Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list
Thomas Dalton wrote: 2009/8/28 Anders Wennersten anders.wenners...@bonetmail.com: I have only been on this list for a month, but I am confused over what I read. There are over 700 subscribers, but two, Anthony and Thoams Dalton is allowed, to generate more then a third of all entries and often just these two are driving a whole thread discussion. On Wikipedia we all work hard to work for consensus (all voices are welcome) and stop people dominating a subject. Why is it allowed for two persons to take over a list like it is done here? We haven't taken anything over. There is nothing stopping anyone else from contributing to the discussion as well. Other than good sense. (Contributing endless reams of text, that is.) Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list
Exactly. If you write too many messages, you run the risk that the majority will start to habitually skip over (most of) your messages. Think of it this way (this is a very simplistic model I think, I'm not an economist): when the central bank of a country prints too much currency, this can cause the value of the currency to go down. Similarly, if there is a famous painter who only made 5 paintings, they will probably fetch a higher price than if s/he had made 500. It's fine if you always have something to say but I think we have all (the more prolific posters here) been guilty of posting two or three (or more) replies to the same thread at once without waiting for others when we could have consolidated into a single e-mail. Also, in my opinion (and yours may be different), although I do have an opinion on nearly every thread on this list, it is not always necessary for everybody to know what I think; this is after all a platform for discussion, not for people to come and find out how I feel about things. Mark skype: node.ue On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanencimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Thomas Dalton wrote: 2009/8/28 Anders Wennersten anders.wenners...@bonetmail.com: I have only been on this list for a month, but I am confused over what I read. There are over 700 subscribers, but two, Anthony and Thoams Dalton is allowed, to generate more then a third of all entries and often just these two are driving a whole thread discussion. On Wikipedia we all work hard to work for consensus (all voices are welcome) and stop people dominating a subject. Why is it allowed for two persons to take over a list like it is done here? We haven't taken anything over. There is nothing stopping anyone else from contributing to the discussion as well. Other than good sense. (Contributing endless reams of text, that is.) Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
Thomas Dalton wrote: Anthony's not exactly being fair, though, when he sort of suggests that the shortfall in Technology spending went instead to the Executive Director. As far as I can tell, it went into the bank, to be spent in the FOLLOWING YEARS on the Executive Director's need to expand staff to unprecedented levels. I think most of the tech underspend was due to spending being deferred. That money will still be spent on tech. Are you objecting to WMF expansion? I think the fact that the WMF can sustain a larger staff is a good thing, it will allow them to do much more. I'd personally place myself on the objecting to WMF expansion side, at least in general sentiment. With larger organizations, you can indeed do more, but also run more risks. In particular, organizations with large staffs run the risk of bureaucratization; and community/volunteer-based organizations with large staffs risk capture of the overall project by the official organization, rather than the community and volunteers they ostensibly act as support staff for. It's not inevitable the outcomes will be bad, but it's worth thinking about, I think, especially as the track record of traditional non-profit organizations overall is quite poor in that department. -Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list
One idea could be to introduce a rule that each user should limit his/her entries to maximum one/day and thread I am sure this would lead to better quality, without stopping valuable input, and make the list much more comprehensive and useful. (With this rule last days 80 entires would probalbly been limited to something like 20) foundation-l is a resource that could be made to be of much use and importance if just the chattiness was limited Anders Mark Williamson skrev: Exactly. If you write too many messages, you run the risk that the majority will start to habitually skip over (most of) your messages. Think of it this way (this is a very simplistic model I think, I'm not an economist): when the central bank of a country prints too much currency, this can cause the value of the currency to go down. Similarly, if there is a famous painter who only made 5 paintings, they will probably fetch a higher price than if s/he had made 500. It's fine if you always have something to say but I think we have all (the more prolific posters here) been guilty of posting two or three (or more) replies to the same thread at once without waiting for others when we could have consolidated into a single e-mail. Also, in my opinion (and yours may be different), although I do have an opinion on nearly every thread on this list, it is not always necessary for everybody to know what I think; this is after all a platform for discussion, not for people to come and find out how I feel about things. Mark skype: node.ue On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanencimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Thomas Dalton wrote: 2009/8/28 Anders Wennersten anders.wenners...@bonetmail.com: I have only been on this list for a month, but I am confused over what I read. There are over 700 subscribers, but two, Anthony and Thoams Dalton is allowed, to generate more then a third of all entries and often just these two are driving a whole thread discussion. On Wikipedia we all work hard to work for consensus (all voices are welcome) and stop people dominating a subject. Why is it allowed for two persons to take over a list like it is done here? We haven't taken anything over. There is nothing stopping anyone else from contributing to the discussion as well. Other than good sense. (Contributing endless reams of text, that is.) Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] FlaggedRevs on Hungarian Wikipedia still not working
Birgitte SB hett schreven: I hope someone is able to shortly fix this issue for you. However I think you have a mistaken idea about WMF. The reason people are wanted to join meta-projects is to ensure that their local wikis issues are understood. The meta-projects *are* hu.WP's projects, not competition for hu.WP. If you, or someone like you, is not part of foundation discussions to both speak up about hu.WP concerns and also to better inform hu.WP discussions about larger issues and trends, then how can hu.WP be properly cared for? Certainly everyone here wishes success for hu.WP and that her volunteers are active and happy. But for the most part, people here are not some abstract WMF-people who have neglected hu.WP. We are en.WS people or fr.WP people or de.WP people. I originally joined this list much like you did. Rather upset at what felt was attacks on en.WS's sincere efforts to do the right thing and general lack of help for us. These WMF-people had been talking about en.WS and saying we would have to delete the UK Hunting Act. I came here hoping to convince these people to actually help us: tell us exactly what copyright allows (very naive I know) rather than just dictating that our stuff be deleted without clarification. But I discovered that these WMF-people were no more than people just like me. Passionate people who found their way here with their feet still firmly planted in their own particular interests. They meant no harm to en.WS, but en.WS didn't rate very high in their concerns either. I quickly realized that someone from en.WS better keep on top of things here, before our interests got inadvertently squashed by someones pet issue. Or we merely got forgotten. So I understand how you might be hoping for for solutions and answers to be found here. I certainly did, but I learned it was a mistake to think there was such authority here. You will find opinions and ideas here. Sometimes you may find needed attention. (I hope this is the case today!) But the only real answer for solving hu.WP issues is to see that hu.WP is in WMF. hu.WP people must be in WMF people. hu.WP developers must be in WMF developers. hu.WP projects must be in WMF projects. Then hu.WP will find real answers and solutions. Or at least, they will find answers and solutions as well as anyone does. Birgitte SB Well, on a general participation level it's all true, what you are saying. But looking at the actual issue Flagged Revs at hu.wp it's very clear: The Foundation pays staff to do administrative tasks local projects cannot do. It's their job to do it. And they haven't done the necessary steps in six weeks. Tisza/hu.wp have done what they needed to do: File a bug at Bugzilla. If the coordination would work properly that should suffice to get the job done. It didn't. He searched to directly contact people who can help about this. And that didn't help too. So it's not Tisza's fault, he did it all right. The problem lies at the foundation level. Some processes are broken. There are two possible solutions: If we don't have enough manpower to handle all requests and bugs than the foundation should hire more staff (with millions in donations flowing in that should be no big problem). The second solution (the cheaper one) would be to create an interface, that allows local bureaucrats to switch on or off a set of approved extensions on their project. The interface would then run the needed scripts automatically. This interface needs to be written, but that's only one time and it will save much time and effort in the future. Marcus Buck User:Slomox ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] FlaggedRevs on Hungarian Wikipedia still not working
On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 11:36, Marcus Buckm...@marcusbuck.org wrote: necessary steps in six weeks. Tisza/hu.wp have done what they needed to do: File a bug at Bugzilla. If the coordination would work properly that should suffice to get the job done. It didn't. He searched to directly contact people who can help about this. And that didn't help too. So it's not Tisza's fault, he did it all right. The problem lies at the foundation level. Some processes are broken. Actually he did many more than he ought to, since he spent quite an amount of time to try to contact people on several levels. My other problem is that fixing the problem really requires five minutes times two. I understand that 100 times 5 minutes are a lot, but the bug was opened on 2009-7-22, or two months ago, with priority HIGH and severity MAJOR. Other than that we cannot do, apart from that I offered (in private email) to get the config files, do the search and replace on my machine (takes 20 seconds) and send back the file. Either prioritising in bugzilla isn't working or we're understaffed. Both can and should be fixed. I'm not blaming anyone, by the way. I'm understaffed too. ;-) g ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Projekt: OpenCritics (let's free subjective content, too!!)
Dear “Wikipedians”, please allow us to introduce a project we have been working on for about a year now: Explaining the importance of the open-source movement for a free internet or the importance of Wikipedia (i.e. free content in the form of factual knowledge) here would be like carrying coals to Newcastle. The question, however, is why has *subjective* open content been neglected so far? In the realm of user reviews and ratings we have pretty much forfeited to closed systems like Amazon or Ciao. That's why we created OpenCritics.com. The idea of OpenCritics is to develop an open platform for freely licensed reviews. Published reviews are then not only available for visitors of certain websites, e.g Amazon, Ciao, etc. but can be copied freely. This also helps against the trend towards internet monopolies.(Please find an explanation and more advantages of this on: http://www.opencritics.com/sp-dsp-user_idea ) We started off with movie reviews; book reviews and more will follow. The ratings are published both on all participating websites as well as on OpenCritics.de (in German, other languages will follow). Who we are: - Our office, the development and my computer are financed by a private limited company. Eventually, I would be pleased if our company could move into the direction of a non-profit organization and funding through donations. However, I do have doubts about that since this is even difficult for Wikipedia. The second best (realistic) alternative is to do what many Linux-distributors, companies like Zend etc do: The content will remain free and open while the project is financed by consulting and support for commercial users. We are still a small team, mainly in our office in Hamburg ,with very different backgound (juristic, webdesign, journalistic and two students). How to help: --- We are especially lacking a prominent team-member known even outside the world of free-internet-geeks who could help us let the little project rise above the attention threshold. Maybe you have an idea who we could contact? In the meantime we are happy about every blogentry (example: http://de.creativecommons.org/freiheit-fur-die-user-ratings/ [in German]) and appreciate critical feedback! Kind regards Georg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list
On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 2:50 AM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: Similarly, if there is a famous painter who only made 5 paintings, they will probably fetch a higher price than if s/he had made 500. And what if they're not selling their paintings? What if they just like to paint? I'm not here to sell my posts. I'm not here to try to convince anyone of anything. I'm here to discuss. If some people are participating in a discussion with me, I'm going to continue to have it, at whatever pace it goes. If some other people aren't interested, there are lots of tools available to filter out those conversations. I'm sure all of you can figure out a way of setting up your email client so it can work for you. If not, the archives are available online. There's no reason you have to have this mailing list emailed to you in the first place. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list
On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 4:27 AM, Anders Wennersten anders.wenners...@bonetmail.com wrote: One idea could be to introduce a rule that each user should limit his/her entries to maximum one/day and thread I am sure this would lead to better quality, without stopping valuable input, and make the list much more comprehensive and useful. (With this rule last days 80 entires would probalbly been limited to something like 20) I really don't understand what use you're trying to get out of this mailing list. You say On Wikipedia we all work hard to work for consensus (all voices are welcome) and stop people dominating a subject. Maybe what you want is a wiki, and not an unmoderated mailing list? Could you give an example of an unmoderated mailing list which has successfully imposed a rule such as the one you suggest? I don't think it's going to succeed in providing the usefulness you desire, and I'm sure it's going to destroy the usefulness that Thomas, myself, and many others on this list do desire. If you'd like to start a moderated foundation-l, in addition to the regular foundation-l, that might be useful. But it's considerably inappropriate for you to sign up for a mailing list that many of us have been enjoying for years and in one month decide you want to alter it to suit your tastes. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list
Yes, I delete pages of messages every day, and some of the posters to Wikipedia lists are among them. They are just not worth the time it takes to open them. They are just never part of the solution. Fred Exactly. If you write too many messages, you run the risk that the majority will start to habitually skip over (most of) your messages. Think of it this way (this is a very simplistic model I think, I'm not an economist): when the central bank of a country prints too much currency, this can cause the value of the currency to go down. Similarly, if there is a famous painter who only made 5 paintings, they will probably fetch a higher price than if s/he had made 500. It's fine if you always have something to say but I think we have all (the more prolific posters here) been guilty of posting two or three (or more) replies to the same thread at once without waiting for others when we could have consolidated into a single e-mail. Also, in my opinion (and yours may be different), although I do have an opinion on nearly every thread on this list, it is not always necessary for everybody to know what I think; this is after all a platform for discussion, not for people to come and find out how I feel about things. Mark skype: node.ue On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanencimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Thomas Dalton wrote: 2009/8/28 Anders Wennersten anders.wenners...@bonetmail.com: I have only been on this list for a month, but I am confused over what I read. There are over 700 subscribers, but two, Anthony and Thoams Dalton is allowed, to generate more then a third of all entries and often just these two are driving a whole thread discussion. On Wikipedia we all work hard to work for consensus (all voices are welcome) and stop people dominating a subject. Why is it allowed for two persons to take over a list like it is done here? We haven't taken anything over. There is nothing stopping anyone else from contributing to the discussion as well. Other than good sense. (Contributing endless reams of text, that is.) Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list
2009/8/29 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org: If you'd like to start a moderated foundation-l, in addition to the regular foundation-l, that might be useful. But it's considerably inappropriate for you to sign up for a mailing list that many of us have been enjoying for years and in one month decide you want to alter it to suit your tastes. Enjoying? Maybe more accurate for many of us is barely tolerating. I am with Anders. It is not just a matter of learning to use an email client properly. Considered posts are soon piled under dozens of back-and-forth-over-minor-details responses. But it doesn't seem the culture of foundation-l at this point would allow moderation to make it a more proportionate place. Which is a shame as in theory it is our main Wikimedia-wide channel of communication, and must be terribly off-putting for newcomers. Brianna -- They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment: http://modernthings.org/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list
On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 10:36 AM, Brianna Laugher brianna.laug...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/29 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org: If you'd like to start a moderated foundation-l, in addition to the regular foundation-l, that might be useful. But it's considerably inappropriate for you to sign up for a mailing list that many of us have been enjoying for years and in one month decide you want to alter it to suit your tastes. Enjoying? Maybe more accurate for many of us is barely tolerating. Why are you here, then? I don't mean that rudely, I'm honestly curious. Is there something provided by this list which is provided nowhere else which is so valuable to you that you're willing to tolerate these parts that you find so unenjoyable? I am with Anders. It is not just a matter of learning to use an email client properly. Considered posts are soon piled under dozens of back-and-forth-over-minor-details responses. There needs to be place for dozens of back-and-forth-over-minor-details discussion. Long detailed emails have their place, but after they are posted there needs to be room for a question and answer session. Limiting these QA sessions so that each person can merely make a single comment and then receive a single response severely limits the ability of people to engage in useful discussion, and forcing people to have any back and forth discussions off-list severely limits the usefulness of the list for brainstorming and for refining ideas. If you want a separate list for long, well-thought-out emails, I'm fine with that. But we need a place for brainstorming and refining ideas. We need a place for back-and-forth discussion. Am I in the minority in believing that? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Proposal: foundation-announce-l
I propose the foundation-announce-l mailing list be set up with the following posting rules: 1) One post per person per thread. That includes the initiator of the thread. 2) Responses in a thread must be in response to the original message. No responding to responses. 4) A person may initiate a maximum of two threads per week. Exception for foundation staff, board members, list administrator(s), and with permission of the list administrator(s). Responses per week are unlimited subject to rules 1 and 2. 5) Posts generally do not go through a moderation queue. Anyone breaking the rules will be put on moderation or unsubscribed at the discretion of the list administrator(s). ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list
On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: If you want a separate list for long, well-thought-out emails, I'm fine with that. But we need a place for brainstorming and refining ideas. We need a place for back-and-forth discussion. Am I in the minority in believing that? You wouldn't be if that was actually what happened. It isn't. Nitpicking, snide remarks and attempts to score cheap points != good faith attempts to refine ideas. It doesn't help that you and Thomas are impenetrable to criticism - you don't even acknowledge the possibility that some people might have a valid point when they criticize the volume and style of your posts. You dismiss them with Well, get a better e-mail client or just go away. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list
There are too many emails in this thread since I last read it for me to reply to them separately, so will just post a general monologue and hopefully address most of the points made. Please excuse the length of this email. I consider this a discussion list, first and foremost. It is used for making announcements, for drawing attention to things going on elsewhere and various other purposes, but above all else it is here for discussion. Discussion is an exchange of ideas. While I do not find all of the ideas expressed useful or interesting, I strongly believe that any idea expressed with a genuine intention of furthering the goals of the Wikimedia movement should be allowed to be spoken (not necessarily here, there are better venues for some ideas, of course) and if that prompts someone else to have an idea they wish to express in response, they should be able to do so. To restrict people to one post a day would completely stop that exchange of ideas, all you would get is a sequence of monologues. People can start blogs if they wish to post monologues (I have recently been considering doing just that). I much prefer lists like this one to contain short messages in reply to other short messages with a quick back and forward of ideas building upon the ideas of others. It has been said that I post a lot. In terms of total number of emails that is certainly accurate, however if someone were to count the bytes posted (excluding quotes of previous messages) I suspect my contribution would be little different to that of many other active subscribers to this list. I don't generally write long messages (this one is an exception to that), I write short replies to the messages of others. I think this list fulfils its purpose far better through such messages. As long as people use modern email clients there is no real disadvantage to splitting things into lots of messages (if you are not using such an email client then that is your problem, not me - if it is your choice, then make a better one, if it is forced upon you then complain to the person doing that forcing, don't complain to me). It has been suggested that posting a lot diminishes the value of each post. I'm afraid those saying that simply don't have a good understanding of economics. There are two ways something can get value - from utility and from scarcity. I would hope my emails are valuable because they are useful. In this context, scarcity is pretty much irrelevant. Finally, I know from private conversations that there are people that read my emails and find them useful. I write for them. If you are not in that group, you are welcome to ignore me. You are even welcome to complain about me to anyone that will listen, but I reserve the right not to be in that group. Thank you for reaching the end of this email. I hope it has helped you understand my views on this subject. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Projekt: OpenCritics (let's free subjective content, too!!)
On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 9:42 AM, teun spaansteun.spa...@gmail.com wrote: The only question which your statement here raises is why you limit yourself to reviews. Imho there might be a considerable market area for people who have opinions to voice on politics, religion, etc. Reviews are quite different political and religious opinion. Unlike political or religious commentary, reviews (especially if they combine numerical ratings with textual evaluation) are valuable in aggregate, as they can help others make yes/no decisions about whether to invest time and/or money into some particular, uniquely identifiable thing (whether watching a particular movie or buying a particular flashlight). Hence the desirability of creating a free alternative to Amazon's reviews. Amazon's reviews, especially for manufactured goods, are an extremely valuable public service (even if you don't shop at Amazon), and the fact they are controlled and maintained by a for-profit company means that the potential exists for Amazon to lock down access or suppress negative reviews (in fact, this happens already) for the good of their profits but to the detriment of the public good. Although individually such reviews have subjective elements, I don't see that as fundamentally incompatible with WMF values. -Sage ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Projekt: OpenCritics (let's free subjective content, too!!)
Sage Ross wrote: I think this is an excellent, long overdue idea and something Wikimedia should be interested in. I was actually thinking of proposing something like this at strategy.wikimedia.org (and may still do so). I don't think that creating such a project within Wikimedia would be a great idea. NPOV is one of the most important Wikimedia principles. --vvv ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
Hello Mark, On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 3:38 AM, Deliriumdelir...@hackish.org wrote: I'd personally place myself on the objecting to WMF expansion side, at least in general sentiment. With larger organizations, you can indeed do more, but also run more risks. In particular, organizations with large staffs run the risk of bureaucratization; and community/volunteer-based organizations with large staffs risk capture of the overall project by the official organization, rather than the community and volunteers they ostensibly act as support staff for. Can you say more about this -- both what more you can do and the risks run -- and cite the track record[s] you mention? Do you feel there are similar capacity/risk tradeoffs of larger/more inclusive communities? (some might say that the current editing community is becoming an organization separating itself from the general public, building barriers to participation; and that this [de facto] organization risks capturing the overall knowledge-sharing project within existing guidelines and policies, rather than encouraging bold participation among the wider world, who are the ostensible audience and body of future contributors.) Thanks, Sj It's not inevitable the outcomes will be bad, but it's worth thinking about, I think, especially as the track record of traditional non-profit organizations overall is quite poor in that department. -Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Projekt: OpenCritics (let's free subjective content, too!!)
So, I think that such a project works well with the concept of NPOV. I think you can break the site into two distinct parts. Part 1: You collect opinions of various sorts in various ways. Part 2: You organize them in terms of their relative significance to each other and summarize them in a disinterested voice. This would be a lot like Wikibooks and Wikipedia; people write stuff on Wikibooks and then people cite those books on Wikipedia. -Josh On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Victor Vasiliev vasi...@gmail.com wrote: Sage Ross wrote: I think this is an excellent, long overdue idea and something Wikimedia should be interested in. I was actually thinking of proposing something like this at strategy.wikimedia.org (and may still do so). I don't think that creating such a project within Wikimedia would be a great idea. NPOV is one of the most important Wikimedia principles. --vvv ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- I am running the Arizona Rock'n'Roll marathon with Team in Training. Help me reach my fundraising goals: http://pages.teamintraining.org/ma/pfchangs10/joshuagay ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal: foundation-announce-l
On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 12:30 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: I propose the foundation-announce-l mailing list be set up with the following posting rules: 1) One post per person per thread. That includes the initiator of the thread. That's not how announcement lists work. The whole point of an announcement list is that the only posts on it will be announcements; and for the list to be useful, the announcements have to be limited to those that are important to the list's topic (which is usually narrowly defined) and of interest to the subscribers—which generally means that only people in positions of authority are allowed to post. mediawiki-announce and toolserver-announce are good examples. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal: foundation-announce-l
On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Benjamin Leesemufarm...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 12:30 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: I propose the foundation-announce-l mailing list be set up with the following posting rules: 1) One post per person per thread. That includes the initiator of the thread. That's not how announcement lists work. The whole point of an announcement list is that the only posts on it will be announcements; and for the list to be useful, the announcements have to be limited to those that are important to the list's topic (which is usually narrowly defined) and of interest to the subscribers—which generally means that only people in positions of authority are allowed to post. mediawiki-announce and toolserver-announce are good examples. I'm pretty confident that Anthony knows how traditional announcement lists work. But what is the meaning of an announcement list for a non-hierarchical highly decentralized project? For smaller projects you just give all the active project members the rights to post to the list — and trust that they understand that they are supposed to keep the volume down and that all the project members agree about what is announcement worthy. I think what Anthony suggests is an interesting and worthwhile idea. The Wikimedia communit(y|(ies)) have a lot of communications challenges: People are often unaware of interesting things that others are doing. The editorial channels like EnWP's signpost are fairly narrow pipe. And the open communication lists suffer from high traffic even when their signal to noise ratio is decent. I don't agree with the notion that we need moderators and list admins to make sure the rules are not broken, obviously the list would need someone who can enforce the rules but there is little reason to believe that there would be much enforcement work after all: the wikis do okay without heavy handed control. Right now there is a lot of announcement duplication because there is no clearly right place to send announcements with foundation wide impact, so we send them everywhere. Were I king of the universe I'd probably pick somewhat different criteria than Anthony suggested (i.e. I might suggest something crazy like initial posts must be translated into at least two languages… to shift the communication cost onto the sender; or require that any posting be on behalf of at least two people), but I don't know that the specifics matter or that my suggestions would really be any better than his. If someone wants to try out something along the lines of what Anthony is suggesting I'd be willing to volunteer for list-mod duty, with the understanding that the moderators purpose is primary enforcing the rules for traffic control purposes. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
Samuel Klein wrote: Hello Mark, On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 3:38 AM, Deliriumdelir...@hackish.org wrote: I'd personally place myself on the objecting to WMF expansion side, at least in general sentiment. With larger organizations, you can indeed do more, but also run more risks. In particular, organizations with large staffs run the risk of bureaucratization; and community/volunteer-based organizations with large staffs risk capture of the overall project by the official organization, rather than the community and volunteers they ostensibly act as support staff for. Can you say more about this -- both what more you can do and the risks run -- and cite the track record[s] you mention? Well, the last part is a judgment call: I'm personally skeptical of the extent to which most non-profit organizations remain representative of the communities they were originally started by, as opposed to the professional staff and boards of directors they're currently run by. That is, is the organization itself directing the effort, taking decisions from the top down; or is the organization there to provide legal and financial backing for implementation of a community's goals? I prefer the 2nd variety. One example I consider near ideal is the relationship between Software in the Public Interest (a non-profit organization) and the Debian project (a community-run project that SPI is the legal and financial backing for). Despite not being a non-profit, the relationship between Canonical and Ubuntu is also almost along those lines, too. In both cases, there's a separate organizational structure for the community and for the legal organization--- SPI does not appoint Debian project leads, and the SPI board does not pass Debian resolutions. Wikimedia so far is run almost like that, though not quite as strongly. Basically: why does formal organization with legal structure exist at all? For purely online organizations, it *almost* doesn't need to exist. But, a decentralized group of people with no legal status has difficulty maintaining a server room, purchasing bandwidth, and similar things. So one does need to exist. And once one exists, perhaps it can provide some other assistance-- if a group of community members think something ought to be done that requires some legal status or money, they could go to the organization with a request, like we currently do with a paid tech staff that implements (some) (sensible) feature requests. But I'm worried about whether that will creep towards the organization itself increasingly running the show, as opposed to playing mainly a supporting/implementation/financing role. Do you feel there are similar capacity/risk tradeoffs of larger/more inclusive communities? (some might say that the current editing community is becoming an organization separating itself from the general public, building barriers to participation; and that this [de facto] organization risks capturing the overall knowledge-sharing project within existing guidelines and policies, rather than encouraging bold participation among the wider world, who are the ostensible audience and body of future contributors.) I think there are risks/tradeoffs there, but I don't see them as quite the same kind. For, say, the English Wikipedia (what I'm most familiar with), Why does it work at all? is a pretty large question, but I think to a large extent it comes down precisely to the fact that our community *isn't* the public at large, but is a subset of the public that is generally well-informed, has some degree of shared culture and community norms, and is committed to a set of goals not everyone shares. It's worth thinking about whether we're unnecessarily excluding people who could share those goals, or could change things to improve the quality of the encyclopedia; but I think also worth thinking about whether there are important elements of those cultural norms that are key to the success of the project and shouldn't be messed with lightly. -Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Projekt: OpenCritics (let's free subjective content, too!!)
People who want to write reviews of this sort generally want to propagandize either for or against something they have strong feelings about. The susceptibility of a project like this to campaigning and cabalism is so great, that i doubt a community run project could maintain objectivity. We have enough problem doing it at Wikipedia when the avowed purpose is to NOT offer opinion. I think maintaining NPOV --or anything like it--in this situation will be impossible. I'd like to see someone try nevertheless. I certainly am not opposing the project. But it should not be us--we should keep far away from that. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 6:44 PM, Joshua Gayjoshua...@gmail.com wrote: So, I think that such a project works well with the concept of NPOV. I think you can break the site into two distinct parts. Part 1: You collect opinions of various sorts in various ways. Part 2: You organize them in terms of their relative significance to each other and summarize them in a disinterested voice. This would be a lot like Wikibooks and Wikipedia; people write stuff on Wikibooks and then people cite those books on Wikipedia. -Josh On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Victor Vasiliev vasi...@gmail.com wrote: Sage Ross wrote: I think this is an excellent, long overdue idea and something Wikimedia should be interested in. I was actually thinking of proposing something like this at strategy.wikimedia.org (and may still do so). I don't think that creating such a project within Wikimedia would be a great idea. NPOV is one of the most important Wikimedia principles. --vvv ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- I am running the Arizona Rock'n'Roll marathon with Team in Training. Help me reach my fundraising goals: http://pages.teamintraining.org/ma/pfchangs10/joshuagay ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Projekt: OpenCritics (let's free subjective content, too!!)
Victor Vasiliev wrote: Sage Ross wrote: I think this is an excellent, long overdue idea and something Wikimedia should be interested in. I was actually thinking of proposing something like this at strategy.wikimedia.org (and may still do so). I don't think that creating such a project within Wikimedia would be a great idea. NPOV is one of the most important Wikimedia principles. No it is *not*. I will continue to combat this pernicious canard as long as there is breath in my body. NPOV is a band-aid that enables the writing of a collaboratively edited encyclopaedia about subjects which while they may be fixed as to their true nature, are inherently subjectively understood by various people. NPOV is *not* a transcendent principle. It shouldn't be raised to the level of something immutable and sacred. It is just a tool. Wikinews does not adhere to the strict NPOV interpretation that is inevitable for Wikipedia. Wikiversity could not even come close to employing anything remotely like it. Wikispecies actually doesn't have any need for anything like it. And for Wikisource, just as for Wikinews, NPOV can only be considered to apply in a thoroughly transmogrified form. Thank you. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
