Re: [Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation
Ask any librarian about what men and women are reading. Men prefer non fictional, women fictional works. Not all of them, of course, but in large majorities. I doubt that that has no consequences for Wikipedia editing behavior. And, as a women once told to a magazine: Women are too polite to correct someone in public. :-) Kind regards Ziko 2010/6/18 Ryan Kaldari rkald...@wikimedia.org: 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
Re: [Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:15 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: 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. Indeed. And you're being too hard on yourself; I don't think you were incoherent, and you're definitely not frequently incoherent. I think Ryan definitely misread your message, and I think he reacted strongly to what he thought he read. And if you had indeed said what he thought you said, I think his response would have been appropriate -- strong in criticizing the substance, but not personal. But, he didn't, so it was fair for you to clarify your words, and it was also fair for you to be sensitive about them. These are sensitive topics and sensitive times, and we should all remember to cut each other some slack as we try to grapple with them. I think a few good things came out of this interchange. I agree with Greg's point that trying to make Wikimedia sites more palatable to non-uber-obsessive technobiblio walking-fact-machines (but still well qualified) types will probably have a greater impact at reducing gender imbalance than targeting improvements at a specific demographic. Removing Wikitext as a barrier may, in and of itself, have a significant impact on editor diversity. I also agree with Phoebe's point. We can't treat this as a one-size-fits-all problem. There may be serious contextual differences across different languages and projects that may require different approaches. We need to be aware of this while also addressing the clear systemic problems. It would indeed be interesting to see what we could learn from id.wp's recent experiences. Which brings me to Ryan's points. There are serious cultural issues that need to be addressed. They may not be systemic -- it's possible, even probable, that there are projects that do not, intentionally or not, create environments hostile to women or other demographics. But when we do see that happen, we need to address it. Speaking as a man who grew up in a household of women and who works a lot in fields that are predominantly female (nonprofits and facilitation), I'd like to claim that I'm especially sensitive to these issues. Sadly, it doesn't really work that way. This stuff is not simple, and environment can exacerbate things. In the strategy project alone, there have been at least two instances where I've been guilty of perpetuating an environment that was less than conducive to women. Last September, when a group of us were brainstorming a list of potential candidates for the Task Force Selection committee, the first list was almost entirely men. This was a natural and harmless result; after all, the vast majority of our volunteers are men. However, I asked the group to think harder to see if we could come up with a group that was 50-50 male-female. I wasn't proposing it as some artificial quota that might reward lesser qualified candidates just because they were women. Despite the gender skew of our volunteers, I didn't think it was unreasonable to identify five great women volunteers. I think we did a good job of this, and I was thrilled by the final makeup of our committee. However, in one of the committee discussions, I once again expressed my hope that we would think a little harder in order to achieve greater diversity in our Task Forces, and I told this story as an example of what I wanted to see. However, I wasn't careful enough with my words, and one of the female committee members interpreted my story to mean that she was only asked to be on the committee because she was a woman. I tried to clarify my words, but the damage had already been done. The second instance was during IRC office hours several months ago. It was late at night (for me), and I'm pretty sure only men were participating -- you can never be sure with IRC. At one point, some locker room humor started. I chuckled to myself, and let it go. I like locker room humor, and when I'm in a room with a bunch of guy friends, I think it's harmless. The problem is, office hours on a publicly logged IRC channel is not the same as my living room. I realized afterward that women who were on the IRC channel or who read the logs afterward would not have found our interchange welcoming. I've been much more diligent about moderating this since, and Philippe's sensitive facilitation has helped immensely, but the tendency has come up again and again. It's not intentional, but it's not right either. This stuff will happen, even if we have the best of intentions. We need to be willing to call each other out when we see it happening, and we need to be firm, yet forgiving in how we educate each other. It's a challenge with diversity as a whole, not just with women, and it's a challenge that we should all embrace. It will make our projects better. =Eugene -- == Eugene Eric Kim
Re: [Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 12:00 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.comwrote: 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. As a passive reader of this thread, I'd like to come to both of your defenses. Greg, I don't think anyone was reading your thread with that as the implication. I certainly didn't take it that way, and I don't think Ryan did. He was making a supplemental point of the issue. No big deal, both posts are well thought out and while slightly contrary in nature, have the same end point. -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan ___ 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 Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:00 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: 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. If it makes any difference, I think you're both right in part -- Ryan is of course correct that there are there are cultural issues on the projects and these may result in real, immediate barriers for specific people who try to edit[1]. I have no idea if Greg is right about this genetic differences theory -- I don't have the math or the biology cred to evaluate such a claim, but do know this is a deeply controversial area[2] -- but your (hopefully larger) point seems un-controversial enough, that making things easier for people who haven't self-selected as editors already, with whatever concentration of traits skewed from the general population such self-selection may produce, will result in a more diverse editorial body in general. And I think we all hope that a more diverse editorial body will lead to a better site culture and less systemic bias in articles (this is of course open to argument, though). These two things are not mutually exclusive, however. My point was that stereotyping too much about women (via genetic differences, or assuming that all countries are just like the U.S.) is bad for outreach; but not stereotyping at all -- not recognizing that there are techniques we could use to outreach to underrepresented groups, perhaps learning from other outreach done by other organizations with similar goals -- would be unfortunate too. There's another good conversation about this topic going on here: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#diversity_4675 -- phoebe [1] or even talk about it; as Greg says there are plenty of people I know and respect who have strong views on this topic who won't write about them, because they'll get shot down. I had to think about it for a while myself. [2]. controversial enough that it's gotten a lot of people in trouble scientifically and socially, including the president of Harvard, whom you cite in your other piece; honestly, you should also probably expect serious debate if you go there. Two nice summaries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_between_the_sexes, http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/01/17/summers_remarks_on_women_draw_fire/ ___ 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
Eugene's post is too long for me to snip but it's basically what I would have said if I was in my usual verbose mood. Basically, I went through a similar thing on strategy wiki selecting the official members of the Living People Task Force. After discussion with Cary and Philippe, we went with three men and three women of various strategic targeting levels and it worked out that the selection provided me valuable input in facilitating the project. I think that, when it matters, Wikimedians do not care about gender/race/orientation. I'm a straight male about to turn twenty-nine, I'm definitely not in the majority of the userbase, but I am in the target consumer usage base. Additionally, based on my offline life experience, we absolutely value female userbase as compared to the outside world in the US. Just my opinion there. -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan ___ 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 Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 1:35 AM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.comwrote: Eugene's post is too long for me to snip but it's basically what I would have said if I was in my usual verbose mood. Basically, I went through a similar thing on strategy wiki selecting the official members of the Living People Task Force. After discussion with Cary and Philippe, we went with three men and three women of various strategic targeting levels and it worked out that the selection provided me valuable input in facilitating the project. I think that, when it matters, Wikimedians do not care about gender/race/orientation. I'm a straight male about to turn twenty-nine, I'm definitely not in the majority of the userbase, but I am in the target consumer usage base. Additionally, based on my offline life experience, we absolutely value female userbase as compared to the outside world in the US. Just my opinion there. -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan I should clarify, a target usage base. -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia...
Forwarded per request. -- Forwarded message -- From: Joseph Reagle joseph.2...@reagle.org Date: Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 6:45 PM Subject: Fwd: Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia... To: foundation-l-ow...@lists.wikimedia.org 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] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net wrote: 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 Yes, authorization seems right. I wouldn't really expect that the Board actually fill such a committee or even necessarily ask for direct reports. The question that came up in IRC though was where would such a committee derive its authority from (assuming it had any particular authority). Perhaps the answer for this is it doesn't and simply fills a communication and reporting role that is currently lacking. Or perhaps (my ideal scenario) we come up with a way where the interested community grants it authority by building the structure, filling the seats, etc., and that is generally recognized. I'm interested in this case specifically of course, but I also am wondering more generally what the current state of affairs is for forming any sort of operational, community-driven committee. Of course we're good at forming wikiprojects to do things that need doing, but for areas that also require overlap with things that the office works on, it seems tricky. Re: scheduling a time at wikimania for discussing this potential glorious wikimania committee: yes, let's. I wanted to have a reprise of the Future of Wikimania discussion from last year, anyway. How about Sunday? I'll volunteer to check with the 2011 team and other interested parties and schedule a time. This overlaps with Manuel's panel, too, but I think we need a dedicated time maybe. Stay tuned! -- phoebe p.s. if we get both James Owen AND James Forrester involved it will be unstoppable. Powered by James^2. ___ 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 Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:27 -0700, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net wrote: --Michael Snow I'm interested in this case specifically of course, but I also am wondering more generally what the current state of affairs is for forming any sort of operational, community-driven committee. Of course we're good at forming wikiprojects to do things that need doing, but for areas that also require overlap with things that the office works on, it seems tricky. Well, I would start with approaching the past organizers asking how they got their teams and who actually in the end did their job properly (and who did not). You would like to have people actually doing smth, not just talking, right? Cheers Yaroslav ___ 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...
Ryan Lomonaco wrote: Forwarded per request. -- Forwarded message -- From: Joseph Reagle joseph.2...@reagle.org Date: Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 6:45 PM Subject: Fwd: Re: [Foundation-l] The problem with Wikipedia... To: foundation-l-ow...@lists.wikimedia.org 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]. I would suggest that if anyone has a good set of logs of the various IRC channels, grepping the pre 20th of January 2006 logs might suggest an earlier usage. Or it might not. 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] The problem with Wikipedia...
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: 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. The concept of Information Wants to be Free has been authoritatively shown to have roots in thinkers as ancient as Aristotle. I would guess here too, that the instance of scientists calculating the amount of energy it took to keep the bumblebee up in the air, and measuring the amount of food it actually consumed, is likely not the earliest form of this paradox. Not precisely the same, but much older, is of course the following passage from Tertullian: 'Natus est Dei Filius, non pudet, quia pudendum est; et mortuus est Dei Filius, prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est; et sepultus resurrexit, certum est, quia impossibile.' (De Carne Christi V, 4) The Son of God was born: there is no shame, because it is shameful. And the Son of God died: it is wholly credible, because it is unsound. And, buried, He rose again: it is certain, because impossible. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credo_quia_absurdum ) 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] encouraging women's participation
I've been following this thread and it occurred to me that Phoebe is the lone woman posting to it, so I feel somewhat duty-bound to share my own perspective as a woman editor on English Wikipedia. I don't intend this to encapsulate everything that there is to be said on the subject, and it's a topic I could probably write forever on, so I will only share a few of my observations. At the time I joined the project, many female administrators and editors were experiencing serious harassment, both on- and off-wiki;while I won't say that scared me away from Wikipedia, it was part of my motivation to select a gender-neutral username and to not openly disclose that I am a woman until a considerable time after I first logged in. (I think most members of the community only discovered I was a woman during my Request for Adminship, and I am still referred to as he on a regular basis.) Once my femaleness was publicly known, I found there was a definite change in the way that some (but not most) male editors and administrators interacted with me. There's even a comment on my RfA by someone who apologised for teasing me because he didn't realise I was a lady. At the same time, because so few women are participating in the various projects, those of us who are visible are often asked to take on additional roles over and above that of editor/administrator. This is both good and bad. In my current role as an arbitrator on my home project, I rarely have the time to do the work that originally brought me to Wikipedia, and I miss being able to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon hitting random page and wikignoming my way through a few dozen articles, or clearing out the speedy deletion pages. On the other hand, I know I probably have a disproportionate influence on various policies and practices, and I hope that my visibility encourages other women to step into leadership roles or even, for that matter, to feel comfortable in self-identifying as female. Reading through this thread, I understand Ryan's interpretation of Greg's post and, to be honest, my own interpretation might well have been somewhat similarif I didn't know Greg. I've met Greg and spoken to him. Just the other night, Greg and I spent the better part of an hour hammering out a step-by-step guide for one aspect of the pending changes variation that is currently undergoing trial on English Wikipedia, and I know beyond doubt that our ability to work together wasn't affected in any way by the fact he's a he and I'm a she. I don't think it's particularly healthy to expect everyone to write in a way that causes no offense to anyone, but I think we all need to be cognizant that *anything* we say can be misread with best intentions. Eugene hits on an important point: the unintentional seepage of the locker room, which to me includes the use of aggressive language, into various communication channels. I moderate several other mailing lists, and from time to time I've had to step in and point it out fairly bluntly (there's too much testosterone in this thread); to be honest, I think this mailing list could use someone saying that a little more often. I can't be bothered investing my valuable time into reading a lot of chest-thumping and finger-pointing, so worthwhile points made in those posts aren't hitting their target. It's my observation that women participants are less willing to invest their time and energy into the endless and circular debates that masquerade as consensus-seeking discussions, and they just move on to something they feel is of greater value. (Many male participants also do the same thing, I should note.) For those who are aware of the endless behavioural debates on various projects, I need to point out that this isn't about civility. I've noticed that experienced wikimedians are very talented at throwing insults at each other without once crossing the civility boundaries. As I say, these are just a few of my own observations. They've all affected my own participation in the project, and I know they have, to varying degrees, affected the way that other women participate in various projects. I don't know whether there's anything that could change most of them, either. 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
On 06/17/2010 07:48 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote: 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. Unfortunately, this has a side-effect. If you're a mailing list administrator, you'll often get spam mail sent directly to list-l-ow...@lists.wikimedia.org. With a filter like this, junk mail that has been normally, and rightfully so, sent to Spam will start appearing in Inbox, which is quite a nuisance. Cheers, Filip ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Country portals
On 17 June 2010 22:39, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote: country portals a while ago (things like wikipedia.de) Oh, I didn't know they existed. Not a bad idea at all! Are they all hosted externally or by the WMF? AGK ___ 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 Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 12:30, Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com wrote: A few of us noticed this several days back. If you check some of the blacklists, lists.wikimedia.org seems to have some people's naughty list. Don't know if that's whats causing it or not though. It usually does, but right now I don't see it listed to any relevant lists. (last time I checked google doesn't care much about irrelevant ones) Of course the other reason might be lots of people pressing SPAM button in gmail g ps: backscatterer is a joke and sorbs useless due to payware removals. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Country portals
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 6:39 AM, AGK wiki...@gmail.com wrote: Oh, I didn't know they existed. Not a bad idea at all! Are they all hosted externally or by the WMF? I think they're all hosted externally (usually by chapters), but the point of the page is to find out things like that and write them down. :-) -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ 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
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 06/17/2010 10:17 AM, Risker wrote: 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. I recently sent a rather important message about a scholarship to one of the awardees. I sent the email from my Thunderbird, but the from address was not mine, but the default scholarship address. I asked him why he hadn't responded, this person fished it out of their spam folder. So it's not just listmail and otrs; it's also mail coming from the Foundation's mailserver directly. - -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkwboSwACgkQyQg4JSymDYkRgACdGLTnSvl7tV6Tf7GCiOWPl1SM Uu4An24/4M3a1OxwWMgfRST6WdDOse/s =+sbs -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ 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
Gregory, I'm sorry if I misinterpreted your post, but it sounded very much like you were saying that encyclopedia writing is a skill that is too academic for women: ...general approaches which make Wikipedia more palatable to average people... may have a greater impact at reducing gender imbalance than female centric improvements... Though are limits to the amount of main-streaming you can do of an academic activity such as encyclopaedia writing. Perhaps you were not meaning to imply that women are too average to be interested in academic activities. I'm glad to hear that isn't the case, but I would encourage you to be more careful with your wording in the future. There is a long history of scientific apologetics being used to perpetuate sexism, racism, etc. Just look at the science of phrenology, or more recently The Bell Curve. Anyway, I don't want to drag this thread into a debate on scientific -isms. I just wanted to remind everyone that there are real steps that can be taken to address the gender imbalance problem, regardless of any real or perceived gender differences. Ryan Kaldari On 6/17/10 8:46 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:08 PM, Ryan Kaldarirkald...@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). I'm finding your response fairly offensive and insulting. It is out of line and I believe you owe me a public apology. That kind of hostility is no way to create an effective environment for collaboration for _anyone_. How can we hope to be inclusive of a broader audience when we can't even maintain professional decorum among the regulars? ___ 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 18 June 2010 08:53, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: 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. The concept of Information Wants to be Free has been authoritatively shown to have roots in thinkers as ancient as Aristotle. I would guess here too, that the instance of scientists calculating the amount of energy it took to keep the bumblebee up in the air, and measuring the amount of food it actually consumed, is likely not the earliest form of this paradox. Not really. All they ever calculated was weather it could glide. It couldn't. In this they were correct. -- geni ___ 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
Ryan Kaldari wrote: Gregory, I'm sorry if I misinterpreted your post, but it sounded very much like you were saying that encyclopedia writing is a skill that is too academic for women: ...general approaches which make Wikipedia more palatable to average people... may have a greater impact at reducing gender imbalance than female centric improvements... Though are limits to the amount of main-streaming you can do of an academic activity such as encyclopaedia writing. Perhaps you were not meaning to imply that women are too average to be interested in academic activities. I'm glad to hear that isn't the case, but I would encourage you to be more careful with your wording in the future. There is a long history of scientific apologetics being used to perpetuate sexism, racism, etc. Just look at the science of phrenology, or more recently The Bell Curve. Anyway, I don't want to drag this thread into a debate on scientific -isms. I just wanted to remind everyone that there are real steps that can be taken to address the gender imbalance problem, regardless of any real or perceived gender differences. I think the valuable point Gregory had, which is obscured both by the sensitivity of the topic and the obscurity of the theoretical basis for the argument, is that there's quite a bit that can be done to encourage greater female participation that doesn't involve specifically targeting females. This need not (and should not) assume that women have less ability, so it's also important to use care in how we frame the discussion. But I think the academic performance of women in society generally amply demonstrates that there's nothing fundamental about a knowledge-sharing project - that being our ultimate aim - which would explain the kind of imbalance that exists in our community. It is possible to theorize about biological differences like greater genetic variability as explanations, but for characteristics like gender that are so intimately connected to a social construction of the concept, it's largely impossible to truly isolate them and eliminate the social factors at play. That also makes it hard to talk about the subject without perilous characterizations and generalizations, but talk about it we must. At risk of going in that direction, I could suggest that usability initiatives fit in very well with what Gregory was suggesting. Usability doesn't particularly have gender on the agenda, but it's possible to see that type of concern as somehow female in our society. To use a bit of gross stereotyping, one might consider it typically male to seek to demonstrate skill in mastering a challenging environment, and more typically female to seek to apply skill toward changing the environment to make it less challenging. The problem is partly that while from a neutral perspective, there's no particular reason to favor either of these skills, in practice we tend to be quite imbalanced, with social consequences that follow accordingly. Another illustration are the cultural issues various people have highlighted here, such as hostility and tone of discussion. On the surface those are gender-neutral considerations, but because of how people are socialized, they have important consequences in reality. That's before we even get into problems where gender is more obviously implicated, like locker-room-type banter or casual objectification of women. This is why I think it's so important for us to examine our culture and figure out what we need to do to improve it. --Michael Snow ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Country portals
Casey Brown hett schreven: 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. :-) In an edit comment editing http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Country_portals User:Nemo_bis asked ''do we really want random people to create such portals?'' I agree that the portals shouldn't be created by random people. They also shouldn't be created by chapters. They should be created by the Foundation. The Foundation should create a uniform portal for all ccTLDs. The design should be uniform, each domain should provide access to the Wikipedias in all languages autochthonously spoken in the respective country. And the portals should be fully localizable using Translatewiki translations. And ideally the same would be done for our other projects. I don't think it is acceptable, that domains are monolingual or offer access to one project only or even redirect to a single project when the country the ccTLD refers to has in fact many languages. Some domains are unregistered or registered by thirds, sometimes redirecting to a single project, sometimes redirecting to non-Wikimedia-related sites. 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] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 12:28 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru wrote: On Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:27 -0700, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net wrote: --Michael Snow I'm interested in this case specifically of course, but I also am wondering more generally what the current state of affairs is for forming any sort of operational, community-driven committee. Of course we're good at forming wikiprojects to do things that need doing, but for areas that also require overlap with things that the office works on, it seems tricky. Well, I would start with approaching the past organizers asking how they got their teams and who actually in the end did their job properly (and who did not). You would like to have people actually doing smth, not just talking, right? Cheers Yaroslav Something... even if that something is mostly just being a reporting/communication facilitator, I think. I don't imagine a committee or group that would actually organize the conference; that should be the job of the local team. For those following along at home, this conversation seems to have migrated to wikimania-l, where it probably belongs: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimania-l/2010-June/001922.html -- 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Serbia billboard campaign
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 1:17 AM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: 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 :) First photos (without formal approval, thus not on Commons): http://likilink.org/photos/ * The first one (500957) is at Belgrade Fair [1] and presents poet, film director etc. Mika Antic [2]. * The second one (503439) is at the highway entrance of Belgrade and presents writer Borislav Pekic [3] * The third photo (505921) is somewhat funny, Borislav Pekic again, but I don't know where it is. * For the fourth photo (505930, Mika Antic again) I don't know where it stays, too. Those billboards are from the phase 0. All of them should be replaced by Radoje Domanovic up to yesterday or so. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgrade_Fair [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mika_Antic [3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borislav_Pekic ___ 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
Here are my two cents... I am organizing now TEDx event in Belgrade. (Unlike others, our speakers will sign contract for CC-BY-SA, too.) And I am carefully watching gender and age involvement at the Facebook page. Our predispositions were again dominantly male: 5 males and one female in organization. Gender ratio is not better now in organization, while we are trying to make it better. We had disbalance at the beginning, while not so strong as we have in Wikimedia (something like 55:40, with ~5% of users who are not expressing their gender). It is now 48:46 for males. So, by age and gender, dominant groups are: * male 25-34: 25% * female 25-34: 23% * female 18-24: 11% * male 18-24: 9% * male 35-44: 9% * female 35-44: 8% (There are ~400 fans now.) It is interesting that the only constant is 18-24 age group with stable ration 11%:9% for females for months. In all other age groups we have constant raising of female ratio. It should be mentioned that a number of females are willing to participate in organization (but the process of adopting someone is not so fast), which means that it is not just a relation between active and passive involvement. Let's try to compare TEDx event with Wikipedia/Wikimedia: * Both are fancy. * Both are about top achievements of humankind. * Both are about community. Yes, TED treats audience and speakers both as participants. * Wikipedia is more famous than TED. * Age groups are similar. * I don't have any doubt that there is ~50:50 ratio for using Wikipedia, as it is for TED. * TED has much less content, but it has much higher ratio of interesting content per time spent on site. * I am carefully choosing TED talks for Facebook page and we generally have good feedback. However, sometimes I am wrong [1][2] * TED's rule no political and religious agenda, as well as well defined TED's scope (science, technology, art etc.) saves us from the topics which could potentially produce endless arguing. * Whenever someone has some constructive idea, I am applying it and saying thanks to that person. This makes atmosphere better. * TEDx is not about everyday editing, but about periodical events. However, participation could be treated similarly. Nobody needs to edit Wikipedia every day. * Technical skills needed for participation in TEDx event are much less than those needed for editing Wikimedia projects. * TEDx events are more social. BUT, it is not TED's per se advantage, it is about our leading of Wikimedia communities. We will have regular meetings, probably on weekly basis, out of the main events. * TEDx events and everything around them are much less stressful than editing Wikipedia and trying to find your place inside of one enormous bureaucracy of Wikimedia communities. * TEDx events and communities around them are not mature. We shell see their development. * for sure something more, it would be good to give a deeper analysis; feel free to give your comparisons Some conclusions may be: * Creating featured AND interesting content and gather that content on some separate project. The Best of Wikimedia or so. But, not, featured encyclopedic article is not *that* interesting, usually. It is not so interesting to read about Belgrade as the feature article on English Wikipedia. Having a featured article on English Wikipedia raises proud of inhabitants of particular area, but it is not interesting. Contrary, I think that we have a lot of interesting materials at Wikimedia projects, which should be just presented nicely. * One ordinary Wikimedian meetup is usually not so fascinating event. Talking about templates, MediaWiki skins, ideas for getting more content at the best (WWII tanks, airplanes and tactics, ass well as about various disputes on projects at the worst) -- is not so interesting for an outsider. We need to find a better way for present ourselves to the world. * I am thinking intensively about the possibility of splitting communities to those which main interests are in politics, religion and being fans of whatever -- and everybody else. Probably, building community would be much easier without partisans. * WP:BITE is something about we are talking a lot, but I don't see any advancement. Just a couple of months ago, I had on my back a classical example of bureaucratic asshole at en.wp. He thought that he knows Wikipedia bureaucracy better than me ha ha ha :D But, I can just imagine the first impression of any newcomer. BTW, I am rarely editing en.wp. Probably, in two major edits I am getting one bureaucratic asshole on my back. * Lower technical knowledge requirements. If WYSIWYG editor is science fiction, maybe a kind of help for structural writing could be helpful: Write in this box title, write in this box introduction, write in that box section title etc. I don't know... * Make social events. They don't need to be connected with Wikimedia projects by idiot-friendly semantics. They could be about much more interesting things. Promotion of science via talks, events,
Re: [Foundation-l] Gmail - List messages flagged as spam
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:48 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 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. Gah! The search result for that gives me _thousands_ of messages. ... and it seems that you can only not-spam a page at a time, the not spam option goes away if you tell it to mark all of the messages in the search results ___ 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 Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 5:16 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:48 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 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. Gah! The search result for that gives me _thousands_ of messages. ... and it seems that you can only not-spam a page at a time, the not spam option goes away if you tell it to mark all of the messages in the search results aye this is my issue. I'm flagging some of the mailing lists at the moment but part of me thinks I should let them go to spam and press the not spam to train it. I'm still having issues on the one where I'm owner, at least one gives me 100+ spam mails on some days and I DONT want those in my inbox. :/ 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
Milos, this is really interesting -- thanks for posting it. I'm sorry as usual to top-post and not snip (BB), but I did want to make a tiny point about TED. My understanding is they've been super-successful with translations -- a very large and active transcribing-and-translating-of-talks community has developed for them quite spontaneously, and the TED organization has been trying to figure out how best to support them. (I don't mean to suggest the TED organization has been having difficulties in that regard: my impression is they're thrilled.) I've asked Philippe to take a look at TED's translation community and see if there's anything we can learn from it -- others might want to do the same. Thanks, Sue -Original Message- From: Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 22:21:03 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation Here are my two cents... I am organizing now TEDx event in Belgrade. (Unlike others, our speakers will sign contract for CC-BY-SA, too.) And I am carefully watching gender and age involvement at the Facebook page. Our predispositions were again dominantly male: 5 males and one female in organization. Gender ratio is not better now in organization, while we are trying to make it better. We had disbalance at the beginning, while not so strong as we have in Wikimedia (something like 55:40, with ~5% of users who are not expressing their gender). It is now 48:46 for males. So, by age and gender, dominant groups are: * male 25-34: 25% * female 25-34: 23% * female 18-24: 11% * male 18-24: 9% * male 35-44: 9% * female 35-44: 8% (There are ~400 fans now.) It is interesting that the only constant is 18-24 age group with stable ration 11%:9% for females for months. In all other age groups we have constant raising of female ratio. It should be mentioned that a number of females are willing to participate in organization (but the process of adopting someone is not so fast), which means that it is not just a relation between active and passive involvement. Let's try to compare TEDx event with Wikipedia/Wikimedia: * Both are fancy. * Both are about top achievements of humankind. * Both are about community. Yes, TED treats audience and speakers both as participants. * Wikipedia is more famous than TED. * Age groups are similar. * I don't have any doubt that there is ~50:50 ratio for using Wikipedia, as it is for TED. * TED has much less content, but it has much higher ratio of interesting content per time spent on site. * I am carefully choosing TED talks for Facebook page and we generally have good feedback. However, sometimes I am wrong [1][2] * TED's rule no political and religious agenda, as well as well defined TED's scope (science, technology, art etc.) saves us from the topics which could potentially produce endless arguing. * Whenever someone has some constructive idea, I am applying it and saying thanks to that person. This makes atmosphere better. * TEDx is not about everyday editing, but about periodical events. However, participation could be treated similarly. Nobody needs to edit Wikipedia every day. * Technical skills needed for participation in TEDx event are much less than those needed for editing Wikimedia projects. * TEDx events are more social. BUT, it is not TED's per se advantage, it is about our leading of Wikimedia communities. We will have regular meetings, probably on weekly basis, out of the main events. * TEDx events and everything around them are much less stressful than editing Wikipedia and trying to find your place inside of one enormous bureaucracy of Wikimedia communities. * TEDx events and communities around them are not mature. We shell see their development. * for sure something more, it would be good to give a deeper analysis; feel free to give your comparisons Some conclusions may be: * Creating featured AND interesting content and gather that content on some separate project. The Best of Wikimedia or so. But, not, featured encyclopedic article is not *that* interesting, usually. It is not so interesting to read about Belgrade as the feature article on English Wikipedia. Having a featured article on English Wikipedia raises proud of inhabitants of particular area, but it is not interesting. Contrary, I think that we have a lot of interesting materials at Wikimedia projects, which should be just presented nicely. * One ordinary Wikimedian meetup is usually not so fascinating event. Talking about templates, MediaWiki skins, ideas for getting more content at the best (WWII tanks, airplanes and tactics, ass well as about various disputes on projects at the worst) -- is not so interesting for an outsider. We need to find a better way for present ourselves to the world. * I am thinking intensively about the possibility of splitting communities to those which main interests are in politics, religion and being fans of whatever -- and
[Foundation-l] Pending Changes update for June 18
Hi everyone, As I'm sure you're all aware, the Pending Changes trial began earlier this week, and seems to be off to a great start. There are many issues to be sorted out both on the community policy side and on the technical side, but everyone here seems to grappling with the community issues without a lot of prodding. On the development front, the team now has a blissfully mundane software maintenance/incremental improvement process to deal with, as opposed to feeling antsy about needing to deploy. With the launch out of the way, William is now wrapping up and turning the project management reigns over to me. When I first started contracting with WMF back in the beginning of May, I had the mistaken assumption that I'd be taking over then, since William had/has another huge opportunity that is looming on the horizon that appeared likely to take 100% of his time. In our first meeting as we started going over the transition, he resolutely pointed out no, I'm staying until we deploy this, however long it takes. We are really glad he was able to stick with us through this, and we're extremely grateful for his tenacity and commitment. This feature would likely have been delayed longer and would have missed many critical details without him. I learned a lot about project management working with him, and enjoyed it a great deal. Thanks William! The main developers, (Aaron and Chad) plan to continue knocking down issues as they discover them, as well as continuing to whittle down the backlog of issues we postponed until after the initial deployment: http://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/46157 Some of the most significant work surrounds the reject button an a few related tweaks. Since the topic of how exactly to optimize the workflow is still a subject of debate, we'd appreciate some feedback on the subject. The features in question are all linked to from here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FlaggedRevs/Specifications The trial itself is slated to last until August 15. After that, community consensus will be required to leave the feature on permanently. A strict reading of the proposed trial would suggest we're obligated to turn the feature off immediately around August 15, but I've seen at least one comment suggesting we leave it on that time. I've proposed here that we instead leave the feature turned on while we discuss the permanent status: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Pending_changes/Trial#leaverunningforvote If you have any concerns that need the dev team's attention, please bring them up here: http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Pending_Changes_issues We're a little behind in looking at that page, but we will get back to you if you post there. We'll also get back to you if you prefer to post to Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensionscomponent=FlaggedRevs That's all for now. Thanks for reading! Rob p.s. I didn't want to turn this email into a parody of an overly-long Oscar speech, but I also did want to specially call out Aaron Schulz, the lead developer on this project, who did a remarkable job developing and preparing the software for this launch as well as making sure that any problems that we did inadvertently introduced were knocked down extremely quickly (often within minutes of finding out). Great work, Aaron! ___ 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 Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 5:19 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: On 18 June 2010 22:16, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:48 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 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. Gah! The search result for that gives me _thousands_ of messages. ... and it seems that you can only not-spam a page at a time, the not spam option goes away if you tell it to mark all of the messages in the search results Yes, I discovered the same thing. I don't understand why - it seems to be a bug. Fortunately, I only found hundreds, not thousands. It's not a bug, it's a feature. Google doesn't want you screwing up its spam filter by not-spamming messages which you haven't even read the title of. You can still click on move to inbox. ___ 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
There is one point around Greg's story about diversities between genders. Men enjoy in playing war (with real guns, paintball, football, edit war, argument war...). Women enjoy in playing less aggressive games. The only games available on Wikipedia are games for men. Facebook is different. At the basic level, there are games for everyone: men can enjoy argument wars, women can enjoy in searching what is going on with their people around them. That means that we need games for women. While I think that we should build full social network, just a basic one would help. ___ 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
Дана Saturday 19 June 2010 05:58:31 Milos Rancic написа: That means that we need games for women. While I think that we should build full social network, just a basic one would help. Ability to make other editors your friends, then you could watch their Special:Contributions jointly (see what are your friends editing). ___ 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 Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 7:30 AM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.rs wrote: Дана Saturday 19 June 2010 05:58:31 Milos Rancic написа: That means that we need games for women. While I think that we should build full social network, just a basic one would help. Or perhaps we don't even have to build one, but just use the existing ones. [People are always against making Wikipedia a social network.] Have RSS feeds of articles you created/pictures you uploaded. These could then be connected to Facebook or wherever for your friends to see what are you working on. Then you are using Facebook, not Wikimedia. And Flickr is much better for private photos than Wikimedia. BTW, there is not space for negotiations anymore. Wikimedia will be a social network, too, or it will continue to loose editors. ___ 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
Дана Saturday 19 June 2010 07:37:18 Milos Rancic написа: On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 7:30 AM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.rs wrote: Or perhaps we don't even have to build one, but just use the existing ones. [People are always against making Wikipedia a social network.] Have RSS feeds of articles you created/pictures you uploaded. These could then be connected to Facebook or wherever for your friends to see what are you working on. Then you are using Facebook, not Wikimedia. And Flickr is much better for private photos than Wikimedia. Then your Facebook friends will see that you are doing interesting things on Wikipedia projects and will want to do them too. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
