Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: WikiLeaks inspired New media haven proposal passes Parliament
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 11:08 PM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.orgwrote: On 17/06/10 06:55, Michael Snow wrote: If it's in the US, wouldn't it be a data center? (I'm mildly disappointed to discover that the Meta pages on the guerilla UK spelling campaign and the gorilla US spelling campaign were deleted some time ago. Though honestly, Noah Webster should have finished the job and made it campain.) For people lucky enough to be able to view the treasure trove of Wikimedia history that is the meta deletion archive, here is the version I prefer: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=Guerilla+UK+spelling+campaigntimestamp=20050608022530 Click show preview to see it with formatting. -- Tim Starling You would and 3 cheers for Sj ! http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Guerilla_spelling_campaigns James Alexander james.alexan...@rochester.edu jameso...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 6:16 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 5:26 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: There's been discussion of the gender gap among Wikimedia editors on and off for many years now, and it's a focus of the strategic planning process. This is a part of a larger issue of how to get members of underrepresented groups to edit more, to combat system bias on all fronts. (Or, simply how to get more people to edit regardless). I just read this article: International Collaboration for Women in IT: How to Avoid Reinventing the Wheel http://iisit.org/Vol7/IISITv7p329-338Craig734.pdf which is about how the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery, an international academic computing membership organization) has a women's interest group -- ACM-W -- which is tasked with increasing women's participation in IT -- an equally daunting task. What's mostly interesting about this article is it describes how ACM-W has an ambassador program, with individuals tasked with increasing participation in various countries. In turn these ambassadors report that one size doesn't fit all -- increasing women's participation in IT depends on a variety of factors, including the general status of women's education in a country, and that the techniques one uses to encourage female participation might vary quite a bit depending on other cultural factors. Of course this is not an earth-shattering conclusion, but it's also clearly applicable to Wikimedia. I haven't seen many papers that take an explicitly international view to the issue of women in IT, so I thought it was interesting. -- phoebe In my admittedly sociologically-slightly-impaired IT oriented mind, I am not sure that the rationales for people to enter the IT field writ large (information technology, computer science, computer engineering, etc) match those for people to contribute to Wikipedia. However, the generality of opportunity identified there seems useful. I guess I was thinking more about the commonalities of process: of encouraging people to do something that requires some education but a lot more self-motivation, and involves interacting with a somewhat non-mainstream and sometimes exclusionary culture that may be (to a greater or lesser degree) hostile to their participation. And what I found interesting about this paper, even though it's not a great paper at all, is it gets towards tossing out the idea that how you do that is similar across the board no matter what, that in fact what it means to interact with computer culture varies a lot depending on entirely outside circumstances. I think that we often make this mistake in Wikimedia too, conflating English Wikipedia culture with the culture of all of the projects, or forgetting that what it's like to edit on a small project is very different from what it's like to edit on a big project, and that how we recruit -- if we are recruiting anyone at all -- might vary a lot depending on the combination of circumstances the potential editor is in and what it is they're trying to do. Like I said, not an earth-shattering conclusion at all, but I've really never seen it expressed much in the context of the women-in-IT problem (which could just be a result of my limited reading). And I don't think we make the case much in Wikimedia either, maybe because there's such a recognizable set of personality traits that truly committed wikipedians tend to possess across the board that it often seems like those traits are the essence of editor-ness. Greg: I think you're totally right about making things more accessible to the average person -- by which I think we mean not an off-the-scale-encyclopedist-geek -- rather than any special group, and of course you can define average in ways unconnected to gender, cultural background, age, income level, computer skills, etc. I think when making broad changes (e.g. usability) we have to trend towards whatever this average is -- virtually all of our readers get the same interface experience, after all, no matter what their background might be. And any improvements that make it easier to edit for this mythical average population will clearly tend towards benefiting many more people in all categories. When doing outreach, though, I think we have to account for the differences. I'd give a different class on Wikipedia to a bunch of fifth graders than I would to twenty-year-olds than I would to people my dad's age; but really maybe more than age it might be their technical proficiency that I have to account for the most, or their level of academic training, or their general obsessiveness about facts, or their prior knowledge of what an encyclopedia is, or whatever. Generalizing *just* about age -- or just about gender, or a host of other categories -- doesn't really get you very far in the end. But it is also clear, I think, that we haven't even reached all of the hyper-geeky people in the world
Re: [Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation
Hoi, Have you had a look at the Indonesian competition? The Indonesian chapter organised a competition among students of 10 universities. The result is many more editors for the id.wp and the majority is female. I am convinced that in many countries a similar result can be achieved. Thanks, GerardM On 17 June 2010 02:26, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: There's been discussion of the gender gap among Wikimedia editors on and off for many years now, and it's a focus of the strategic planning process. This is a part of a larger issue of how to get members of underrepresented groups to edit more, to combat system bias on all fronts. (Or, simply how to get more people to edit regardless). I just read this article: International Collaboration for Women in IT: How to Avoid Reinventing the Wheel http://iisit.org/Vol7/IISITv7p329-338Craig734.pdf which is about how the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery, an international academic computing membership organization) has a women's interest group -- ACM-W -- which is tasked with increasing women's participation in IT -- an equally daunting task. What's mostly interesting about this article is it describes how ACM-W has an ambassador program, with individuals tasked with increasing participation in various countries. In turn these ambassadors report that one size doesn't fit all -- increasing women's participation in IT depends on a variety of factors, including the general status of women's education in a country, and that the techniques one uses to encourage female participation might vary quite a bit depending on other cultural factors. Of course this is not an earth-shattering conclusion, but it's also clearly applicable to Wikimedia. I haven't seen many papers that take an explicitly international view to the issue of women in IT, so I thought it was interesting. -- phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at gmail.com * ___ 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] Wikipedia trade mark misuse
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 17:25, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote many things. My sidenote is that if you believe in what you say then you imply Wikipedia, Wikimedia and everything we have with 'wiki' string in it, and every method we use which described as 'wiki-way of web publishing' violates Ward's intellectual rights since it was him who first used the word, who conjured up the method and made it known. He didn't, doesn't, and won't, and never intended to interfere, however please realise that wiki was _well_before_ Wikipedia, both the term and the method, and we just use them out of the kindness of Ward [courtesy of Ward - if it were a commercial thing :)]. Trying to claim rights on someone else's work is at best uncivilised. (But of course the legal way is that if you'd try to trademark it it would be nullified by prior art in five seconds.) I would like this thread to stop as it's now really just a waste of precious bits of ones and zeroes. I guess the original question was overanswered now. Let's move on to real problems. World peace, anyone? Thanks, [[user:grin|g]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: WikiLeaks inspired New media haven proposal passes Parliament
Tim Starling wrote: On 17/06/10 06:55, Michael Snow wrote: If it's in the US, wouldn't it be a data center? (I'm mildly disappointed to discover that the Meta pages on the guerilla UK spelling campaign and the gorilla US spelling campaign were deleted some time ago. Though honestly, Noah Webster should have finished the job and made it campain.) For people lucky enough to be able to view the treasure trove of Wikimedia history that is the meta deletion archive, here is the version I prefer: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=Guerilla+UK+spelling+campaigntimestamp=20050608022530 You could have pastebinned it, if you had any other intention than cock a snoot at those of us who are *not* admins on meta. Just a kind reminder. 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] Wikipedia trade mark misuse
On 17 June 2010 11:37, Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 17:25, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote many things. My sidenote is that if you believe in what you say then you imply Wikipedia, Wikimedia and everything we have with 'wiki' string in it, and every method we use which described as 'wiki-way of web publishing' violates Ward's intellectual rights since it was him who first used the word, who conjured up the method and made it known. We're not talking about patents; we're talking about trademarks. Who conjured up the method is completely irrelevant, as I have already explained. This complete lack of understanding of trademark law is precisely why people shouldn't be trying to guess whether something is a violation or not. I have not once claimed that it is a violation. I have said that it might be one. That is the most I can say with my level of understanding of the relevant law and it is clear I have far more understanding of the relevant law than anyone else in this discussion. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia trade mark misuse
Wow, this thread just needs to end. Nathan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia trade mark misuse
on 6/17/10 9:47 AM, Nathan at nawr...@gmail.com wrote: Wow, this thread just needs to end. Nathan Interesting, Nathan. Needs to end for whom? Would you say the same thing if this were a live in-person discussion? Marc Riddell ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Interlanguage extension
2010/6/11 John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com: On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 7:43 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: ... A simpler solution was proposed and implemented by Nikola Smolenski about two years ago (see the links at the end). It still haven't been enabled in the live WMF projects because of technical issues, which seemed to me rather minor (although i might be wrong). ... Links for reference: * http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:A_central_wiki_for_interlanguage_links I'm thinking out loud that this could be implemented as part of a wikidata project. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/058685.html As I am reading up on the strategy wiki, I am seeing several wikidata-like proposals. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Data.wikimedia.org more on http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Structured_Data I think we need to merge these into one project concept, and then hold an RFC on meta. This may be a good idea for the long run, but to the best of my knowledge Wikidata is very big and not very mature. Nikola's Interlanguage extension, in comparison, is small, simple and already working. -- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי Amir Elisha Aharoni http://aharoni.wordpress.com We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace. - T. Moore ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Open Wikimedia meeting on IRC: today, 1700 UTC / 1300 EST in #wikimedia
Reminder: this is starting in a few minutes, and will run until 1830 UTC. SJ On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 12:59 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: There will be another open meeting tomorrow on IRC. For those who are available, please join us in #wikimedia at 1700 UTC. (There's a link to a web-based client you can use.) All are welcome to add discussion topics. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings#June_17.2C_2010 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Gmail - List messages flagged as spam
A housekeeping note: Gmail has been marking some list messages as spam for the past five days or so. It sounds like this is affecting other Wikimedia lists, including Otrs-en-l and daily-article-l. I don't know what if any work has been done to try to fix this issue, but until it's sorted out, you might need to watch your spam folders for list posts. Thanks, Ryan -- [[User:Ral315]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Gmail - List messages flagged as spam
On 17 June 2010 13:12, Ryan Lomonaco wiki.ral...@gmail.com wrote: A housekeeping note: Gmail has been marking some list messages as spam for the past five days or so. It sounds like this is affecting other Wikimedia lists, including Otrs-en-l and daily-article-l. I don't know what if any work has been done to try to fix this issue, but until it's sorted out, you might need to watch your spam folders for list posts. Thanks, Ryan I can confirm that Gmail has been marking at least some mail as spam from *every* Wikimedia or Wikipedia list to which I subscribe, and has been doing so since June 11. This includes messages from the OTRS notification system. Risker/Anne ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Gmail - List messages flagged as spam
2010/6/17 Ryan Lomonaco wiki.ral...@gmail.com: A housekeeping note: Gmail has been marking some list messages as spam for the past five days or so. It sounds like this is affecting other Wikimedia I've noticed the same problem with Gmail ;/ In last days I have to check very carefully spam folder. -- Leinad ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Gmail - List messages flagged as spam
Yes. This is true. Many messages are marked as spam during the past few days. I got this message also from the SPAM folder. On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:51 PM, Daniel ~ Leinad danny.lei...@gmail.comwrote: 2010/6/17 Ryan Lomonaco wiki.ral...@gmail.com: A housekeeping note: Gmail has been marking some list messages as spam for the past five days or so. It sounds like this is affecting other Wikimedia I've noticed the same problem with Gmail ;/ In last days I have to check very carefully spam folder. -- Leinad ___ 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] Gmail - List messages flagged as spam
On 17 June 2010 18:12, Ryan Lomonaco wiki.ral...@gmail.com wrote: A housekeeping note: Gmail has been marking some list messages as spam for the past five days or so. It sounds like this is affecting other Wikimedia lists, including Otrs-en-l and daily-article-l. I don't know what if any work has been done to try to fix this issue, but until it's sorted out, you might need to watch your spam folders for list posts. So *that's* why nothing's been making any sense! Thanks for telling me! There is a simple solution: 1) Click create a filter next to the search bar 2) Type lists.wikimedia.org in the To: box 3) Click Next step 4) Check Never send to spam 5) Save the filter This will NOT get things out of spam that are already in it, though. Search for in:spam to:lists.wikimedia.org to find them and Not Spam them manually. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?
Hi folks, For several years now, people have occasionally floated the notion that there should be a permanent Wikimania oversight committee – basically, a group of people responsible for giving some coaching and guidance and oversight to the local planning team each year. Over the years, support has been offered each year by people like Phoebe, James Forrester, Delphine (Delphine both in her staff role and as a volunteer) and SJ … but there has never (AFAIK) been a formal oversight committee. I think there probably should be. I've been talking about this idea with a few people over the past several months. Based on those conversations, I'd propose a mixed committee of volunteers and staff, with a small membership – let's say, five or so people. Ideally the people would remain on the committee for several years, and would have experience with past Wikimanias. The role of the committee would be to provide coaching and guidance for the local planning team (“here is how we've done it in past years, here's what usually works, here are some problems you should watch out for”) … and also to provide oversight to the local team, and help them course-correct if they're having problems. Essentially, the committee would be responsible for helping to ensure, in partnership with the local team, that every Wikimania is a success. I want to reiterate that I (and I think we all) see Wikimania as a volunteer-led event. The Wikimedia Foundation plays a fairly small role --- it is its biggest sponsor, and it supports it in various ways. But Wikimania is a community event, which I don't think should change. I'd like to throw this out for discussion, and also ask people to self-nominate if they're interested in being on such a committee. If everyone interested will be at Gdansk, the best next step may be to arrange a face-to-face meeting there to figure out how best to do this. And I warn Phoebe via this note (although I'm sure she can anticipate it), I will be aiming to pull her in to help think it through, since she has been one of the most consistently-active planners/organizers, at pretty much every Wikimania so far. I'm interested in everyone's views on this, and I'd be particularly interested in hearing from the people who've been involved in past Wikimanias, and also from the Haifa people, to hear if this'd be useful for them for 2011. Thanks, Sue -- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation 415 839 6885 office 415 816 9967 cell Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Gmail - List messages flagged as spam
Hi Thomas, I appreciate a lot your warning and hint This will NOT get things out of spam that are already in it, though. Search for in:spam to:lists.wikimedia.org to find them and Not Spam them manually. as I never noticed before that checkbox Also apply filter to XXX conversations below. (see 2nd page of Gmail filter wizard) doesn't process letters which're in Spam already. Regards, Pavlo On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 8:48 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On 17 June 2010 18:12, Ryan Lomonaco wiki.ral...@gmail.com wrote: A housekeeping note: Gmail has been marking some list messages as spam for the past five days or so. It sounds like this is affecting other Wikimedia lists, including Otrs-en-l and daily-article-l. I don't know what if any work has been done to try to fix this issue, but until it's sorted out, you might need to watch your spam folders for list posts. So *that's* why nothing's been making any sense! Thanks for telling me! There is a simple solution: 1) Click create a filter next to the search bar 2) Type lists.wikimedia.org in the To: box 3) Click Next step 4) Check Never send to spam 5) Save the filter This will NOT get things out of spam that are already in it, though. Search for in:spam to:lists.wikimedia.org to find them and Not Spam them manually. ___ 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] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 3:06 PM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: The role of the committee would be to provide coaching and guidance for the local planning team (“here is how we've done it in past years, here's what usually works, here are some problems you should watch out for”) … and also to provide oversight to the local team, and help them course-correct if they're having problems. Essentially, the committee would be responsible for helping to ensure, in partnership with the local team, that every Wikimania is a success. We actually have tried to do a lot of this informally for a while, but the informality has caused it to sorta fall apart recently. :-) Some things we've done are: * try to make sure that most planning discussion happens on wikimania-planning-l so that past and present organizers can communicate effectively * have work occur on the official public (wikimania20XX.wikimedia.org) and private (wikimaniateam.wikimedia.org) wikis so everyone can help and see what's been done in the past * get some help docs/pages together, here's two on the private planning wiki: http://wikimaniateam.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Ideal_Team / http://wikimaniateam.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Ideal_Timeline A formal committee and a real, detailed set of tips (or Wikimania Book as Sj called it) would definitely be an improvement, but it's important to stress that other people would definitely still be welcome to provide feedback on different topics. I'm interested in everyone's views on this, and I'd be particularly interested in hearing from the people who've been involved in past Wikimanias, and also from the Haifa people, to hear if this'd be useful for them for 2011. I know that the Haifa team is definitely interested in this. Last I heard, they were actively reaching out to previous organizers so that they could meet them in Gdansk and get feedback/tips. (They've also been setting up planning information on the existing wikimaniateamwiki.) -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could never work in practice. I've seen that quote attributed to Jimmy, and also to Miikka Ryokas, quoted by Noam Cohen in his NY Times story about Virginia Tech. But neither of them, I think, originated it. Does anyone have a good attribution for first use of that quote? (I'm using it in a presentation and want to attribute if I can.) Thanks, Sue -- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation 415 839 6885 office 415 816 9967 cell Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
Isn't the quote backwards? The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. It could never work in theory? -Dan On Jun 17, 2010, at 4:03 PM, Sue Gardner wrote: The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could never work in practice. I've seen that quote attributed to Jimmy, and also to Miikka Ryokas, quoted by Noam Cohen in his NY Times story about Virginia Tech. But neither of them, I think, originated it. Does anyone have a good attribution for first use of that quote? (I'm using it in a presentation and want to attribute if I can.) Thanks, Sue -- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation 415 839 6885 office 415 816 9967 cell Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ 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] The problem with Wikipedia...
Yes, it's communism that works in theory but not in practice. :-) 2010/6/17 Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com Isn't the quote backwards? The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. It could never work in theory? -Dan On Jun 17, 2010, at 4:03 PM, Sue Gardner wrote: The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could never work in practice. I've seen that quote attributed to Jimmy, and also to Miikka Ryokas, quoted by Noam Cohen in his NY Times story about Virginia Tech. But neither of them, I think, originated it. Does anyone have a good attribution for first use of that quote? (I'm using it in a presentation and want to attribute if I can.) Thanks, Sue -- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation 415 839 6885 office 415 816 9967 cell Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ 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 -- Jon Harald Søby http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
This is the best source of the zeroth law of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654/Raul%27s_laws#Laws_by_others I believe people have tried to track down the original coiner, but noone really knows. Thanks, Pharos 2010/6/17 Jon Harald Søby jhs...@gmail.com: Yes, it's communism that works in theory but not in practice. :-) 2010/6/17 Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com Isn't the quote backwards? The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. It could never work in theory? -Dan On Jun 17, 2010, at 4:03 PM, Sue Gardner wrote: The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could never work in practice. I've seen that quote attributed to Jimmy, and also to Miikka Ryokas, quoted by Noam Cohen in his NY Times story about Virginia Tech. But neither of them, I think, originated it. Does anyone have a good attribution for first use of that quote? (I'm using it in a presentation and want to attribute if I can.) Thanks, Sue -- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation 415 839 6885 office 415 816 9967 cell Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ 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 -- Jon Harald Søby http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by ___ 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] The problem with Wikipedia...
On 17 June 2010 21:07, Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com wrote: Isn't the quote backwards? The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. It could never work in theory? I vaguely remember it on wikien-l many years ago. I have no idea if that was its first use. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
Dan Rosenthal wrote: Isn't the quote backwards? The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. It could never work in theory? It can be formulated various ways. Raul's Laws has yet another variation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654/Raul%27s_laws I'd note that in the history of that page, it dates back to March 2006 and even then the original author was listed as unknown. That makes it exactly the sort of quote that is easily misattributed to Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln. --Michael Snow ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
Here's the phrase in a 1988 sociology paper: http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/1/1/19 I'd call it a pretty obvious play on words, though, so I really doubt we got it from that. Anyone got a complete wikien-l archive to grovel through? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, For several years now, people have occasionally floated the notion that there should be a permanent Wikimania oversight committee – basically, a group of people responsible for giving some coaching and guidance and oversight to the local planning team each year. Over the years, support has been offered each year by people like Phoebe, James Forrester, Delphine (Delphine both in her staff role and as a volunteer) and SJ … but there has never (AFAIK) been a formal oversight committee. I think there probably should be. Hello Sue and all, Good timing -- we just had a long conversation about this in the #wikimedia open meeting this afternoon. There were quite a few participants, including several past wikimania organizers. Quick summary of that discussion: * there is definite interest in an ongoing Wikimania (oversight, governance, guidance) (body, committee, group) (we talked for quite a while about those various names and their different connotations) * there are a few potential roles that people see for such a group: ** 1) collecting and writing better documentation about the conference, including best practices for organization and what has happened in the past ** 2) answering questions from Wikimania organizers about past practices, helping coordinate who to ask about various aspects ** 3) providing oversight to the overall wikimania process -- for instance making sure that a bid jury is called and the bids are submitted in time (like elections) ** 4) providing oversight/governance as the conference progresses -- for instance, getting regular reports about the conference. Along with this, the org team would have someone to report to if, say, a venue burns down or some other catastrophe happens. These ideas are roughly in order of how much controversy they generated among discussion participants. I think we all pretty much agreed that we need better conference documentation, and a loose community group of past organizers and interested participants can provide such documentation. Here's a start: Conference handbook: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania/Handbook -- let's write the big book of Wikimania Conference checklist: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania/checklist -- make sure you have everything you need Conference community: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania/community -- a start at a community group, w/ interested participants. We discussed however that for any oversight/governance functions we might need a more formalized structure and perhaps a formal mandate. This seemed like a Board-level issue to several people (including me). We also discussed that there's not a good process for proposing and forming community committees that would interact with the Foundation on various issues. What do you all think? best, Phoebe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:19 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Here's the phrase in a 1988 sociology paper: http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/1/1/19 I'd call it a pretty obvious play on words, though, so I really doubt we got it from that. Anyone got a complete wikien-l archive to grovel through? - d. going back that far it might be on wikipedia-l, I think, and Joseph Reagle has done quite a bit of work analyzing that -- maybe he can help. We're looking for the orgins of the quote: The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could never work in practice. :) -- phoebe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
On 17 June 2010 21:14, Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net wrote: Dan Rosenthal wrote: Isn't the quote backwards? The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. It could never work in theory? It can be formulated various ways. Raul's Laws has yet another variation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654/Raul%27s_laws I'd note that in the history of that page, it dates back to March 2006 and even then the original author was listed as unknown. That makes it exactly the sort of quote that is easily misattributed to Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln. --Michael Snow The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it's a total disaster goes back to jan 2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Gareth_Owenoldid=35978744 -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:37 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:19 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Here's the phrase in a 1988 sociology paper: http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/1/1/19 I'd call it a pretty obvious play on words, though, so I really doubt we got it from that. Anyone got a complete wikien-l archive to grovel through? - d. going back that far it might be on wikipedia-l, I think, and Joseph Reagle has done quite a bit of work analyzing that -- maybe he can help. We're looking for the orgins of the quote: The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could never work in practice. :) -- phoebe Actually, the other way around, as others have stated. Now that you mention it, I've seen that quote attributed to Gareth Owen before, so that may actually be the origin of it. I think it's quite a bit older than 2006 though. -- phoebe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Yes, it's communism that works in theory but not in practice. :-) But isn't Wikipedia Communism? It must be true, I saw it written so on Wikipedia! :D - -Mike -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkwaiLoACgkQst0AR/DaKHvUXgCbBY+yHj/W+Z5slPOBMLhCfyxs XYoAn18fKr6W3bX3O3y8Csw3STMY0ZUW =4pzn -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
On 17 June 2010 21:37, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:19 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Here's the phrase in a 1988 sociology paper: http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/1/1/19 I'd call it a pretty obvious play on words, though, so I really doubt we got it from that. Anyone got a complete wikien-l archive to grovel through? - d. going back that far it might be on wikipedia-l, I think, and Joseph Reagle has done quite a bit of work analyzing that -- maybe he can help. We're looking for the orgins of the quote: The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could never work in practice. Well I can search wikipedia-en-l as far back as 13.09.04 and I'm not coming up with anything. Running google searches for mentions pre 2006 doesn't turn up anything however use explodes in 2006 which is rather fast if than jan 2006 use is the first. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?
Hello, I had the pleasure of spending this past Monday in Tel Aviv, speaking at the Israeli Wikipedia Academy. (More about that in a bit -- the support for Wikipedia and wikis in general among universities there remains extremely strong.)We talked about next year's Wikimania over dinner. On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 3:47 PM, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote: I'm interested in everyone's views on this, and I'd be particularly interested in hearing from the people who've been involved in past Wikimanias, and also from the Haifa people, to hear if this'd be useful for them for 2011. I know that the Haifa team is definitely interested in this. Last I heard, they were actively reaching out to previous organizers so that they could meet them in Gdansk and get feedback/tips. (They've also been setting up planning information on the existing wikimaniateamwiki.) It is always good to see an org team still flush with the energy of organizing a bid, trying to reach out and connect with all of the right groups with knowledge from previous years. And it's always a bit of a letdown if that energy doesn't find anyone from outside the team with similar energy, reaching back. Happily, there are a lot of past organizers - both people who were on bid teams and people who were part of other institutions - who have spoken up in recent days to ask how they can help. If we start a Wikimania Primer now, while a new team has that honeymoon energy, we can have a detailed discussion in Gdansk about how to set up a group to support future org teams from yeear to year. As Casey mentioned earlier, there is a lot of good how-to material on the wikimaniateam wiki which is unnecessarily hidden, and should simply be converted into that sort of public document.* SJ * a problem shared with most private wikis... -- meta...@gmail.com w:user:sjidenti.ca:sj ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Serbia billboard campaign
A couple of months ago, we was approached by an artist group which idea is to raise cultural awareness by putting at billboards stylized photos of (not so) famous [1] cultural and scientific persons from the history of Serbia. They wanted to incorporate their art project into Wikimedia Serbia projects and we've found that it is a great idea. The project's site is likilink.org [2][3][4]. The project has been done without money. The main company which deals with billboards in Serbia, Alma Quatro [5] is giving to us not used billboards for free. Not used means, for example, if some billboard campaign is lasting up to 15th of some month -- as they are renting space on monthly basis -- the rest of the month is our. So, it is not about bad locations; contrary, locations are top. But, it was their initial idea, they will work on that, but, it is up to Wikimedians to choose who will be the next persons on billboards all over Serbia. So, after the first couple of writers, the rest is up to them. The first person on billboards is Radoje Domanovic [5], Serbian satirist with Orwellian motives. Those billboards are presently at ~20 places in Belgrade, including large billboards at the highway entrance to Belgrade. The second group will be 5 persons with 30 billboards each: * Two will be Serbian writers. * One will be a female inventor from our previous, but not yet finished project (Female inventors) in cooperation with another organization. * One will be Richard Stallman. * One will be Jimmy Wales. Yes, Jimmy will get 30 billboards in Belgrade for one month :) [1] - Famous, but not so as Nikola Tesla or Vuk Karadzic are. [2] - Lik i link means face/figure and link. [3] - The billboards are designed as the image from the site, but with link to the project's site and [4] - Please, don't ask my why I've put just a JPEG with map :| It will be fixed today or tomorrow. [5] - http://www.aqyu.com/ [6] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radoje_Domanovic ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Serbia billboard campaign
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:09 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: A couple of months ago, we was approached by an artist group which idea is to raise cultural awareness by putting at billboards stylized photos of (not so) famous [1] cultural and scientific persons from the history of Serbia. They wanted to incorporate their art project into Wikimedia Serbia projects and we've found that it is a great idea. The project's site is likilink.org [2][3][4]. The project has been done without money. The main company which deals with billboards in Serbia, Alma Quatro [5] is giving to us not used billboards for free. Not used means, for example, if some billboard campaign is lasting up to 15th of some month -- as they are renting space on monthly basis -- the rest of the month is our. So, it is not about bad locations; contrary, locations are top. But, it was their initial idea, they will work on that, but, it is up to Wikimedians to choose who will be the next persons on billboards all over Serbia. So, after the first couple of writers, the rest is up to them. The first person on billboards is Radoje Domanovic [5], Serbian satirist with Orwellian motives. Those billboards are presently at ~20 places in Belgrade, including large billboards at the highway entrance to Belgrade. The second group will be 5 persons with 30 billboards each: * Two will be Serbian writers. * One will be a female inventor from our previous, but not yet finished project (Female inventors) in cooperation with another organization. * One will be Richard Stallman. * One will be Jimmy Wales. Yes, Jimmy will get 30 billboards in Belgrade for one month :) [1] - Famous, but not so as Nikola Tesla or Vuk Karadzic are. [2] - Lik i link means face/figure and link. [3] - The billboards are designed as the image from the site, but with link to the project's site and [4] - Please, don't ask my why I've put just a JPEG with map :| It will be fixed today or tomorrow. [5] - http://www.aqyu.com/ [6] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radoje_Domanovic Ah, and I forgot a couple of important information: * The first campaign is ongoing: from previous Monday to next Tuesday. * The second campaign will start at Wednesday and it will last for one month. From that point, persons on billboards will be chosen directly by Wikimedians. I will make two projects: one on sr.wp, another on Meta. There will be possible to propose and vote for a person which would be on billboards. Let's say, 2-3 on sr.wp and 3-4 on Meta. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
Hello, I could imagine that such a statement, in a different form, comes originally from socialist or anti-socialist circles. By the way, I am not such a big fan of this seemingly witty remark. If there is a conflict between theory and practice, that means that your theory is bad and has to be adjusted to practice. (In Soviet Union it was the other way round, reality had to be shaped conforming to the theory, that's why I believe the idea comes from somewhere there.) If your theory is that Wikipedia is anarchy and creative chaos and swarm intelligence etc., then, of course, Wikipedia does not work in theory. :-) Kind regards Ziko 2010/6/17 geni geni...@gmail.com: On 17 June 2010 21:37, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:19 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Here's the phrase in a 1988 sociology paper: http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/1/1/19 I'd call it a pretty obvious play on words, though, so I really doubt we got it from that. Anyone got a complete wikien-l archive to grovel through? - d. going back that far it might be on wikipedia-l, I think, and Joseph Reagle has done quite a bit of work analyzing that -- maybe he can help. We're looking for the orgins of the quote: The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could never work in practice. Well I can search wikipedia-en-l as far back as 13.09.04 and I'm not coming up with anything. Running google searches for mentions pre 2006 doesn't turn up anything however use explodes in 2006 which is rather fast if than jan 2006 use is the first. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Serbia billboard campaign
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 5:09 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: A couple of months ago, we was approached by an artist group which idea is to raise cultural awareness by putting at billboards stylized photos of (not so) famous [1] cultural and scientific persons from the history of Serbia. They wanted to incorporate their art project into Wikimedia Serbia projects and we've found that it is a great idea. The project's site is likilink.org [2][3][4]. Just want to say that this is very cool and awesome. :-) The simplistic site is also very cool. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Serbia billboard campaign
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:09 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: [3] - The billboards are designed as the image from the site, but with link to the project's site and ... and Wikipedia logo. At the site, user can click on the image, which leads to the appropriate article. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
Ha. Yes, of course :-) -Original Message- From: Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:07:59 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia... Isn't the quote backwards? The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. It could never work in theory? -Dan On Jun 17, 2010, at 4:03 PM, Sue Gardner wrote: The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could never work in practice. I've seen that quote attributed to Jimmy, and also to Miikka Ryokas, quoted by Noam Cohen in his NY Times story about Virginia Tech. But neither of them, I think, originated it. Does anyone have a good attribution for first use of that quote? (I'm using it in a presentation and want to attribute if I can.) Thanks, Sue -- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation 415 839 6885 office 415 816 9967 cell Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ 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
[Foundation-l] Country portals
I created a page about country portals a while ago (things like wikipedia.de), with the intention of asking people to take a look at it, make sure everything was right, and expand it... but I never got around to it and here I am now. ;-) The page is here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Country_portals and I'd appreciate it if you made sure that your local portal is on there. If you know anything about portals, please add to the page. :-) -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Serbia billboard campaign
Congratulations on this successful alternative use of content in a BIG SCALE way. :-) Thanks for sharing it with us. Wonderful idea! Sydney Poore (FloNight) On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 5:26 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:09 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: [3] - The billboards are designed as the image from the site, but with link to the project's site and ... and Wikipedia logo. At the site, user can click on the image, which leads to the appropriate article. ___ 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] The problem with Wikipedia...
geni wrote: Well I can search wikipedia-en-l as far back as 13.09.04 and I'm not coming up with anything. Running google searches for mentions pre 2006 doesn't turn up anything however use explodes in 2006 which is rather fast if than jan 2006 use is the first. I grepped for it in foundation-l, wikien-l and wikipedia-l archives but found nothing. BTW, it seems we dropped our archives of intlwiki-l. Info-de-l, spamtest-l and the odd jason-l and jason2-l lists. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Serbia billboard campaign
we want photo's! 2010/6/17 Sydney Poore sydney.po...@gmail.com Congratulations on this successful alternative use of content in a BIG SCALE way. :-) Thanks for sharing it with us. Wonderful idea! Sydney Poore (FloNight) On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 5:26 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:09 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: [3] - The billboards are designed as the image from the site, but with link to the project's site and ... and Wikipedia logo. At the site, user can click on the image, which leads to the appropriate article. ___ 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] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?
A couple of fast thoughts: * I think it's debatable whether it's board-level or not. It's board-level in the sense that it's not staff-level -- meaning it's mainly a community responsibility rather than a staff responsibility. But to the extent that part of the role of the committee would be to ask the staff for help if Wikimania is floundering, that is probably not a board-level issue. For example, I can't imagine the board making a resolution asking me to intervene to offer more support if one year Wikimania were floundering. That just doesn't feel like a governance issue. * Which leads me to point two, which is that from my perspective, I actually do want someone to flag to me if Wikimania is floundering, and to ask me officially to have the staff get involved. Wikimania in Gdansk this year has had some problems, and I have felt awkward about how to best resolve them, given that (again) it's a community-led event, not a staff-led event. But I don't think the board should need to involve itself in that, because again, I think it's not a governance issue. * Those aren't super-significant issues from my perspective though. Upshot from my perspective: I think that there's lots of good energy and thinking happening on this, and it feels like people are pretty aligned in feeling we want some form of oversight/guidance/something, in place supporting excellent Wikimanias every year. Which is great. Does someone want to organize a meeting about this for Gdansk? I'm hoping Phoebe will attend, and Casey and SJ, and whoever else is interested. I will be happy to put it in my schedule, and I think James would probably be interested too. (James Owen, not Forrester. I actually don't know if James Forrester is coming this year, although now that I think of it, maybe he is one of the train-travelling people?) Thanks, Sue -Original Message- From: phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 13:28:37 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Wikimania general list \(open subscription\)wikimani...@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee? On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, For several years now, people have occasionally floated the notion that there should be a permanent Wikimania oversight committee – basically, a group of people responsible for giving some coaching and guidance and oversight to the local planning team each year. Over the years, support has been offered each year by people like Phoebe, James Forrester, Delphine (Delphine both in her staff role and as a volunteer) and SJ … but there has never (AFAIK) been a formal oversight committee. I think there probably should be. Hello Sue and all, Good timing -- we just had a long conversation about this in the #wikimedia open meeting this afternoon. There were quite a few participants, including several past wikimania organizers. Quick summary of that discussion: * there is definite interest in an ongoing Wikimania (oversight, governance, guidance) (body, committee, group) (we talked for quite a while about those various names and their different connotations) * there are a few potential roles that people see for such a group: ** 1) collecting and writing better documentation about the conference, including best practices for organization and what has happened in the past ** 2) answering questions from Wikimania organizers about past practices, helping coordinate who to ask about various aspects ** 3) providing oversight to the overall wikimania process -- for instance making sure that a bid jury is called and the bids are submitted in time (like elections) ** 4) providing oversight/governance as the conference progresses -- for instance, getting regular reports about the conference. Along with this, the org team would have someone to report to if, say, a venue burns down or some other catastrophe happens. These ideas are roughly in order of how much controversy they generated among discussion participants. I think we all pretty much agreed that we need better conference documentation, and a loose community group of past organizers and interested participants can provide such documentation. Here's a start: Conference handbook: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania/Handbook -- let's write the big book of Wikimania Conference checklist: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania/checklist -- make sure you have everything you need Conference community: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania/community -- a start at a community group, w/ interested participants. We discussed however that for any oversight/governance functions we might need a more formalized structure and perhaps a formal mandate. This seemed like a Board-level issue to several people (including me). We also discussed that there's not a good process for proposing and forming community
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
Thank you all! Very helpful. I'll attribute it to Gareth, and note that it's passed into widespread use. Thanks, Sue -Original Message- From: Joseph Reagle joseph@reagle.org Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:39:41 To: phoebe ayersphoebe.w...@gmail.com Cc: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org; Sage Rossrages...@gmail.com; Sue Gardnersgard...@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia... On Thursday, June 17, 2010, phoebe ayers wrote: Actually, the other way around, as others have stated. Now that you mention it, I've seen that quote attributed to Gareth Owen before, so that may actually be the origin of it. I think it's quite a bit older than 2006 though. A wonderful question and one I've been interested in since I think such aphorisms have an interesting normative power (e.g., some others include [a]). Of course scholars, at least, like it so much *because* it shows that the theory is incomplete and hence is grist for their mills, i.e., new theory! :-) I can't provide a provenance any more specific than already noted (i.e., appearing on Gareth Owen's user page) and I always found it ironically apt that such a prominent statement about Wikipedia is attributed to an anonymous. (If anyone knows Owen, please ask!) However, here's a bit of a time-line, I think it certainly spread as a meme in wider circles thanks to Cohen at the NYT. 20060120: Gareth Owen's user page [1]. 20060321: Raul654's adds it to his laws [2]. 20070423: Noam Cohen reference in NYT [3]. 20070501: Quoted in Wikizine [4]. 20070613: Sage Ross refers to it as old hat a few months later in response to popular Britannica blog entry [5]. 20080106: Cohen references it again [6]. [a]:http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/archived_content/people/reagle/inet-quotations-19990709.html [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Gareth_Owenoldid=35978744 [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Raul654/Raul%27s_lawsoldid=44834502 [3]: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/technology/23link.html [4]: http://en.wikizine.org/2007/05/year-2007-week-18-number-69.html [5]: http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2007/06/authority-of-a-new-kind/ [6]: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/books/06cohenintro.html ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
Pharos wrote: This is the best source of the zeroth law of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654/Raul%27s_laws#Laws_by_others I believe people have tried to track down the original coiner, but noone really knows. The original original of the concept itself is of course The Flight of the Bumblebee, with a related concept being the centipede losing track of it's legs, when it begins trying to think through what it is doing with them. old skool anecdote warning In actual fact I employed this kind of formulation to rebut New Media pundit Teppo Turkki (think of him as the Finnish equivalent of Andrew Keene, and you won't go too far wrong) in a debate here in Finland, in the mid 1990's, on the subject of the future of the Internet. My opinion was that eventually, with the passage of time the Internet would not be The Net of a Million Lies anymore, at least in terms of any idea that had been debated exhaustively on the web, though new lies would regularly sprout of course. Teppo Turkki attempted to just completely pooh-pooh the very idea, saying That might be the way it works in theory, but in practise... To which I replied lightning fast that in fact, It could never in fact work in theory, but practical experience has showed otherwise. /old skool 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] Gmail - List messages flagged as spam
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:48 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: 2) Type lists.wikimedia.org in the To: box If you use Has the words: [quote]listid:*.wikimedia.org[/quote] you'll be able to catch certain messages not caught by the To: filter. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?
On 17 June 2010 23:48, susanpgard...@gmail.com wrote: (James Owen, not Forrester. I actually don't know if James Forrester is coming this year, although now that I think of it, maybe he is one of the train-travelling people?) I am, to both counts, and you can rely on me turning up to anything to do with Wikimania organisation. :-) J. -- James D. Forrester jdforres...@wikimedia.org | jdforres...@gmail.com [[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
Platonides wrote: geni wrote: Well I can search wikipedia-en-l as far back as 13.09.04 and I'm not coming up with anything. Running google searches for mentions pre 2006 doesn't turn up anything however use explodes in 2006 which is rather fast if than jan 2006 use is the first. I grepped for it in foundation-l, wikien-l and wikipedia-l archives but found nothing. BTW, it seems we dropped our archives of intlwiki-l. Info-de-l, spamtest-l and the odd jason-l and jason2-l lists. My guess would be anyway that it wasn't on the lists, but in an IRC chat. Might even have been by me, since I had used a similar formulation about the internet as a whole, over a decade before. But I am certainly not claiming affirmatively to be the originator, since as others have said, the play on words is pretty obvious. 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] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?
Today's meeting was definitely progressive and the idea of compiling a handbook (or guide, or whatever) to Wikimania is fruitful..but, I just thought: Enthusiasm and good intentions could turn into a problem (or a crisis) if they are not accompanied by experience, or at least know-how. All teams want a conference, but they don't necessairly understand what does that take. From my limited experience in 2008; Delphine was an imporant factor (catalyst) in making things go on track, poking volunteers, and reporting to the foundation. She knew what a conference is...and what wikimedians want. If someone could take the role of Delphine back, maybe on part time or per task basis, then I think that could help. A book is good; but how do we make sure the content is practically implemented? Moushira On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 1:48 AM, susanpgard...@gmail.com wrote: A couple of fast thoughts: * I think it's debatable whether it's board-level or not. It's board-level in the sense that it's not staff-level -- meaning it's mainly a community responsibility rather than a staff responsibility. But to the extent that part of the role of the committee would be to ask the staff for help if Wikimania is floundering, that is probably not a board-level issue. For example, I can't imagine the board making a resolution asking me to intervene to offer more support if one year Wikimania were floundering. That just doesn't feel like a governance issue. * Which leads me to point two, which is that from my perspective, I actually do want someone to flag to me if Wikimania is floundering, and to ask me officially to have the staff get involved. Wikimania in Gdansk this year has had some problems, and I have felt awkward about how to best resolve them, given that (again) it's a community-led event, not a staff-led event. But I don't think the board should need to involve itself in that, because again, I think it's not a governance issue. * Those aren't super-significant issues from my perspective though. Upshot from my perspective: I think that there's lots of good energy and thinking happening on this, and it feels like people are pretty aligned in feeling we want some form of oversight/guidance/something, in place supporting excellent Wikimanias every year. Which is great. Does someone want to organize a meeting about this for Gdansk? I'm hoping Phoebe will attend, and Casey and SJ, and whoever else is interested. I will be happy to put it in my schedule, and I think James would probably be interested too. (James Owen, not Forrester. I actually don't know if James Forrester is coming this year, although now that I think of it, maybe he is one of the train-travelling people?) Thanks, Sue -Original Message- From: phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 13:28:37 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Wikimania general list \(open subscription\) wikimani...@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee? On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, For several years now, people have occasionally floated the notion that there should be a permanent Wikimania oversight committee – basically, a group of people responsible for giving some coaching and guidance and oversight to the local planning team each year. Over the years, support has been offered each year by people like Phoebe, James Forrester, Delphine (Delphine both in her staff role and as a volunteer) and SJ … but there has never (AFAIK) been a formal oversight committee. I think there probably should be. Hello Sue and all, Good timing -- we just had a long conversation about this in the #wikimedia open meeting this afternoon. There were quite a few participants, including several past wikimania organizers. Quick summary of that discussion: * there is definite interest in an ongoing Wikimania (oversight, governance, guidance) (body, committee, group) (we talked for quite a while about those various names and their different connotations) * there are a few potential roles that people see for such a group: ** 1) collecting and writing better documentation about the conference, including best practices for organization and what has happened in the past ** 2) answering questions from Wikimania organizers about past practices, helping coordinate who to ask about various aspects ** 3) providing oversight to the overall wikimania process -- for instance making sure that a bid jury is called and the bids are submitted in time (like elections) ** 4) providing oversight/governance as the conference progresses -- for instance, getting regular reports about the conference. Along with this, the org team would have someone to report to if, say, a venue burns down or some other catastrophe happens. These ideas are roughly in order of how much
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Serbia billboard campaign
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 12:02 AM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org wrote: we want photo's! The company is making photos of every billboard. We have a deal to get all of them under GFDL/CC-BY-SA :) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?
OK, so I guess my question is (and we talked about this on IRC too) -- who has the power or the ability -- or who *should*, in a perfect world -- create such a committee? We don't have much precedent for this. There were concerns over who or what body can create governance/oversight structures, particularly if this isn't really just a Foundation issue. I totally agree that part of such a body's role could be to help coordinate between the permanent staff whose work might touch on Wikimania, and the rotating local organization team. -- phoebe On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 3:48 PM, susanpgard...@gmail.com wrote: A couple of fast thoughts: * I think it's debatable whether it's board-level or not. It's board-level in the sense that it's not staff-level -- meaning it's mainly a community responsibility rather than a staff responsibility. But to the extent that part of the role of the committee would be to ask the staff for help if Wikimania is floundering, that is probably not a board-level issue. For example, I can't imagine the board making a resolution asking me to intervene to offer more support if one year Wikimania were floundering. That just doesn't feel like a governance issue. * Which leads me to point two, which is that from my perspective, I actually do want someone to flag to me if Wikimania is floundering, and to ask me officially to have the staff get involved. Wikimania in Gdansk this year has had some problems, and I have felt awkward about how to best resolve them, given that (again) it's a community-led event, not a staff-led event. But I don't think the board should need to involve itself in that, because again, I think it's not a governance issue. * Those aren't super-significant issues from my perspective though. Upshot from my perspective: I think that there's lots of good energy and thinking happening on this, and it feels like people are pretty aligned in feeling we want some form of oversight/guidance/something, in place supporting excellent Wikimanias every year. Which is great. Does someone want to organize a meeting about this for Gdansk? I'm hoping Phoebe will attend, and Casey and SJ, and whoever else is interested. I will be happy to put it in my schedule, and I think James would probably be interested too. (James Owen, not Forrester. I actually don't know if James Forrester is coming this year, although now that I think of it, maybe he is one of the train-travelling people?) Thanks, Sue -Original Message- From: phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 13:28:37 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Wikimania general list \(open subscription\)wikimani...@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee? On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, For several years now, people have occasionally floated the notion that there should be a permanent Wikimania oversight committee – basically, a group of people responsible for giving some coaching and guidance and oversight to the local planning team each year. Over the years, support has been offered each year by people like Phoebe, James Forrester, Delphine (Delphine both in her staff role and as a volunteer) and SJ … but there has never (AFAIK) been a formal oversight committee. I think there probably should be. Hello Sue and all, Good timing -- we just had a long conversation about this in the #wikimedia open meeting this afternoon. There were quite a few participants, including several past wikimania organizers. Quick summary of that discussion: * there is definite interest in an ongoing Wikimania (oversight, governance, guidance) (body, committee, group) (we talked for quite a while about those various names and their different connotations) * there are a few potential roles that people see for such a group: ** 1) collecting and writing better documentation about the conference, including best practices for organization and what has happened in the past ** 2) answering questions from Wikimania organizers about past practices, helping coordinate who to ask about various aspects ** 3) providing oversight to the overall wikimania process -- for instance making sure that a bid jury is called and the bids are submitted in time (like elections) ** 4) providing oversight/governance as the conference progresses -- for instance, getting regular reports about the conference. Along with this, the org team would have someone to report to if, say, a venue burns down or some other catastrophe happens. These ideas are roughly in order of how much controversy they generated among discussion participants. I think we all pretty much agreed that we need better conference documentation, and a loose community group of past organizers and interested participants can provide such
Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 8:51 AM, susanpgard...@gmail.com wrote: Thank you all! Very helpful. I'll attribute it to Gareth, and note that it's passed into widespread use. The popular observation is that Wikipedia only works in practice. In theory, it can never work. Sheizaf Rafaeli and Yaron Ariel, Online Motivation Factors: Incentives for Participation and Contribution in Wikipedia, published in Psychological aspects of cyberspace, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521694647 p.243 http://gsb.haifa.ac.il/~sheizaf/cyberpsych/11-RafaeliAriel.pdf http://books.google.com.au/books?id=2NaSFhCAU0oCq=Wikipedia+only+works+in+practice; -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation
I don't think scapegoating Wikipedia's gender imbalances to biological differences is especially helpful. And the suggestion that it may not be possible to dumb-down Wikipedia enough to attract women is ridiculous (and offensive). Regardless of our genetic predispositions, there are very real cultural issues that frequently drive female contributors away from Wikimedia projects. Many areas of our projects are downright mysogynistic: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3APatriarchyaction=historysubmitdiff=290490477oldid=290436986 while others are just passively sexist: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Picture_of_the_day/Archive_1#POTD.27s_depiction_of_women http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Nudity#Standard_regarding_female_vs_male_genitalia Not to mention that our trolls seem to favor profiling and harassing female editors: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=18616st=20p=107254#entry107254 As long as disrespectful and sexist behavior flourishes unchecked, editing Wikipedia will probably not be an attractive proposition for most women. Unfortunately, this problem seems to be self-perpetuating, as the more the gender ratio is skewed, the more the culture of Wikipedia will tend to tolerate sexist or mysogynistic behavior, and the more women will leave the project. I think instead of trying to figure out some magic interface pheromone for women, we should just start reaching out to more women directly. It would be great if the Foundation's new public policy initiative could do outreach to some Women's Studies programs or if we could promote Wikipedia to women's tech groups like IBM Women in Technology or the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. Any other ideas? Ryan Kaldari On 6/16/10 6:04 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 8:26 PM, phoebe ayersphoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: There's been discussion of the gender gap among Wikimedia editors on and off for many years now, and it's a focus of the strategic planning process. This is a part of a larger issue of how to get members of underrepresented groups to edit more, to combat system bias on all fronts. (Or, simply how to get more people to edit regardless). You may find it interesting that these kind of large imbalances can arise out of a simple but surprising mathematical truth: If you have a mixed population with a skill, say skateboarding, that follows the typical normal distribution and one sub-population (e.g. people with red hair) have an average performance only slight higher than another sub-population (blondes), and you were to select the best skateboarders out of the group you would end up with a surprisingly high concentration of the red-hair subgroup, so high that it doesn't at all seem justified by the small difference in average performance. This is is because in normal distributions the concentration of people with a particular skill falls off exponentially away from the average, so if you take the two distributions (amount of skateboarding skill for red-hairs and blondes) and shift one a very small amount the ratio between the two becomes increasingly large as you select for higher and higher skill levels. The same kind of results happen when, instead of a difference in average performance, there is simply a difference in the variation. If red-hairs have the same average skate-boarding skill but are less consistent— more klutzes _and_ more superstars this has an even larger impact than differences in the average, again biasing towards the red-hairs. These effects can be combined, and if there are multiple supporting skills for a task they combine multiplicatively.[*] The applicability here is clear: There is a strong biological argument justifying greater variance in genetically linked traits in men (due to the decrease in genetic redundancy) which is supported by many studies which show greater variance in males. So all things equal any time you select for extremes (high or low performing) you will tend to tend to end up with a male biased group. (There are small also differences in measured averages between men and women in many areas...) And many of the 'skills' that are reasonable predictions of someone's likelihood of being a Wikipedian, if we're even to call them 'skills' as many aren't all that flattering, are obviously male super-abundant in the greater world. How many female obsessive stamp collectors do you know? Male? The kind of obsessive collecting trait is almost so exclusively male that it's a cliché, and it's pretty obvious why that kind of person would find a calling in Wikipedia. One piece of insight that comes out of is that general approaches which make Wikipedia more palatable to average people, as opposed to uber-obsessive techobibilo walking-fact-machines, may have a greater impact at reducing gender imbalance than female centric improvements. (and may
Re: [Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:08 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkald...@wikimedia.org wrote: I don't think scapegoating Wikipedia's gender imbalances to biological differences is especially helpful. And the suggestion that it may not be possible to dumb-down Wikipedia enough to attract women is ridiculous (and offensive). Regardless of our genetic predispositions, there are very real cultural issues that frequently drive female contributors away from Wikimedia projects. [snip] Ryan, I believe your post was unnecessarily confrontational. I would expect you to call me out on that kind of thing, so I'm going to call you out on it. I generally succeed at being thick skinned— but this characterization of my words is hurtful and the witch hunts that sometimes accompany responses like yours are outright frightening. I'm also concerned for other contributors who aren't as online-tough as I am... I know people who wouldn't touch a gender-issues thread with a 10ft poll because they are sure that they'll be misunderstood and burned alive. We can't improve diversity if we create the impression that anyone who disagrees with the group or shares a contrary view is the enemy and fair game for an attack. We should welcome contrary views, even wrong ones, and treat all speakers with patience, respect, and a healthy-helping of assume-good-faith— even when, and especially when, our first impression of their positions is that they are ones which might be harmful to some group or another. After all, by ferreting out a wrong position and building a good counter argument in a respectful discussion between colleges we build knowledge and skills that help us see and correct the same wrongness everywhere. But that can't happen if we use language to address wrong positions that reflect negatively on the character of the speaker. ... and to get real change on these kinds of pervasive issues we need the broadest input and the broadest buy in. This can't be achieved if the topic is one which people feel is open only to people who know the right things to say and the right ways to say them. The characterization of my mainstreaming suggestion as dumb-down Wikipedia enough to attract women is exceptionally uncharitable and contributed significantly to my impression that you were trying to make a target out of me. Just so there is no lack of clarity on this point, I'm opposed to dumbing down in general and the idea that anything would need to be made _dumb_ to attract Women is completely unsupported by any information that I've seen. Making things more attractive to typical people doesn't mean making them dumber. ... In this case I wasn't even disagreeing with anyone. I'd take your complaint, if not the tone, as a deserved response if I'd dismissed any examples similar to the ones you provided in your post... but I simply didn't. I fully agree that there are real cultural issues, and that they should be addressed. (Though I would point out, the author of that first horrifying diff-link has long since left the project, so I'm at a loss as to what action I could take now to deal with that particular case). Any time you can point to clear articulatable problems, I'm all for taking action. Once you've taken care of them, however, it's also important the you keep in mind that some of the imbalances are caused by external factors or indirect non-discriminatory internal ones. By keeping all possible causes in mind, and by maintaining a friendly and positive environment for collaboration, we have the greatest opportunity to get the most benefit in the shortest amount of time. I apologise for giving you— or anyone else— the impression that my post was intended to reflect negatively on Women. That was certainly not my intention. In fact, what I was saying arguably the converse (and I used a fairly derogatory language to characterize what Wikipedia selection bias that I'd like to see us temper somewhat, uber-obsessive techobibilo walking-fact-machines, something which sounds more like a side show exhibit than a human being). I believe Wikipedia's form and practices select for weirdos in many different ways, — some weird in 'good ways', many of then negative weirdnesses, (and, I'm sure many more neutral ones). Some of those selections conspired against including Women (and people of many other backgrounds), ... fewer conspire against selecting our existing majority population, because our existing population has done a good job of removing the things that irritate them. ...and it's worth bringing up because it can lead to interesting suggestions, like the idea that making Wikipedia less appealing to weirdos can improve diversity in areas which are not obviously strongly connected to the specific weirdness since selecting for extremes magnifies even small differences between groups. There are plenty of ways that Wikipedia participation rewards being weird— such as having the patience to write a novel defending yourself when someone
Re: [Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 1:00 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: counter argument in a respectful discussion between colleges we build If I can't even manage to say colleague without screwing it up, how can we assume that anything I say was an insult to anything and not just some kind of unfortunate miscommunication? (sorry for the lack of proof-reading, I must have been too busy vomiting out a large volume of words) I am probably less clearly spoken than most people here, — pretty shameful considering that English is my native language and isn't for many of the other people on this list— but I am by no means alone in communicating poorly from time to time. If nothing else I hope that my frequent incoherence can serve as an example of why it is essential to be patient and tolerant when we communicate with others. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?
On 6/17/2010 5:35 PM, phoebe ayers wrote: OK, so I guess my question is (and we talked about this on IRC too) -- who has the power or the ability -- or who *should*, in a perfect world -- create such a committee? We don't have much precedent for this. There were concerns over who or what body can create governance/oversight structures, particularly if this isn't really just a Foundation issue. I suppose the board could create the committee, if it's not clear who else might have the authority. Or perhaps better, the board could authorize its creation. I think the board is a bit reluctant to jump in, partly for the reason Sue mentioned that overseeing Wikimania is not really a board-level issue (it's primarily operational rather than strategic), but also because the board is not well placed to fill and maintain committees like this. When it becomes a situation of appointing people none of us really knows, or feeling that there are probably people we're not aware who ought to be recruited to a committee like this, it's pretty uncomfortable to have that responsibility. But if we authorized the committee and then let the staff and experienced Wikimania volunteers review applications or expressions of interest to join the committee, that might work out. That's kind of the direction things have moved in any case. Some of the early committees that still function have evolved to a place outside the board's immediate activity, and the current work of the governance committee is focused more on structures needed to organize the board's own functions. --Michael Snow ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Gmail - List messages flagged as spam
I think adding mailing list addresses to contacts list will solve the problem. On 18 June 2010 03:07, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:48 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2) Type lists.wikimedia.org in the To: box If you use Has the words: [quote]listid:*.wikimedia.org[/quote] you'll be able to catch certain messages not caught by the To: filter. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- http://junaidpv.in ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
