Re: [Wikimedia-l] crazy deletionists!
I think that is a very dismissive misreading of the discussion. Some people have it in their heads that appears in reliable sources equates to article-worthiness, but the problem here is that the doings of celebrities is covered in excruciating detial by the media, including what tey eat, the clothes they wear, and so on. Same for some politicians, such as every Thanksgiving some poor sod gets to stand outside the White House gate and breathlessly report what is on the President's table, or at XMas the reports of what the First Family bought each other. Reliably sourced? Yes. Encyclopedic worthiness of White House Thanksgiving 2009 Dinner Table ? None at all. I guess anything that people are interested in is our guideline; however those who are interested it are going to have to write, and monitor, most of this stuff themselves. It can be interesting. I remember a TV show about Queen Elizabeth's kitchen; fascinating, in a way... Actually, White House cuisine is an issue; prime rib, real prime rib, is readily available to the White House; eating a lot of that, a favorite of Nixon, will clog up blood circulation to the brain. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike
Try http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/10/russian-wikipedia-shut-down-protest?INTCMP=SRCH It is quite possible, as in China, political censorship is the actual purpose, and pornography, and whatever, is just the excuse. Fred On 11/07/12 09:40, Milos Rancic wrote: Yep, I forgot it. BTW, note the comments below RIA Novosti news on Russian Wikipedia strike [1]. That baseline fluctuates a lot :) [1] http://en.ria.ru/society/20120710/174509543.html By the way, Western media are spinning this to be an anti-Putin protest, see f.e. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/10/russian-wikipedia-shut-down-protest ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] In the News
Folks, if this has already been brought to the List, please excuse the repetition. If not, enjoy; http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/romneys-running-mate-some-say- wikipedia-holds-the-answer/?nl=usemc=edit_cn_20120810 Marc Riddell They probably got that out of Wikipedia, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney_presidential_campaign,_2012#Use_of_Wikipedia_for_divination Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] CNET News: Corruption in Wikiland? Paid PR scandal erupts at Wikipedia
Spotted this in my news feed, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57514677-93/corruption-in-wikiland-paid-pr-scandal-erupts-at-wikipedia/ sincerely, Kim Bruning http://untrikiwiki.com/ Max Klein's wiki editing business His blog response: http://untrikiwiki.com/explanation-to-allegations-of-misuse-of-position-and-paid-editing/ Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike
Well, the new law is now being considered for application to block YouTube in Russia. Make of that, what you will. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19648808 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] I have never understood anyone who thinks that showing contempt for the Prophet was a smart thing to do. Only great evil comes from it. Not great spiritual trouble or lightning bolts from God; I'm not superstitious, but simply a dirty mess that results in a great deal of damage to innocent people. That Muslims should grow up is a given, but so should everyone else. It is simply not possible for Russia to permit showing of such material nor for India, or possibly even France; it's inflammatory. Not publishing pictures of the Prophet and being reasonably respectful toward him is pretty much the first lesson anyone who hopes to have a decent relationship with Muslims is taught. Going out of your way to heap contempt on him is just stupid; unless making trouble is your purpose. I think any laws should be couched in terms of damaging foreign relations or inciting to riot. I'm not sure they would be unconstitutional even in the United States. When the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is reduced to begging a fundamentalist preacher in Florida to cool it, something is out of whack. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On 4 January 2013 13:03, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: With respect to welcoming and assisting new users on the English Wikipedia where there is a bewildering volume of varied activity by new and experienced users it might be helpful if we had a recent changes options that showed only edit by new editors with less than say 100 edits that could be monitored. Newbie helpers could then welcome, comment, compliment, or otherwise assist the new user. Obviously access to such a recent changes option by those looking for trouble could also be used in ways that would discourage the new user. Perhaps access could be limited to only flagged newbie helpers. How would we stop Twinkle/Huggle users from using such a feed as a shooting gallery? - d. That is covered above under Obviously access to such a recent changes option by those looking for trouble could also be used in ways that would discourage the new user. Access to that option would probably have to be limited to administrators or a new class of newbie helpers. I'm afraid the shooting gallery is already coded into Twinkle/Huggle. It is the use of that coding that is at issue. It could be used to encourage, reward and advise as well as to enforce. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
It would probably be easier to code and use Wikipedia the Game which had ingame commands such as view, edit, upload, discuss, search, etc which called http pages on Wikipedia than to add game features to wiki software. One could start with any mud coding with an appropriate license. Fred I've been playing on a MUD lately, http://www.alteraeon.com/ that has put considerable effort into getting new users started. MUDs, at least text-based ones, also suffer from failure to attract and engage new users. The first thing about a MUD that is simply not on a wiki is channels. On a MUD there will be a Newbie channel that experienced users monitor. Experienced users are expected to be helpful, offering encouragement and practical help to new users. A channel on a MUD is more or less an IRC channel incorporated into the software. It's real time. Another thing is that a user is logged on, and presumably engaged in the game. There is no need for that on a wiki. Anyway, a post on the newbie channel is seen by all others who are logged in and have activated that channel. This happens on a telnet terminal with a command line for input or a functional equivalent, called a client, a mud client. So something like an in-wiki IRC channel that new users would automatically be logged into along with experienced users might be helpful. The MUD I reference has both a MUD school where a presumably new user goes through the basic game moves and is instructed in them and, much more interesting and engaging, a complex Newbie zone where the new player faces an increasing complex series of challenges which successfully accomplish learning by doing. The coding on the particular MUD generously rewards every right move with experience, money, and other goodies. This is all very nanny and I doubt the average highly educated user who is a university professor or professional could accept being put to school in this manner in a compulsory way before being allowed to edit, but it could be available as an option. We could even have a practice wiki which was set up in this way as an option. Probably no one would use it though, I suppose, so whatever is done would probably have to be on the main site. It would be a sandbox, but a more active and monitored one, actually a set of practice articles in sandboxes. With respect to welcoming and assisting new users on the English Wikipedia where there is a bewildering volume of varied activity by new and experienced users it might be helpful if we had a recent changes options that showed only edit by new editors with less than say 100 edits that could be monitored. Newbie helpers could then welcome, comment, compliment, or otherwise assist the new user. Obviously access to such a recent changes option by those looking for trouble could also be used in ways that would discourage the new user. Perhaps access could be limited to only flagged newbie helpers. Fred Bauder ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
It's the worst kept secret in the world that you can hire people to decode your captchas -- http://decaptcha.biz/ for example. Better captchas don't work because you are competing against people and if people can't solve the captcha ... Middle name of Jimmy Wales has worked well for me. And middle name of Larry Sanger, and nickname of Jimmy Wales. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On 09/01/13 10:03, Kim Bruning wrote: On Wed, Jan 09, 2013 at 07:45:41AM +, David Gerard wrote: Right. So anyone in this thread going into detail about en:wp policies is actually not addressing this, and the problem is on a higher level? :-/ Back to the drawing board. That actually makes the problem a lot harder! (does mean we know where to start looking though) I am not sure that Facebook is the problem. http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=wikipedia,facebook does show that Facebook overtook Wikipedia sometime in 2007, but that happened relatively slowly. Having said that, there have been suggestions to introduce social networking features in Wikipedia. WikiLove is a step in that direction. So, what could be the next step? Befriend users and see their edits and new articles? Like edits and articles? We could have lists of friends. Although some would actually be enemies lists. 172 continues to edit under several names. If I wanted to spend all my time reversing his point of view edits a friends list with his socks on it would be useful. This nicely illustrates the problem that making the editing atmosphere better for some requires making it punishing for others. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
Socialization is usually best achieved through rewards rather than through punishments. The principle reward is a sense of achievement when good editing is done or good administrative work done. In the case of editing the reward, absent trouble, is instantaneous as your work is published. Fred Yes, of course - why didn't we think of that? Actually the lack of rules and lack of punishments means (meant) it was bloody hard to game the system. Now we have a calcified set of rules and an oligarchy, passive-aggressives have a field day. Rules-lawyers abound, polite requests to the oligarchy are met with insults about mind-set and other newspeak comments. Meanwhile the 99% of editors that just want to edit and the 95% of admins that just want to help the project are stymied at every turn, scared to get involved in the processes. A number of years ago the oligarchy destroyed hope (Esperanza) - now the Wikiquette noticeboard has gone. Power is increasingly in fewer and fewer hands, a significant number of whom have, over the years, and indeed recently, abused that power. The solution for social problems is socialisation. We have some great exponents of that art in Dennis Brown, Worm That Turned and several others. For those that won't be socialised, the solution is ostracism - or blocking as it is known. Provided this is used with caution on community members, and with no longer duration than necessary it is a good solution. On 04/01/2013 06:27, Tim Starling wrote: The solution for social problems is to have rules and a means to punish people who break them. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] COI versus OUTING
A not really hypothetical question: Let say one is the director of marketing at a 16 billion dollar company and decides to come to Wikipedia in an attempt to alter its coverage of one of your companies key products (which has been hit fairly hard lately by the evidence). One also invites 50 of your best friends (most of which are on your pay role to join you in this effort). Let say you are trying to do it anonymously but both you and your associates send out a whole bunch of intimidating emails to a long standing editor. Than this long standing editor without any real difficulty figures out who you are (as you sort of did email him). You than vanish from Wikipedia. What if this long standing editor decided to either hand the story over to the press or write something up for publication in a peer review journal as said editor does not stand for intimidation easily? And this long standing editor believes that the world / patients might be better off if this behavior become more widely known. How would the Wikimedia community apply the above two policies / guidelines (WP:COI and WP:OUTING)? -- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian Our prohibitions against outing of the personal information of other editors refers to on-wiki accusations and guesses. You can use that information freely with respect to private communications with administrators or the arbitration committee regarding socking and conflict of interest issues. On-wiki communications regarding conflict of interest editing is OK but should omit such personal information. If Wikipedia processes are ineffective in dealing with the problem, publication off-wiki, particularly in a peer-reviewed journal, is acceptable in my view as assuming power over an issue and information concerning it implies a responsibility to deal with it adequately. However, I hope you will attempt to use our processes before you do something that may be damaging to our public image. Please give us a chance. For one thing, if there are grounds, our checkuser crew can often ferret out sock puppets and where they originate; you would have to promptly, probably before any legal controversy is ripe or before a court, obtain a court order to get that information on your own if editing was done using an account name. A note regarding evidence that you might need in defending a possible libel action: edits containing personal identifying information may be deleted or suppressed under our policies and can be retrieved later only under the terms of a court order, so, obviously, get them before they are hidden. Fred Bauder ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] The Church of Reason
The primary goal of the Church of Reason, Phaedrus said, is always Socrates's old goal of truth, in its ever-changing forms, as it is revealed by the process of rationality. I'm sorry, but that ship sailed long ago. Wikipedia is compendium of information published in reliable sources. You need to go upstream if you want to address truth. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Lessig on Aaron's laws
Le 2013-03-11 11:45, Andrea Zanni a écrit : I feel obliged to remind you of this splendid talk from Lessig on Aaaron's Laws. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embeddedv=9HAw1i4gOU4 Here you can find the transcript (with slides and everything) http://www.correntewire.com/transcript_lawrence_lessig_on_aarons_laws_law_and_justice_in_a_digital_age For what is worth, I found the talk extremely clever and lucid and moving. I'm not ashamed to say that I cried more than once. I really, really encourage you to see it, all of it. Aubrey I can't watch it now, but I was just wondering if the talk was under a free license so we could upload it to wikicommons. kind regards, mathieu There is a link to a complete transcript with a CC copyright notice at the bottom. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Proposal to use the internal wiki more
On 3 April 2013 03:34, Michael Peel michael.p...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: So, rather than close the internal wiki, I'd like to propose a radical redesign and repurposing of it. Is there the interest and willingness in the WMF and the chapters to share such information with each other? I'd argue against this. From the perspective of the Wikimedia Foundation, I would rather staff bias towards putting information on public wikis wherever possible, and I'd worry that staff energy going into updating a closed private wiki would by necessity pull focus from public work. I'd argue for closing both the internal wiki and the internal mailing list: IMO there's nothing on either that needs to be confidential. Thanks, Sue Yes, our work needs to be pubic and accessible. Fred Bauder USA ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] French intelligency agency forces removal of a Wikipedia article
Hard to know what was involved from the information you provide. The problem is there is classified information that amounts to nothing and then there is classified information release of which can cause serious damage. Defiance will eventually result in serious trouble. Not that we should knuckle under to nonsense. Fred Hi there, I guess you might be interested to hear that Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur (Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence, DCRI), a French intelligence agency that reports directly to the Ministry of the Interior, has apparently forced a French Wikipedia administrator to delete an article that in their opinionâas I understand itârevelead classified information deemed very harmful to the French national defence (compromission du secret de la Défense nationale). Interestingly, they contacted the WMF legal team with a request to remove (delete? suppress?) this article a couple of weeks before that, but were refused after failing to provide further information on why the article should be removed (in the words of a Foundation legal counsel). Undounted by that, they approached the said administrator â who operates under his real name, so I guess it was pretty easy to track him â and asked him to delete this article, a request which he obliged. (The article has since been restored by a different administrator). As far as I understand, the version of the article they wanted to have deleted was https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=81104004. I guess that when an intelligence agency asks their citizen to remove information from Wikipedia citing the penal code (article 413-11 of the French penal code in this case), it is something worth sharing (no harm intended). Further reading in English: * https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prevoldid=91703508 * https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=91705235 -- Tomasz W. KozÅowski a.k.a. [[user:odder]] ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] French intelligency agency forces removal of a Wikipedia article
Typical. They were not willing to tell our legal counsel why or what was classified; she, of course, has no French security clearance; now it is spread all over an administrators noticeboard, and restored. They weren't wrong but neither is our legal counsel or the users; so fell between the cracks. Hopefully the matter was not too important; I'm sure we have enough money to pay for relocating the facility to a secure location. Fred This is where the discussion is happening on-wiki: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Bulletin_des_administrateurs#Secret_d.C3.A9fense On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 10:52 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Hard to know what was involved from the information you provide. The problem is there is classified information that amounts to nothing and then there is classified information release of which can cause serious damage. Defiance will eventually result in serious trouble. Not that we should knuckle under to nonsense. Fred Hi there, I guess you might be interested to hear that Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur (Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence, DCRI), a French intelligence agency that reports directly to the Ministry of the Interior, has apparently forced a French Wikipedia administrator to delete an article that in their opinionâas I understand itârevelead classified information deemed very harmful to the French national defence (compromission du secret de la Défense nationale). Interestingly, they contacted the WMF legal team with a request to remove (delete? suppress?) this article a couple of weeks before that, but were refused after failing to provide further information on why the article should be removed (in the words of a Foundation legal counsel). Undounted by that, they approached the said administrator â who operates under his real name, so I guess it was pretty easy to track him â and asked him to delete this article, a request which he obliged. (The article has since been restored by a different administrator). As far as I understand, the version of the article they wanted to have deleted was https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=81104004. I guess that when an intelligence agency asks their citizen to remove information from Wikipedia citing the penal code (article 413-11 of the French penal code in this case), it is something worth sharing (no harm intended). Further reading in English: * https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prevoldid=91703508 * https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=91705235 -- Tomasz W. KozÅowski a.k.a. [[user:odder]] ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Matthew Roth Global Communications Manager Wikimedia Foundation +1.415.839.6885 ext 6635 www.wikimediafoundation.org *https://donate.wikimedia.org* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] French intelligency agency forces removal of a Wikipedia article
Somehow it is important... Streisand effect writ large. Unless somehow it was just a mixup, or a deliberate attempt to put a false target forward. Fred This is seeming a little silly; it's just a big communications station. It's got huge radio towers and is very visible on the skyline for a distance. It's got a civilian radio/TV tower colocated with it. I can't see what would be sensitive in the article.. On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 12:12 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Typical. They were not willing to tell our legal counsel why or what was classified; she, of course, has no French security clearance; now it is spread all over an administrators noticeboard, and restored. They weren't wrong but neither is our legal counsel or the users; so fell between the cracks. Hopefully the matter was not too important; I'm sure we have enough money to pay for relocating the facility to a secure location. Fred This is where the discussion is happening on-wiki: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Bulletin_des_administrateurs#Secret_d.C3.A9fense On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 10:52 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Hard to know what was involved from the information you provide. The problem is there is classified information that amounts to nothing and then there is classified information release of which can cause serious damage. Defiance will eventually result in serious trouble. Not that we should knuckle under to nonsense. Fred Hi there, I guess you might be interested to hear that Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur (Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence, DCRI), a French intelligence agency that reports directly to the Ministry of the Interior, has apparently forced a French Wikipedia administrator to delete an article that in their opinionâas I understand itârevelead classified information deemed very harmful to the French national defence (compromission du secret de la Défense nationale). Interestingly, they contacted the WMF legal team with a request to remove (delete? suppress?) this article a couple of weeks before that, but were refused after failing to provide further information on why the article should be removed (in the words of a Foundation legal counsel). Undounted by that, they approached the said administrator â who operates under his real name, so I guess it was pretty easy to track him â and asked him to delete this article, a request which he obliged. (The article has since been restored by a different administrator). As far as I understand, the version of the article they wanted to have deleted was https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=81104004. I guess that when an intelligence agency asks their citizen to remove information from Wikipedia citing the penal code (article 413-11 of the French penal code in this case), it is something worth sharing (no harm intended). Further reading in English: * https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prevoldid=91703508 * https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=91705235 -- Tomasz W. KozÅowski a.k.a. [[user:odder]] ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Matthew Roth Global Communications Manager Wikimedia Foundation +1.415.839.6885 ext 6635 www.wikimediafoundation.org *https://donate.wikimedia.org* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] The value of Wikipedia for the economy
The value would be obvious if Wikipedia were a for profit company listed on the stock markets. Not that it would have a real value identical to a computation based on imagined advertising revenue. It is in the billions though. Fred Hi all, Last weekend we had a discussion about how to 'sell' the importance of Wikipedia to economics-focused people (a.k.a. politicians etc), and the question came up on how much Wikipedia contributes to the global economy. Many people access it daily, and the information they get from that might help them to run businesses, be more efficient etc. Third world countries (and maybe even the rest of the world) might have better educated people thanks to Wikipedia, which might make better and more efficient workers, higher literacy and cheaper university educations. Has there been any scientific (or other) research on the effect Wikipedia has (or had) on the world economy, or even the economy of a specific country/region? There are some numbers what Wikipedia would be 'worth' if it were a commercial company, but that is not what I'm looking for. What is Wikipedia worth to society, the way it currently runs. Alternatively, are there similar studies to other knowledge compendiums, or even 'the internet'? Thanks for any pointers! Lodewijk ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] The value of Wikipedia for the economy
Don't worry. Any one who has thought about this sort of thing much has come away more puzzled than when they began. What for example is the value of a cigarette? The price is rather easy. Fred (sorry, this came off a bit too sharp :) Thanks for all the input, anything is better than nothing of course!) 2013/4/8 Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org However, those numbers are not exactly what I'm looking for. I do not want to know what it would be worth as a company, or how much people are willing to pay for it. But how big is the impact? How much positive value does Wikipedia add to the world economy? I hope this number is significantly higher than what people would be willing to donate (although it would give a far low minimum). 2013/4/8 Anders Wennersten m...@anderswennersten.se In preparation of the strategic planning a few years ago, we at the Audi committee made some calculation to estimate the theoretical potential of donation from different perspectives, like what other NGO got. We then come to the standpoint that the potential was several times that of 2009-2010 donations. We have now already doubled that amount, and perhaps we are getting closer to the theoretical potential, but this gives the estimate of a potential donation of something between 50-200 MUSD. And the benefit must surely be a few times of the potential donations, So a rough estimate of benefit based on this reasoning would be in the magnitude of 100-500 MUSD/year Anders Andrew Gray skrev 2013-04-08 14:36: The Economist had an estimate recently: http://www.economist.com/news/**finance-and-economics/** 21573091-how-quantify-gains-**internet-has-brought-** consumers-net-benefitshttp://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21573091-how-quantify-gains-internet-has-brought-consumers-net-benefits http://www.economist.com/**blogs/freeexchange/2013/03/**technology-2http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/03/technology-2 - of approximately $50m value to readers. It's a pretty vague estimate, but it's an interesting start. Andrew. On 8 April 2013 13:28, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org wrote: Hi all, Last weekend we had a discussion about how to 'sell' the importance of Wikipedia to economics-focused people (a.k.a. politicians etc), and the question came up on how much Wikipedia contributes to the global economy. Many people access it daily, and the information they get from that might help them to run businesses, be more efficient etc. Third world countries (and maybe even the rest of the world) might have better educated people thanks to Wikipedia, which might make better and more efficient workers, higher literacy and cheaper university educations. Has there been any scientific (or other) research on the effect Wikipedia has (or had) on the world economy, or even the economy of a specific country/region? There are some numbers what Wikipedia would be 'worth' if it were a commercial company, but that is not what I'm looking for. What is Wikipedia worth to society, the way it currently runs. Alternatively, are there similar studies to other knowledge compendiums, or even 'the internet'? Thanks for any pointers! Lodewijk __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] French intelligency agency forces removal of a Wikipedia article
No, some information which is classified is also contained within reliable published sources available to the public and we use that information in our articles, along with occasional original research which may due to good guesses also contain such information. There are not two separate worlds of reliable classified information and reliable unclassified information; they overlap. For example, if Mongolia purchases MIG aircraft that will result in an intelligence bulletin; but also there may be an AP story. The summary of classified information about the planes Mongolia has may have an inferior, but more or less accurate, Wikipedia counterpart article about the Mongolian air force, which if copied to the Intelligence wiki looks like it contains secret information, which, presumably the full file on Mongolian armed forces probably is. Fred In other words, the problem was people were uploading Wikipedia articles which the government thought included classified information? And because the pages were already public uploaders assumed they were unclassified, but because the government is nuts, they were wrong. On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 3:06 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 3:32 PM, Romaine Wiki romaine_w...@yahoo.com wrote: On Fri, 5 Apr 2013 12:31:29, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: I can't see what would be sensitive in the article.. I think that the existence of the article is considered too sensitive for them, not realizing that all information is already elsewhere on the internet. A couple of years ago, the guy in charge of the CIA's internal MediaWiki (the Intelligence Wiki, which they added classification levels etc) did a talk at ... Usenix? LISA? One of their conferences. He was talking about challenges. The code certification was interesting. The Wiki project getting in trouble for having (US classified) Secret, Top Secret, or Top Secret SCI (Secure Compartmented Information) in the Open-unclassified category *due to Wikipedia uploads/imports* was apparently a major ongoing pain point for the whole organization. Fortunately not one that was being exposed to the public, other than his talk... -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] French intelligency agency forces removal of a Wikipedia article
Weapons design is obvious; however much intelligence is about rather ordinary military capability and deployment. We seem to be doing poorly, from the intelligence standpoint responsibly, regarding laser weapons, the next big thing I don't think much has been published in public reliable sources, although it showed up today in the NYT. Fred. On 8 April 2013 20:06, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: He was talking about challenges. The code certification was interesting. The Wiki project getting in trouble for having (US classified) Secret, Top Secret, or Top Secret SCI (Secure Compartmented Information) in the Open-unclassified category *due to Wikipedia uploads/imports* was apparently a major ongoing pain point for the whole organization. I have to say, this is a delightful image :-) We had some problems in the past on enwiki with this officially secret situation - well-meaning military personnel trying to remove information from articles citing operational security reasons, even when the information was definitionally public. Strictly speaking, had *they* told us the information, they could perhaps have been breaching operational security; the problem came from not connecting that to the realisation that not everyone was bound by their specific security restrictions. (I forget the precise pages - a map of military zones in Iraq was involved in one, and I've also seen someone try and remove mention of where US divisions were based in Germany, which was perhaps a bit like trying to hide the proverbial elephant...) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] The case for supporting open source machine translation
This is closely tied to software which is being developed, some of it secretly, to enable machines to understand and use language. As of now this will be government and corporate owned and controlled. I say closely tied because that is how translation works; only someone or something that understands language can translate perfectly. That said, crude translations into little used languages are nearly worthless due to syntax issues. Useful work requires at least one person fluent in the language. Fred Could open source MT be such a strategic investment? I don't know, but I'd like to at least raise the question. I think the alternative will be, for the foreseeable future, to accept that this piece of technology will be proprietary, and to rely on goodwill for any integration that concerns Wikimedia. Not the worst outcome, but also not the best one. Are there open source MT efforts that are close enough to merit scrutiny? In order to be able to provide high quality result, you would need not only a motivated, well-intentioned group of people, but some of the smartest people in the field working on it. I doubt we could more than kickstart an effort, but perhaps financial backing at significant scale could at least help a non-profit, open source effort to develop enough critical mass to go somewhere. All best, Erik [1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/animations/growth/AnimationProjectsGrowthWp.html [2] https://developers.google.com/translate/v2/pricing -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation Wikipedia and our other projects reach more than 500 million people every month. The world population is estimated to be 7 billion. Still a long way to go. Support us. Join us. Share: https://wikimediafoundation.org/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Human-assisted machine translation (it was: The case for supporting open source machine translation)
All European languages, with the exception of Basque, are essentially one language with different vocabulary. MT should generally work, but needs help as the example shows. The big, and perhaps insurmountable, problem comes with trying to use it with say, Hopi, which assigns meanings in a wholly different way. Fred Ha, I just met a good example of a text you may hardly translate with MT means. Look at this text which come from [1]: The term manifold comes from German Mannigfaltigkeit, by Riemann. In Romance languages, this is translated as variety â such spaces with a differentiable structure are called analytic varieties, while spaces with an algebraic structure are called algebraic varieties. In English, manifold refers to spaces with a differentiable or topological structure, while variety refers to spaces with an algebraic structure, as in algebraic varieties. This is a good example because cleary in German you obviously won't say that Mannigfaltigkeit come from the German Mannigfaltigkeit. Also if you translate it to a Romance language like French you won't formulate this paragraph in the same way. Well, it doesn't add more to what I already said, but it probably give a more concrete example of MT limits. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_manifolds_and_varieties ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in blacklist trouble again
On 9 May 2013 12:19, Anthony Cole ahcole...@gmail.com wrote: In your hypothetical case of Russian only being spoken in one country that censors how to smoke marijuana information: If you insist on leaving a paragraph on how to make a bong in the Russian-language Marijuana smoking article, then the article won't be accessible to 140,000,000 people; if you remove that paragraph (and any others that are censored), the article, and its information about psychosis, respiratory effects, geographic distribution, history, correlation with tobacco smoking, gateway to harder drugs hypothesis, etc. will be available to 140,000,000 people. The problem is that in the real world it doesn't stop there. States that have found it easy to censor you once will continue doing so. Today its about drugs tomorrow its Kirill I of Moscow's watch day after that its anything critical of Putin. Since this is Russia I expect coverage of the issue of homosexuality could get interesting. -- geni The Russian government censors historically and can be expected to do so in the future. A dryer iteration of the marijuana article, omitting how to grow and smoke as well as how wonderful dope is, will probably pass. Remember, assume good faith? It is easy enough to work around, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is not censored. I don't think the slippery slope is all that slippery. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in blacklist trouble again
On 05/09/2013 07:19 AM, Anthony Cole wrote: We would be failing in our mission to disseminate educational information effectively and globally if, due to an ideological attachment to NOTCENSORED, we took the former option. You're saying this as though those things were orthogonal to each other. They are not. When we bow to random entities' wishes of what is correct educational information, you've already fatally compromised that mission. Should we remove the articles about Tibet from zhwp so that the PRC is more accepting of Wikipedia? -- Coren / Marc No, but including accurate information about the conditions of life of the serfs and slaves of old Tibet, and the ridiculous superstitions of the lamas will go a long way toward lifting blocking of those pages. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in blacklist trouble again
I've also done a great deal of editing of Tibetan articles. I wish there was a way to transport you back in time to old Tibet. Fred Highlighting the fact that such an old hand was making a rookie-like mistake was actually, y'know, the point. From: dger...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 20:42:06 +0100 To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in blacklist trouble again On 9 May 2013 20:34, Tarc Meridian t...@hotmail.com wrote: What a terribly ill-informed comment. This is something one sees regularly in new editors, Fred's been on Wikipedia since it was wikipedia.com, so you may wish to reread his comment in that light. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
Florence, I agree with you almost completely, but I would also note that it is also partially about the user's thought processes and business norms that determine how fast it is. My employer, for instance, has a wiki that's meant to be a collaborative resource where disparate elements from across the (several thousands of persons with access) organization can quickly iterate on a document the same way we make revisions to our wikis. In practice, however, we are so accustomed to a high level waterfall style process as you describe, with a primary author and several interested parties clearing the copy, it completely loses any benefit of the process and becomes no different to me than a Sharepoint site with slightly better UI. -Dan Dan Rosenthal We have a few waterfall editors on Wikipedia too, and they are a repeated source of trouble, as they are likely to defend strongly against collaborative changes. Patience is a premise for dealing successfully with any group dynamic, Napoleon and Alexander the Great not withstanding. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
We could create a Facebook page, Wikipedia Chill, where only positive interactions are permitted... Only half joking here. We can consciously design interactions in terms of their emotional tenor should we chose to. In an example taken from life, we can keep vicious dogs for the effect they have on the possibility of constructive dialogue and collaboration, or not. Fred I just wanted to add another thought to this, which occurred to me on the bus in to work this morning. There is an insight from a school of psychotherapy called Transactional Analysis* that, while all of us have a basic need to interact with one another, that need is fulfilled as much by negative interactions as positive ones. If positive interactions are lacking (which they often are, because we are socially conditioned to avoid providing positive interactions unless there is a good reason), then negative interactions will substitute for them because they fulfill the same psychological need, just in a much more dysfunctional way. I wouldn't recommend this as rigorously-proven scientific analysis but I've often been surprised by how true it can be. Perhaps when email lists are quiet we should simply praise each other more? ;-) *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 8:31 AM, Chris Keating chriskeatingw...@gmail.comwrote: Thank you Michael for the thoughtful post! I very much agree. I read somewhere (don't ask me for a citation!) that the physiological effects of anger - increased levels of adrenalin and cortisol, high heart rate, and the like - take about 30 minutes to return to normal after something happens that makes you angry. Back in the day if you received a letter that made you angry, you would have several hours to write an immediate response, which would then probably take several more hours to reach its recipient, who would probably respond the next day... plenty of time for the physical reaction of anger to subside. Email, usenet, PhPBB, wikis and the like means there is a technological method of ensuring that responses can be written and shared instantly (and angrily) and, indeed, in heated threads you can quite happily exchange messages which provoke an emotional response quickly enough that your flight-or-fight reflex is being triggered repeatedly over a period of hours with every ping of your inbox. So basically; yes, I agree. Regards, Chris On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 7:45 AM, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.comwrote: I originally wrote this message last year on a nonpublic list. It seemed to be well received, and some people asked me to share it publicly, but I didn't get around to it then. I think this would be a good time to share it here now. It is not specifically directed at recent issues here, but I think it does have some relevance. (I have some thoughts more directly related to those matters as well, which I hope to share when I have time to write them down. That might not happen until late Friday, which is probably not the best time for it, but based on recent history perhaps I can still hope some people will be reading then.) Internet technology is known for letting things happen much faster than they did before we were all so connected. This speed now seems normal to us and, being immersed in that culture, we have come to expect it. Wikis, as one aspect of that culture, have the feature of making that speed a personal tool - you can make something happen right away. How many of us got involved because we saw a mistake and figuratively couldn't wait to fix it? And when we discovered that we literally didn't have to wait, we were hooked. One result of this is a culture that caters to impatience, sometimes even rewards it. And that's why we are often tempted to think that being irritable is a way of getting things done. We imagine: this problem should be instantly solved, my idea can be implemented right away, I will be immediately informed about whatever I care about. But as our culture grows in scale, none of that remains true (and perhaps, we get more irritated as a result). I wish I could say that because it's a matter of scale, technology will take care of things because that's how we handle scaling. However, the issue is not about whether the technology will scale, but whether the culture will scale. On a cultural level, scaling issues are not handled by technology alone. They are handled by establishing shared values (be bold, but also wait for consensus), by agreeing upon standard procedures (which provide important protections when designed well, but also introduce delays), and by dividing up responsibilities (which requires that we trust others). That last bit is critical; people have repeatedly suggested a certain mistrust underlies the repeated flareups. Well, the reason that mistrust has grown so much is because we are often impatient, and
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
I agree that patience is a very important virtue in some situations, such as when we coach newbies or seek consensus among many people. But it's sometimes not a virtue, such as in many crisis situations. As a metrics and performance enthusiast, I feel that it's possible to have an appropriate mix of patience and impatience, and people should be appropriately accountable for their performance. Pine Fine, so long as people don't make emergencies out of things that could very well be carefully considered and decided. We are not [plug in name of political idiot]. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] evaluation of electronics articles
I think that is a pretty good analysis of the entire project. It is directly related to lack of editorial control and the impossibility of being able to assign writers to problem areas. Fred I ran across this paragraph in the preface to O'Reilly's new book Encyclopedia of Electronic Components. [1] I'm not sure that I've ever seen an evaluation of Wikipedia's electronics coverage before, but to me this sounds like a pretty good description of a lot of our engineering articles (at least in English)... Wikipediaâs coverage of electronics is impressive but inconsistent. Some entries are elementary, while others are extremely technical. Some are shallow, while others are deep. Some are well organized, while others run off into obscure topics that may have interested one of the contributors but are of little practical value to most readers. Many topics are distributed over multiple entries, forcing you to hunt through several URLs. Overall, Wikipedia tends to be good if you want theory, but not-so-good if you want hands-on practicality. -- phoebe 1. http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920026105.do -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at gmail.com * ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Somebody Will
Also, classic Marxism. Draw your own conclusions and parallels as you see fit. Oh, didn't know if anyone else would see that: http://en.communpedia.org/Lyrics:Somebody_Will Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Somebody Will
By the way, is there a license attached to this song, or is it bare copyright? Copyright Sassafrass As it is a song there are special rules for commercial performances, like if you cover it. Cover means sing a song you did no write yourself like on a recording. Fred On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 8:17 AM, Sumana Harihareswara suma...@wikimedia.orgwrote: Cynics, skip this message! http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/songs/sci-fi-fantasy-fandom/somebody-will/ I came across this sentimental song about a world of encouragement and productivity, in which everyone is encouraged to create, support and work toward ideals and it reminded me of our shared mission, so I wanted to share it with you. -Sumana ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Association Culture-Libre http://www.culture-libre.org/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
All edits and other actions are archived, but I would think there would be zero interest or utility to NSA. I would simply ignore the matter. Fred This is a simple question with a potentially very complicated answer. What, if any, are the implications of the PRISM scandal for Wikimedia? Does the fact that our servers are based in the US now compromise our mission either in a technical, privacy or an ethical sense? - Liam / Wittylama -- wittylama.com Peace, love metadata ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
Everything passing over the internet is archived. Nearly everything done at Wikipedia passes over the internet. Fred My understanding is that PRISM focused on private electronic communication. I can't see a situation where we would be concerned by that. But some official statement could help put at ease people worries :) -- Christophe On 10 June 2013 03:34, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: All edits and other actions are archived, but I would think there would be zero interest or utility to NSA. I would simply ignore the matter. Fred This is a simple question with a potentially very complicated answer. What, if any, are the implications of the PRISM scandal for Wikimedia? Does the fact that our servers are based in the US now compromise our mission either in a technical, privacy or an ethical sense? - Liam / Wittylama -- wittylama.com Peace, love metadata ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
There is plenty of reason to think the government would be interested in Wikipedia access logs. On the other hand, there's very little reason to believe an organization when they say they haven't been turning over information under a top secret order which they're not allowed to tell anyone about. Correct. If Osama Bin Laden had been editing Wikipedia, before his death of course, through some account in Pakistan, it would have been rather reasonable to respond favorable to a request for information. But plenty of reason to think the government would be interested in Wikipedia access logs No, massive amounts of information about people doing ordinary things like editing articles about Homer Simpson is kind of the opposite of intelligence; it IS the haystack, not the needle. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 6:10 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Everything passing over the internet is archived. Nearly everything done at Wikipedia passes over the internet. Encrypted, if you're using https everywhere (and Wikipedia hasn't intentionally or unintentionally compromised their certificate). But simple encryption that NSA can break at will. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
They tap directly into the internet backbone. Only if there is some particular matter which interests them which they would need our help to decipher would they contact the Foundation. There are a few things out there that I can imagine them being interested in, but very few. For example, there are small groups of people in the United States that support The Shining Path or the Naxalites. Active steps to open a military front in the United States would probably kick them into gear and they might be interested in who edited our articles on these subjects as advocates for that tendency. Fred If the NSA, CIA, or some other spook agency is getting information off of Wikimedia servers, they don't have a CU account or anything like that. They'd have a program running at the operating system level that extracts the data in a standardised format and sends it off to some secret server somewhere where it can be collated for data mining purposes. If they have some way of getting private information, it's going to be well hidden and not something you or I are likely to (or capable of) stumbling across. Cheers, Craig On 10 June 2013 20:09, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 June 2013 10:56, Florence Devouard anthe...@yahoo.com wrote: Precisely, they could ask to have CU accounts... There are people who closely monitor who has what powers. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
You are right, Anthony, never assume you're not dealing with idiots. If NSA is doing doing detailed surveillance of Tea Party activists or defense lawyers we are truly well along the road to hell. Fred On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 6:21 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Correct. If Osama Bin Laden had been editing Wikipedia, before his death of course, through some account in Pakistan, it would have been rather reasonable to respond favorable to a request for information. But plenty of reason to think the government would be interested in Wikipedia access logs No, massive amounts of information about people doing ordinary things like editing articles about Homer Simpson is kind of the opposite of intelligence; it IS the haystack, not the needle. And yet, PRISM is exactly about collecting the full haystack. And it makes sense, if you ignore the privacy implications: Collect everything in your multi-zetabyte storage device, even if you aren't going to analyze it right away. And yeah, editing articles about Homer Simpson is one thing. Editing articles about the Tea Party, on the other hand... Fred, you used to be a lawyer. How would you like the government to have access to all the Wikipedia searches (and google searches which linked to Wikipedia) done from your office? Might that not compromise your ability to defend alleged criminals? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
National Security Letters have been served on Libraries. However, as we keep no track whatever off who is reading the site; it is hard to see how serving one on us would accomplish anything; we can't produce records we don't keep. I suppose a secret court order could be applied for which would require us to log readers and searchers, but that would be kind of dumb and unproductive. Fred On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 6:33 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: Wikipedia is not a top traffic website from people editing. 99% of the traffic is reading/searching. Yes, and I as I pointed to the email written by Domas, that those logs don't exist. We know that people's Google searches have been used against them in court. I'm not aware of any cases where Wikipedia searches have been used. But I can't imagine why they'd be any different. Because one is a search engine and the other is an encyclopedia. If someone was researching ways to make explosives or looking for child pornography, those are grounds to incriminate. Wikipedia on the other hand is an encyclopedia. There is nothing illegal about going in to a library and looking at a physical encyclopedia, nor should there be about Wikipedia. Regards Theo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
It would be good *if* the WMF can provide assurances to editors that they havent received any national security letters or other 'trawling' requests from any U.S. agency. If the WMF has received zero such requests, can the WMF say that? There wouldn't be any gag order. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter says that the gag orders were struck down, pending appeal. That means we may have to wait a while.. -- John Vandenberg I know a college librarian who used to be in Naval Intelligence. He swore up and down that should his library received such a request that he would not honor it. There is a lot of blowback to this sort of stuff not only by librarians but by people with intelligence experience. It seems very unlikely we would have received one, not only because of it being useless, but also because of the very high probability that our outlaw organization would almost certainly disclose it. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
Forwarded to legal at wikimedia.org Fred I think the key here is not to keep more information about users than necessary. Of course, there is the question of if the NSA asks for our checkuser data. I am relatively confident of WMF's honesty here. They have been pretty concerned about user privacy in general (I am sure that there is some WMF privacy mishap that happened at some point, but I am judging by my overall sense of the organization, make of it what you will. I think it would be a good idea for the WMF legal department to make a statement (which means I need to remember what mailing list legal is, it's not a burden but I am a lazy, lazy man) We have occasionally made mistakes, but all checkuser requests are logged; fishing expeditions are not allowed. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
They tap directly into the internet backbone. Only if there is some particular matter which interests them which they would need our help to decipher would they contact the Foundation. There are a few things out there that I can imagine them being interested in, but very few. For example, there are small groups of people in the United States that support The Shining Path or the Naxalites. Active steps to open a military front in the United States would probably kick them into gear and they might be interested in who edited our articles on these subjects as advocates for that tendency. Fred If the NSA, CIA, or some other spook agency is getting information off of Wikimedia servers, they don't have a CU account or anything like that. They'd have a program running at the operating system level that extracts the data in a standardised format and sends it off to some secret server somewhere where it can be collated for data mining purposes. If they have some way of getting private information, it's going to be well hidden and not something you or I are likely to (or capable of) stumbling across. Cheers, Craig On 10 June 2013 20:09, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 June 2013 10:56, Florence Devouard anthe...@yahoo.com wrote: Precisely, they could ask to have CU accounts... There are people who closely monitor who has what powers. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
David Gerard wrote: On 10 June 2013 18:01, Rand McRanderson therands...@gmail.com wrote: I think the key here is not to keep more information about users than necessary. In particular - at present. as I understand it, we don't keep full access logs, just 1/1000 samples. We need to not keep full access logs. I'm not sure about access log retention. I know what used to be true (that we didn't and frankly couldn't keep full access logs), but I'm not sure what the current situation is. Related to this, however, is a broader point about hiding versus deleting information. We, as a community, have gotten into a pattern of hiding (suppressing) information in our databases rather than simply removing it outright. This has advantages (chiefly reversibility), but the practice of sweeping information under the rug rather than taking out the trash can, and inevitably will, cause issues. Truly problematic usernames, edits, and logs really ought to be deleted, not simply suppressed, in my opinion. This has come up in the context of database dumps and database replication. We're basically asking for this information to one day be leaked by retaining it indefinitely (including usernames that out individuals, CheckUser logs, content buried inside page histories, etc.). MZMcBride It is much better to be able to monitor oversighters than to completely remove the miniscule portion of suppressed material intelligence agencies might have an interest in. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
Le 2013-06-10 14:29, Craig Franklin a écrit : If the NSA, CIA, or some other spook agency is getting information off of Wikimedia servers, they don't have a CU account or anything like that. They'd have a program running at the operating system level that extracts the data in a standardised format and sends it off to some secret server somewhere where it can be collated for data mining purposes. If they have some way of getting private information, it's going to be well hidden and not something you or I are likely to (or capable of) stumbling across. People wherever they work are humans. They never use supranatural powers that are fundamentally innaccessible to the mere mortal because they are mere mortal. Sure one person can hardly expect to achieve more than a structured organisation with far much ressources. It doesn't mean individuals which are not part of one sepcific organisation are powerless. There will always be humans maintaining the system who must, in order to do their work, have potential access to everything. We have them here in our developers who have access to our databases. This was the niche Snowden filled and why he had access to so much he was not authorized to access. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Some Unanswered Questions
We can guess, of course, and some of us are very good guessers, but here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=5-basic-unknowns-nsa-black-hole-prism Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
Le 2013-06-11 14:09, Fred Bauder a écrit : There will always be humans maintaining the system who must, in order to do their work, have potential access to everything. A potential access to everything is a so vast and vague assertion that it practicaly denote nothing. Also, one could come with the exact opposite assertion, full of always/never nothing/everything. We hack network backbones like huge internet routers, basically that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/12/edward-snowden-us-extradition-fight Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
Fred Bauder, 12/06/2013 22:47: We hack network backbones  like huge internet routers, basically  that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/12/edward-snowden-us-extradition-fight Time for some additional encryption at least between different parts of the infrastructure perhaps? Nemo My impression is that NSA has set up a sort of mirror internet; presumably they would simply incorporate additional encryption into that. In any event we do want to have easy world wide communication, not necessarily all heavily encrypted. More than anything else, we need to get the wolves out of the hen house; if billions are being spend on signals intelligence maybe its time to negotiate an end to the cyberwar. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
I would like to raise the option of a more Wikipedia-like protest. How about, on the English Wikipedia, picking one day to make the Main Page topic-specific, similar to the traditional April 1 selection? Candidates, off the top of my hat: [[NSA]] / [[Black Chamber]] [[PRISM (surveillance program)]] [[Panopticon]] [[Surveillance state]] / [[Mass surveillance]] [[1984]] [[Surveillance abuse]] The articles are (of course!:-) NPOV, but the topic selection could be POV to raise awareness of the issue. This is good, but I fear it would soon expand into banners denouncing fracking and Monsanto. Somehow we would have to achieve and maintain a posture which rejects nihilism, no values, without embracing the cause of the day. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 3:33 PM, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.ukwrote: PRISM From @ShammaBoyarin on Twitter: Its not as if the NSA were mass downloading articles from JSTOR. Certainly if the evidence showed that the NSA were breaking into wiring closets and hacking into computer networks this would be a much different story. (Yes, you can speculate that they're probably doing this too, but this particular scandal is the NSA getting information from computer networks with the permission of the computer owners, not despite the owners actively trying to keep them out.) Actually, there is a small attached CIA unit to do just that. The story is a bit bigger than what The Guardian has published so far. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
On Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.netwrote: (Yes, you can speculate that they're probably doing this too, but this particular scandal is the NSA getting information from computer networks with the permission of the computer owners, not despite the owners actively trying to keep them out.) Actually, there is a small attached CIA unit to do just that. The story is a bit bigger than what The Guardian has published so far. Did you read what I said? Yes, you can speculate that that's what they're doing. But that's not what was published. The fact of the matter is that there would be a much bigger uproar if the NSA were caught doing what Aaron Swartz did, on American soil against an innocent American company. If NSA were caught breaking into wiring closets and hacking into computer networks, the 4th Amendment violation would be way more obvious and incontrovertible. Within the United States the FBI, has the authority, in appropriate cases, with a warrant, to engage in such activity. If there was a valid finding by a Federal District Court judge that the was a valid reason it would not be a 4th amendment violation. There is more than one source, not just what happens to be on the front page this week. Additionally, we are not bound by the canon of generally accepted knowledge in our discussions. That is our rule for encyclopedia articles, not our rules for thinking. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] PRISM, government surveillance, and Wikimedia: Request for community feedback
The reporting in the UK is that it is aimed at 'foreigners'. I think that is us! Of course that may be for domestic US consumption. Yes, the thing is, we are an international organization, and, frankly, we don't vet people politically before they can create an account or edit. Our trust system is based on their behavior here, not what else they may be doing in their life. It is inevitable that from time to time we may be in communication with people that are out of favor with the United States government. However, I think that is so rare that neither American intelligence services nor us should waste much time on it. There is a vanishingly small chance that a request might be directed to us. I doubt expending hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting such a request is the best use of our money, but consensus may be different. It is pretty cheap putting on a brave face when there is little actual danger. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Tapping into the Backbone
Can you please stop spamming Us With topics like this? Its not Wikimedia related at all. Huib It is related. There was a question as to whether edits and other activity on Wikipedia were being swept up. Obviously they are. Whether activities of interest to intelligence agencies are logged or ever used or how is another matter. Fred Op zaterdag 22 juni 2013 schreef Fred Bauder (fredb...@fairpoint.net) het volgende: The GCHQ mass tapping operation has been built up over five years by attaching intercept probes to transatlantic fibre-optic cables where they land on British shores carrying data to western Europe from telephone exchanges and internet servers in north America. This was done under secret agreements with commercial companies, described in one document as intercept partners. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Met vriendelijke groet, Huib Laurens ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Tapping into the Backbone
In our earlier discussion about PRISM. Whether the intelligence agencies could, if they felt it within their remit, access edits and other actions, and, of course, passwords. Obviously they can easily if they are not encrypted. Common sense, on the other hand will inform you that nothing we do would be of interest to an intelligence agencies focused on actual threats. Fred Where is that question in this topic? Huib Op zaterdag 22 juni 2013 schreef Fred Bauder (fredb...@fairpoint.net) het volgende: Can you please stop spamming Us With topics like this? Its not Wikimedia related at all. Huib It is related. There was a question as to whether edits and other activity on Wikipedia were being swept up. Obviously they are. Whether activities of interest to intelligence agencies are logged or ever used or how is another matter. Fred Op zaterdag 22 juni 2013 schreef Fred Bauder (fredb...@fairpoint.netjavascript:;) het volgende: The GCHQ mass tapping operation has been built up over five years by attaching intercept probes to transatlantic fibre-optic cables where they land on British shores carrying data to western Europe from telephone exchanges and internet servers in north America. This was done under secret agreements with commercial companies, described in one document as intercept partners. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; javascript:; Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Met vriendelijke groet, Huib Laurens ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Met vriendelijke groet, Huib Laurens ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [tangential] Why voting is evil
Rick Falkvinge has been writing a book, Swarmwise, on how the Pirate Party organised. He's been posting it a chapter at a time to his blog. You know how Wikipedia/Wikimedia has (or had) the meme that voting is evil? This sets out why. http://falkvinge.net/2013/07/01/swarmwise-the-tactical-manual-to-changing-the-world-chapter-six/ tl;dr: voting creates winners and losers, and losers are unhappy and disengage. - d. And what is the difference when any Wikipedian with good sense avoids participation in any policy discussion unless there is massive consensus. Practical experience with anarchic decision-making shows that aggressive idiots rule. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in trouble /yet/ again
I don't get it. I was able to use a Wikipedia link to find a place to download The Searchers, a John Ford film starring John Wayne in about 30 seconds. How is that not theft that we are facilitating? Fred Hi there, two months after the smoking cannabis controversy, the Russian Wikipedia is in trouble again, this time over an anti-piracy legislation that will come into force on August 1 and which might result in Wikipedia as a whole -- not just a few articles -- being blacklisted in the country. The Russian parliament introduced anti-drug and anti-child pornography legislation last year, and it's already successfully used to censor encyclopaedic articles, so I guess it's time for more radical steps now; the new law might lead to banning websites that just /link/ to sites which hold content copyrighted by others. RIA Novosti has more information on the subject: http://en.ria.ru/russia/20130709/182150416/Russian-Wikipedia-Faces-Ban-Due-to-Anti-Piracy-Law--Director.html I'm CC-ing the advocacy advisors mailing list because this lies within their area of expertise; when responding to this e-mail, please make sure to include both lists. -- Tomasz ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in trouble /yet/ again
On 07/09/2013 08:37 PM, Fred Bauder wrote: How is that not theft that we are facilitating? Because theft, is to deprive, temporarily or absolutely, the owner of it, or a person who has a special property or interest in it, of the thing or of his property or interest in it. In some jurisdiction, linking to sites that play fast and loose with Copyright /may/, in certain circumstances, be facilitating copyright infringement. It certainly isn't theft. (I am not saying the latter is okay -- but that calling copyright infringement theft is inflammatory rhetoric and intellectually dishonest, at best). -- Marc Interesting notion that plain talk is inflammatory and dishonest. How is deliberate copyright infringement is not theft? Why are we the pirates' little helpers? Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in trouble /yet/ again
On 9 July 2013 23:46, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Well, not wanting to wade into that pirates' little helpers snarkiness, but it takes 30 seconds from anywhere on the web to find a copyright violation. Maybe a bit longer if you have a slow connection. Risker True enough, but why are we one of the ways? Fred I've not had that experience on English Wikipedia, although I've never tried it on other projects. Now, I can easily take just about any link anywhere on the web and find a copyvio within 2-3 clicks, and I'm pretty sure that would be true for links on Wikipedia too. I suppose we could always ban external links, but I think it would be counterproductive for our projects and mission, and it wouldn't solve anyone's copyright issues. But please don't conflate links directly from Wikipedia to copyright violations (which is, I believe, expressly forbidden on all of our projects) and being able to get to copyright violations from links in Wikipedia. The only way to prevent the latter is to ban all external links. Risker I guess I view sites which host entertainment, as opposed to material which contains knowledge, as different. So music or a movie seems different from a newspaper article or a passage from a book which, at least in my mind, seems more like fair use, but not, of course, how fair use is actually defined by the courts. So The Searchers, which is not entirely void of information, however distorted, seems very different from a copied newspaper article which might also imagine Monument Valley was in Texas. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in trouble /yet/ again
- Original Message - From: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2013 4:36 AM Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in trouble /yet/ again On 07/09/2013 08:37 PM, Fred Bauder wrote: How is that not theft that we are facilitating? Because theft, is to deprive, temporarily or absolutely, the owner of it, or a person who has a special property or interest in it, of the thing or of his property or interest in it. In some jurisdiction, linking to sites that play fast and loose with Copyright /may/, in certain circumstances, be facilitating copyright infringement. It certainly isn't theft. (I am not saying the latter is okay -- but that calling copyright infringement theft is inflammatory rhetoric and intellectually dishonest, at best). -- Marc Interesting notion that plain talk is inflammatory and dishonest. How is deliberate copyright infringement is not theft? Why are we the pirates' little helpers? Fred I'm tired of having this argument in uk.legal, and I don't want to go through it all again here. The essence of theft is that property belonging to another is appropriated, i.e. the rights of the owner have been assumed by someone else. In the case of a copyright, however many illicit copies are made, the copyright remains intact and it would be illogical to say otherwise, because then there would come a number of copies beyond which the copyright would cease to exist, which is not the case. And that's without arguing the point of whether it is possible to form an intention to permanently deprive the owner of his copyright when doing so is in fact and in law impossible. If you post a creative work on a website the purpose which is to share files you have assumed the rights of the owner, one of which is to determine the conditions which must be met to view or listen to the work. The owner can give his work away to the world but not third parties. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in trouble /yet/ again
If you post a creative work on a website the purpose which is to share files you have assumed the rights of the owner, one of which is to determine the conditions which must be met to view or listen to the work. The owner can give his work away to the world but not third parties. Fred What are you saying has been stolen here? The work itself, the copy of it, or the copyright in the work? There are serious problems in trying to bend the law of theft to any of them. It is easiest to analyze if the work has never been published. Distributing it then is a taking of intellectual property regardless of whether the original is physically taken or only a copy. The theft is of the possible gain lost. Actually, rather like claim jumping. It is not the ore that is lost but the right to mine it and profit from it. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] The soft underbelly of the WP: the sponsored private fiefdoms that thrive in the blind spots
I just checked the archives. The original message was not received by the mailing list, for whatever reason, probably misaddressed. This message of inquiry is the first message in the tread. I think you should resend the original message if your mail program permits that. Sounds interesting... Fred I've have my setting on receive copy of own emails, but did not receive this email that I sent out. Can someone please confirm? Regards, On 22 July 2013 18:02, Rui Correia correia@gmail.com wrote: Dear All It is certainly not news that a lot of deliberately biased editing goes on on the Wikipedia. It is equally known that there are mechanims to address these issues. But that is where the problem lies - those intent on skewing information know all the tricks and loopholes, whereas neutral editors who pass by to add something they came across are not so clued up. Most editors that get reverted just move on and don't bother. This leads to the 'ownsership' syndrome, with editors shooing away anybody that adds anuthing they don't like. The bigger problem, is when these editors who act as if they 'own' certain articles are actually either being paid to do so or are actually lomked to an organisation with particilar interests in the page(s). A case in point, the other day I was looking for images of mosquitos sucking blood and and came across blatant pornography on Flickr. I added a few lines about pornography on Flickr and because it was reverted (I admit the edit was not sterling worsmithing) it made me look into the history of the page. That there are two or three editors who automatically revert anything negative is obvious. Less obvious is that one of these editors was 'dormant' for a year-and-a-half, then suddenly came out of hibernation 2 months ago to exclusively counter any anti-Flickr edits and add pro-Flickr edits - about 75 edits in 2 months. And one or 2 sanitsing the page of Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo!, (which owns Flickr). Another has practically admitted to having some kind of association with Flickr (there is plenty in Flickr-related debates on user pages to prove that there is indeed a sinsiter and unhealthy relationship. The two or three work in a concerted manner, even replying on behalf of each other, which makes suspect the presence of sockpuppets or similar. There is also a high-school student among the reverters. Things are now at a point that they are making rules, 'agreeing' with those against them on the maximum length of a section of a Flickr controversy. No such limitations on any other (positive) aspect of the article. They have have 'agreed' that a number of Huffington Post comments on Flickr must not be included - it is not a relaible source, apparently.. This would not have bothered me were it not for the fact that the Flickr article is of an adequate size, with lots of good information on it and most of it quite complimentary. It is worrying that a few lines of bad press should so annoy people that they are on stand-by to revert at whatever hour of day or night. The mechanisms that the Wikipedia has created to improve the project play into the hands of people like these - features such as the watchlist. Within minutes of a change, it gets reverted. Sometimes an editor will persist for a while, but eventually walks off and goes edit elsewhere. Which is odd, because if there are mechanisms for redress, why not use them? Unfortunately, in my experience, whenever anything is put up for arbitration, the first ones on the scene include the very editors involved or others whom they trust who get tipped off about the issue as soon as it develops. It is this that is tarnishing the name of the Wikipedia and driving away good editors. I use Flickr as an example, but is it not the firwst time that I have come across this type of behaviour. And so, tiny cliques and coteries flourish like fiefdoms in the blind spots of the mechanisms created to ensure that we all strive for the same principes. What is worse, there are big players behind this all. In an age when the so-called 'big media' is already overwhelmingly in the service of 'big business', we owe to ourselves to keep them out of the WP. Regards, Rui Correia. -- _ Rui Correia Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186 Número de Telemóvel na Ãfrica do Sul +27 74 425 4186 ___ -- _ Rui Correia Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186 Número de Telemóvel na Ãfrica do Sul +27 74 425 4186 ___ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
Re: [Wikimedia-l] The soft underbelly of the WP: the sponsored private fiefdoms that thrive in the blind spots
I just checked the archives. The original message was not received by the mailing list, for whatever reason, probably misaddressed. This message of inquiry is the first message in the tread. I think you should resend the original message if your mail program permits that. Sounds interesting... Wait, I lied. Here it is: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-July/127077.html I don't know if I received it, as I delete almost all messages. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] Resend: The soft underbelly of the WP: the sponsored private fiefdoms that thrive in the blind spots
Resent so I have an original copy to reply to. Dear All It is certainly not news that a lot of deliberately biased editing goes on on the Wikipedia. It is equally known that there are mechanims to address these issues. But that is where the problem lies - those intent on skewing information know all the tricks and loopholes, whereas neutral editors who pass by to add something they came across are not so clued up. Most editors that get reverted just move on and don't bother. This leads to the 'ownsership' syndrome, with editors shooing away anybody that adds anuthing they don't like. The bigger problem, is when these editors who act as if they 'own' certain articles are actually either being paid to do so or are actually lomked to an organisation with particilar interests in the page(s). A case in point, the other day I was looking for images of mosquitos sucking blood and and came across blatant pornography on Flickr. I added a few lines about pornography on Flickr and because it was reverted (I admit the edit was not sterling worsmithing) it made me look into the history of the page. That there are two or three editors who automatically revert anything negative is obvious. Less obvious is that one of these editors was 'dormant' for a year-and-a-half, then suddenly came out of hibernation 2 months ago to exclusively counter any anti-Flickr edits and add pro-Flickr edits - about 75 edits in 2 months. And one or 2 sanitsing the page of Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo!, (which owns Flickr). Another has practically admitted to having some kind of association with Flickr (there is plenty in Flickr-related debates on user pages to prove that there is indeed a sinsiter and unhealthy relationship. The two or three work in a concerted manner, even replying on behalf of each other, which makes suspect the presence of sockpuppets or similar. There is also a high-school student among the reverters. Things are now at a point that they are making rules, 'agreeing' with those against them on the maximum length of a section of a Flickr controversy. No such limitations on any other (positive) aspect of the article. They have have 'agreed' that a number of Huffington Post comments on Flickr must not be included - it is not a relaible source, apparently.. This would not have bothered me were it not for the fact that the Flickr article is of an adequate size, with lots of good information on it and most of it quite complimentary. It is worrying that a few lines of bad press should so annoy people that they are on stand-by to revert at whatever hour of day or night. The mechanisms that the Wikipedia has created to improve the project play into the hands of people like these - features such as the watchlist. Within minutes of a change, it gets reverted. Sometimes an editor will persist for a while, but eventually walks off and goes edit elsewhere. Which is odd, because if there are mechanisms for redress, why not use them? Unfortunately, in my experience, whenever anything is put up for arbitration, the first ones on the scene include the very editors involved or others whom they trust who get tipped off about the issue as soon as it develops. It is this that is tarnishing the name of the Wikipedia and driving away good editors. I use Flickr as an example, but is it not the firwst time that I have come across this type of behaviour. And so, tiny cliques and coteries flourish like fiefdoms in the blind spots of the mechanisms created to ensure that we all strive for the same principes. What is worse, there are big players behind this all. In an age when the so-called 'big media' is already overwhelmingly in the service of 'big business', we owe to ourselves to keep them out of the WP. Regards, Rui Correia. -- _ Rui Correia Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186 Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resend: The soft underbelly of the WP: the sponsored private fiefdoms that thrive in the blind spots
I use Flickr as an example, but is it not the firwst time that I have come across this type of behaviour. And so, tiny cliques and coteries flourish like fiefdoms in the blind spots of the mechanisms created to ensure that we all strive for the same principes. What is worse, there are big players behind this all. In an age when the so-called 'big media' is already overwhelmingly in the service of 'big business', we owe to ourselves to keep them out of the WP. Regards, Rui Correia. Well, it is hardly the first time any of us of have encountered possible conflict of interest. For example, there is no article on Wikipedia with the title processed food. Try to create one and watch and learn... All I can say is that we do our best in a difficult environment. Corporations, political movements, and nation states, have substantial budgets and talent is out there for the hiring. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resend: The soft underbelly of the WP: the sponsored private fiefdoms that thrive in the blind spots
A case in point, the other day I was looking for images of mosquitos sucking blood and and came across blatant pornography on Flickr. I added a few lines about pornography on Flickr and because it was reverted Rui Correia. The Flickr images you linked to, if it was you, were the sort one pays for... on a pornography site. Not good to post the links. The question is whether there is information about these sorts of images on Flickr published in a reliable source. I don't know the answer to that question. Here is the deal: Wikipedia is not an independent search for truth and repository of the results. It is a compendium of information published in reasonably reliable sources. A summary of generally accepted human knowledge. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resend: The soft underbelly of the WP: the sponsored private fiefdoms that thrive in the blind spots
It is this that is tarnishing the name of the Wikipedia and driving away good editors. Rui Correia. When the going gets tough the tough get going. They don't throw their hands up, vainly protest, then give up. Possible conflict of interest is a legitimate concern; however, it is not a simple straightforward matter. Particular editors with troublesome editing patterns can have multiple motives, and sometimes are simply editing in good faith. You're welcome to hang in there and fully participate in both editing and discussing possible conflict of interest, just as you are welcome to handle nitro provided you follow the rules. I assume you have not been blocked yet. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] The soft underbelly of the WP: the sponsored private fiefdoms that thrive in the blind spots
On 07/23/2013 02:03 PM, Todd Allen wrote: I don't think such a proposal would be hopeless on en. How did dewiki circumvent the difficulties regarding attribution and role accounts? Last I checked, our terms of use prohibit password sharing, and IIRC Mike Godwin (legal counsel at the time) stated there were some serious issues with the idea of contributions not being credited to an individual. -- Marc The corporation, or whatever, itself would have to sign off legally. It would have to control access to the account. It could hire a public relations firm if that were part of our deal with them. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] The soft underbelly of the WP: the sponsored private fiefdoms that thrive in the blind spots
Thanks Andreas Iit didn't cross my mind that you would actually go and check - at the time the search terms were in Portuguese, so you will probably find different results - If I find the original pic I will send it to you. But more importantly, the porn on Flickr is a secondary issue - the intent of my email was to draw attention to the possibility of corporate control of the information, which you have already addressed. I saw something about CHECKUSER, and that special procedures must be followed to 'out' such people - or reveal possible sockpuppet or one-purpose accounts. I'll look into those and let you know. Best regards, Rui Checkuser is done only when it seems someone is creating multiple accounts and abusing them in some way. In instances of concerted conflict of interest editing it doesn't really matter whether there is one person, many, or a group or firm behind the edits. They are treated as socks because of their manner of editing, not because of technical proof of identity. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] Progress...
As with other inventions that produced an inferior product at a much lower price, from the printing press to the steam-driven loom to Wikipedia, what happens now is largely in the hands of the people experimenting with the new tools, rather than defending themselves from them. http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/07/08/moocs-and-economic-reality/ Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Progress...
On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 1:48 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: As with other inventions that produced an inferior product at a much lower price, from the printing press to the steam-driven loom to Wikipedia, what happens now is largely in the hands of the people experimenting with the new tools, rather than defending themselves from them. http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/07/08/moocs-and-economic-reality/ Fred Those bloody kids and their newfangled inventions like the steam loom and the printing press just don't have any respect any more. I seriously have no idea what that paragraph is trying to say. A teaching moment... if not a learning one. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Progress...
Hoi, Sorry Fred, I do not like your post. The quote has it wrong because research shows that it is factually wrong. Wikipedia has a better coverage at a superior quality to the encyclopaedia that went before. The only thing I can agree with is that it is available at a much lower cost; it is the cost of having access to the Internet. As a consequence why should I read it ? Thanks, GerardM If systemic biased editing is not considered your statement would be true. However, one of the side effects of our volunteeristic methods is that systemic bias resulting from editing by groups and interests with numberless agendas is inevitable; not that Britannica was without certain systemic biases. Wikipedia does not have good editorial control and can never have it. Gresham's law is at work; no printed book has the beauty and quality of the Lindisfarne Gospels; nothing made on a machine loom compares remotely with Navajo weaving. Fred On 26 July 2013 13:48, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: As with other inventions that produced an inferior product at a much lower price, from the printing press to the steam-driven loom to Wikipedia, what happens now is largely in the hands of the people experimenting with the new tools, rather than defending themselves from them. http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/07/08/moocs-and-economic-reality/ Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and talk about VisualEditor
On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 11:13 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: de:wp convinced you. What would it take to convince you on en:wp? (I'm asking for a clear objective criterion here. If you can only offer a subjective one, please explain how de:wp convinced you when en:wp hasn't.) [Speaking personally, not for the VE team in any way.] Why should a consensus of any arbitrary number of power editors be allowed to define the defaults for all editors, including anonymous and newly-registered people? Anonymous edits make up about 1/3 of enwiki edits, IIRC. Every day, 3,000-5,000 new accounts are registered on English Wikipedia. These people are not even being asked to participate in these RFCs. Even if they were, they typically don't know how to participate and find it very intimidating. This system of gauging the success of VE is heavily biased toward the concerns of people most likely to dislike change in the software and frankly, to not really need VE in its current state. That doesn't mean they're wrong, just that they don't speak for everyone's perspective. The sad fact is that the people who stand to benefit the most from continued use and improvements to VE can't participate in an RFC about it, in part because of wikitext's complexities and annoyances. It is a huge failure of the consensus process and the Wikimedia movement if we pretend that it's truly open, fair, and inclusive to make a decision about VE this way. In WMF design and development, we work our butts off trying to do research, design, and data analysis that guides us toward building for _all_ the stakeholders in a feature. We're not perfect at it by a long shot, but I don't see a good faith effort by English and German Wikipedians running these RFCs to solicit and consider the opinions of the huge number of new/anonymous editors. And why should they? That's not their job, they just want to express their frustration and be listened to. To answer David's question: I think we need a benchmark for making VE opt-in again that legitimately represents the needs of _all the people_ who stand to benefit from continuing the rapid pace of bug fixing and feature additions. I don't think an on-wiki RFC is it. Steven Let me confess, I hate all new things. I hate the constantly changing complicated wiki markup and I hate the new editor, cause I don't know how to work it even if it would be simpler if I were starting from scratch. The point was to design an editor that would be better for casual and new editors; I have nothing whatever to add from my own experience because I can't duplicate from my experience that of a casual or new editor. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] NSA
See attachment. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data Fred___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA
See attachment. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data the NSA has created a multi-tiered system that allows analysts to store interesting content in other databases, such as one named Pinwale which can store material for up to five years. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA
Look at the attached image. Fred Hmmm, the word wiki isn't named anywhere. On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:43 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: Apparently Wikipedia was or is one of the targeted websites. Risker On 31 July 2013 15:42, Huib Laurens sterke...@gmail.com wrote: How is this related to the foundation? On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:22 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: See attachment. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Met vriendelijke groet, Huib Laurens ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Met vriendelijke groet, Huib Laurens ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA
I think it's more reasonable to assume that Wikipedia (which shares many features with Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and other social networks) has been the subject of this kind of demand than that it hasn't. No one with direct knowledge would be able to do anything other than deny it, but we can easily see why data held by Wikipedia (including partially anonymized e-mails, file uploads, talk page communication, etc.) would be of interest to intelligence agencies. The capacity of the Wikimedia Foundation to keep a secret of this nature is law. Simply too many outlaws; something NSA could probably figure out; they are not called intelligence for nothing. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA
I think it's more reasonable to assume that Wikipedia (which shares many features with Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and other social networks) has been the subject of this kind of demand than that it hasn't. No one with direct knowledge would be able to do anything other than deny it, but we can easily see why data held by Wikipedia (including partially anonymized e-mails, file uploads, talk page communication, etc.) would be of interest to intelligence agencies. The capacity of the Wikimedia Foundation to keep a secret of this nature is low. Simply too many outlaws; something NSA could probably figure out; they are not called intelligence for nothing. Fred Changed law to low ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia
Dear Colleagues at the Foundation I just came across an artecle called White Africans of European ancestry. What is that even supposed to mean? Who would be any other white people if not of Europen ancestry? The Ainu people, not that it matters. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Block evasion might be a federal offense
http://feedly.com/k/14WeLcY I wish I was grossly misrepresenting the situation here. If I am, please do set me straight. You're not wrong, but getting the attention of a federal prosecutor would be easier for jaywalking in a National Park. It applies only to extreme situations. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Block evasion might be a federal offense
On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 4:09 AM, Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 9:37 AM, Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoeks...@gmail.com wrote: On Aug 21, 2013 8:56 AM, Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com wrote: The account and/or underlying IP is blocked. That is the technical impediment. The action that is now a federal offense, it seems, is to defy the warning, by circumventing the block by changing IP and/or account to do what you were told not to do on the warning. Technicalities aside if I follow you right then it is a federal offense to edit Wikipedia when you were told not to (eg. banned but _not_ blocked). If that's the case the IP part of the discussion is mainly irrelevant as one does not have to evade a block to violate the ban. The central issue though, that it seems block evasion is a federal offense, is not affected by the difficulty in proving evidence for it. It is the question whether the evasion is a crime that bothers me. [insert meetoo here] g This is actually incorrect, as were some of your comments about the irrelevance of IP blocks in your prior post. Have a look at some of the links I posted earlier in the thread, I think the issues should become more clear. To FT2's comments - it's not actually true that the IP ban, or a cease and desist, have to be specific to a person. In fact in the linked case, they are blanket to a company. I see no particular reason why the same reasoning can't be applied to a school, or a church. A geographic area is probably harder to support. Additionally, we generally give warnings, and block accounts. For the most egregious harassment, the only instances I can see this ever coming into play for Wikimedia, virtually every perpetrator has a long history of blocked user accounts. I think that makes the debate over the personally identifying nature of IPs irrelevant for this discussion. Although I don't think it rose to the level that a federal court would take it seriously the Scientology socks are an example. There, ips were usually irrelevant as was the individual identity of users; although we knew a few. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] A Survey on Science Reporting
If you write or add to articles based on journal articles you might complete this survey: https://lsucommunications.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_0PTVlA7OUCLqkyV Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia and the politics of encryption
Any censor from the United States or European governments that works directly with us (I have no personal knowledge of this, I just know it has to be) is concerned with classified information, not someone's opinions or factual information about historical events or political personalities. Detailed information about construction of advanced nuclear weapons or the details of military or intelligence operations cannot be on Wikipedia just as child pornography cannot be; on the other hand, a distorted, or devastatingly accurate picture, of the Iraq War, or Obama, can be. So, while the details of material removed for legitimate security reasons cannot be published; in China the identity and any personal information we have gathered such as the ip address of an editor and the content of their edits to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 article would be of interest to the security apparatus and classified. Any local employee or volunteer of ours who shared that information with others even within our organization could be prosecuted. It is quite impossible to work with the Chinese government in the manner suggested and maintain a scintilla of integrity. A request by them to remove details about their advanced nuclear weapons or specific details of their military deployments would, of course, be legitimate. The Chinese government has legitimate reason to avoid extensive public attention to past errors and disasters; one has only to look at the history of the Soviet Union to observe the effect of focusing on past outrages on public morale, but that is their burden to bear not ours to share. Fred Hoi, Fred, what is different in your scenario from what happens in the USA ? Thanks, GerardM On 3 September 2013 00:23, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: On 31/08/13 15:17, Erik Moeller wrote: It could be argued that itââ¬â¢s time to draw a line in the sand - if youââ¬â¢re prohibiting the use of encryption, youââ¬â¢re effectively not part of the web. Youââ¬â¢re subverting basic web technologies. China is not prohibiting encryption. They're prohibiting specific instances of encryption which facilitate circumvention of censorship. So, what to do? My main suggestion is to organize a broad request for comments and input on possible paths forward. OK, well there's one fairly obvious solution which hasn't been proposed or discussed. It would allow the end-to-end encryption and would allow us to stay as popular in China as we are now. We could open a data centre in China, send frontend requests from clients in China to that data centre, and comply with local censorship and surveillance as required to continue such operation. It would be kind of like the cooperation we give to the US government at the moment, except specific to readers in China instead of imposed on everyone in the world. It would allow WMF to monitor censorship and surveillance by being in the request loop. It would give WMF greater influence over local policy, because our staff would be in direct contact with their staff. We would be able to deliver clear error messages in place of censored content, instead of a connection reset. -- Tim Starling Their orders would be classified; disclosure of them would be a crime. Not a problem for us, but a big problem for staff on the ground in China. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia and the politics of encryption
And from that assertion what practical action or policy should follow? Fred Fred, Sorry, there is no us. As far as the United States is concerned they allowed themselves to spy on any person who is not one of US to be speid on. Given that our movement is a global movement, the fact that it is based in the US is incidental. Thanks, GerardM On 3 September 2013 14:36, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Any censor from the United States or European governments that works directly with us (I have no personal knowledge of this, I just know it has to be) is concerned with classified information, not someone's opinions or factual information about historical events or political personalities. Detailed information about construction of advanced nuclear weapons or the details of military or intelligence operations cannot be on Wikipedia just as child pornography cannot be; on the other hand, a distorted, or devastatingly accurate picture, of the Iraq War, or Obama, can be. So, while the details of material removed for legitimate security reasons cannot be published; in China the identity and any personal information we have gathered such as the ip address of an editor and the content of their edits to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 article would be of interest to the security apparatus and classified. Any local employee or volunteer of ours who shared that information with others even within our organization could be prosecuted. It is quite impossible to work with the Chinese government in the manner suggested and maintain a scintilla of integrity. A request by them to remove details about their advanced nuclear weapons or specific details of their military deployments would, of course, be legitimate. The Chinese government has legitimate reason to avoid extensive public attention to past errors and disasters; one has only to look at the history of the Soviet Union to observe the effect of focusing on past outrages on public morale, but that is their burden to bear not ours to share. Fred Hoi, Fred, what is different in your scenario from what happens in the USA ? Thanks, GerardM On 3 September 2013 00:23, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: On 31/08/13 15:17, Erik Moeller wrote: It could be argued that itâââ‰â¢s time to draw a line in the sand - if youâââ‰â¢re prohibiting the use of encryption, youâââ‰â¢re effectively not part of the web. Youâââ‰â¢re subverting basic web technologies. China is not prohibiting encryption. They're prohibiting specific instances of encryption which facilitate circumvention of censorship. So, what to do? My main suggestion is to organize a broad request for comments and input on possible paths forward. OK, well there's one fairly obvious solution which hasn't been proposed or discussed. It would allow the end-to-end encryption and would allow us to stay as popular in China as we are now. We could open a data centre in China, send frontend requests from clients in China to that data centre, and comply with local censorship and surveillance as required to continue such operation. It would be kind of like the cooperation we give to the US government at the moment, except specific to readers in China instead of imposed on everyone in the world. It would allow WMF to monitor censorship and surveillance by being in the request loop. It would give WMF greater influence over local policy, because our staff would be in direct contact with their staff. We would be able to deliver clear error messages in place of censored content, instead of a connection reset. -- Tim Starling Their orders would be classified; disclosure of them would be a crime. Not a problem for us, but a big problem for staff on the ground in China. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia and the politics of encryption
I guess emergencies should not go to legal as there may be a considerable delay. Fred Are there more successful attempts? It would be difficult to enumerate successful attempts since, by definition, they would have been successful at not being known. :-) -- Marc I once suppressed information about a troop movement underway in Iraq after a request. Troop movements are explicitly mentioned in the Espionage Act. Such requests, and other requests regarding obviously illegal material, should go to legal at wikimedia.org or emergency at wikimedia.org at the Foundation rather than to User:Oversight, by the way. There is a whole bunch of people on the oversight committee none of whom are known to have security clearances. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia and the politics of encryption
Are there more successful attempts? It would be difficult to enumerate successful attempts since, by definition, they would have been successful at not being known. :-) -- Marc I once suppressed information about a troop movement underway in Iraq after a request. Troop movements are explicitly mentioned in the Espionage Act. Such requests, and other requests regarding obviously illegal material, should go to legal at wikimedia.org or emergency at wikimedia.org at the Foundation rather than to User:Oversight, by the way. There is a whole bunch of people on the oversight committee none of whom are known to have security clearances. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself
That was the purpose of the original arbitration committee. Finding a mentor is kind of hard nowdays as there are so many users who might help but probably will not. On the other hand, many requests I have received and looked into are from people who are making trouble themselves; sometimes very serious trouble. Giving a second chance to someone who has been banned by the community after extended discussion seldom works out well. But that's not a newbie who has run into serious trouble just for making jokes about Windoze... Fred It is very laudable if you, Peter, tries and help newbies and others that are harassed by other users. I however don't think it is enough in a worldwide organization that you have to rely on volunteers and that these will intervene. As I see it, if you start such an organization you must also take on the responsibilities that follows. You can't just duck and pretend that you can hand over all problems to the users. I still think that an international organization like the Wikis demands an instance to which mistreated and mobbed users can turn. An instance with the responsibility that normal rules in a society are upheld and with the authority to uphold them. Regards, Lars Gardenius Von: Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com An: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Gesendet: 10:50 Donnerstag, 5.September 2013 Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 10:18 AM, Lars Gardenius lars.garden...@yahoo.de wrote: No I don't think it is being addressed. Not in a serious way. You mean it's not _solved_. Indeed. At least one problem was mentioned in the thread which is that the (honest, knowledgeable) newbies have unproportionally smaller debating/lobbying power than aboriginals, and they are very easy to oppress. This is an ongoing problem for the last decade or so and no good solution seem to exist. In theory there are (or could be) volunteers who could be called in cases of newbie oppression from the experienced troll^H^H^H^Heditors who would declare that they try to act as neutral as possible but they would possess more experience to handle obnoxious editors and other regual beings. Arbitration, mentoring, whatever we like to call it. Obviously it only worked if there's a free way to reject a request (if the volunteer believes the newbie has no merits, let's not call them outright trolls and vandals) and if it isn't an official cabal but a large catalog of helpful and experienced editors. I have often done it (and still occasionally do on Commons since it's a pretty harsh environment for newbies) and it's doable if there's enough volunteers and people don't try to do it too often, I mean, one in a week or month or so. The point is to have a group of random people who are not involved in the debate but could help to communicate with the members of the community. (Since they're uninvolved it's probably useless to call them biased, which is the easiest unargument I've seen in such debates.) g ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself
That's Sweden all right, it's like a small town. Thousands of administrators from scores of countries is another matter. Even requests for administration is very difficult as, unless you do big time research, or spend your life monitoring others edits and activity, you just don't know much. Voting has the same downside; because of the volume you just don't have enough information to register an informed opinion, at least about individuals. The people you encounter in daily activities while editing is only a tiny sliver. Fred It is no magic *yearly reelection of administrators/sysops has meant no bullying types are sysops any more *we are a small community with just a few hundred active. And we have decided to treat everyone (who are serious) as valuable individuals, and go a very long way to make all feeling welcome, stop behaving as overdog/underdog and also to try special solutions for troublesome users that enable them to not being blocked but having restrictions on certain type of activities. Both people who have temporary maniac periods and with autism symptoms can be useful contributers if handled right by the communities. But these experiences can not be extended to everywhere. en:wp have 20 times the number of contributers then sv:wp and of course this means need of different ways of handling problems. I do not pretend to have anything to teach en:wp, but as said I find nothing useful for sv:wp hearing of the challenges on en:wp Anders Pavlo Shevelo skrev 2013-09-05 13:36: Sorry, but I'm not agree with your note, Anders. My home WP is not en: (it's uk: in fact) but everything being discussed is very (100%) applicable for our community. Lucky you are in se:WP that you have no similar issues/problems but perhaps you've collected some magical know-how how to avoid said troubles. If so would you please share that knowledge experience? Sincerely, Pavlo On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 2:23 PM, Anders Wennersten m...@anderswennersten.sewrote: Should not this discussion be held on he maillist for English wikipedia? There is not much, if any, of what is being discussed that I can recognize from my home wp Anders ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself
For a serious discussion to happen you will need to disclose some examples. The next step is to move beyond anecdote to see if there is a general problem. The particular incident Rui brought up has been pretty much explained, but the question remains about have a new or casual editor who commits a faux pas can simply be reminded not to rather than being vilified and being turned away completely. Everyone does dumb stuff, especially at first. The question is whether they learn anything from it. Fred Sorry, but I have seen several instances where it certainly doesn't work. Not in a way you would expect in a normal society anyhow. Regards, Lars Gardenius Von: cro0...@gmail.com cro0...@gmail.com An: Lars Gardenius lars.garden...@yahoo.de; Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org CC: fredb...@fairpoint.net fredb...@fairpoint.net; Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Gesendet: 14:22 Donnerstag, 5.September 2013 Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself I wouldn't say dispute resolution has never worked, nor does it not work now. It could use improvement, but the same could be said about everything (and like most things, shortages of volunteers make things harder) Steve Zhang Sent from my iPad ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself
Lars, Please put your cards on the table. What are your suggested changes? Fred I am also more interested in processes than discussing special cases. I think that was also the meaning of Rui Correia's letter starting this thread. To me there is obvious that there are flaws in the construction of the Wiki-organization when it comes to mistreatment and mobbing of users. I have discussed this question both with the stewards and the ombudsman, both tell me that they can't intervene in a Wiki, even if they themselves object to the behaviour of certain members of that Wiki. That means that there is no instance outside of the specific Wiki to which a harassed and mobbed user can turn. That is I think an structural error that I believe you don't usually find in any other big organization. I have also studied these pages where dispute resolution is handled. They do not impress me much. I agree with Rui Correia, it is the same people quarreling about the same things and the result is often nil. So I still think there need to be structural change to handle this type of problems. Regards, Lars Gardenius Von: cro0...@gmail.com cro0...@gmail.com An: Lars Gardenius lars.garden...@yahoo.de CC: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org; fredb...@fairpoint.net fredb...@fairpoint.net Gesendet: 15:15 Donnerstag, 5.September 2013 Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself I've worked extensively with dispute resolution on English Wikipedia (I have conducted surveys and so on). If you have specific trends I would welcome seeing them (isolated cases where one side is unhappy with the result is not necessarily a sign the process is flawed, so I am more interested in overall trends but would welcome your opinion.) Steve ZhangSent from my iPad On 05/09/2013, at 10:59 PM, Lars Gardenius lars.garden...@yahoo.de wrote: Sorry, but I have seen several instances where it certainly doesn't work. Not in a way you would expect in a normal society anyhow. Regards, Lars Gardenius Von: cro0...@gmail.com cro0...@gmail.com An: Lars Gardenius lars.garden...@yahoo.de; Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org CC: fredb...@fairpoint.net fredb...@fairpoint.net; Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Gesendet: 14:22 Donnerstag, 5.September 2013 Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself I wouldn't say dispute resolution has never worked, nor does it not work now. It could use improvement, but the same could be said about everything (and like most things, shortages of volunteers make things harder) Steve Zhang Sent from my iPad On 05/09/2013, at 6:18 PM, Lars Gardenius lars.garden...@yahoo.de wrote: No I don't think it is being addressed. Not in a serious way. That Wikipedia:Dispute resolution mirrors a very naive approach in a worldwide organization. It has never worked before and it doesn't work now. To imagine that groups of people will not try and manoeuvre out persons that they don't like is very naive. That has not happened before in the history of mankind and the Wikis are no exception. Today noone is accountable for what they do to other Wiki-contributors, they are not even identifiable since they hide behind nome de guerres. Stewards have no authority to protect users from abuses and the same goes for the Ombudsman. (see also Rui Correia's email) So if the Wikis want to be a safe place for children and old folks alike, and that everybody shall be able to contribute on equal conditions, a more realistic organization to protect the users must be put in place. Regards Lars Gardenius Von: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net An: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Gesendet: 1:16 Donnerstag, 5.September 2013 Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself It is addressed but by a rather complicated and demanding process. See Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. Not really workable for new users who bump up against well-established users who have bad habits, or have learned that nasty behavior pays off in being able to control content. Fred I think you are completely right and it is a big problem in the Wiki-world that is not being addressed by anyone in a leading position. Regards, Lars Gardenius Von: Rui Correia correia@gmail.com An: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Gesendet: 23:08 Mittwoch, 4.September 2013 Betreff: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself Greetings to All Let me start by saying that I don't do much here at the WP, not compared to people who make hundreds of edits a week. I would love to, have a long list of to-do, but unfortunately time is not on my side. In my
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself
Yes, that is pretty much the situation. The howls of outraged anguish from those who were not able to dictate (really bad) content or practices form the core of our organized opposition. That does not mean systemic deficiencies don't exist; just that we must look and think in a noisy environment. Fred On 09/05/2013 04:18 AM, Lars Gardenius wrote: That Wikipedia:Dispute resolution mirrors a very naive approach in a worldwide organization. It has never worked before and it doesn't work now. Where doesn't work is mostly defined as didn't give the result I demanded. I've been part of that dispute resolution process for many years, and came out of it with the (admittedly cynical) lesson that the vast majority of vocal critics of it have become so as a result of losing to it for having been in the wrong in the first place. When someone leaves in a tiff because they have been prevented from getting their way against consensus, then the system is arguably doing exactly what it's been designed for. Of /course/ nobody ends up in a conflict on the projects without being convinced that they are in the right; and if they end up on the losing side, they will clearly feel that they were wronged. We play up the concept of discussion leading to consensus but -- let's not kid ourselves -- we are all humans and thus subject to ego, stubbornness, and personality conflicts. There *are* no vast, sweeping injustices. No system is perfect and, occasionally, errors *are* made; but the leap from the system didn't let me get my way to the system is broken/dying is all to easy to make, and is an unavoidable result of humans interacting. This certainly could be improved. More education of users upfront might prevent the confrontations in the first place; less reliance on established cliques would reduce groupthink and exaggerated conservatism. More robots and fewer humans would reduce the effects of human nature... -- Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself
OP = original poster, Rui Sorry but I don't what/who OP is. And you still misunderstand. This is not a question about consensus over some article, it is about normal human behaviour, and that it sometimes is not there. If you haven't seen that happening I don't know where you have been looking. I think you paint an idealistic and rosy picture of the life in the Wikis that many users don't recognize. Regards, Lars Gardenius Von: Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org An: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Gesendet: 18:05 Donnerstag, 5.September 2013 Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself On 09/05/2013 11:49 AM, Lars Gardenius wrote: But if your child is mobbed at a Wiki when he/she tries to contribute, or your grandmother is being abused when she contributes to a Wiki, you want somewhere to turn. As said there is no such instance in the Wikis, there is noone responsible how people are treated and mistreated in the Wikis. You start from the presumption that those things usually or often happen for reasons other than trying to push something through against consensus. I have rarely seen that happening (and no, the OP is not an example -- if anything he's an excellent counterexample). Mind you, there are often cases where the newbie is going against consensus but doesn't know it. This is a case for user education. We /do/ have a problem with the way much of the community handles new editors, but the existing mechanism in place /do/ work for the most part (at least, for the more egregious examples). The rest is a cultural problem that no enforcement body could fix; you don't make people nice by beating them up. -- Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself
On the contrary, the Arbitration Committee has the responsibility and the power. That they do not discharge the full remit is another matter. People have ran for and been elected to the committee on a platform of not discharging the responsibility it was given. Fred No, I just responded to a problem that I recognized well. If you call him/her this or that is not important. The important thing is that the person (or group of persons) has the responsibility and the power to fulfil its task, i.e. to protect Wiki-users from abuses and mobbing. Today nobody has neither that responsibility nor that power. regards, Lars Gardenius Von: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net An: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Gesendet: 18:44 Donnerstag, 5.September 2013 Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself And your solution is an ombudsman, or what? I know there is a solution that you have in mind. In fact, it looks very much like a solution in search of a problem. Out with it! Fred The problem is that howls of outraged anguish seems to come from the admins not from the newbies. But that was not the question here. The question was that the Wikis lack an instance that people can turn to when they are harassed and mobbed in the wikis, be that newbies or admins, children or old folks, women or men. Regards, Lars Gardenius Von: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net An: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Gesendet: 18:03 Donnerstag, 5.September 2013 Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself Yes, that is pretty much the situation. The howls of outraged anguish from those who were not able to dictate (really bad) content or practices form the core of our organized opposition. That does not mean systemic deficiencies don't exist; just that we must look and think in a noisy environment. Fred On 09/05/2013 04:18 AM, Lars Gardenius wrote: That Wikipedia:Dispute resolution mirrors a very naive approach in a worldwide organization. It has never worked before and it doesn't work now. Where doesn't work is mostly defined as didn't give the result I demanded. I've been part of that dispute resolution process for many years, and came out of it with the (admittedly cynical) lesson that the vast majority of vocal critics of it have become so as a result of losing to it for having been in the wrong in the first place. When someone leaves in a tiff because they have been prevented from getting their way against consensus, then the system is arguably doing exactly what it's been designed for. Of /course/ nobody ends up in a conflict on the projects without being convinced that they are in the right; and if they end up on the losing side, they will clearly feel that they were wronged. We play up the concept of discussion leading to consensus but -- let's not kid ourselves -- we are all humans and thus subject to ego, stubbornness, and personality conflicts. There *are* no vast, sweeping injustices. No system is perfect and, occasionally, errors *are* made; but the leap from the system didn't let me get my way to the system is broken/dying is all to easy to make, and is an unavoidable result of humans interacting. This certainly could be improved. More education of users upfront might prevent the confrontations in the first place; less reliance on established cliques would reduce groupthink and exaggerated conservatism. More robots and fewer humans would reduce the effects of human nature... -- Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself
Indeed, a community a few hundred seems optimal. Fred This is certainly not a question only for the English Wikipedia. I somewhat doubt that it even foremost has to do with the English Wikipedia. I have seen this problem primarily in smaller Wikis dominated by few people. Regards, Lars Gardenius Von: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net An: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org CC: wikie...@lists.wikimedia.org Gesendet: 13:28 Donnerstag, 5.September 2013 Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself At wikie...@lists.wikimedia.org ? Perhaps, but hard to start over from the beginning. Fred Should not this discussion be held on he maillist for English wikipedia? There is not much, if any, of what is being discussed that I can recognize from my home wp Anders Fred Bauder skrev 2013-09-05 13:18: That was the purpose of the original arbitration committee. Finding a mentor is kind of hard nowdays as there are so many users who might help but probably will not. On the other hand, many requests I have received and looked into are from people who are making trouble themselves; sometimes very serious trouble. Giving a second chance to someone who has been banned by the community after extended discussion seldom works out well. But that's not a newbie who has run into serious trouble just for making jokes about Windoze... Fred It is very laudable if you, Peter, tries and help newbies and others that are harassed by other users. I however don't think it is enough in a worldwide organization that you have to rely on volunteers and that these will intervene. As I see it, if you start such an organization you must also take on the responsibilities that follows. You can't just duck and pretend that you can hand over all problems to the users. I still think that an international organization like the Wikis demands an instance to which mistreated and mobbed users can turn. An instance with the responsibility that normal rules in a society are upheld and with the authority to uphold them. Regards, Lars Gardenius Von: Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com An: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Gesendet: 10:50 Donnerstag, 5.September 2013 Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 10:18 AM, Lars Gardenius lars.garden...@yahoo.de wrote: No I don't think it is being addressed. Not in a serious way. You mean it's not _solved_. Indeed. At least one problem was mentioned in the thread which is that the (honest, knowledgeable) newbies have unproportionally smaller debating/lobbying power than aboriginals, and they are very easy to oppress. This is an ongoing problem for the last decade or so and no good solution seem to exist. In theory there are (or could be) volunteers who could be called in cases of newbie oppression from the experienced troll^H^H^H^Heditors who would declare that they try to act as neutral as possible but they would possess more experience to handle obnoxious editors and other regual beings. Arbitration, mentoring, whatever we like to call it. Obviously it only worked if there's a free way to reject a request (if the volunteer believes the newbie has no merits, let's not call them outright trolls and vandals) and if it isn't an official cabal but a large catalog of helpful and experienced editors. I have often done it (and still occasionally do on Commons since it's a pretty harsh environment for newbies) and it's doable if there's enough volunteers and people don't try to do it too often, I mean, one in a week or month or so. The point is to have a group of random people who are not involved in the debate but could help to communicate with the members of the community. (Since they're uninvolved it's probably useless to call them biased, which is the easiest unargument I've seen in such debates.) g ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself
No thank you, I do not have a dispute; you do; please follow the dispute resolution procedure. Fred Hi Tom Thanks for your contribution. However, you seem to have missed the point. So Lisa violates the 3RR principle and you lecture me. And I lodge a complaint over the 3RR and that gets closed without due process. Would you care to touch on those tho aspects and advance your opinion on the 3RR violation being swept under the carpet? And reporting of a 3RR violation being swept under the same carpet? I must presume that you condone the action of the other editor? And for your information, everytime I have come across people that monitor even the talkpage of their favourite articles you can be sure that it is about the content of what is posted, but about whether or not the comment casts the subject of the article in a bad light. Perhaps you might care to look into this and look into the edit history of these editors? Regards, Rui On 5 September 2013 14:18, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.comwrote: Lets just be clear here, the contributuion Rui is talking about was as follows: Must be a joke - how can moving from W8 to W XP be called a downgrade? W8 is crap! I want a computer, not a basket of apps for retarded morons! https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Windows_XPoldid=571533769 His response to its removal is to suggest those removing it are paid Pro-Microsoft editors. Rui, what I'm going to suggest here is that you've not really understood the processes that go into collaborating on an article. You may well be right that the content needs changing, but your presentation of a personal opinion in such a ranting form makes it very hard to collaborate. Look at it from another side. If you'd put a lot of effort into writing and article and then someone turned up on the talk page to post what looked like a personal rant about the content, citing no sources and putting very little in the way of suggested changes would you be peeved? Would you wonder if perhaps that editor was a paid editor sent to disrupt the article by a competitor? Would you be offended if Lisa held that view about you (that you were a paid advocate?). So, yes, Wikipedia has a big problem. But it's not just abusive admins (we have a few) and grumpy editors, or paid advocates. It is a broad spectrum of problems - and in this case you were the one with the less-than-perfect contribution. Broadly speaking this is an education problem; we need to bring more focus on the concept of the talk page as a collaboration portal *not* as a place to discuss the topic (i.e. NOTFORUM) and we also need to emphasise the importance of making comments in the right tone, and with supporting sources. Regards, Tom On 4 September 2013 22:08, Rui Correia correia@gmail.com wrote: Greetings to All Let me start by saying that I don't do much here at the WP, not compared to people who make hundreds of edits a week. I would love to, have a long list of to-do, but unfortunately time is not on my side. In my limited involvemet here, I have seen many a good editor leave the project. Mostly, people leave because they can't take it anymore having to fight the 'blocks' of defenders that coalesce around certain topics. In itself, though not very healthy, such blocks forming around topis is fine. What is not fine is that if any issue gets referred to a higher process for a resolution, it is often the same people grouping of people previously involved in disputes on the same topic who come to the resolution forum to issue a decision. However, it is always the 'outsider' that loses. He gets acused of everything under the sun, and gets 'good advice' from supposedly neutral editors, urging him to calm down, to temper his language etc. It is like trying to point out that the earth is round at a monthly meetng of the fat-earthers. That is not healthy and is making the WP processes look like a kangaroo court run by a cabal. And I expect pretty much the same reaction to this email. I pointed out in an ealier email to this list the difficulty that one encounters when you include something negative about certain big corporations. I was stoned and made to feel that I was wrong and everbody else was right. The reaction was tantamount to a chorus of yes, we know there are problems, but don't say it out loud, someone might hear you!. Let's for argument's say that I was wrong. But - more importantantly - was anything done to investigate what I was saying? What if there are legions out there paid to sanitise the pages of big corporations? And we know that they exist, and that WP has taken up the issue as in here, http://nick-xomba-ceo.xomba.com/microsoft_accused_of_paying_blogger_to_alter_wikipedia_articles I made a silly remark on a Talk page about the choice of the word downgrade
Re: [Wikimedia-l] : WMF resolution on neutral point of view
Hi all, I realize Resolution:Biographies of living people[1] implies this but I fail to see any resolution that establishes neutral point of view as one of our non-negotiable values. I think there is merit in having an over-arching resolution on a Neutral Point of View policy. I also feel Resolution:Biographies of living people suffers from the absence of such a definition of what exactly neutral point of view supposed to mean. [1]: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Biographies_of_living_people Neutral point of view is one of the founding principles of Wikipedia and was promulgated by its founder, Jimmy Wales, and strongly supported by its co-founder, Larry Sanger, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_viewdiff=270453oldid=270452#The_original_statement_of_the_neutral_point_of_view_policy The first edits to the page is dated November 10, 2001 but I think the very first edits of that page are no longer available. It's not an unwritten constitution... Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] : WMF resolution on neutral point of view
I am not disputing how settled it is but I don't think meta sufficiently achieves expressing how settled this core value really is. As you stated it would be more of a restatement and re-emphasis of what already is a core value. -- ã¨ããç½ãç« (To Aru Shiroi Neko) Yes, good idea, needs to be done. Please notify the board of directors... Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] : WMF resolution on neutral point of view
On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 11:53 PM, Asaf Bartov abar...@wikimedia.org wrote: ... I, for one, share your perception that NPOV is a problem on some (perhaps most) Wikipedias, asaf, could you please elaborate a little bit what you mean by this? do you not share the experience that the editors were able to come up with reasonable and well thought out rules they follow, since wikipedia exists? and many of the rules were discussed. and most of them discussed again? isn't this one of the cores which made wikipedia so successful? rupert. For the most part; however, and I speak only of the English Wikipedia, there are topics where pov prevails due to the skill and power of its advocates. I suspect much worse things elsewhere. By the way, I regularly, and deliberately, engage in point of view writing elsewhere; I know it when I see it. Ask yourself, where is the article [[processed food]]? If you want an good education in public relations techniques, try to write one... Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] : WMF resolution on neutral point of view
I've been thinking about this. Wikipedia is a compilation of information from sources that are generally considered reliable. The trouble is that the information in those sources varies. Rather than deciding ourselves, after all most of us are amateurs, what the truth is, we present all the views in reliable sources without trying to decide which is right or even better, although there may be sourced information which does do that which can be included. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] : WMF resolution on neutral point of view
On Sat, 5 Oct 2013, at 18:47, Fred Bauder wrote: I've been thinking about this. Wikipedia is a compilation of information from sources that are generally considered reliable. The trouble is that the information in those sources varies. Rather than deciding ourselves, after all most of us are amateurs, what the truth is, we present all the views in reliable sources without trying to decide which is right or even better, although there may be sourced information which does do that which can be included. Fred This is simply false. If a third source says that one of two reliable sources is wrong or simply worse, the third source is not ignored. It is not simply false. Provided such a criticism is found in a reliable source, neutral point of view would require it be included. For example, in a climate change article, information about the poor factual basis of climate change denial should be included. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] : WMF resolution on neutral point of view
I have posted 4 sentences, kind of a draft of a draft of a draft. It is very overwhelming for me to draft text with near-legal precision on my own. -- ã¨ããç½ãç« (To Aru Shiroi Neko) I've added a bit. I'll do some copyediting later. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Global East
A nationalist point of view is not neutral point of view. I can imagine what the dictator of Kazakstan considers a suitable article. Fred Yesterday Yuri, ED of WMUA (and my college in FDC) was interviewed in the main morning program on Swedish Radio re the ua.wp contra ru:wp in Ukraine and of Kazak WIkipedia The 8 minutes report is half in Swedish and half in English so a bit hard to listen to [1] The most interesting parts are *The Kazak dictator is making all academics in this country to update the Kazan version of Wikipedia, perhaps to get it POV but mostly so they will not be dependent of ru:wp, ie he sees it as a must to have a decent Wikipedia version in order to be independent of the culture from Russia *In Ukraine the former education minister (pro eu and pro Ukrainian language) actively promoted the ua:wp so not be dependent on ru:wp. The current minister have the opposite idea and has made Russian an official second language in the eastern part of Ukraine *It seems the university students make it as almost a political choice if to use ua:wp or ru:wp, and then in western Ukraine choose ua:wp The central role of Wikipedia in theses vital political issues I have not heard of from our ordinary western chapters/language versions (or is catalonian/Amical an example) And reflecting on this, I also think, even if independent, of the dramatic increase of use of arabic and indonesian wikipedia [2] . Also of Vietnamese wikipedia which has a tremendous increase in number of article by intellegent use of bots. Also of the very interesting development in India, with their many different language versions. We here very little (nothing?) from these interesting developments, where we all probably can have a lot to learn Asaf talks of the problem of getting Global South started as there are very weak/missing wp communities. But are we as a movement doing enough to support the active communities and developments in the Global East? (I can not help also think of Sues words re elections within the movement. Do these processes conserve our existing dominance in Board and groups of representatives coming from western world?) Anders [1] http://sverigesradio.se/api/radio/radio.aspx?type=dbid=4725418codingformat=.m4ametafile=asx [2] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyCombined.htmtic increase of use of arabic wikipedia ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
