *|* *LinkedIn
*
*Wikipedia  **| **WikiDonne
UG * | *WikiDonne Project
 *











Il giorno ven 14 giu 2019 alle ore 14:32 Mister Thrapostibongles <
thrapostibong...@gmail.com> ha scritto:


Fæ

[...] the pre-existing understanding that the WMF do not replace

existing and perfectly adequate community agreed procedures for
banning bad behaviour on our projects.


Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that the existing English Wikipedia
community processes are not "perfectly adequate" for that purpose.



If the English
Wikipedia's policies are not fit for purpose, or implementation of
policy is incompetent, we need a much bigger discussion


Indeed.  Unfortunately the tone of the discussion here and at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_response_to_the_Wikimedia_Foundation%27s_ban_of_Fram
suggests
that the requisite discussion is now less, not more, likely to happen or be
productive.

Thrapostibongles
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

2019-04-13 Thread Anders Wennersten

In our community (Swedish) we embrace Wikidata wholeheartedly and we 
have found solution to take care of vandalism. Literialist, show changes 
on Wikidata on Wikipedia etc.


I believe it is more an attitude issue then a technical one.

I agree with earlier comments that English Wikipedia is not everything 
and regarding use of Wikidata it  is not a leader


Anders


Den 2019-04-13 kl. 21:01, skrev Yaroslav Blanter:

To be honest, Wikidata does have serious vandalism issues which have not
yet been solved. It is unlikely the English Wikipedia will have a more
close integration with Wikidata until they have been solved. For the
record, I am administrator on both projects.

Cheers
Yaroslav

On Sat, Apr 13, 2019 at 8:31 PM Gerard Meijssen 
wrote:


Hoi,
When I worked on Ottoman history in Wikidata (I will get back to it again)
Catalan was one of the best resources. Thank you :) If you want me to I can
share my work/your work on your wikipedia.
Thanks,
 GerardM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GerardM#Ottoman_Turkey

On Sat, 13 Apr 2019 at 20:21, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <
galder...@hotmail.com> wrote:


Well, that Wikidata problem happens on English Wikipedia. Some Wikipedias
(Basque, Catalan, even French) are embracing Wikidata extensively.

And there's the branding issue. Maybe Wikipedia is not THE future.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [strategy process] Fwd: I decided to leave the working group

2019-03-28 Thread Anders Wennersten

There is a Swedish expression "har man tagit fan i båten får man ro 
honom i land" (If you have taken the devil into your boat you must row 
him ashore"


Independent if this process has been bad or not, I see it is as just 
some six month left of it. And it is important to do the best of it. It 
would be a bad move to stop it at thois point in time, and would also be 
too late to correct the process if it has been flawed.


Anders


Den 2019-03-27 kl. 14:05, skrev Itzik - Wikimedia Israel:


Hi,

Two weeks ago I sent this email to my strategy working group (resource
allocation). I didn't plan to send a public email, just to share with the
rest of the group my reason to leave and just to disappear.
I receive feedbacks with many of the group members and also requesting
permissions to transfer it with others outside of the group, which leads to
more conversations that I had around it.

Last week we had our weekly phone call, during which we discussed our
feelings and opinions about the process so far. From our long conversation
and the conversations with the others, I learned that many of these
feelings exist among the other members, as well some ideas on how to make
it easier and less demanding and at the same time publishing the
conclusions sooner.
Yesterday, following a good conversation with one of the WMF's board
members about it, I was asked to share these thoughts with the movement's
list, so that it may also involve the community's feedback as well.



*Itzik Edri*
Chairperson (volunteer)
it...@wikimedia.org.il
+972-54-5878078



-- Forwarded message -
From: Itzik - Wikimedia Israel 
Date: Wed, Mar 13, 2019 at 2:08 PM
Subject: I decided to leave the working group
To: 

Dear friends,

For a long time I have been considering leaving the working group but each
time I decided to give it another chance. Yesterday, after long
consideration, I decided to write this email.

I must be honest - I was skeptical from the first moment about this
process. The huge amount of money which the board allocated to this process
together with the complicated and (very) long process planned for it - make
me doubt the ability to really have a real outcome in a reasonable time.
For the past two years, it seems to me like the strategy took over almost
every movement event and activity. I feel bad for investing millions of
dollars from our donations and uncounted hours of volunteer time into this
process.

I also felt hypocritical in the way the foundation acts - while "freezing"
grant programs (such as APG) and holding affiliates from increasing their
programs and budgets, "because of the strategy process" while
simultaneously approving itself to increase its budget and staff year after
year by tens of percentage.

Despite my distrust of the chances of this process and the criticism I felt
for it, I instructed my organization to give it the full support we been
asked, as all our movement did. Later on, I decided to join this working
group as I felt we almost reached the final step of the process and I
wanted to help shape the recommendations. I was totally wrong.

In the first months of the workgroups, I felt it was completely wasted of
time. I saw how wonderful volunteers tried to lead the process within each
group (thank you Daria!) - but it wasn't their job, nor none of us. I felt
like I was returning to university, and every few weeks I received
instructions and homework from the lecturer, with assignments to the
following week - and in between, that we need to lead it and solve things
by ourselves. It took the core team a few months to change it and bring
external support, but even after the (right) change, it continues to feel
like I came *to work for *the strategic process, not with.

I felt like nothing happened for the past year(or years?) before the
working groups started to operate. As if we didn't have hundreds of
meetings around the world, with a total of tens of thousands of people and
an enormous amount of hours of conversations - and aside from a short few
sentences of a strategic direction, we started from scratch. A completely
new process.
 From scratch to have discussions about what this process is, definitions
and concepts. What is the problem with the current system? What are the
challenges? What people shared during the first phase? Information which
wasn't available and ready for the group, and still isn't. Eight months
after we start, the real conversation about the subject which I joined to
discuss about and help shape recommendations around it, is far, far away
from even to start.

The more I spoke to more and more people who are part of the process, I
realized that this despair is not only with me but with many. But we are a
real Wikimedians, and we are committed to the things we start. We are bad
with stopping things when they don't work or have real reviews of the
things we do when we have the belief that this is the right thing. I
completely stopped thinking it is the right thing

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikidata now officially has more total edits than English language Wikipedia

2019-03-20 Thread Anders Wennersten

In my experience we are now leaving Phase one of filling Wikidata with 
basic data.


This first phase involved many botcreated items and wellmeaning 
semi-manual mass updates. This has resulted in many problems. Bots that 
is filling wrong Item,  with same name but a different object, creating 
mess. Bot update that put in deathdates from a list of retirement dates 
creating a lot of angriness as it showed in Google search a lot of 
living persons being dead. And a lot of bewildering "Intance of"


Our reaction to this is that we are now putting a major effort to 
manually go through important classes of WD items in order to enter 
correct data, specially "Instance of". This in order to correct  and 
stop erroneous data to be entered from now on. It also give a big 
advantage as fact control on datasets is much easier done by using 
Wikdata. Also after base data is correct, make mass updates and 
correction by bot.


We also have the vision to "freeze" correct data (of data that should 
not change) by using Literialists, first to easy control big dataset, 
but after a while putting in logic that hampers changes in his data.


So not manually or Bot but both.

Anders


Den 2019-03-20 kl. 12:46, skrev Gerard Meijssen:

Hoi,
The biggest benefit of Wikidata is that it knows about more subjects than
any Wikipedia has articles. Like Wikipedia it has its own problems but it
has its own benefits. The biggest problem with Wikidata is not its quality
and the biggest benefit of Wikipedia is not its quality. Both have issues.
All Wikimedia projects rely on their communities, that is where things are
the same.

The notion that a community and text is better is in itself a fallacy
because the integrity of data is easier to check with data and not so much
with text. An example: I have repeatedly indicated that 6% of all the
entries in a list in a Wikipedia is wrong. The problem is one of
disambiguation..  For instance, for a chemistry award you would expect at
least scientists better chemists. When a hockey player or a movie star is
among them, it follows that you want to check this out. Easy to do at
Wikidata, impossible at Wikipedia. It is possible but only only when
Wikipedians and Wikidatans collaborate (they are not really).

When you suggest that bots are less secure than humans you are wrong as
well. Research shows that a human with the best of intentions has an error
rate of something like 6%. However when a list like a Wikipedia category of
alumni of a given university is considered, there are no new errors
introduced by a bot. All the errors included in Wikidata are the errors
that already exist in a Wikipedia,. When we were to have consolidation
processes, once a person is known to have studied at a university we could
synchronise categories and data. In addition to this, bots import
authorised data from ORCID indicating former students of universitiies. A
consolidation process could update update both Wikidata and all Wikipedias
who take an interest.

In addition when people search withing Wikidata, never mind the language
they will find what Wikidata has to offer. Any Wikipedia is a subset of
what a Wikipedia has to offer.

So as much as both Wikidata Wikipedia are wonderful products, there is room
for improvement. Improvement will only happen when we truly care about
sharing in the sum of all knowledge, when we truly care about quality and
not assume that "we" (whoever we is) has a superior proposition.
Thanks,
   GerardM


On Wed, 20 Mar 2019 at 10:45, Gabriel Thullen  wrote:


Sorry about this mail, I hate to rain on somebody's parade but:
Ever since Wikidata was set up, there have been more edit made by bots than
by humans (registered contributor + anonymous contributor), except for a
few periods in 2017 and 2018. On the other hand, the activity of the bots
on the English Wikipedia has almost always been lower than the activity of
anonymous contributors, and that activity has always been well below that
of registered contributors. There was one exception, in 2013 where there
was a spike of bot activity.
We could also talk about the average number of edits per contributor which
appears to be around 100 on the English Wikipedia and 1,200 on Wikidata
(these numbers are after removing the estimated edits done by bots). Quite
a difference.
The different Wikimedia projects rely on the community to police and curate
the content of these encyclopedias and data collections. I am therefore a
bit wary of what is happening with Wikidata where more edits are still
being done by bots than by real humans (by "real" I mean "real" not like
"real" as in the TV series "real humans")

Best regards
Gabe

On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 9:25 AM Olushola Olaniyan <
olaniyanshol...@gmail.com>
wrote:


This is a good news.

Cheers!!!

Olaniyan Olushola
CEO DataAccess Systems Ltd
President, Wikimedia Nigeria
Member, Affcom ( Wikimedia Foundation)
Co-director Wiki Women Radio
www.wikimedia.org.ng
sh...@wikimedia.org.ng

[Wikimedia-l] Wikidata used by other then Wikipedia

2019-01-31 Thread Anders Wennersten

We are now experiencing a couple of cases where third party uses data 
from Wikidata to create user interface of  data from it without any use 
of Wikipedia, to support their own systems. One is a genealogy website, 
who use Wikidata to present where parish having genealogy records can be 
found on a map, using coordinates etc  for these parisihes from 
Wikidata. Another in an early phase is a water authority who will load 
Wikidata with their data and present data from there.


Is this part of a trend, are there many cases like these?

Does statistics exist giving how many acesses goes to Wikidata from 
3-parties? Are we missing these in our use statistic by focusing on 
access to Wikipedia?


Anders


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

2018-12-30 Thread Anders Wennersten

Thats excellent. It is just then to live up to that guidline, and foster 
people who can simplity the lead sections


For myself I remember how hard it was to get an educated physisct to 
write of the Coriolis effect in the lead section to make it 
understandable. He just squeemed that with simple language then it is no 
correct. And in it there is animations but without proper text it is 
impossible to understand


Anders

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_force is not easy to take in




Den 2018-12-30 kl. 13:23, skrev David Gerard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section
says pretty much the same:


The lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic. 
It should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is 
notable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent 
controversies. The notability of the article's subject is usually established 
in the first few sentences.

that is, the intro section should be a short standalone article:


As a general rule of thumb, a lead section should contain no more than four 
well-composed paragraphs and be carefully sourced as appropriate.

For an extreme case, [[World War II]] gets *five* long paragraphs for
its intro section.


- d.



On Sun, 30 Dec 2018 at 10:57, Anders Wennersten
 wrote:

In my little duckpond (svwp) we have guidleines for the introduction
part of the article.

It should use (simple) language to enable 14-16 years old to understand
it (while the rest can use more complicated vocabulary)

It should hopefully only be 1-3 sentences, and to state what is all
about and not a summary.

We do not live up to this recommendation all the time, but I have
noticed that he introducion part on enwp generally are very long, in
comparison

Anders



Den 2018-12-30 kl. 11:39, skrev Zubin JAIN:

I am 51, and I do not know much about the 18- generation, but I know two

important things about them. They have a very short attention span and
difficulties to concentrate. And they get a graphical and visualized
information much more easier than texts. For example, my son is capable of
watching three or four movies per day, but he has difficulties to read 20
pages from a book.


Well, the first question is whether an encyclopedia is an appropriate / the

best format for them to get knowledge (as it is for us). I do not know the
answer. What I write below assumes that the answer is positive, otherwise
the rest of the text does not make sense.


The next question is what should be done. How Wikipedia should look like to

be accessible to this generation? The answer seems to be obvious. Articles
must be short and contain a lot of graphic information. May be they need to
be videoclips. Short clips. Or, at lest, they must contain clips, with more
voice and less letters. If one needs more detailed information or just
further information - one hops to the next article or watches the next clip.

These are gross generalizations and the ideas are similarly flawed.
Anecdotes do not prove anything and while there is some evidence to suspect
that attention span is reducing ( Though there has yet to be consensus and
one should naturally be sceptical of any psychological finding given the
fields replication crisis). Under 18 people such as myself probably use the
site the most compared to any other demographic and most of us are capable
of using it as well as anybody else.

The idea that Wikipedia needs to be dumbed down has abousltley no basis on
fact and data, is only supported by anecdotes and stereotypes. This is not
to say that simplifying some Wikipedia articles and creating more video
content is wrong, Wikipedia should be inclusive to all including those with
disabilities or conditions that make the traditional encyclopedia
unsuitable but making those changes out of ageist assumptions of
generational decline is insulting.

On Sun, 30 Dec 2018 at 17:21, Jane Darnell  wrote:


I still believe we need to "explode Wikipedia", by which I mean split
curation templates, categories, lists and all other articles into more
easily editable and curatable parts. This enables better linking to
discrete Wikidata items while reducing the tedious task of curation for
extremely long articles. Your comments, Peter, are still based on the
18-year-old idea of "it's the info that matters". It's no longer just the
content that matters. Content curation, once advertised as being super
simple (and still in the byline as "everybody can edit"), has become a
tedious and complicated task, and efforts to make it easier have resulted
with the visual editor for mobile, which still doesn't work for uploading
to Commons. We need better upload interfaces for fixing spelling mistakes,
adding blue links, categories, media, and all other common tasks. We should
not let Google decide which sentences to index first, but we should be
enabling those decisions to be made by human edito

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

2018-12-30 Thread Anders Wennersten

In my little duckpond (svwp) we have guidleines for the introduction 
part of the article.


It should use (simple) language to enable 14-16 years old to understand 
it (while the rest can use more complicated vocabulary)


It should hopefully only be 1-3 sentences, and to state what is all 
about and not a summary.


We do not live up to this recommendation all the time, but I have 
noticed that he introducion part on enwp generally are very long, in 
comparison


Anders



Den 2018-12-30 kl. 11:39, skrev Zubin JAIN:

I am 51, and I do not know much about the 18- generation, but I know two

important things about them. They have a very short attention span and
difficulties to concentrate. And they get a graphical and visualized
information much more easier than texts. For example, my son is capable of
watching three or four movies per day, but he has difficulties to read 20
pages from a book.


Well, the first question is whether an encyclopedia is an appropriate / the

best format for them to get knowledge (as it is for us). I do not know the
answer. What I write below assumes that the answer is positive, otherwise
the rest of the text does not make sense.


The next question is what should be done. How Wikipedia should look like to

be accessible to this generation? The answer seems to be obvious. Articles
must be short and contain a lot of graphic information. May be they need to
be videoclips. Short clips. Or, at lest, they must contain clips, with more
voice and less letters. If one needs more detailed information or just
further information - one hops to the next article or watches the next clip.

These are gross generalizations and the ideas are similarly flawed.
Anecdotes do not prove anything and while there is some evidence to suspect
that attention span is reducing ( Though there has yet to be consensus and
one should naturally be sceptical of any psychological finding given the
fields replication crisis). Under 18 people such as myself probably use the
site the most compared to any other demographic and most of us are capable
of using it as well as anybody else.

The idea that Wikipedia needs to be dumbed down has abousltley no basis on
fact and data, is only supported by anecdotes and stereotypes. This is not
to say that simplifying some Wikipedia articles and creating more video
content is wrong, Wikipedia should be inclusive to all including those with
disabilities or conditions that make the traditional encyclopedia
unsuitable but making those changes out of ageist assumptions of
generational decline is insulting.

On Sun, 30 Dec 2018 at 17:21, Jane Darnell  wrote:


I still believe we need to "explode Wikipedia", by which I mean split
curation templates, categories, lists and all other articles into more
easily editable and curatable parts. This enables better linking to
discrete Wikidata items while reducing the tedious task of curation for
extremely long articles. Your comments, Peter, are still based on the
18-year-old idea of "it's the info that matters". It's no longer just the
content that matters. Content curation, once advertised as being super
simple (and still in the byline as "everybody can edit"), has become a
tedious and complicated task, and efforts to make it easier have resulted
with the visual editor for mobile, which still doesn't work for uploading
to Commons. We need better upload interfaces for fixing spelling mistakes,
adding blue links, categories, media, and all other common tasks. We should
not let Google decide which sentences to index first, but we should be
enabling those decisions to be made by human editors. Findability should
reflect editability and it doesn't.

On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 9:18 AM Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:


Hi Yaroslav,
Several recent developments relate to this situation which I think you
have described reasonably well.
Short descriptions help a bit. But they are too short to help much
Simple Wikipedia tries to keep things simple and easily understood, but
perhaps concentrates too much on a small vocabulary.
I do see a real need and a use for a "Readers Digest" or "executive
summary" version of long and complex articles for people who don’t have a
need for the full story, but as a complementary version, possibly linked
from the top of a desktop view, and possibly the primary target in

mobile.

This would not be needed for all articles.
Cheers,
Peter Southwood

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
Behalf Of Yaroslav Blanter
Sent: 29 December 2018 23:34
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

I have written a long text today (posted in my FB) which the readers of
this mailing list might find interesting. I copy it below. I understand
that it is very easy to critisize me for side issues, but if you want to
comment/reply I would appreciate if you address the main issue. The

target

audience I was thinking about

Re: [Wikimedia-l] REMINDER: Invitation to the October 2018 Wikimedia Monthly Activities Meeting: Thursday, October 25th, 18:00 UTC

2018-10-26 Thread Anders Wennersten


I disagree.

For me it is perfect. I get the impulse to get in and I know if I am 
busy with other things. Reminder of something in the future get lost 
otherwise.


Anders



Den 2018-10-26 kl. 10:22, skrev Fæ:

Saw this message today. Almost all readers of this list will find a
broadcasted 30 minutes reminder equally useless.

Please revisit this part of the WMF comms plan.

Thanks
Fae

On Thu, 25 Oct 2018, 18:35 Greg Varnum,  wrote:


Hello everyone,

Reminder that this month’s Wikimedia Monthly Activities Meeting will begin
in approximately 30 minutes.

The “To be determined” slot will be an "Update from the Wikimedia
Foundation Executive Director”.

I hope that you are able to join us, or watch the video on Wikimedia
Commons (or YouTube) later.


---
Gregory Varnum
Communications Strategist
Wikimedia Foundation 
gvar...@wikimedia.org
Pronouns: He/Him/His


Begin forwarded message:

From: Gregory Varnum 
Subject: Invitation to the October 2018 Wikimedia Monthly Activities

Meeting: Thursday, October 25th, 18:00 UTC

Date: October 22, 2018 at 10:46:48 PM PDT
To: Wikimedia Mailing List ,

WikimediaAnnounce-l , "Staff
(All)" 

Hello everyone,

The next Wikimedia Monthly Activities meeting will take place on

Thursday, October 25th, 2018 at 6:00 PM UTC (11 AM PDT). The IRC channel is
#wikimedia-office on https://webchat.freenode.net <
https://webchat.freenode.net/>, and the meeting will be broadcast as a
live YouTube stream:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J86J8N1gExk <
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J86J8N1gExk>. We’ll post the video
recording publicly after the meeting.

During the October 2018 meeting, we will have an update on the movement,

Wikimedia 2030 status update, a presentation on values, principles and
methods, and more.

Meeting agenda:
Welcome and introduction to agenda - 2 minutes
Movement update - 3 minutes
Values, Principles, and Methods, oh my! - 10 minutes
Wikimedia 2030 status update and opportunities to participate - 20

minutes

Update from the Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director - 5-10 minutes
Questions and discussion - 10 minutes
Wikilove - 5 minutes

Please review the meeting's Meta-Wiki page for further information about

the meeting and how to participate:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_monthly_activities_meetings <

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_monthly_activities_meetings>

The November 2018 and December 2018 monthly activities meetings will be

combined and will take place on Thursday, December 6th, starting at 19:00
UTC (11:00 Pacific Daylight Time). If you would like to sign up to
participate, please visit:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_monthly_activities_meetings/Sign_up
<
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_monthly_activities_meetings/Sign_up



Thank you,


--
Gregory Varnum
Communications Strategist
Wikimedia Foundation 
gvar...@wikimedia.org 
Pronouns: He/His/Him

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: First round of Working Group members

2018-07-24 Thread Anders Wennersten

As I see it the strategy process is run for the functionaries in the 
movement and by them. People with focus on contributing to the projects 
are not involved, when volunteers is mentioned it is mostly people 
running worskhops for beginners etc, a kind of semi functionaries, not 
the hard core contributes.


This could be a good thing and foster a new set of moment leaders, fully 
in agreement with goals and strategy. It could also be seen as a 
weakness, as we do not recognize the more "wild" (but creative)y culture 
in our communities and only have the "nice" and obedient culture being 
accepted.


Facts

The vision  was really created in Wikiconf 2017 by functionaries

The way forward was defined by Wikiconf 2017 by functionaries

The set up of work groups was from the beginning set up  to include 
(only) functionaries (time requirement, and first it was also talked of 
candidates should be endorsed by local chapters). And the actual 
selection was not done transparent as is the culture of the communities 
but by "boss" selection (I only feel the movement is starting to 
resemble a big company, not the vibrant communities)


Anders



Den 2018-07-24 kl. 21:29, skrev Yaroslav Blanter:

On Tue, Jul 24, 2018 at 9:16 PM, David Cuenca Tudela 
wrote:

I do not know what really happened but if I listen to what has been said
here and earlier on similar occasions, my conclusion is that for the
Strategy Team we - volunteers who are working on the projects but are not
associated with the chapters, do not show up at Wikimania, do not attend
real-life tutorials organized by WMF - just do not exist.

If this is the case, this is a serious gap to be bridged. So far I have net
see even an acknowledgement of its existence.

Cheers
Yaroslav
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Appropriation of the Wikimedia Blog by the WMF

2018-06-10 Thread Anders Wennersten

James, I think you yourself earlier today put forwards a possible first 
step in this direction.


Support a group of people working "at the front" in neutralizing paid 
editing and other bad editing, by giving them possiblity to meet IRL, 
and why not at a session commited to this issue at WIkimania?


Anders


Den 2018-06-10 kl. 20:09, skrev James Heilman:

There is a fair bit of literature on intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation.
Wikipedia has been mostly built on the first. Introducing greater extrinsic
motivation may decrease intrinsic motivation. Doing so should thus be done
with great care, at a small scale that can be reversed, and be well studied
to make sure the positive outweigh the negatives before being expanded. Not
saying we should not look at this just that it may not result in the
benefits we hope far. With respect to burn out, emergency physicians are
generally paid well yet over half are experiencing burnout.
https://wire.ama-assn.org/life-career/report-reveals-severity-burnout-specialty

James

On Sun, Jun 10, 2018 at 11:45 AM, Yaroslav Blanter  wrote:


Hi David,

Well, I did not reply because I disagree but in my experience having long
arguments with people one disagrees with usually does not lead to agreement
and is also very tiring. You gave your opinion, I gave mine, it is up to
other readers to decide whose arguments are stronger. I really hate this
"last word" game. If Natacha did not raise exactly the same argument again,
I would not even respond.

Concerning people who do the job and do not feel appreciated - I absolutely
agree with you that they should be rewarded. The appreciation can come from
both the community and the WMF (and possibly sometimes from the external
parties). I just disagree that this appreciation should be monetary. There
are many ways to reward people and at the same to avoid introducing
additional factors which I believe are harmful for the community.

Concerning the premise that the existed model does not work anymore - I
just disagree with the premise. Indeed, we have for example burnout of
volunteers - I myself resigned the admin tools in the English Wikipedia in
January, and stopped editing for a month in February, after the community
failed to do anything about long-term harassment of a certain user directed
at me - but this unfortunately happened before and will happen later.
Specifically concerning the administrator issue, in the English Wikipedia I
would still like to see any evidence that there is work which requires an
admin attention and does not get it. All backlogs I am aware of originate
not because administrators are lazy or there are too few of them, but
because things are being asked are not submitted to a right place - such as
for example someone asking to resolve a long-standing content dispute
claiming it is vandalism.

Cheers
Yaroslav

On Sun, Jun 10, 2018 at 7:21 PM, David Cuenca Tudela 
wrote:


Yaroslav,

Yes, you already made your point earlier, and I addressed it here [1] and
also in the draft proposal to enable some volunteers to receive donations
for their work [2]. The fact that you neither commented on my reply to

your

initial concern, nor on the proposal suggests me several possibilities.

The

first one is that you are not listening to me [3], because you are not
interacting with the proposals that could counter your fears, and you are
not asking questions about them. The second one is that you don't trust
your own capacity to listen to other people even when money is involved.
That could also be, because people with the biggest fear that others do

not

listen to them are indeed not well equiped to listen to other people. And
the third one could be that you are a victim of your own observations,

you

might be so used to see white swans (people being paid not listening) in
your life that the mere idea that black swans (people being paid who
listen) exist might seem inconceibable for you. It could also be that you
find something wrong or that could be done better in my proposal or that
you have a better one, but since you haven't voiced your opinion, I don't
know what.

Concerning time and motivation, I consider that the people who are
contributing during their official working hours without explicit

permision

to do so are effectively STEALING resources from their employer. This is

of

course a partial view, because who owns actually the planetary resources?
And who is there to say that it is not reasonable to invest some in
Wikimedia projects? Although I understand and I feel empathy for the
volunteers that Bodhisattwa mentions, I feel that what Aubrey said before
holds true here: "You can't do good if there's no "you" in the first
place". So if I ever meet people like that I will tell them: you are not
doing any good here, because you are not putting yourself first.

You say that "we indeed have a lot of people who shout loud, do very
little, and get all kinds of credits for the work others have done". But

we

also

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Appropriation of the Wikimedia Blog by the WMF

2018-06-10 Thread Anders Wennersten

I can agree with most what you write Yaroslav, but I want also to remind 
the scenario that started this issue.


I believe we are in a process of worsening deterioration of the content 
in our major project (Enwp,dewp etc). This as the rewards to enter 
biased info in these are getting higher as the reliability in our 
content/brand project increase. At the same time there are indication 
that the people "at the front" of neutralizing these "attack" are 
getting fewer and overstrained. (number of admins of the being 
decreasing). According to me it forces us to act before the situation 
gets out of control (we lose the quality and credibility in our 
content). And the choices, as I see it, is to either give up our vision 
"free to all to update" (only validated accounts to update) or to 
strengthen our "defending" forces.


It is not unique to have participant in our project to being given 
financial support. We have our Wikipedian in residence, and at the top 
in the hierarchy of Check users we have WMF employee, and in my 
understanding these cooperations work OK.


I have no direct suggesting how a model to financial support these 
defenders should look like and I do not see it being many perhaps 10-15 
in total. But I do think it would be a good ting discuss these option, 
and see if a proposal could be put forwards without the negative risks 
you mention.


Anders



Den 2018-06-10 kl. 12:30, skrev Yaroslav Blanter:

If it goes back as a salary, you have people
working together, some of them being paid for the work, and some doing it
for free. If there is any conflict, "volunteers" getting salary will defend
their decision until they get blocked.

On Sun, Jun 10, 2018 at 7:01 AM, Natacha Rault  wrote:


Thanks for having this conversation.
Having a balanced life is important, but why should the revenues generated
by volunteer work not go back to volunteers also?
In truth, wikimedia projects are addictive, time consuming, they generate
passionate debates and I have seen many going down the black hole and
finding it hard to manage “priorities”.
This situation is detrimental to those who struggle most to survive.
Should contributing  be the activity of only those rich people who can
afford to be volunteers on their free time? I dont think so.
Tackling with gendergap issues, I see many women not contributing because
they say “it’s time consuming” and they cant afford it.
I don’t know how to deal with these issues, but at the core of
implementing “strategic orientations” which include diversity issues, well
it is a must have conversation.
As for the wikimedia blog I dont really have an idea on that: if the WMF
does it, finances it, well ... At the same time it would need to remain
under free licence so that we can use the stories in our projects, because
the revenue paying it is generated from our volunteer work.

Have a nice day, I have just bought myself a canoe kayak, which is the
only way for me not to get entangled in contributing on a bright sunny day.
I cant bring my computer on the river!
I think we should finance “wikimedians go green off wiki for the week end
projects”. Some days off the internet walking, swimming, having chats by a
fire wood and just taking care of ourselves off wiki.


Nattes à chat


Le 10 juin 2018 à 05:38, Bodhisattwa Mandal 

a écrit :

Hi David,

I hear you.

I live in that part of the world where getting any job and earning money,
by any means possible, is the topmost priority of life, as unemployment

and

corruption has become intimate part of most of the people. Involvement in
volunteer works with no personal or financial gain, is not appreciated at
all and sanity is frequently questioned even by family members and close
friends. The real life is far more harsh for us than the issues we face

in

Wikipedia.

But, I have seen people, who have fought against all extreme odds to

create

contents in Wikimedia. I met an Wikimedian, who would have no food or

money

for the next day to survive, if he didn't go and look for some labour

work

and earn some money for his family, yet learned advanced computer works
from scratch with the help of a Jurassic age broken laptop gifted by a
well-wisher and built the most impactful project in his language, believe
me, I have seen that laptop with my own eyes. I know someone, very close

to

my heart, who once spent the small amount of money he had with him, to

pay

the cyber cafe, he went almost everyday to edit Wikipedia, even if he

knew,

that the money he was spending, was his last resort for that day. These
Wikimedians are no less than a legend to me and whenever I feel

frustrated

and burnt out, I remember them. I am pretty sure, everyone in this

movement

knows someone amazing.

You are absolutely right, people who build Wikipedia from their core of
their heart are not heard or appreciated in larger Wikimedia world, some

of

them are silently contributing forl a long time , without any expectation
from anyone. On the

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we losing out against bad editing?

2018-06-01 Thread Anders Wennersten

I fully support Micrus summary and comments, I see it them very up to 
the point I raised in my first input in this thread.


And while I see this as a general problem for all versions/projects, I 
can see that a start on enwp would make sense. It has the biggest number 
of edits but also being the one where the "gains" to enter skewed info 
is very much the highest, making the pressure on admins when 
neutralizing being the toughest.


For the model now being discussed I see it as comparable to "Wikipedian 
in Residence", perhaps like "Admins (patrollers) financially supported 
by a Community".


Anders





Den 2018-06-01 kl. 10:51, skrev David Cuenca Tudela:

On Mon, May 28, 2018 at 4:41 PM, Gerard Meijssen 
wrote:

Just a question. When you pay volunteers, where does it stop?

First of all I must say that what I might say as an answer to those
questions reflects my understanding of this topic now, which is different
than when the conversation started, and that it will be different when more
questions like these arise, or when more input is given, or when what I say
is being challenged.

As I see it now, specially after the input by Pine, the system should not
rely on donations from the WMF only. Volunteers should have their own
individual way to develop a relationship with their donors in order to feel
free. The WMF might be part of this, either directly supporting individual
volunteers, or by supporting an affiliate that would administer funds on
behalf of the WMF and other major donors.

You ask "where does it stop?" and my interpretation is that the capacity
both to enable volunteers to accept donations, and to donors to support
them should be built organically over time. It is unrealistic to think that
we can suddenly open the system for everyone, it has to be built
progressively. Remember also that, from the input by Yaroslav, it is
important that volunteers are enabled to accept donations with the
condition that they develop personal faculties, like the ability to listen,
humbleness, and general understanding of the situation of the community and
their own. This takes time, and requires a kind of social structure that
needs to be built from scratch to facilitate the goal.

Regarding if it is only for admins or not, well, my understanding at the
moment is that there are tasks that require considerable personal energy
and dedication that is in short supply. There are also tasks that fulfill a
structural function in the community, and that are not valued as such. I
feel that for the first stage of this initiative volunteers should
self-assess how their work affects other members of the "working
community", that is the community of editors who perform tasks in the
projects. Be it in direct tasks like maintenance, or social tasks like
mediation. I consider that in general admins satisfy these criteria, but of
course, as always, there are many grey zones that should be considered
carefully on a case by case basis. If this initiative would progress and
would be successful, I imagine that volunteers that work for the broader
reading/data consuming community should also be considered eventually.
However, as said, I would prefer to start small to build understanding,
capacity, and empowerment where it has the biggest impact first, and expand
as conditions allow.


is it only for English Wikipedia and if so why?

In my opinion, no. I consider myself a global volunteer of the Wikimedia
movement and as such I care for all volunteers in every project. I consider
that every Wikimedian deserves my attention, and my work to enable them to
be successful in whatever project they are working on (one of the reasons
why these days I am more involved in Wikidata). The reality is, however,
that en-wiki attracts the most attention from readers/donors because it has
established itself as a common ground for the whole planet. We could argue
if this is healthy or not, but it is the reality right now and we should
live with it while we find more inclusive approaches. Once said that, I do
consider that en-wiki should be given the attention that it deserves, while
considering smaller projects that also need this kind of approach.

Regards,
Micru
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we losing out against bad editing?

2018-05-26 Thread Anders Wennersten

My own reflection reading this discussion is that there is a difference 
between vandalism and POV pushing.


For vandalism we have better routines in place and also tools like ORES, 
and also a system of steward who can acts in cases of crosswikivandals


For Pov pushing and especially cross wiki POV pushing we have no 
routines in place, and no roles like he steward who can help out for 
these cases.


I also have only positive experience interacting with stewards, both in 
their willingness to help and alertness. And they have a very good tone 
in conversations. And they are a bit separated from the communities.


And my loose thought in the end of my starting mail, was more to be open 
to having paid something like POV-stewards who can get involved in tough 
POVedits. And that these can offload the burden on admin when things 
getting nasty


I am not a supporter of paid editors, and think it would be too 
controversial having paid administrators.


Anders






Den 2018-05-26 kl. 09:38, skrev David Cuenca Tudela:

On Sat, May 26, 2018 at 7:41 AM, James Salsman  wrote:


I'm not sure that's true. Whether it started as a game of Nomic or
not, almost all of the admins have been elected through a certainly
established process.


That someone does an activity or that this person has been elected to
perform an activity doesn't mean that he or she is a professional. It might
be an occupation, but not a profession. On the en-wiki article about
"profession" there are several milestones listed as how an occupation
becomes a profession, the first one being that the occupation becomes a
full-time occupation, all the rest are related to the establishment of
professional bodies that regulate professionalization through training,
ethics regulation, and licensing.

In any case these matters are never clear-cut, they co-evolve over time
based on the needs of the people involved. At this point of time I feel
that the main need is talent retention while keeping the volunteer-driven
spirit. It is not easy to maintain the social order when implementing
changes like these, but I believe that with enough debate and
consensus-making it would be possible to reach a satisfactory solution.

 From my side, I am open to more input, and more exchange of views. After
this conversation it might be interesting to ask the people involved and
see how would they feel by being more supported and appreciated by the
community, then request to the community the necessary action to make it
happen.

I think the Signpost article and the email that Anders sent to this mailing
list are very serious and they should be addressed efficiently and
promptly. I personally cannot choose to ignore it, because I think that
there are steps that can be taken and I would like to urge anyone reading
this message to at least join this conversation.

Regards,
Micru
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[Wikimedia-l] Are we losing out against bad editing?

2018-05-25 Thread Anders Wennersten

My main worry, during my daily patrolling, is if we manage to neutralize 
the bad editing (vandalism, POV pushing) or if the destructive editing 
is slowly successfully degenerating the great content we have created in 
our projects.


In todays Sign-post it indicates an accelerating rate of decrease of 
admins on enwp, and some likewise tendency on dewp. Is this a sign that 
the "good" powers are losing out to the "bad" ones?


I also seen a very passive response to two massPOV editing . One, on 35 
versions, is related to Hans Asperger, to state he was a nazi doctor 
(false, even if he was somewhat passive in some cases). Here dewp 
reacted quickly and after a while enwp, so these articles are OK, but in 
most of the other 35 this false info lies unchanged. Also I react to the 
effort from GazProm promoting their  propaganda article /Football for 
Friendship / in up to 80 version, and where almost noone has neutralized it.


Are  we  slowly losing the battle against the "evil" forces? And if so, 
is then our new strategy (being good in itself) and the plan to 
implement  it all too naive? For example I like very much the ambition 
to help out on areas in the world where Wikipedia etc is not 
established, but would it be more correct to put effort in regaining 
control of the very many Wikipedia versions, that is definitely 
degenerating and we are loosing what has been done on these. (as a test 
look at "latest changes" on some of the versions with low editing, it is 
depressing to see that there often are more vandal editing, not being 
undone, then proper new material)


Would it be most appropriate if we all in a 2-3 years effort 
concentrated on getting (back) control on our material in our projects, 
before we start efforts in implementing the strategy we have agreed 
upon. Perhaps a number of paid admins, vandal/pov fighters, about as 
many as there are stewards today, would be necessary not to lose out.


Anders



//

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fake news

2018-04-27 Thread Anders Wennersten

We have the latest propaganda issue from Russia (gazprom and a troll 
company), that has been accepted in around 50 wikipedia versions. I see 
this not only as propaganda but also fake news


https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19960532

Anders


Den 2018-04-27 kl. 16:26, skrev Devouard (gmail):

Hi

I have been proposed to give a conference about wikipedia and fake 
news and to focus on very specific examples rather than general 
concepts. I already have a few ideas but any pointers to particularly 
interesting cases or discussions will be welcome.


Thanks for your help.

Florence

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[Wikimedia-l] Avicii

2018-04-22 Thread Anders Wennersten

His death caused 11,7 m accesses to his article in the last two days, 14 
versions with more then 10 accesses (enwp 5,7 M).


Impressive figures showing how global artists are nowadays, and how 
natural it is to look into Wikipedia when things happen


Anders

https://tools.wmflabs.org/langviews/?project=sv.wikipedia.org=all-access=user=2018-04-20=2018-04-21=views=1=list=Avicii


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Time to simplify the Bureaucracy ?

2018-03-06 Thread Anders Wennersten

Are you aware of the huge difference in bureaucracy on the different 
language versions?


Of course a more elaborate set of written rules is needed where there 
are many users, then what is needed where the number of contributors are 
fewer.


But even on an smaller language version like "mine" svwp, it is tough to 
be a newbee. There is a lot or best practice being accumulated, and you 
must follow these even if i is more by being told of these then need for 
you to "know" or look into policiy documents etc. And there is a need to 
know more of techniques, like templates and Wikidata use.


So I agree the general complexity is increasing, but I disagree that 
there is in general increasing bureaucracy.


Anders

Den 2018-03-06 kl. 11:16, skrev WereSpielChequers:

Hi Zubin and welcome.

The discussions about declining editor levels started to go quiet in mid
2015 after we noticed that numbers had started to rally at the end of 2014.

Here is the signpost article that covered part of this in 2015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/In_focus
That focussed on the very active, but the raw edit count shows the same
pattern on English wikipedia, a decline from 2007 to 2014, then a rally and
the last couple of years being broadly stable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Time_Between_Edits

"Wikipedia in terminal decline" was an interesting story for journalists
and others, "maturing organisation is broadly stable on several measures"
sounds just a tad boring.

As for your concern about bureaucracy and philosophical rants. Many of the
policies are complex, and there are even examples of things that contradict
each other. But it is a very very complex system, and some of the
complexity comes from hard won compromises between people with very
different views. A commercial organisation could have done some things more
simply, but a volunteer organisation can't simply tell people to do what
they are paid to do. I suspect that many reforms are possible and may even
be necessary, but it really helps when you are changing something to
understand the different perspectives that lead to that compromise.


WereSpielChequers







--

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2018 21:42:32 +0800
From: Zubin JAIN 
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Time to simplify the Bureaucracy ?
Message-ID:

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

2018-02-25 Thread Anders Wennersten

I am very happy to follow this thread as I believe it is addressing a 
very relevant issue.


In my mind we can divide up the different language version into 5 
categories:


1.Enwp,

2.the next 6-7 (de,fr, es,jp,pt,ru..)

3.the next 20 or so, where the basic workprocesses are applied

4.the next 40-50 which are struggling to generate more input then what 
is vandalised


5.the rest which in reality is no viable online encyclopedias

And for me no 1 priority is to accept that there are these categories, 
and that what is applicable for cat 1 and 2 is not so for 4 and 5.


I believe the grant model could easily make room for subsiding good 
initiatives addressing the problem for cat 4 and 5 (and perhaps 3).


And I think it is very presumptuous to start talking of what technique 
to use and things like translation. If we open up for creative 
brainstorming (among the ones having the need) I think very many other 
ways can turn up. Myself I am deeply impressed what you can create using 
Wikidata as a base source of info, and being from a version of type 3 I 
see how much my homeversion improve content with wikidata created infoboxes


Anders



Den 2018-02-24 kl. 13:51, skrev John Erling Blad:

This discussion is going to be fun! =D

A little more than seventy Wikipedia-projects has more than 65k articles,
the remaining two hundred or so are pretty small.

What if a base set of articles were opened for paid translators? There are
several lists of such base sets. We have both the thousand articles from
"List of articles every Wikipedia should have"[1] and and the ten thousand
articles from the expanded list[2].

Lets say verified good translators was paid about $0.01 per word (about $1
for a 1k-article) for translating one of those articles into another
language, with perhaps a higher pay for contributors in high-cost
countries. The pay would also have to be higher for languages that lacks
good translation tools.

I believe this would be an _enabling_ activity for the communities, as
without a base set of articles it won't be possible to build a community at
all. By not paying for new articles, and only translating well-referenced
articles, some of the disputes in the communities could be avoided. Perhaps
we should also identify good source articles, that would be a help.
Translated articles should be above some minimum size, but they does not
have to be full translations of the source article.

A real problem is that our existing lists of good articles other projects
should have is pretty much biased towards Western World, so they need a lot
of adjustments. Perhaps such a project would identify our inherit bias?

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_articles_every_Wikipedia_should_have
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_articles_every_Wikipedia_should_have/Expanded
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Lower page views

2018-01-25 Thread Anders Wennersten

st entirely spurious: An issue found and
mitigated in July/August 2016 had artificially inflated desktop
traffic up to 30% during these two months. There is a Phabricator task
to correct this in the publicly available data [7], but it is still
open.

Besides the monthly reports of core metrics at [1] which come with
brief observations about trends, we also publish a more in-depth slide
deck about readership core metrics once per quarter.[8] The next one
will come out in two weeks and I plan to do some further analysis
(e.g. check if the decrease was focused geographically) in preparation
for that; so perhaps we will know a bit more then.



[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Audiences

[2] 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_pageviews_year-over-year_comparison_(since_May_2013).png

[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Page_Previews

[4] http://discovery.wmflabs.org/external/#traffic_by_engine and
http://discovery.wmflabs.org/external/#traffic_summary , select weekly
or monthly smoothing for easier comparison, but keep in mind the
default view includes bots/spiders

[5] Connor McMahon, Isaac Johnson, Brent Hecht: "The Substantial
Interdependence of Wikipedia and Google: A Case Study on the
Relationship Between Peer Production Communities and Information
Technologies" https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM17/paper/view/15623
. BTW we are still looking for someone to volunteer a summary or
review of this paper for the Wikimedia Research Newsletter/ Wikipedia
Signpost, so that more community members can learn about this research
- contact me in case you're interested.

[6] 
https://9to5google.com/2017/11/08/google-search-knowledge-panels-news-publications/

[7] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T175870

[8] Cf. last quarter's edition:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Readers_metrics_Q1_2017-18_(Jul-Sep_2017).pdf


On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 2:55 AM, Anders Wennersten
<m...@anderswennersten.se> wrote:

We are seeing a steady decrease of page views to our projects (Wikipedia). 
Nov-Dec-Jan it is decreasing in a rate of 5-10% (year-year), and for big 
languages like Japanese,  Spanish close to 10%, or some months even more  [1]

Is there any insights of why this is so? Could it be that Google take over 
accesses with their ever better way of showing results direct  (but then also 
with showing extracts of Wikipedia articles) .

Or that our interface on mobiles is inferior so we miss accesses from mobiles 
(now being 54% of total). Or horror of horror that users look for facts on all 
new sites with fake news instead of Wikipedia?

Anders

[1] https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyCombined.htm


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[Wikimedia-l] Lower page views

2018-01-23 Thread Anders Wennersten

We are seeing a steady decrease of page views to our projects 
(Wikipedia). Nov-Dec-Jan it is decreasing in a rate of 5-10% 
(year-year), and for big languages like Japanese,  Spanish close to 10%, 
or some months even more  [1]


Is there any insights of why this is so? Could it be that Google take 
over accesses with their ever better way of showing results direct  (but 
then also with showing extracts of Wikipedia articles) . Or that our 
interface on mobiles is inferior so we miss accesses from mobiles (now 
being 54% of total). Or horror of horror that users look for facts on 
all new sites with fake news instead of Wikipedia?


Anders

[1] https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyCombined.htm


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Women in red

2017-10-15 Thread Anders Wennersten


WMSE has run programs with this focus for more then 3 years on svwp.

The result have been roughly
2-3 generated more then 1000 articles
15-25 generated more then 100 articles
100-200 more then 10 articles
around 500 at least one
giving a total of a bit more the 1 new articles of women. And even 
being a bit on the short side, there is nothing wrong in them or to be 
ashamed of. (and many fascinating stories can be fund among them)


Enwp has 30 times as many editors than svwp. so I see nothing 
unrealistic with a goals of 10 new articles, but perhaps it could 
take somewhat longer then anticipated

Anders


Den 2017-10-15 kl. 16:02, skrev Gnangarra:

I cant believe this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red/The_World_Contest
has
got WMF funding, the idea of trying to create 100,000 stub articles on
english wikipedia without any thought to how it'll impact on the
community.

I find it ironic that a competition is being funded to encourage current
contributors to do what we wont accept from new editors.  If a new editor
was to create an article it wouldnt pass through the Articles for Creation
process because its half the size of the minimum set there. Many of the
competition articles will just get tagged CSD - A1, A7, A9 even G2

While there is a nice bot that will count the size of the prose, there is
no automated process for checking copyright violations, checking for
notability and most importantly checking for BLP with the aim of 100,000
the community will years to clean up the mess that is about to be created.

we are 15 days from this disaster commencing




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New beta feature: Syntax Highlighting!

2017-08-24 Thread Anders Wennersten


Thanks, it is a great feature! Especially to easily find the Ref tags.

And it work just fine for me, technically.

Anders


Den 2017-08-23 kl. 20:41, skrev Danny Horn:

Hi everyone,

I've got some good news -- wikitext syntax highlighting is live again, and
I'm almost completely sure it's staying live. :) You can now enable it as a
Beta feature on all LTR wikis.




On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 4:23 PM, Danny Horn  wrote:


Hi Andy,

Thanks for sending your thoughts, that's the kind of feedback that we
need. People can either write responses in this thread, or post it on the
project's talk page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Tech/
Wikitext_editor_syntax_highlighting

We'll respond as comments come in, making bug fixes and then making a plan
for changes as we see what people have to say. Thanks again.

Danny



On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 4:07 PM Andy Mabbett 
wrote:


On 3 August 2017 at 23:21, Danny Horn  wrote:


WMF's Community Tech team team is happy to announce that Wikitext Editor
Syntax Highlighting has been released as a beta feature today on all LTR
Wikimedia projects!

I'm all in favour of having syntax highlighting - I teach people to
edit wikicode, and I find it helps them to learn it more quickly.

I've been using the syntax highlighting gadget  en.Wikipedia:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Remember_the_dot/
Syntax_highlighter

for some time now. I've just disabled, it, and instead enabled the new
beta feature.

My first impression is that it is lacking in contrast - it's far
harder, now, to differentiate the various types of content. Indeed the
colour pairs used (e.g. #8800CC vs. #B3) fail WCAG web
accessibility guidelines for colour contrast.

I realise that choice of styling colours is a "bikeshed" matter, but
contrast ratio is a quantifiable and objective accessibility issue.

Also, because the script does not load immediately, the larger
headings cause the page to "dance" as the script kicks in.

What plans are there to either receive and act on feedback such as
this, or to provide greater user-customisation options?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Wikimédia France - informations sur la situation actuelle

2017-07-13 Thread Anders Wennersten

I LOVE the Wikipedia way of working - result-oriented, respectful 
dialogues around facts


I HATE power-games and misuse of given authority, both in general in 
life and especially in the Wikimedia movement


I ADMIRE the functionaries in France who have stood firm in their own 
integrity and their beliefs in our values, and rather resigned then 
"played along"


I am very HAPPY to see the decisive stand of FDC, The Board an WMF for 
our values in this case of misbehaviour


and I TRULY LOVE to see the constructiveness of the French community as 
they arise (as  the Phoenix bird from the ashes) in order to 
re-establish the chapter to be true to the values, vision and best 
practice within the movement


I already know the French community to be both creative, productive and 
well working, and am now looking forward to once again see the also 
creative, productive and well working as we have been used to see


Anders
wishing everyone involved the energy to get through this challenge in 
the best way possible



Den 2017-07-13 kl. 11:44, skrev Natacha Rault:

Der Lodewijk,

Thank you for the message, the threshold has indeed been reached, and the WMFR 
board has communicated that they will have the GA asap. The official number of 
people requesting the GA is of 73 as of now.

The emphasis on democratic chapters is indeed important. People are now 
discussing freely on the public list, and it’s  great because they are starting 
to reflect on what they want for the future, and also have spokesmen and women 
for the organisation of the GA. I think this was really needed and the 
discussion is really refreshing after months of moderation.

Kind regards,

Natacha / Nattes à chat









Le 13 juil. 2017 à 11:32, Lodewijk  a écrit :

Thanks Natacha.

I see that 70 members have requested a General Assembly to be held. I
remember from WMFR's bylaws that 25% of the membership can force the board
to call a General Assembly, or do it themselves. Is this request formulated
in such a manner? What is the required threshold?

This is a terribly sad situation WMFR finds itself in. There are no
winners, and trying to continue this struggle can only create bigger losses
on all sides.

I hope an assembly can be held soon, and that a democratic decision can be
prepared there, where the membership can give its trust to a board - either
providing the current board (with a majority of board-appointed members, if
I understand correctly) with the much needed moral authority, or by
electing a new board that can start afresh.

This is why we have always put so much emphasis on having democratic
chapters where the members can in the end intervene.

Lodewijk
(snipping the messages below, as the software complains it's too long)



2017-07-13 10:21 GMT+02:00 Natacha Rault :


Dear All,

As some anglophone wikimedians wanted an English version, we have
translated the time line in English concerning what is happening in the
French chapter, although surely we still have to clarify and correct
mistakes. You can find it here: https://www.mathisbenguigui.eu
/wikimedia-timeline/indexEN.html 

Kind regards,

Nattes à chat / Natacha


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [PRESS] Turkish authorities block Wikipedia

2017-04-29 Thread Anders Wennersten

I do hope WMF taken NO action. We have learnt by similar cases, that the 
local communities(chapters) haves best insight in how to best proceed.


And things would evolve to be much worse if an non-turkish entity was to 
take action


Anders

Den 2017-04-29 kl. 12:45, skrev Rogol Domedonfors:

Presumably the WMF will be taking prompt, strong and effective action to
protest against and reverse this decision?  A case in the Constitutional
Court, for example?

"Rogol"

On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 10:47 AM, Mardetanha 
wrote:


more info
https://turkeyblocks.org/2017/04/29/wikipedia-blocked-turkey/

Mardetanha

On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 2:06 PM, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel <
it...@wikimedia.org.il> wrote:


Basak commented on Facebook: "In the news, it says that, Wikipedia

supports

global terrorism. The Turkish officials has been corresponding with
wikipedia (?)  but there is no answer. The site (most probably they mean
English one)  includes content that supports ISIS ."

http://mobil.hurriyet.com.tr/son-dakika-haberi-wikipediaya-
erisim-engellendi-40441904


- Sent from mobile

On Apr 29, 2017 11:55, "Mardetanha"  wrote:


hopefully it would be technical mistake and will be lifted very soon.

Mardetanha

On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 1:13 PM, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel <
it...@wikimedia.org.il> wrote:


Hey,

FYI -  sad news from Turkish.



*Regards,Itzik Edri*
Chairperson, Wikimedia Israel
+972-54-5878078 | http://www.wikimedia.org.il
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in

the

sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment!


-- Forwarded message --
From: Itzik - Wikimedia Israel 
Date: Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 11:42 AM
Subject: [PRESS] Turkish authorities block Wikipedia
To: Communications Committee 


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39754909

Reuters just published that a 15 minutes ago, so it will be soon all

over

the news.


---

*Turkey has blocked all access inside the country to the online
encyclopaedia Wikipedia, one of the world's most popular websites.*

It was not initially clear why the ban had been imposed.
The Turkey Blocks group said the site was inaccessible from 08:00

(05:00

GMT) by order of the Turkish authorities.
People in the capital Istanbul were unable to access any Wikipedia

pages

without using a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
"After technical analysis and legal consideration based on the Law

Nr.

5651, an administrative measure has been taken for this website,"

Turkey's

Information and Communication Technologies Authority was quoted as

saying.

No reason was given.
Turkey Blocks and Turkish media, including the Hurriyet Daily News,

said

the provisional order would need to be backed by a full court ruling

in

the

next few days.

Social media was in uproar as news of the ban emerged, with some

users

speculating that it might be a bid to suppress criticism on President

Recep

Tayyip Erdogan's Wikipedia page.
Mr Erdogan narrowly won a controversial 16 April referendum on

increasing

his powers, but the issue has deeply divided the country.
Turkey has temporarily blocked popular social media sites including
Facebook and Twitter in the past, especially in the wake of mass

protests

or terror attacks.
The government has previously denied censoring the internet, blaming
outages on spikes in usage after major events.



*Regards,Itzik Edri*
Chairperson, Wikimedia Israel
+972-54-5878078 <+972%2054-587-8078> | http://www.wikimedia.org.il
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in

the

sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment!
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's go gender neutral

2017-04-06 Thread Anders Wennersten

This basic issue has for many years been a "hot" issue in Sweden.

And the use of the words "han" (he/his) and "hon" (she/her) has become a
minefield. And to use "him and her" to mean all type of persons is just
not acceptable (what about all who want to use other attributes to
define themselves).

And a new word has been created "hen", meant to be a more neutral word.
But then this word has become very controversial as it is seen as a
leftist/feminist thing by conservative/populists

So when it comes to how we use them in documents related to WIkipedia,
is to not use any of them. It is a little bit more complicated but it is
quite possible. "The person who takes a photo should" etc

And our standpoint is that we as Wikipedians should not be first in
introducing new use of language but wait until it has become mainstream
(if it ever will be)

Anders

Den 2017-04-07 kl. 00:24, skrev Fæ:

Thanks for raising the different language problems. I'm aware of it,
though I only edit in English.

Last weekend I was much enlightened by sitting down with a German
trans contributor, who was showing me the system language problems on
the German Wikipedia, and together we started having fun comparing
trans related policies and trans related article numbers. I was amazed
at the difference. No, that's not enough, I was really shocked that
the second largest Wikipedia that I deeply respect, is a community
that apparently has little appetite or any active discussion on these
LGBT+ issues. In comparison the English Wikipedia feels like a vibrant
and creative garden of Eden to me as an LGBT+ contributor.

By forging ahead, at least on Wikimedia Commons[1] and attempting the
same on the English Wikipedia[2], we hope to set a healthy example for
what is possible, and lay down the challenge to other projects to be
truly welcoming and feel encouraging for trans and genderqueer readers
and editors, rather than just saying that we are.

Language may be very limiting, sure, let's accept that fact of life.
It's both interesting and difficult. But it's not unimaginable that
our Wikimedia movement could end up adopting leading edge new
non-gendered terms in multiple languages for simple words like "user"
and "administrator" that currently are unnecessarily gendered. We
could even show willing by taking baby steps like just empowering our
users to set their own preferred pronoun style, like Ve or Mx, which
is entirely possible right now, today, in the MediaWiki software.
Ignoring these options, or even joking about them, is to pretend that
genderqueer people don't exist.

Yes, please flag up the issues, let's discuss the challenges. No, I
simply do not accept that by we are asking for the impossible on any
of our projects, I never shall accept it.

Links:
1. Wikimedia Commons, new draft policy created today, because of these
discussions:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Use_of_gender_neutral_language
2. Drafting a new English Wikipedia RFC, because of these discussions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_LGBT_studies#Research_for_proposing_a_gender_neutral_principle_for_Wikipedia_policies_and_guidelines

Thanks,
Fae

On 6 April 2017 at 21:49, John Erling Blad wrote:

There are a lot of languages where there are no neutral gender, or where
there are a single male gender, or it can even be that the only neutral
gender is used for things and animals.

In German there is an expectation of gender-correct form. In Norwegian
there is an expectation of a neutral form. In Danish there is only
masculine forms.

Sorry but this idea is not generally usable.

On Thu, Apr 6, 2017 at 10:37 PM, Raymond Leonard <
raymond.f.leonard...@gmail.com> wrote:

One can use "one" or "one's" to substitute in many places for 3rd person
singular pronouns. Not everywhere, but it is in keeping with English
grammar.

Peaceray

On Thu, Apr 6, 2017 at 10:35 AM, J. wrote:

Instead of:
* A photographer has to be given credit when the picture is used.
How about:
* The artist must be given attribution when an image is reused.

Cheers! Wayne Calhoon (AKA Checkingfax)

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the Code of Conduct in force?

2017-03-06 Thread Anders Wennersten

We have 61000 editors  that made more the 5 edits last month and 8800 
making more then 100 edits. Last election to the Board attracted 5500 
voters. These figures gives a magnitude of the numbers in the community.


The number of active on this list are around 50-100, and normal 
participations in meta discussion (except when it was for Visual editor) 
are at best 100-200.


I truly believe we should not be content to say these 100-200 are the 
community or spokespersons for the community. And I admire the approach 
being made by WMF in the strategy project, to actively try to reach out 
to a broader audience then these 100-200


So I believe her has always been an issue of the dialogue between the 
community and WMF, both referring to who is the community and the 
dialogue in itself. But I do see that the approach being taken by WMF 
now and lately does a lot to resolve this issue and and is worth both 
praise and support


And I do would like to see less of "We the community" by people on this list

Anders



Den 2017-03-06 kl. 20:07, skrev Rogol Domedonfors:

Gerard

On Mon, Mar 6, 2017 at 7:28 AM, you wrote:


For Rogol and Pine I have an additional challenge; when the WMF is to
support the community, is their time better spend serving quality or is
their time better spend discussing endless procedures that make us stick in
the mud as it stifles initiative?


A fallacious dichotomy, as no doubt you were well aware.  We need to
establish working and workable procedures that allow Community and
Foundation to engage together in planning at the level of long-term
strategy and medium-term technical roadmap so that the WMF are able to
deliver quality products that support the mission effectively.  Do you
think we have those already?  Or do you think we can do without them?

"Rogol"
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Positions open for strategy coordinator contractors.

2017-01-31 Thread Anders Wennersten


Re: the Swedish Wikipedia is mostly just bot-created articles.

There are around 620 000 all manually created. Of the botcreated "seed" 
articles over 20 have been extended by manual effort, enabling us to 
for example have proper articles on all mammals in the world, all birds, 
all lakes in Sweden and Finland, which would otherwise have been 
impossible for a small wiki like ours. Of the others, we have a huge 
number being of great beneficial value. University students writing on 
parasite illnesses in animals really need the basic article created on 
the parasitises as such, and just the other day the enthusiast on 
mosquitoes living in Sweden who could concentrate on the name and where 
they exist and did not have to bother with the basic data of the  mosquitoes


We have also recently run into some problems re the last set of 
botgenerated articles, but this does not diminish the great value of the 
earlier sets.


Anders
(who with ease speak with my Norwegian friends and my Danish friend from 
the east part of Denmark)



Den 2017-01-31 kl. 15:38, skrev John Erling Blad:

In Scandinavia there are a bunch of closely related languages, they are
often referred to as North Germanic Languages.[
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Germanic_languages] Icelandic and
Faroese language is often referred to as Insular Scandinavian, West
Norwegian, or Old West Norse, and is somewhat different from the
Continental Scandinavian.

There are four midsized Wikipedias in Scandinavia; Swedish (3 782 560
articles, 2 950 active users), Bokmål (460 848 articles, 1 631 active
users), Danish (223 121 articles, 1 076 active users), and Nynorsk (132 213
articles, 205 active users). There are also two smaller Wikipedias;
Islandic (41 739 articles, 161 active users), and Faroese (12 418 articles,
44 active users). Yes the biggest in number of articles is the Swedish
Wikipedia, but it is mostly just bot-created articles.

Swedes have trouble speaking with both Norwegians and Danes, Danes have
lesser trouble with Swedish and even less with Norwegian, Norwegians have
virtually no problems wiith Swedish and Danish. People from Island and the
Faroe icelands usually speaks Danish, they learn it in school, and as
Norwegian and Danish is pretty close they usually understands Norwegians
without any problem. It is somewhat strange how much trouble Swedes have in
understanding the other Scandinavian languages, given that they are so
closely related.

The reason why you see signs with Swedish text on airports are because
Swedes have problems with all other Scandinavian languages. I'm not sure it
is wise to continue that "tradition". Get someone fluent in the
_Scandinavian_
  languages, it is not uncommon for people in Scandinavia to be speak and
write several of the languages, even all of them.

Yes, I'm a bit frustrated because I know that if a "language specialist" is
hired because (s)he knows Swedish the rest of the languages will be
forgotten. It is simply how things work in Scandinavia, Swedes are in
general introvert, the rest are extrovert. (Sorry Swedes!) Some says Sweden
geopolitically is located between Germany and France, and the rest of
Scandinavians wonder why they haven't noticed they are way up north…

On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 8:01 PM, Maggie Dennis 
wrote:


Hello, all. :)

As you know, we are launching a movement strategy process and want people
from the community integrally involved at every stage. We are accordingly
seeking active Wikimedians interested in applying for a number of Community
Strategy Coordinator positions. The people hired for these positions will
be part-time, remote contractors of up to 20 hours a week with a contract
of 3 months. Start date should be in early March.

You can see the job descriptions and apply for the positions at <
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Work_with_us>, but here’s a quick
summary of who we’re looking for and what they’ll be doing:

*Language Specialist Strategy Coordinators*

These will be bilingual speakers of a specific list of non-English
languages[1] and English who are experienced in their language project
community or communities. They will be expected to be able to both conduct
deep outreach to these non-English communities and to liaise between these
communities and others, in order to maximize the ability of their
communities to participate in the movement strategy process. They will also
need to be capable of monitoring and summarizing discussions about strategy
topics and will be expected to produce a summary report at the end of their
contract.

*Metawiki Strategy Coordinators*

These facilitators need not be multilingual (although it is a plus), but
must be fluent in English and must be experienced contributors to one or
more Wikimedia communities. They will be working alongside the language
specialist coordinators, the global community, the Wikimedia Foundation and
the strategy team to facilitate the most inclusive strategy process

Re: [Wikimedia-l] don't run away from the mess we've made, fix it (Re: Concerns in general)

2017-01-27 Thread Anders Wennersten


Anna, I am surprised at your pessimism

I see cases over and over again how we  "find a way to turn our culture 
toward more generative and constructive forms of public discourse"


See how our Armenian friends is doing wonders turning their closest 
surrounding into being open in a very tough culture


remember how our Bangladesh friends managed to get their orglicense from 
authorities without paying bribes, just being true to our culture


read almost every  week how we manage to get the GLAM sector into being 
more cooperative and positive to disseminating knowledge with 
inspiration from us


Please do not concentrate too much on enwp and US

Anders



Den 2017-01-27 kl. 20:50, skrev Anna Stillwell:

Hello,

I'd like to talk beyond this particular instance or these particular
protagonists.

I'd like to talk about culture. We've created a culture that is hard on
people, somewhat punishing of them. We engage in a good deal of public
shaming.

We need to find a way to turn our culture toward more generative and
constructive forms of public discourse. If we fail, smart, good, healthy
Wikimedians will go away and not add their knowledge to our projects.

It’s not even about whose at fault anymore, because we all are. When I talk
to people across the movement, they're all pretty clear that someone other
than themselves is the responsible party:

- “It’s the dysfunctional board.”
- “No, no. it’s the “toxic communities”.
- “Of course not, its the obtuse staff”.

First, this is not healthy and it is not true. We have smart, brilliant,
competent people throughout our movement. I’ve met brilliant, generative,
empathic community members who have performed a deep service by adding
their knowledge. I’ve met brilliant staff members that are advancing ideas
that can have tremendously positive impacts on our projects. I’ve met
brilliant board members who are thinking about the future in a very serious
way.

Second, it does us no good to shift the blame around and work against each
other. We have to find ways to support each other in solving problems
because we have a lot of important problems to solve together.

We face so many challenges, not least of which is a world that seems to
think that closed societies and ignorance and divisions are better than
open societies, coursing with knowledge and constructive unity. Of the many
challenges we face together: being collectively diminishing of one another
and divisive should not be one of them.

Sorry, I just can’t keep quiet  on
this any more.

/a


On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 10:39 AM, James Salsman  wrote:


Does anyone doubt that the English Wikipedia's longstanding,
pervasive, counter-factual, systemic bias towards supply side
trickle-down austerity libertarian objectivist economics due at least
in part to early influence of editors attracted to Jimmy Wales' former
public positions isn't at least partially responsible for the
situation Romaine describes below?

Would it be better to move the Foundation out of the U.S., fix the
bias, or both?

https://twitter.com/JaneMayerNYer/status/808003564291244033

Sincerely,
Jim Salsman

 forwarded message 
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2017 04:33:53 +0100
From: Romaine Wiki 
To: Wikimedia 
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Concerns in general

Today I was reading in the (international) news about websites with
knowledge on the topic of climate change disappear from the internet as
result of the Trump administration. The second thing I read is that before
something can be published about this topic, the government needs to
approve this.

Do you realise what the right word for this is? censorship.
Even if it is only partially.

Luckily there are many scientists working on getting all the data abroad,
out of the US to ensure the research data is saved, including on servers in
the Netherlands where Trump (hopefully) has no reach.

In the past week I was reading about the Internet Archive organisation, who
is making a back up in Canada because of the Trump administration. I did
not understood this, you may call me naive, but now I do understand,
apparently they have some visionary people at the Internet Archive.

I miss a good answer to this situation from the Wikimedia Foundation.

Trump is now promoting harassment and disrespect, already for some time,

What signal is given to the rest of the world if an America based
organisation is spreading the thought of a harassment free Wikipedia and
the free word, while the president of the US is promoting harassment,
disrespect and censorship on a massive scale.

This is just the first week of this president!

I am 100% sure everyone in the Wikimedia movement is willing to make sure
Wikimedia faces no damage whatsoever, including in WMF, but to me this
still starts to get concerning.

If we as Wikimedia movement think that free knowledge, free speech, freedom
of information,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] English Fundraiser Update

2016-12-22 Thread Anders Wennersten


Thanks for this info and decision!

And very many thanks to you and your team making such a marvellous job 
with the fundraising. We are not only reaching our goal in record time, 
but also getting very good press for the professionalism for the the 
campaign and its messages


Anders


Den 2016-12-22 kl. 21:55, skrev Lisa Gruwell:

Hi All-

Just a quick update on this:  We concluded the English-language banner
campaign on Monday (12/19) – at the three week point of the campaign. This
is the shortest campaign in recent memory. We were able to reach the goal
and raise some extra funds for these initiatives and the endowment
.
We will be running a “thank you banner” around the New Year to thank
everyone for their support  – instead of an appeal as we had planned.  Look
for our report on the English-language fundraiser soon in January once the
numbers have settled and we have time for more analysis. Thanks to everyone
who helped make this campaign a success!

Best,
Lisa Gruwell

On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 11:44 AM, Sam Klein  wrote:


Lisa & Jaime -

Congratulations to all on a fast campaign.  Is this the fastest
time-to-goal on record?

This is a season in which neutrality and genuineness are precious
commodities. No surprise that many people I know have given more than usual
to projects such as ours.  I hope you can complement this with open and
genuine messaging.

On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 6:52 PM, Michael Peel  wrote:


Continuing the English fundraiser as part of reaching the global
fundraising target makes sense to me.

Continuing the fundraiser after the global target has been reached is

rather more concerning - except where the funds are being raised
specifically for the endowment.


This seems right to me.

Clear and welcoming messages build trust.  You can thank everyone for
helping reach the goal quickly, and be clear about where further funds go.
Funds raised over the annual target, before the end of the fiscal year, can
go into the endowment - again with clear & grateful language once the
annual goal is reached.

Budgeting deserves its own consideration.  Having a prioritized list of
future projects is great for communicating intent and helping the movement
plan.  But expanding the budget has implications for reserves, endowment,
and future budgets + strategy.  If surplus goes to new projects, then
"everyone giving $3" would not mean "no fundraising needed for years to
come". In fact the overhead associated with persistent projects could make
it harder to sustain operations next year.

Finally, as you find that you have spare banner-cycles because of the
successful campaign, *please use that same banner space* and your talent
for connection to honor and inspire editors, donors, and readers.  A more
than perfunctory thank-you. A good fundraiser is a victory over the
commercial forces that make the Internet and most media suck; its success
should be a story we can all hold on to and share. :)

Warmly,
SJ
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] English Fundraiser Update

2016-12-16 Thread Anders Wennersten


It seems the whole world is full of spreading lies nowadays.

I feel very sad that now even we are following this trend

If we stated we would stop when the target was met, so we should stop 
when the target was met


Anders
who are commited to spread correct facts through Wikipedia, as a 
counterforce to all loose statement


016-12-17 kl. 07:06, skrev Peter Southwood:

If you wanted to continue past the target, the message should NOT imply that 
you would stop at the target.
Cheers,
Peter

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Lisa Gruwell
Sent: Friday, 16 December 2016 8:05 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] English Fundraiser Update

Hi everyone,

As most of you know, we run our English-language online fundraiser on Wikipedia 
every year in December. It’s our biggest fundraiser of the year.
During this time we raise the bulk of funds to support our operating budget to 
support the projects, fund community efforts around the world, and run the 
Wikimedia Foundation.

This year, we are happy to report we’ve reached our goal of US$25 million in 
record time. This is a testament to the importance of Wikimedia and how much 
support we have from people all over the world.

Given this momentum, we believe that it would be wise and worthwhile to 
continue to fundraise more in the month of December, for the following
reasons:

1. While we have reached our goal for the December campaign, we have not yet 
reached our fundraising goal for Fiscal Year 2016-17 (July 2016 - July 2017).

Continuing the English fundraiser gives us security and flexibility through the 
end of the fiscal year. It allows us to have a less aggressive banner schedule 
in coming months, which gives us time for more research and better localization.

2. We have clear programmatic uses for additional funds.

We have some important projects that could use additional funds and are ready 
to proceed. We plan to direct additional funds to the following work:


1.

The buildout of an additional caching center, to improve site
performance for users across Asia and Oceania [1].
2.

Investment in additional support for structured data on Wikimedia
Commons and improved integration with the Wikidata roadmap [2].
3.

Support for community health initiatives, including additional support
for the Community Engagement team [3].
4.

Support for an inclusive and truly global movement strategy process [4].
5.

Growing the endowment in order to secure our future [5].


You can find more information about each of these areas of work below.



We have chosen these projects because they directly support our mission and 
respond to the needs of Wikimedia communities and users. We also believe these 
investments are investments in our future: support for a diverse global 
community, increased resourcing for sister projects, a healthier community 
culture, a shared direction for the future of the movement, and security for 
our mission in perpetuity.

Here is what we will do: We intend to continue with the banners for a few more 
days. We would then take them down over the Christmas holiday, before making an 
end-of-year push in the final couple days of the year. (Many people choose to 
give at the very end of the year, and they are expecting to hear from us as 
usual -- so it is an opportunity to give people who plan to give the easiest 
means to participate).

We’ve been following the conversations on this list about the fundraiser and 
the target. On Wednesday, we sent this recommendation to our Board of Trustees, 
who were broadly supportive of this course of action. Today, we are sending it 
to you. We believe we can make good use of the funds in the coming year, 
without additional unsustainable commitments into coming fiscal years. It is 
fiscally responsible and programmatically sound. The additional work 
strengthens our movement, and the additional funds make these efforts possible.

We welcome your questions and feedback.

Best regards,

Lisa Seitz Gruwell and Jaime Villagomez


More information about the projects:

[1] An additional caching center to improve performance in Asia and Oceania

Our current caching centers in have provided significant value to users, and 
the Wikimedia Foundation invested further in them in 2014-15. We believe that 
further expanding these efforts and their reach into other parts of the world 
would further help us provide the best user experience to our global audience. 
With that in mind, we are considering a number of different locations for an 
additional caching center to enhance our performance for Wikimedia communities 
in Asia and Oceania. Most internet organizations compete to reach users by 
establishing local points of presence, and as a result the performance 
expectations of users in Asia are getting higher. Establishing this new caching 
center will help us meet those

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Board: Vacant appointed seats and Turnover (Was: Personal Update)

2016-11-05 Thread Anders Wennersten

My experience from following the board of WMSE several years, and where 
we now have two years terms is


First year is a learning phase where you more listen then participate

Second year most get more involved and find it very stimulated to be in 
the Board


Third year some get very active, while others are active on the lower 
level as in year two


Fourth year, some continue being active, while others get more passive, 
and also less stimulated


This experience support your proposal to go for a three year term

Anders


Den 2016-11-05 kl. 14:11, skrev Lodewijk:

Hi Nataliia,

It would have been nice if you could have shared this a bit earlier, given
that apparently the board meeting is next week. This gives little time for
discussion of your proposal, on a topic that has received wide interest
previously. Perhaps that could be considered a point for improvement,
especially on these non-urgent reform topics. That gives you more time to
incorporate the feedback into your proposal.

I destilled a few different topics from your email:
1) Better onboarding processes
- sounds great to me. Please feel free to invite community members in
setting up such processes as well. I understood that something like that
was aimed to happen at past Wikimania, and that sounds like a good move!
Getting a clear 'synopsis' would probably also help, something that can
serve as a reference point to make sure that nothing is missing. I would
also advise the method I have seen some WMF employees use (but this may be
more time consuming), and that is to have the new board members do some
'interviews' or in general structured conversations with community members,
staff members and other stakeholders during their first months. Wikimania
is a great opportunity for that.

2) Changing the 'entry point' for appointed board members from January to
Wikimania
- May be sensible or not. The upside is that more things happen at once,
which means less repetition. The downside is that everything happens.. at
once. You'll have potentially a board meeting where 40% is brand new.
That's a lot. I don't have a strong preference either way, but whatever you
choose, I think it'd be good to introduce an observer status for upcoming
board members in the months leading up to their formal appointment - if
that doesn't exist yet - especially for people with less of a Wikimedia
background. You could use the January-Wikimania gap for that.

3) you propose longer terms
- 3 year terms are already quite long in my opinion. Continuity can happen
in two ways: because you force it to happen (i.e. by longer terms), or
because people get re-appointed/re-selected. In the past years there was a
lot of turnover in the community and chapter seats because the latter did
not happen: board members were not re-selected. There is probably some
relationship with how the board performance was appreciated by the
electorate. And one could argue that in such a case, it might maybe be
better to not force more continuity - because it also results in less
opportunity to improve the board when there's an observed need for that. In
this light, I would definitely not be in favour for lengthening the term
lengths other that the occasional 6 months to make entry points fit
together better.

I hope this caught the changes you're proposing? Please correct me if I
missed something.

Thanks for sharing though, and I hope that you'll engage in a constructive
discussion despite the short time left before the board meeting :)

Best,
Lodewijk



2016-11-05 13:07 GMT+01:00 Nataliia Tymkiv :


Hi all,

I am forking a discussion on Wikimedia Foundation Board of trustees vacant
appointed seat(s) and turnover at this point.

== The Board members start and end terms (Turnover) ==
I have drafted here three charts indicating the starting and ending of the
terms of the Board members:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikimedia_
Foundation_Board_Governance_Committee/Board_terms

The first chart shows how it will go now, if nothing is changed.

As you can see we have a lot of onboarding / offboarding even without
anything extraordinary happening, and it means that the Board has scarcely
any time to work as a team and concentrate on things beyond looking for new
people and onboarding them.

The picture is "darkened" by the fact that the onboarding process is not
formalized enough and I would rather concentrate on working on improving
the onboarding process, so we have it in place when new members join,
rather then rush to appoint new Trustees.

We had a discussion about it in the Board Governanace Committee (BGC), and
it seems that having less on- and off-boardings-points per year (f.ex., at
Wikimania) should be something to plan for. And less people joining per
year.

The second and third charts illustrate this idea: every year three new
trustees join the Board, with the community-, affiliates- and appointed
seats joining in different years (well, one appointed seat join

Re: [Wikimedia-l] A new Wikipedia fork: InfoGalactic

2016-10-12 Thread Anders Wennersten

One (unrealistic?) brainchild of me is that Wikipedia should be have as 
a key element, a reliability class set on all articles, say A-F, where 
today's articles would mainly be C (no issues) and D (issues exist). 
That articles with a A or B class would require only Trusted user 
account to edit, and E and F would be new set of articles not qualified 
for Wikipedia. And it would require special setting to access E or F 
articles and they would be seen with another Logo then Wikipedia and 
perhaps a red warning dimmingsceen


Anders

016-10-12 kl. 12:22, skrev Peter Southwood:

I agree.
There is a lot of information that could be provided for and by people who are 
interested in trivia (I am not using the term derogatively - just couldn’t 
think of a better one).
Cheers,
P

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Alessandro Marchetti
Sent: Wednesday, 12 October 2016 11:40 AM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] A new Wikipedia fork: InfoGalactic

I agree with Anders. About the issue of weak/bad/irrelevant/border-line content 
management. I don't care about that specific project although I do support 
plurality in any case.
But "not wasting" material and HRs is a key issue. For all platforms. At the moment I 
would strongly encourage at least to use all the "tools" we have already at their maximum 
potential, which we are not doing. These include:
1) a better knowledge of all wiki platforms and how they work.Try to avoid that 
paternalism that some wikipeda users show off when they decide a priori 
something is not even worth transferring. It's quite snob. We have many 
projects and sometimes transferring content is not so difficult. Even if you 
delete pokemon articles a book about pokemons on wikibooks is still a good 
thing to have. And that recipe in a food article maybe deserves more than just 
be cut off.
2) support an extensive use of draft space and a correct management of all drafts. And a 
bigger tolerance for draft spaces in general. Don't stress people on that, there are 
always better things to do than "harassing" people about stuff in sandboxes and 
drafts. Next time you want to do something like that, don't and work on the main 
namespace. And see yourself if things are in the end better or worse globally. Some of 
these problems just require time. You wait and sources arrive.
3) a better information sharing with the projects. This always annoys me, these long-term wiki 
users that rarely inform any project or usually the lest competent one about an Afd or a warning. 
And when you do inform people around and you show that other users disagree with a rigid deletion 
procedure and they're willing to help or similar they never thank you, and never learn. They play 
their little game and they have never understood after years that wiki is about sharing knowledge. 
Not about deleting a content as fast as possible because "I know how the world works". 
No, you DON'T. Sometimes these rigid deletionists are pushing for the road that allows a fast 
deletion per se, not because this makes the life of editors simpler. I'm convinced because fo that 
we pay a price as a community that is much bigger than the "embarrassment" of leaving on 
the main namespace for few days or weeks an improper article that most of the time almost noone 
visits. I did many lists of all articles that needed revision (unedited by human users in years, 
for example) and in every platform there's always plenty of stuff that was much more critical and 
people missed for years, including hoaxes. Because they were spending too much time copy-pasting 
the same links or comments in order to delete the article of the last minor actor or mid-sized 
company whose presence doesn't really make any difference in the perception of our overall quality.
4) efficient article connectivity. Make article-lists for example. Encourage to group 
content with a rationale. You can prevent a lot of useless "spin off" in many 
cases.
If you start to apply this good practices,  you can reduce the number of critical cases 
(and "social" consequences) by a double digit. Only at that point I would ask 
for additional solutions. Because If after so many years we can't even do that, I think 
we still have better things than worrying or making fun about forks.

  


 Il Mercoledì 12 Ottobre 2016 10:31, Peter Southwood 
<peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> ha scritto:
  


  Wikitrivia?
Cheers,
P

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Anders Wennersten
Sent: Tuesday, 11 October 2016 12:16 PM
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] A new Wikipedia fork: InfoGalactic

I think this initiative point to a weakness in our approach, that is worth 
discussing, independent if just this will be anything or not.

In

Re: [Wikimedia-l] A new Wikipedia fork: InfoGalactic

2016-10-11 Thread Anders Wennersten

I think this initiative point to a weakness in our approach, that is 
worth discussing, independent if just this will be anything or not.


In our version we have somewhat lower quality demand then enwp, and we 
can also be more pragmatic and handle cases individually, but still one 
of our most recurrent discussion is on how we handle articles that is 
too weak/bad/irrelevant to be allowed into our articlespace but still 
not are rubbish. We have looked into 1)enwp alteranative with a draft 
space, 2) to have special signals to engage editor willing to work on 
these, 3) to give it back to the user who put it into Wikipedia with 
text explaining what is the problem, 4) different type of templates, 
5)and have special pages where these can be discussed.


Some of these (and pragmatism and good mentors) help a little bit, but 
does not solve the basic issue, that users create articles (not being 
rubbish) that is not allowed into our article space, which makes them 
very disappointed (angry)


Anders

Den 2016-10-11 kl. 11:58, skrev Peter Southwood:

Competition is healthy, it can be useful to test alternatives and separate out 
the ones that work from the ones that don’t. However I think Starlords may be 
one that doesn’t work and may bring down the project prematurely. I will watch 
in case they develop anything actually useful - who knows...
Cheers,
Peter

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Craig Franklin
Sent: Tuesday, 11 October 2016 8:48 AM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] A new Wikipedia fork: InfoGalactic

So what you're saying is, Vox Day has created a "safe space" where his circle 
of friends can reinforce each other's biases without interference from the outside world? 
 Great.

Also, "Starlords".  Good grief.

Cheers,
Craig

On 11 October 2016 at 04:13, David Gerard  wrote:


"INFOGALACTIC: an online encyclopedia without bias or thought police"

Home page: http://infogalactic.com/info/Main_Page
Announcement: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/10/project-big-fork-
infogalactic.html
Roadmap: http://infogalactic.com/info/Infogalactic:Roadmap


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thinking outside the box

2016-09-06 Thread Anders Wennersten


I am very happy how this nowadays works out.

We have now a lot of chapters, each with a Board. And here the members 
are not oldtimers and here is the appropriate first place to get into 
the Wikmedia world.


And there are many bodies who you can then turn to to get further into 
the Wikimedia world, like Affcom or being a member of  Simple Annual 
Plan Grants Committee or other grant committees. Also here more or less 
newcomers are welcome.


But for the core bodies like the Board, FDC or the BGC supporting 
committee, I am very pleased to see that we get a lot of people with 
long Wikimedia experience. And as they are frequently replaced, I see no 
problem and only advantages


Anders







Den 2016-09-06 kl. 08:33, skrev Rogol Domedonfors:

I think Pine's message rather illustrates my point.  Pine seems to assume
that the alternative is between people experienced in the WMF ways of doing
things and novices.  Actually, there are plenty of people in the world with
experience in being trustees of non-proft organisations, and technical
expertise, and experience of knowledge representation and dissemination,
and the robustness to hold senior employees to account, who are not closely
connected with the WMF or its affiliates.  They mainly live a long way from
Silicon Valley, too.

For the avoidance of doubt, I have never been a candidate for, let alone
held, any position, paid or voluntary, in or related to the WMF or any
associated organisation.

"Rogol"
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] 2016 call for Board Governance Committee Volunteer and Advisory members [results]

2016-08-16 Thread Anders Wennersten

I joined the movement in 2007. I was then overwhelmed by the beauty and 
strength of the concept and the content in the projects. But at the same 
time I was underwhelmed by the support structure behind. Even if 
Delphine and Brion were good in talking with everyone and fixing 
technique and Florence in chairing the operations, it was surely not up 
to the needs.


For me a milestone in getting a professional support structure in place 
was in 2012, when the Haifa agreement was realized and the FDC (and 
narrowing-focus) got in place. FDC was as fascinating for me as the base 
concept of the projects and as much true to the values of the movement. 
And besides the clever colleagues in the committee I got to know  some 
truly admirable individuals, like Kate Welsh, Garfield, Gayle and of 
course Anasuya (and a little later Katy and Bishakha). Sometimes I feel 
that in the movement there are the best people you can find anywhere. 
But at the same time there were underwhelming issues, like a partly 
dysfunctional Board and that WMF operations was neither properly working 
nor reviewed (by FDC).


I now see that in 2016 a new milestone is being passed when the movement 
(at last) gets a professional support structure on par with the needs.  
I perceive the tech org now working well and user driven, that the 
budget process now has been run professional and that there is a good 
management team in place for the running of WMF. And after seeing a lot 
of good initiatives around the working of the Board where this 
announcement is the thing that get the keyelement in place,  I also 
believe the Board is now up to become as professional as is needed for 
the movement. And the joy of seeing the names of many of my all time 
favourites back (in part also in FDC) is profound.


Welcome all of you and looking forward to read of the resolutions from 
this enhanced BGC


Anders






Den 2016-08-16 kl. 15:47, skrev Nataliia Tymkiv:

Dear all,

I am honestly delighted to announce the results of the public call for
Board Governance committee volunteer and Advisory members, announced on
July 15, 2016  [1]. We received nine applications, and after discussing
them with BGC and reviewing the committee's needs and interviewing a short
list of candidates,I have chosen five volunteer advisory members for the
committee. I'd like to extend my thanks to everyone who offered to serve on
the committee.

Please find below a short introduction for our new volunteer advisory
members. They are all quite well known in the movement and I think their
insights would be helpful. They join the Committee once they sign the
documents that Stephen LaPorte, our Interim Secretary, sent to them (the
same ones as the Board members sign - the confidentiality agreement

, code of conduct

, conflict of interest disclosure
).

=== Gayle Karen Young ===

Gayle Karen Young is a WMF's former Chief Talent and Culture office. In her
time at Wikimedia, she was accountable for building the current HR team and
had an active hand in board development and staffed the board HR committee.
She brings experience with the Wikimedia movement, with the workings of the
Foundation, and through her own consulting work in leadership and board
development with organizations in both the for-profit and non-profit space,
and in technology and human rights.

=== Kat Walsh ===

Kat Walsh is a former member of Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees,
12/2006-8/2013 (Chair, 2012-2013; Executive Secretary, 2009-2010). Now she
works as an attorney specializing in copyright, Internet law, and free and
open source software.


=== Tim Moritz Hector ===

Tim Moritz Hector is Chair of the Board of Wikimedia Deutschland since
2014. Tim has been an active Wikimedian for more than eight years and was
engaged in several positions on national and international level. His most
recent engagement (with Frans Grijzenhout from WMNL) is focussed on
building the capacities of board members in all Wikimedia-organizations. He
is going to finish his B.A. in politics and german philology this month and
shall work as an advisor to the ED at the "Academy for volunteerism" in
Berlin beginning in September.

=== Ido Ivry ===

Ido Ivry is a board member of Wikimedia Israel. He has extensive NGO
experience, as well as business understanding, both in large corporates,
NGOs, GLAM institution (National Library of Israel), and is currently a CTO
in his own startup, developing open data solutions for city governments.
Ido has been active on the Grants Advisory Committee and as part of the
Simple APG Committee, working with many organizations in our movement on
carrying out their missions successfully and effectively.

=== Ira B. Matetsky (User:Newyorkbrad) ===

Ira Brad Matetsky

Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to communicate compassionately with non-native English speakers

2016-07-07 Thread Anders Wennersten

Very good and also very accurate.

It reminds it also works the other way. When I was in Australia 1979
discussing a delicate project proposal, I stated "to resolve this we
need to have ice in the stomach " and getting a big question mark on
everyone's face as a response. Iit seemed this well used Swedish
expression was not as international as I had taken for granted (and they
still make jokes on me for this) .:-)

Anders

Den 2016-07-05 kl. 21:59, skrev Nick Wilson (Quiddity):

https://medium.com/@mollyclare/taming-the-steamroller-how-to-communicate-compassionately-with-non-native-english-speakers-d95d8d1845a0
A good essay.

TL;DR: Some detailed examples of how to improve communication and
interactions, for the benefit of anyone who uses English as a second
language.

Excerpts, to whet [sharpen or stimulate] your appetite:

Phrasal verbs in English can be particularly hard to master. Just think

about “cut off” vs. “cut up” vs. “cut over” vs. “cut in” vs. “cut out” vs.
“cut down” vs. “cut back” and you’ll see how confusing it can be when you
recommend “cutting back” on something, or asking someone to “cut it out”.
[...]

Make your message very clear, especially your request. This is doubly

true for me, because I work with Germans, who are famously direct. The
American habit of softening and burying a request is just confusing and
pointless to them.

The last thing you and I want to do is overwhelm. We work across language

barriers, not because it’s glamorous or fun or easy, but because we care
about collaborating with people who are different from us [...]. And
non-native speakers are committing to this collaboration even more than we
are: they’re reaching out to us by working in English. [...]

n.b. Yes, there are some over-generalizations and stereotypes in there.
It's still good overall, though! ;-)

I'd like to link it on Metawiki, but I'm not sure where; Any suggestions?
I've gotten (happily) lost in the [[Multilingual]] disambig page, and the
[[Grants:Learning patterns]] pages, but the only place I can find that
collects advice like this, is the first section at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Manual#Guidelines - What page
might I have missed?

Quiddity
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Our problem with India

2016-06-28 Thread Anders Wennersten

I have been active in FDC and followed closely all applicants. It works 
very well when it comes to promote small affiliates to grow in a 
controlled way and ensuring that money is spent wisely. The FDC, though, 
demand an elaborate plan, and application, which can be (too) hard as a 
first step if you still is an volunteer driven organisation.  So  since 
a year the Simple annual plan grant now exist, and I have been part in 
this and its seven applicants that has been through that process. And it 
works wonderfully even if there has been quite complicated issues in the 
application. The application formality is much easier and the applicant 
gets hands-on help by both WMF staff and also by a peer from an existing 
affiliate. And the feedback we have received has been very very 
positive, specially the support from peers. And for you Milos who was in 
ChapCom at the same time as me in 2008, you should rejoice as much as me 
that now also Brazil is on track, so the "complicated" affiliates in 
2008, Catala, Brazil an US, are now all on track.


So we now have process in place that really help and support small 
groups of enthusiastic Wikimedians to grow in a controlled way becoming 
well functioning chapters. We have also since 2008 learnt, from 
experiences from Brazil and India, that to try by "outsiders" to get  a 
local organisation in place that will grow in a good way, just has not 
worked. These experiments just hindered (and delayed) natural good 
establishment.


So my learning is that it is counter productive to try as an outsider to 
get something happen. We have to await until groups of clever 
Wikimedians in India with the right ambition etc are ready to enter 
applications to either of the grant programs, and then there are 
mechanisms in place to help them evolve


Anders







Den 2016-06-28 kl. 13:36, skrev Milos Rancic:

And it seems I need one more note: The last sentence was satirical.
On Jun 28, 2016 13:27, "Milos Rancic"  wrote:


On Jun 28, 2016 09:58, "Milos Rancic"  wrote:

(Hint for American
Wikimedians: Trump supporters are your next target for positive
discrimination.)

It seems I have to clarify this sentence.

I didn't say Trump, I didn't say Cruz, I didn't say Cruz supporters, I
said Trump supporters.

I have in mind very specific population, genuinely scared by the
privileged Mexican illegal immigrants, working lazy for the American
agricultural industry for $5/h or less and supported by Bay Area hipsters
and Jewish lobby.


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Harassment and blaming the victim

2016-06-07 Thread Anders Wennersten

I fully agree with Risker. I feel this discussion is only (mainly) 
looking at enwp. Harassment probably exist on all versions but the 
seriously of the issue look very differently.


Being the most active user and sysop on a smaller version (svwp) I do 
not recognize the issues being discussed. On our version we do not need 
any arbcom, we are getting very good to resolve all issues without, on a 
page where all are welcome to participate (and block of more then a day 
is not allowed of an productive contributor by just one admin, it must 
have been discussed first and reached consensus first) . And 
haressements are not more frequent than that is is possible to handle 
them individually (which we do and have a low tolerance level)


And besides from us being few that makes this issue easier to tackle, my 
opinion is that the key for us is the yearly confirmation of admin 
rights.  It is interesting to follow these over the years. First the 
reasons for non-support was if clear misuse, after a few years 
aggressive discussion style, but now it is being about the need to 
friendly and cooperative (but all OK to be tough on trolls, bad 
behaviour unserious editing)


perhaps instead of building up new rules etc, it could be worthwhile to 
study good working versions instead and learn from them?


Anders



Den 2016-06-07 kl. 21:18, skrev Risker:

Hmmm. I find this recommendation concerning.  There *might* be some
validity on large projects with hundreds of administrators, but there are a
lot of projects with only a few admins, and they were "selected" because
they were willing to do the grunt work of deletions, protections, and
blocks. Nobody was selecting them to handle large-scale harassment.
Indeed, I cannot think of a single administrator even on a large project
who was selected because of their ability or their interest in handling
harassment incidents.  There's pretty good evidence that it is not only not
a criterion seriously considered by communities, but that absent the
interest or willingness to carry out other tasks or demonstration of
aptitude for other areas of administrator work, an admin candidate would
not be selected by most communities, even large ones where harassment is a
much more visible concern.

There is also no basis for putting forward that mandatory training for any
administrator function would be useful on a global scale. How does one set
up a mandatory training program for carrying out page protection, given
that every large project has a different policy?  What happens if an
administrator doesn't "pass" a mandatory program? Are they desysopped, over
the objections of their community?

I'll point out in passing that there is not even consideration of a formal
global checkuser training program - again, the local policies vary widely,
and the types of issues addressed by checkusers on different projects is
very different.

Risker/Anne

On 7 June 2016 at 15:01, Sydney Poore  wrote:


My suggestion is to come up with a general type training that can work for
all administrators and functionaries since all have the freedom and
permission to do all types of work on WMF projects. And that training
should be mandatory.

Then people who are focusing on a particular type of administrative or
functionaries work can take more advanced courses that could be mandatory
for doing some types of work.

Sydney





Sydney Poore
User:FloNight
Wiki Project Med Foundation
WikiWomen's User Group
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/sydney.e.poore


On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 2:10 PM, Pine W  wrote:


Hi Sydney,

Thanks for that link. I think that for now I would suggest avoiding

making

the training mandatory because we won't know how successful it is until
after we've used it for awhile. After the training has been tested and
refined based on feedback, and if the consensus is that the training is
helpful, then at that point we could consider making this a required

annual

training.

I could foresee is that, on wikis that have arbitration committees or
other systematic ways of dealing with administrators who mess up, the
ArbComs and/or the community could say that those administrators who have
demonstrated weakness in areas that are addressed by the training will be
required to take or re-take the training as a condition of keeping their
admin permissions.

My hope is that the training will be of such good quality, and so
interesting and useful to administrators, that many administrators will
*want* to take the training or at least be curious enough to try it. Big
carrot, small stick. We can escalate from there if the training develops

a

track record of success.

I would think of success as being measured in two ways: administrators'
feedback about the training shows a consensus that they found it helpful,
and communities report higher levels of satisfaction with their
administrators as shown in the difference between surveys that are done
before on multiple

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on WMF Governance reviews

2016-06-04 Thread Anders Wennersten


Den 2016-06-03 kl. 21:35, skrev Michael Peel:
On 3 June 2016 at 03:19, Anders Wennersten <m...@anderswennersten.se> 
wrote:

3.The composition of the Board, mandates given to members of the Board and
by whom, formal relation between the Board and the stakeholders of our
movement, is a complete mess. And an audit would only be able to state
this, not how it ought to be resolved.

I would hope that a review would be a review, not an audit, i.e. it would look 
at options for improving matters, not just saying what the current situation 
is. This was the case for WMUK, and was done by looking at external best 
practices, and by interviewing other stakeholders in the organisation./Mmike


If it could be run that way I believe it would be of tremendous value. 
This is issues that you typically get "home-blind" on, and a proper 
review on how other has solved it and what research says about it 
together with competence in the specifics of NGOs in US could give the 
Board and us all new insights and ideas! And an opportunity to attack 
what I believe is at the root of the problems we have encountered around 
the Board operations (and I know it is NOT the individuals in it, they 
are good and clever persons).


Lets hope something like this an be initiated

Anders




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on WMF Governance reviews

2016-06-02 Thread Anders Wennersten


Den 2016-06-02 kl. 20:07, skrev Nathan:

  To Anders' point, perhaps not all insights
offered will be new to everyone.


Perhaps unwise of me. I state here what I would expect to come out of 
such an audit/review (and I do not write this to start a heated 
discussion, I could be very wrong, but to be more concrete, what an 
audit could mean)


1.The routine and processes to run the Boards internal operations are on 
par with what could be seen as needed considering budget, world wide 
operations etc.


2.The routines and processes to follow up an control the operations of 
WMF is seriously underdeveloped considering the size of the 
organisation/budget. And an audit could give expensive advice on how to 
improve, but we have this competence much closer at hand as many 
chapters have good routines and process in place to follow up an control 
its own operations (partly thx to FDC). The Board could improve by just 
using best practice from our chapters.


3.The composition of the Board, mandates given to members of the Board 
and by whom, formal relation between the Board and the stakeholders of 
our movement, is a complete mess. And an audit would only be able to 
state this, not how it ought to be resolved.


And if I am about right, there is a risk that it is only the no 1 which 
initiate thorough discussions, of like how to put up protocol to reflect 
better transparency (and where the audit very well could pass this part 
all together), and this is not the key problem, but a symptom. And an 
audit would not be expected to come up with any concrete suggestions on 
how to fix the serious underlying problem of p 3 - We must solve this 
independent of audits


Anders



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on WMF Governance reviews

2016-06-02 Thread Anders Wennersten

Thanks for your feedback. I think it import we have a realistic view on 
what a governance review/audit can accomplish.


My experience on running audits/reviews resembles what you write. A lot 
of the result will most probably be long bits of text, stating thing 
that is already well known, like that "there exist a board manual", 
"minutes of meetings exists" etc.


And most value I have experienced with audits has been when there has 
been zero transparency (which is not the case here) and when you learn 
if the procedures is run (or not) according to what is written and good 
practice. And as this we mostly already know of already. I have never 
seen an audit to be more "clever" and/or present more "insight" then 
clever people already in the board or people who have insight in its 
working. So in my belief most shortcoming of the Board procedures have 
already been identified, in discussion within the Board and in the 
discussion of the Board on this list.


So while I am not against an audit to be made, it could help "clear the 
air", I do  want to stress that it is a big risk a lot a money will be 
spent to just state what is already known. And it is actions to remedy 
the shortcomings in processes that gives real value. not reports as such.


Anders








Den 2016-06-02 kl. 14:02, skrev Chris Keating:

Just wanted to post some thoughts on the subject of the WMF having an
external governance review/audit. As you may know the FDC recommended that
the WMF should do this and I imagine the WMF board is thinking about the
matter at the moment. I was Chair of Wikimedia UK when we undertook our
governance review in autumn 2012 so hope my perspective is useful.

On balance I think an appropriately-defined governance audit, conducted by
the right people, would be helpful for WMF and the community but here are
some pros and cons.

*Reasons against  *
1. Cost. At a minimum, an audit would cost $20,000 - if done very
efficiently in a light-touch way. An extensive review could cost several
times that much. Anyone who you'd want to do the work would have a day rate
of $1000+ for top-level consultants and $500+ for other people involved.
2. Governance reviewers won't solve any of the "Wikimedia-specific"
problems. Hopefully whoever would be appointed would have experience of
working with boards of volunteer-based movements not just 'conventional'
non-profits. However, Wikimedia levels of transparency will still be
unusual for them and governance consultants are very unlikely to recommend
or support (say) live-streaming board meetings to increase transparency, or
making community-elected trustees unsackable without a referendum of some
kind.
3. Progress already made. The WMF Board has already introduced a number of
key policies, e.g. a code of conduct. If those have already addressed some
of the key issues then an external review will have less to say.
4. Risk of getting unfocused answers. There is a risk with this kind of
review of getting lots of detailed comments on various policies and
documents that don't actually have an impact. However, this can be avoided
with a well-defined brief.

*Reasons to do it*
1. Feedback on Board behaviour. A reviewer will probably interview Board
members and senior staff, and attend a meeting, as well as reviewing
documents and policies. As a result they will be able to observe the actual
behaviour of the board. That is unique (and hopefully helpful) feedback.
2. Reassurance. From November to January, a lot of people (including many
WMF staff and community members) were confused and concerned (to put it
mildly) about what was happening at WMF board level. (Probably there were
also people *on the WMF board* sharing the same concerns). Many of those
people are still concerned to varying degrees. An external review that says
"actually, most of this is working fine now but you can improve X, Y and Z"
is valuable reassurance for the whole community. If, on the other hand, the
review says "actually there are some serious issues that still need to be
sorted out" then much better that the Board realises that and acts on it in
the next couple of months than waiting another year or two and running into
the same problems again.
3. The amount of change that's happened lately. The WMF has grown immensely
in the last 10 years and has had very high turnover on the Board in the
last 2. Some of the ways of working that have grown up in those 10 years
may not be right, and some of those that were right might no longer be in
the Board's institutional knowledge. If I were in the shoes of one of the
newer WMF trustees I would think that an external governance review was a
very helpful step in making sure that the Board was working as effectively
as possible.

Regards,

Chris Keating
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] FDC Recommendations for 2015-2016 Round 2

2016-05-16 Thread Anders Wennersten

For the ones who do not read the complete text, i see the key sentences 
to be (for WMF and the Board)


*WMF to view its actions as leveraging a /network effect/ utilising the 
resources of the global movement.


*For an international organization [Board], there is an apparent 
overall lack of global diversity


I do hope that these key needs will be reflected not only in operative 
actions but also in the recruitment of a new ED.


A resource centre in SF*combined* with the people, local organisations 
and learnings from all over our movement will be a formula for success 
that will enable us to reach our vision



Anders




Den 2016-05-15 kl. 21:55, skrev Anders Wennersten:

Thanks, for once, again a very thorough work done by FDC.

I find it very encouraging to see that this committee is able to 
continue with its good quality in its assessments and also to see it 
growing as a role model in integrity and also truly representing the 
community in values and experience gained from activities from our 
affiliates/chapters.


I do hope that you, both as a role model and in your hand fast 
recommendations, can help both the Board and WMF to also evolve into 
role models and fully taking in the learning from all parts of the 
movement. And that you will continue guide and follow up on the work 
in the chapters having employees.


Anders

Now having read through all text twice, and enjoyed it a lot






Den 2016-05-15 kl. 19:29, skrev matanya moses:

Hello Wikimedians,

Twice a year, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) meets to help 
make decisions about how to effectively allocate movement funds to 
achieve the Wikimedia movement's mission, vision, and strategy. For 
this round, we met in person from May 13-15 to deliberate on five 
plans and proposals, which were submitted by Wikimedia Armenia, 
Wikimedia Norge, Wikimedia France, the Centre for Internet and 
Society, as well as the draft annual plan of the Wikimedia 
Foundation. We would like to thank all the organizations this round 
for submitting these proposals.


We have posted our Round 2 2015-2016 recommendations on the annual 
plan grants to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. [1] The 
Board will review our deliberations and make a decision by July 1, 2016.


This round, we received grant requests of roughly $1.25 million USD, 
and we have recommended roughly $1.14 million in annual plan grants 
(though grants are made in local currency). Before we met in May, we 
reviewed all of the proposals and additional documents submitted. We 
were assisted in this review with some input from the FDC staff 
assessments and analysis on impact, finances, and programs, as well 
as community comments on the proposals.


There is a formal process to submit complaints or appeals about these 
recommendations. Here are the steps for both:


Any organization that would like to submit an appeal on the FDC’s 
Round 2 recommendation should submit it to the Board representatives 
to the FDC by 23:59 UTC on 8 June 2016 in accordance with the appeal 
process outlined in the FDC Framework. A formal appeal to challenge 
the FDC’s recommendation should be in the form of a 500-or-fewer word 
summary directed to the two non-voting WMF Board representative to 
the FDC, Dariusz Jemielniak. The appeal should be submitted on-wiki, 
[4] and must be submitted by the Board Chair of a funding-seeking 
applicant. The Board will publish its decision on this and all 
recommendations by 1 July 2016.


Complaints to the ombudsperson about the FDC process can be filed by 
anyone with the Ombudsperson and can be made any time. The complaint 
should be submitted on wiki, as well. The ombudsperson will publicly 
document the complaint, and investigate as needed.


On a side note, all FDC members are flying back to their home 
countries, so we might be able to respond only in a day or two,


On behalf of the FDC,

Matanya [1]

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_recommendations/2015-2016_round_2 




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] FDC Recommendations for 2015-2016 Round 2

2016-05-15 Thread Anders Wennersten


Thanks, for once, again a very thorough work done by FDC.

I find it very encouraging to see that this committee is able to 
continue with its good quality in its assessments and also to see it 
growing as a role model in integrity and also truly representing the 
community in values and experience gained from activities from our 
affiliates/chapters.


I do hope that you, both as a role model and in your hand fast 
recommendations, can help both the Board and WMF to also evolve into 
role models and fully taking in the learning from all parts of the 
movement. And that you will continue guide and follow up on the work in 
the chapters having employees.


Anders

Now having read through all text twice, and enjoyed it a lot






Den 2016-05-15 kl. 19:29, skrev matanya moses:

Hello Wikimedians,

Twice a year, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) meets to help 
make decisions about how to effectively allocate movement funds to 
achieve the Wikimedia movement's mission, vision, and strategy. For 
this round, we met in person from May 13-15 to deliberate on five 
plans and proposals, which were submitted by Wikimedia Armenia, 
Wikimedia Norge, Wikimedia France, the Centre for Internet and 
Society, as well as the draft annual plan of the Wikimedia Foundation. 
We would like to thank all the organizations this round for submitting 
these proposals.


We have posted our Round 2 2015-2016 recommendations on the annual 
plan grants to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. [1] The 
Board will review our deliberations and make a decision by July 1, 2016.


This round, we received grant requests of roughly $1.25 million USD, 
and we have recommended roughly $1.14 million in annual plan grants 
(though grants are made in local currency). Before we met in May, we 
reviewed all of the proposals and additional documents submitted. We 
were assisted in this review with some input from the FDC staff 
assessments and analysis on impact, finances, and programs, as well as 
community comments on the proposals.


There is a formal process to submit complaints or appeals about these 
recommendations. Here are the steps for both:


Any organization that would like to submit an appeal on the FDC’s 
Round 2 recommendation should submit it to the Board representatives 
to the FDC by 23:59 UTC on 8 June 2016 in accordance with the appeal 
process outlined in the FDC Framework. A formal appeal to challenge 
the FDC’s recommendation should be in the form of a 500-or-fewer word 
summary directed to the two non-voting WMF Board representative to the 
FDC, Dariusz Jemielniak. The appeal should be submitted on-wiki, [4] 
and must be submitted by the Board Chair of a funding-seeking 
applicant. The Board will publish its decision on this and all 
recommendations by 1 July 2016.


Complaints to the ombudsperson about the FDC process can be filed by 
anyone with the Ombudsperson and can be made any time. The complaint 
should be submitted on wiki, as well. The ombudsperson will publicly 
document the complaint, and investigate as needed.


On a side note, all FDC members are flying back to their home 
countries, so we might be able to respond only in a day or two,


On behalf of the FDC,

Matanya [1]

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_recommendations/2015-2016_round_2 




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Board update

2016-05-07 Thread Anders Wennersten


Den 2016-05-07 kl. 22:25, skrev Andreas Kolbe:

On Sat, May 7, 2016 at 7:17 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak 
wrote:


Regarding the community seat, I am in conversation with the Election
Committee, which has narrowed it down to just a few options. We are going
to finish this discussion soon and I expect the timeline to be announced
before Wikimania.



Are you considering reinstating James Heilman, as one of these options?


The Election Committee early on in these discussion came to favour an 
election to resolve the vacancy rather then by appointment.


But when it comes to an election we are not in full agreement if an 
election of one is the preferred option or an election of all three 
community seats (an early ordinary election). Also in the question of 
when, we find there is a lot a practical issues  to take into 
consideration (when will the new standing election committee be fully in 
place? is it doable to have an election during summer months?, the 
timing of the actual appointment to the Board after the (s)election etc)


Anders



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Africa / Gender gaps (was Re: Gender gap on "classical" encyclopedias)

2016-04-21 Thread Anders Wennersten



Den 2016-04-21 kl. 08:21, skrev Gerard Meijssen:

Hoi,

Anders, have you looked into the ArticlePlaceholder? Could it serve you
well instead of adding articles using the bot?
Thanks,
   GerardM
I do not know, as  I am not directly involved. What I do know is that 
Sverker, Lsjbot creator is one of the most clever persons I ever met, 
and that he knows well of Wikidata and that all expertise on Wikidata on 
svwp has been involved in the design


I would suggest you ask Sverker directly (and offlist) I think you 
clever guys on Wikidata can learn a lot from his insights


Anders







On 21 April 2016 at 07:48, Anders Wennersten <m...@anderswennersten.se>
wrote:


Our traditional way of creating article is based on the interests of the
contributors. This produces skewed total result, and this becomes more
evident on a smaller version like svwp, then on bigger. We have long come
to the conclusion that we will never be able to fill categories like towns
in Mali and basketballplayer in Brazil, where we have had something like
less then 10% of entries then the same categories on enwp (or frwp)

Wikidata can be of help evening out, but on svwp we have (also since long)
said we must work and have a more systematic and deliberate approach to
fill out "empty spaces"

We therefore love Lsjbot which now generates several million good and
comprehensive articles on geographical entities all over the world from the
most complete database that exists, and where areas like Africa is getting
exactly the same attention like a Nordic country. It is completely
unrealistic to think that the few contributors on svwp would ever create
the now existing  25 article on entities on Canada or 16500 entries in
Antartica. But the bias in the source means Djibuti only gets 4000 and
Camerun 9000 but it is none the less a huge improvement.

For articles on woman/men project are being run by wmse and it now exist a
group of dedicated contributors generating articles on women. I am all
fascinated of sources being used, specially to get entries of women from
middle of 19-th century. All famous ballet dancers in Copenhagen in 1850.
All women who had local fame in Finland around 1860, including local
healers etc. They have now created many thousands articles and getting the
rate of articles up to 20% of total (25% of the number for men)

So I believe skewness is becoming an important issue and that we need to
adress oit even if it means to let go the "holy rule" only manual created
article are "real" articles, it is the need of our readers who should have
priority.

Anders

[1] list of article generated by country this far:
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategori:Robotskapade_geografiartiklar
[2] latest article generated just now a river in Fiji
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbau_Creek_%28vattendrag,_lat_-16,50,_long_179,08%29


Den 2016-04-20 kl. 23:30, skrev Florence Devouard:


Hello

Sorry for highjacking your thread, but reading your message, I wanted to
share with you a small page I made a few days ago, to quantify the double
gap Gender/Africa.

http://www.wikiloveswomen.org/about-the-project/mind-the-gap/

If anyone has additional links or studies that could be useful to further
illustrate that double gap... I am interested.

Also, if anyone is interested in further exploring this data-wise, please
raise your hand ;)

Florence


Le 20/04/16 09:39, alexhin...@gmail.com a écrit :


Hi, as some of you may know, the Wikipedia gender indicator [1] tells us
how many articles are biographies about women x language/country/culture.

In order to compare these numbers...Does anyone knows if there is an
existing comparison with gender balance in classical encyclopedias?
(Britannica, Larousse...) or, if not, could someone prepare a WD query
about it?

I think it could be a good argument for us to use: e.g "at cawiki 12% of
bios are about women, compared to 5% in GEC, Our most famous encyclopedia".

We could compare it also for temathic encyclopedias or other databases
existing in projects like Mix and match.

Can someone help? thanks in advance


[1]http://wigi.wmflabs.org/


Àlex Hinojo
User:Kippelboy
Amical Wikimedia Programme manager
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Africa / Gender gaps (was Re: Gender gap on "classical" encyclopedias)

2016-04-20 Thread Anders Wennersten

Our traditional way of creating article is based on the interests of the 
contributors. This produces skewed total result, and this becomes more 
evident on a smaller version like svwp, then on bigger. We have long 
come to the conclusion that we will never be able to fill categories 
like towns in Mali and basketballplayer in Brazil, where we have had 
something like less then 10% of entries then the same categories on enwp 
(or frwp)


Wikidata can be of help evening out, but on svwp we have (also since 
long) said we must work and have a more systematic and deliberate 
approach to fill out "empty spaces"


We therefore love Lsjbot which now generates several million good and 
comprehensive articles on geographical entities all over the world from 
the most complete database that exists, and where areas like Africa is 
getting exactly the same attention like a Nordic country. It is 
completely unrealistic to think that the few contributors on svwp would 
ever create the now existing  25 article on entities on Canada or 
16500 entries in Antartica. But the bias in the source means Djibuti 
only gets 4000 and Camerun 9000 but it is none the less a huge improvement.


For articles on woman/men project are being run by wmse and it now exist 
a group of dedicated contributors generating articles on women. I am all 
fascinated of sources being used, specially to get entries of women from 
middle of 19-th century. All famous ballet dancers in Copenhagen in 
1850. All women who had local fame in Finland around 1860, including 
local healers etc. They have now created many thousands articles and 
getting the rate of articles up to 20% of total (25% of the number for men)


So I believe skewness is becoming an important issue and that we need 
to  adress oit even if it means to let go the "holy rule" only manual 
created article are "real" articles, it is the need of our readers who 
should have priority.


Anders

[1] list of article generated by country this far: 
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategori:Robotskapade_geografiartiklar
[2] latest article generated just now a river in Fiji 
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbau_Creek_%28vattendrag,_lat_-16,50,_long_179,08%29


Den 2016-04-20 kl. 23:30, skrev Florence Devouard:

Hello

Sorry for highjacking your thread, but reading your message, I wanted 
to share with you a small page I made a few days ago, to quantify the 
double gap Gender/Africa.


http://www.wikiloveswomen.org/about-the-project/mind-the-gap/

If anyone has additional links or studies that could be useful to 
further illustrate that double gap... I am interested.


Also, if anyone is interested in further exploring this data-wise, 
please raise your hand ;)


Florence


Le 20/04/16 09:39, alexhin...@gmail.com a écrit :
Hi, as some of you may know, the Wikipedia gender indicator [1] tells 
us how many articles are biographies about women x 
language/country/culture.


In order to compare these numbers...Does anyone knows if there is an 
existing comparison with gender balance in classical encyclopedias? 
(Britannica, Larousse...) or, if not, could someone prepare a WD 
query about it?


I think it could be a good argument for us to use: e.g "at cawiki 12% 
of bios are about women, compared to 5% in GEC, Our most famous 
encyclopedia".


We could compare it also for temathic encyclopedias or other 
databases existing in projects like Mix and match.


Can someone help? thanks in advance


[1]http://wigi.wmflabs.org/


Àlex Hinojo
User:Kippelboy
Amical Wikimedia Programme manager
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What can we learn

2016-04-11 Thread Anders Wennersten

The election does not elect members of the Board, and I have not written 
that


The election does, though, elect candidates to be considered by the 
Board for appointment to the Board


The three members in the Board are not community elected (and I have 
never written that), but they are selected from the community and I call 
them being community selected (but perhaps it is bad English)


Anders

Den 2016-04-11 kl. 13:13, skrev Andy Mabbett:

On 9 April 2016 at 07:26, Anders Wennersten <m...@anderswennersten.se> wrote:


this is the second community selected

ITYM "community suggested". The selection is done by the board.


that has left the Board within a year
after being appointed, and before any future election

There are no elections.




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[Wikimedia-l] The option:Byelection soon

2016-04-11 Thread Anders Wennersten

My spontaneous reaction, like others in the Election Committee, when 
informed of Dennys resignation was to think a byelection, soon in time, 
would be the "natural" way to fill the empty seat.  This is how it has 
been done earlier (even if now some years back)  and while the 
appointment of Maria after James had support of existing (informal?)  
thinking ("if the Board reject any of the elected three, as they are 
entitled to do, they should appoint at No 4") , no such thinking has 
existed to support appoint no 5 in case of a resignation.


But the more I think the more hesitant I become, and also taking into 
account the (excellent) feedback in the thread "what can we learn" that 
at least to me give a feeling the election process for community 
election can be adjusted (without need making it more complicated) so 
that a situation like this in the future would be resolved without any 
need of byelection.


A Bylection
*Draws a lot a resources from WMF
*Draws a lot of resources from the Election Committee. While almost all 
in out internal discussion is willing to support a byelection (even 
among the ones not interested to stay on in a standing EC) , we are 
fewer then for last election. Greg has resigned as some others.
*Draws a lot on energy from the community. Think of all banners that was 
put up and even at some time dedicated e-mails being sent out, just the 
translation was a huge effort as such


I also want to highlight that that I can see risks in running a byelection
*what if we are not able to live up to the demands of process quality 
and the elections legitimacy will become disputed?
*what if we wear out the community motivation to participate in 
community election, could it make next ordinary election in less the a 
year less successful?
*what if the process as such reopens earlier traumas in the movement 
(like James re the Board issue)?


So while not "ruling out" a byelection, I believe we should not go for 
that option without thoroughly considering other option for filling the 
seat. There can be other alternative then look for no 5 in last election 
and we should remember it is only to fill a seat for less then a year, 
is a bylection an overkill for what it can resolve?


Anders




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What can we learn

2016-04-09 Thread Anders Wennersten


Den 2016-04-09 kl. 12:51, skrev Fæ:

leaving your seat should be made to appear like a
royal abdication or the result of failure.

Yes, another option to secure a continuity of members in the board would 
be to accept resignations will occur and then have the community 
election to end formally in a number of "reserves". and that these 
reserves are to be elected by the Board if resignation occurs.
As the community election today only gives  three candidates for the 
Board to elect (or reject), the number four must be seen as a runner up, 
to be selected by the Board if they do not approve any of the first 
three. This reasoning was also reflected in the stating by the election 
community in early January and the election of Maria as a replacement 
for James by the Board.  To extend the same reasoning this time is 
stretching it a bit far, time since last election is further away, and 
number five in the election has at least by me never been seen as a 
runnerup. If the Board in their selection after a community election 
were to reject two candidates I would consider a reelection more 
relevant then to go further down the list .


But a bylection is quite costly to set up and run centrally and also for 
the whole community. So perhaps we should be broadminded in thinking how 
could fill the empty seat after Danny


Anders

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[Wikimedia-l] What can we learn

2016-04-09 Thread Anders Wennersten

I, as all others, has full sympathy for Danny and find that he in his 
mail made an excellent explanation on how the situation made the option 
to resign the only reasonable way forward


BUT this is the second community selected that has left the Board within 
a year after being appointed, and before any future election (either a 
snap byelection soon, or the ordinary in a years time) I believe we 
should look into if anything can be learnt. And if there are things, 
primary in the election process, that can be done to ensure the 
appointed community selected members of the Board staying on the whole 
term.


For Danny my interpretation is that he is very operational role in 
ordinary work leads to many interaction with WMF etc and where COI 
consideration hampers his day-to-days activities. And that his major 
strength, "Wikidata", is hard to make use of in the Board as any 
influencing of decision re this also puts him in a COI situation, and 
that he outside this competence finds he has limited "value" for the 
board work.


But all of these facts was known before the election (but not necessary 
the ramification). Would a more elaborate (tedious long?) description of 
requirements of serving in the Board helped Danny to understand the 
challenge before he entered his candidacy? Would some type of 
(lightweight) "vetting" by the Election committee by all candidates have 
identified this risk (which then could have been feedbacked to the 
candidate)? Should for future election the election committee not only 
be facilitator of the election, but also help he voters in complementing 
the data given by each candidate by some type of comments? For example 
last time the requirement from the board was non western (non English 
natives) persons and priority for nonmale. but 2 out of 3 was just his. 
Could some mark on the candidate statement made by the EC (he/she is/is 
not fulfilling the Board criteria) had helped?


The setup up of a Standing Election Committee is under formation but it 
will probably still be some month before it is established. Any changes 
in the election process has to await this formation, but I believe a 
discussion of learnings can start independently.


Anders




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikiwand

2016-03-31 Thread Anders Wennersten


Thanks Dan.

Besides the interface as such, where several have given, for me, 
interesting feedback, I wonder over the funding banner.


Would not a widespread use of Wikiwand mean that readers no longer get 
the "begging" banner. And would that not mean a risk of decreasing funding?


Anders





Den 2016-03-31 kl. 19:19, skrev Dan Garry:

On 30 March 2016 at 23:39, Anders Wennersten <m...@anderswennersten.se>
wrote:


What is WMFs position on Wikiwand [1]?


There is no "official WMF position" on Wikiwand. The Wikimedia Foundation
is quite a diverse collection of individuals with a range of different
opinions. :-)

Personally, I like Wikiwand. I think there's some things they do really
well, like their table of contents on desktop, and some things that they
could improve, like the clutter of the interface on mobile devices. The
performance of their website used to be incredibly poor, so much so that it
took over a minute to load on my iPhone 4. They seem to have made quite
some strides in that area though, because I don't have this problem at all
on my Nexus 5.

I've tried contacting them a few times to share knowledge and see how we
could collaborate, but I never received any response from them.

I hope they keep improving their interface. I think it's a worthwhile
project.

Thanks,
Dan




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[Wikimedia-l] Wikiwand

2016-03-31 Thread Anders Wennersten


What is WMFs position on Wikiwand [1]?

is it a complement or a commercial run interface that is  better that we 
can offer?


Anders

[1] http://www.wikiwand.com/about

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] User interaction on Wikipedia --call for submissions

2016-03-16 Thread Anders Wennersten

This is not he only case where I lately have observed a tendency to use 
words which is more or less unintelligent for non-English speaking people.


The phrase "Inspire Campaign on content curation & review" includes a 
number of complicated words. I commented upon this [1] to
Jethro who only  stated these were correct words, seemingly uninterested 
the effect on reders of using those type of words. And now this message 
has started to occurs in a banner, where a Swede has made an extremely 
bad translation making it even more unintelligent. Our village pump is 
full of people very upset of this, also as we usually do not translate 
banner messages. In our discussion it has been put forward these 
messages has done more harm to the brand then any of the problems lately 
around WMF and BoT (these entities are rather vaguely known her)


And I expect most do as I, just refuse to take in any message from WMF, 
not seeing they are interested to communicate with us (or get input from 
us), only enwp


Anders



[1] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:I_JethroBT_%28WMF%29=prev=15393279





Den 2016-03-16 kl. 05:40, skrev John Mark Vandenberg:

On 16 Mar 2016 07:07, "Moushira Elamrawy"  wrote:

Hello Fae,

Ideation phase [0], is a term widely used in product and design context.
Now, I see your point around how volunteers who are not related to these
fields, might not be familiar with it. Possibly something like, idea
generation, or brainstorming could have replaced it.

I am not sure though if the factors that you have listed are relevant; I
think it is a matter of using a word in a certain context where it

actually

fits, without realizing how a broader audience would perceive it.

In any case, thanks for the note :-)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideation_%28creative_process%29

That is a woeful article, for a useless word with no fixed meaning. As far
as I can tell the component all usages agree on is "thinking" is involved.
See the many comments on the talk page.

A good test for whether a word should be used in communications to a wide
audience is how widely translated a Wikipedia article is. If it would be
translated to a different concept in other languages, it isn't a good
concept for this type of communication.

--
John
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Executive transition planning

2016-03-05 Thread Anders Wennersten


I second Delphines praise.

I am also very glad to see that this being the fourth major decision 
taken by the Board this year (outing of James was done last year...) , 
and that they all have been very good and balanced. And even if valid 
wishes for quicker decisions is raised, I myself prioritize quality in 
the decisions before haste.


Anders



Den 2016-03-05 kl. 10:54, skrev Delphine Ménard:

Thank you Alice. I find this move pretty bold and welcome it, it renew
with an old tradition ;)

Also many thnaks for sharing with us these kind of developments.

Cheers,

Delphine

On Sat, Mar 5, 2016 at 3:14 AM, Alice Wiegand  wrote:

Hi all,
short update, as announced by Patricio:

Our organization needs stability, it needs a chance to rest for a moment
and to move on with the things that matter at the same time. That’s why the
Board  is aiming for a quick decision about the interim ED.

If you want to make a difference you need to act differently.

We know that our C-level team is doing a great job in managing the
day-to-day-operations and they all have a deep understandning of our
culture, challenges and needs. Who, if not them, knows better what is best
for the organization in this moment. The Board is not best suited to make a
decision about the interim which can quickly be established and accepted in
this situation.

Therefor the board empowers the entire C-level-team to come up with a
solution for the interim question. We leave it up to them how that
decisions looks like. We trust them to think traditional or outside of the
box as it fits to our organization, the Wikimedia Foundation. The
C-level-team needs some time to deliberate and decide. They will present
their result to the board which has to vote on it. We plan to finalize
until the end of next week.

Alice.

--
Alice Wiegand
Board of Trustees
Wikimedia Foundation


--
Alice Wiegand
Board of Trustees
Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
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[Wikimedia-l] Affiliate-selected Board seats-candidates

2016-03-02 Thread Anders Wennersten

There are now, five days before deadline, 7 candidates and all new 
names. Last time two years ago there were only two candidates before the 
very last days before deadline and both being existing Board members.


It is very good to see so many competent candidates and representing a 
wider set of background then has have been seen before.


But we should respect the election process and keep questions and 
discussions on the candidates meta  pages.


I find it inappropriate to discuss any  of them separately on this list.

Anders




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a volunteer organization

2016-03-01 Thread Anders Wennersten




Den 2016-03-01 kl. 11:01, skrev David Emrany:

The credibility of Wikipedia as a brand is going down the tubes
rapidly as fresh scandals emerge with alarming frequency. More enemies
of the movement are being created daily.


We all live in different realities, so please be careful to indicate 
that your reality is everyones reality


In Sweden we have had the most profound increase in trust in Wikipedia 
the last six month, not least in conjunction to the 15 year anniversary  
There have been several articled in our main media reporting both with 
good insight and giving credibility to Wikipedia. We have seen a 
continuous strong support from the Glam sector and also a significant 
change from School authorities, which now are staring to look mostly how 
to make best use of Wikipedia, and not as before only indicating the 
need to be observant of sources being used


The affiliate here has just received the biggest grant yet on more then 
300KUSD to put the result of wikipedia loves word heritage onto 
WIkidata. And  also our community is working better then ever and seeing 
regularly new editor (but we still have a problem of too few new ones)


So here there is no scandal being known and what is happening around SF 
is not reported or known her in our media


Anders






On 3/1/16, David Cuenca Tudela  wrote:

Hi David,

you say that "A large number of these persons are paid editors / PR -SEO
"consultants" who have worked themselves up to positions of administrators".
Although there is no clear evidence, there is a lot of mistrust and
suspicion about "paid editing". Since people need to make a living, they
find a way to market their skills, sometimes honestly and other times
dishonestly. Not everybody can combine a job and take positions of
responsibility in the movement without burning out after a while.

However you come to say that the WMF should "purge all rogue editors" and I
consider that it is wrong to consider the WMF as the police of the site. It
is right to have assistance in legal matters when the community requests
it, but it would compromise the autonomy of the movement if the wmf would
take an interventionist role. It would do more damage than good >>
https://xkcd.com/1217/

I do advocate for an evolution in the culture of the community, but that
cannot come from external sources, it has to come from volunteers
themselves taking more responsibility, increasing the partnership with the
professional arm of the movement, and creating in the process more trust to
take appropriate action - and there is never a solid definition of what it
constitutes.

When I started the tread I mentioned other volunteership models (like WOOF,
or workaway) that could help create more trust. It is unclear if it could
work for us, or if it would be scalable, but given the state of the
movement perhaps it doesn't hurt so much to try new things and see how it
goes.

Cheers,
Micru


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What should happen next? My 5 ideas

2016-02-26 Thread Anders Wennersten


Or perhaps a key problem is the recruitment process to the Board .

Fort the community elected seats, wanted criteria were identified by the 
Board and clearly communicated (non-western, non English speakers) but 
was in practice ignores by the voters and where 3 out of the five 
getting most votes were US-based. This could be fixed with a more active 
election committee, who could either give a go/nogo for candidates or 
any way give a clear feedback of the nominated candidates in how well 
they fit into.


For the chapters based seats the original intention was to enable 
excellent candidates to turn up if less well known by the community in 
general. In practice though the process favours the well known 
candidates. Also here a more active election committee could make a 
difference.


Anders












Den 2016-02-27 kl. 03:17, skrev Risker:

No, I think we've actually done a very superficial identification of the
problems.  Some of them are so obvious that they are overwhelming the less
obvious but equally serious issues.

Honestly, "we need a new board" is probably not an issue. 40% of the board
has been seated for less than a year, and another seat is empty and
awaiting someone who probably won't have been a WMF board member before.
Two more seats are currently being contested.  It is entirely conceivable
that by the time we get to Wikimania we will only have two people with more
than 14 months' experience on the board.  No, "new board" isn't an issue,
despite how many people keep saying it is; transfer of information at the
hand-off last Wikimania probably was an issue, and new board member
orientation definitely was (and is).  The issues with the appointment of
one of the "board selected" members recently was at least partly because,
as I understand it, there has never been a written process for how to vet
potential board members for most of the things we all assumed board members
were screened for. WHile I'll be the first to admit I rolled my eyes too,
I'm hard-pressed to openly condemn a bunch of people who'd never done a
task before for not getting it perfectly right.  (Note that even the WMF
staffer assigned to assist in the vetting, Boryana Dineva, had been an
employee for only a few days when handed the assignment, knowing almost
nothing about the community, the organization, the board, or even what to
look for when vetting a potential board member.)

So, "let's restructure the board" is a wish-list item. The structure of the
board wasn't a root cause.  The processes of the board, including the
orientation process, and the lack of documentation or clarity of the
process, were much closer to root causes here.

That's just one example.

Risker/Anne



On 26 February 2016 at 21:04, Pete Forsyth  wrote:


Risker and Brion:

I very much agree with the principles you're stating, and am coming to
realize I should have framed my message differently. There has actually
been quite a lot of discussion of what the problems are, and I am basing my
suggestions on the ones that I've personally seen a lot of attention to.
Namely (as I stated, in part, above):
* It might take a very long time to get a new ED, which would be bad
* We might get an ED who does not effectively absorb information and values
from staff and community
* Appointing an interim ED in a hurry (one month) might not bring us
somebody who's best for the long term
* Funders (both institutions and individuals) might be skeptical about
giving, due to recent issues
* On Point #6, a great deal of work has already been done on identifying
problems here, and I look forward to seeing more synthesis etc. on wiki:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_transparency_gap

There is, I agree, much more work to be done in identifying and clarifying
further problems we should be looking to address. But from what I've read
and heard, there seems to be some pretty strong consensus around the
problems I've identified above; and ideally, I would have stated that out
in an intro to my message. If there is *disagreement* on those issues, I
think it would be good to hear it.

Along with you, I welcome further deliberation of what the problems are
that should be solved, and if I suggested otherwise I regret giving that
impression.

I strongly hope and believe, though, that the Board is already working to
address the subset of rather obvious problems that is at least similar to
what I listed above. Those problems need to be addressed quickly, and I
believe it's best if various stakeholders in the Wikimedia vision -- not
just the 9 members of the Board -- weigh in on the best way to address
them. If there is a consensus that we shouldn't do that here in public, I
can take it off this list; but speaking for myself, I'd like to see some
public deliberation and consensus-building about more immediate steps,
rather than a bunch of individual efforts to lobby the Board.

I don't intend any of this to be a total solution. Regarding

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Katy Love to direct WMF Resources team

2016-02-25 Thread Anders Wennersten

Very glad to see this. Congrats to you Katy, you are already doing a 
excellent and impressive job and you will do even more of this in this 
new posititon


I am happy also to read of some genuine good news coming out of the 
challanging times that we just have been through


Anders



Den 2016-02-26 kl. 00:02, skrev Maggie Dennis:

Hello, all.

I am delighted to announce that Katy Love has agreed to step into the role
of Director of Resources in the Community Engagement department, picking up
the baton so ably carried by Siko Bouterse before her. Katy has been with
the Wikimedia Foundation since January 2013, beginning as the first program
officer to work with the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC). I’m grateful
to her for moving into this role and am looking forward to collaborating
with her closely in WMF’s Community Engagement department.

We will be hiring her replacement to oversee the FDC/full annual plan
grants program in the weeks ahead.

Best regards,

Maggie

P.S. Their page! https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

2016-02-20 Thread Anders Wennersten

Reading an following this thread makes me feel profoundly sad. And the 
symptoms indicates for me that there is indeed  something "rotten" going on.


I feel deep sympathy for staff whose pain is seems to go very deep, and 
I would really want to help out to to ease the problems if it was in my 
capability.


But there is as Risker puts it a deep information asymmetry in this thread.

I am sitting far away from the SF office and have no direct contact with 
staff and even if I read of the pain, I do not catch any concrete facts 
what it is all about. The handling of Knowledge engine has not been 
good, but it can be remedied. The Board is not optimal and perfect, but 
the members are clever and loyal to our mission and I have no reason to 
doubt that they will take care of things on their "table", even if 
somewhat slower pace then people would want.


And even if I feel and sympathize with the frustration of staff I would 
like to ask the inputs to this thread to be more factual and also show 
the respect of each others as we are used to in our daily Wikipedia 
dialogues.


Anders
With sympathy and love to all involved in this crisis







Den 2016-02-21 kl. 04:58, skrev Oliver Keyes:

Just staff and former staff? Huh. You must be reading
wikimedia-that-doesn't-include-liam-fae-former-board-members-or-almost-anyone-else-l.
What's it like there?

To Risker's point; "don't beat up on people who have less information
than you" is a good principle. But so is "don't call people
incompetent when the alternative is that you're missing something".
Speaking as both a volunteer and staff, Anthony, I have found your
attitude in this conversation and others on the subject to be deeply
unproductive. It would be good if you spent more time asking questions
and less time dismissing people's concerns.

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 9:39 PM, Anthony Cole  wrote:

Ah, Brandon. Thanks for writing me off as "the folks at Wikipediocracy."
I'm also the folks at en.Wikipedia and the folks on the board of
WikiProject Med Foundation. And I give a shit about Wikipedia.

This push for the removal of the ED is coming from staff. And failed staff.
If you want support from the wider editor community, you'll need to bring
us with you. I'm making it clear to you that presently you haven't done
that yet. Maybe you don't need to.



On Sunday, 21 February 2016, Brandon Harris  wrote:


 Danny, don't kid yourself!  The folks at Wikipediocracy know
everything about everything that's happened at the Foundation and about
everything that will EVER happen.  They've never been wrong, ever!

 I don't understand why we're still talking about this!



On Feb 20, 2016, at 5:29 PM, Danny Horn > wrote:

You know, it's possible that the people who work for the Foundation might
understand the situation in a more nuanced way than you do. I know it
doesn't seem likely, but dare to dream.

---
Brandon Harris :: bhar...@gaijin.com  :: made of steel wool
and whiskey




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[Wikimedia-l] Simple English please! was The conversation is happening elsewhere :(

2016-02-17 Thread Anders Wennersten

I second this opinion, please remember we are many not having English as 
our mother language


Also besides being all lost in the discussion of Knight grant 
application, I do not understand a word from the poem of Yates, neither 
do I understand the meaning of Aspen grove


Please, please go back to simple English in this list to enable many to 
take part


Andes

Den 2016-02-17 kl. 09:57, skrev Andrea Zanni:

Thanks Asaf,
I didn't know about that group.

May I also mention that the conversation is also becoming *exhausting*,
being in English and at very high level?
I know we can't do nothing about it, but it's worth noting, IMHO, that the
more we go on the fewer people with incredible stamina, analytic skills and
English proficiency will follow and engage.
Not really inclusive for Wikimedia.
I, for one, find it very hard to follow everything and participate.

Aubrey


On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 2:02 AM, Adam Wight  wrote:


Thanks for the note!  Fwiw, I can't read that without a login.  Feel free
to urge the owners to make the thread public, if base crook even supports
such a thing.
On Feb 16, 2016 4:47 PM, "Asaf Bartov"  wrote:


Dear colleagues,

These are difficult and confusing times.  Many of you are puzzled or
receiving partial and possibly contradictory bits and pieces of news.

As a service to the community, I feel I must point out that significantly
more conversation is taking place -- for whatever reason -- on the

(public)

Wikipedia Weekly facebook group[1].

Without endorsing that choice of venue (the issues with Facebook are

fairly

well-known), it does appear that if you want significantly more
information, you should head on over there and read through the last

couple

of weeks' posts. (much information is in the comments)

(if you are inspired to collect and preserve useful information from

there

on Meta, that would be best.)

In solidarity,

Asaf

[1] https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/

--
 Asaf Bartov
 Wikimedia Foundation 

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
https://donate.wikimedia.org
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting formula was Appointment of María Sefidari to Wikimedia Foundation Board

2016-01-30 Thread Anders Wennersten

My personal analysis comes to the conclusion that the voting 
formula/voting system needs to be redesigned before next election. The 
current one has serious flaws related to the oppose option. It is both 
open to "smart" voting (manipulation) and it also gives undue weight to 
the oppose option.


There are several ways a redesign can be done, from keeping the SNO but 
with a modified formula to changing it to one of the options Chris 
mention or others.


With the set up of a standing committee there will be ample time to work 
with this issue before next election. And I expect it will be done with 
involving the community on lists and meta


Anders

Den 2016-01-30 kl. 10:00, skrev Chris Keating:

It would be good if the voting system was built to give a clear next best
option in these circumstances.

Simple positive voting,  single transferable vote, and proportional Schulze
would all do that.

I wonder if there's any movement on the idea of a standing election
committee to consider now how the next community election will be set up?

Chris
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