Re: [Foundation-l] News from Germany: White Bags and thinking about a fork
On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 8:27 AM, David Gerard wrote: > A neutral all-or-nothing image filter would not have such side effects > (and would also neatly help low bandwidth usage). It would also make the project useless. I don't want to see the 0.01% (yes, rhetorical statistics again) images of medical procedures, and I'd avoid seeing the (much higher) X% of images that are NSFW while in public. That does not mean that I want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and not see any images whatsoever. Given the choice, I would not use such a filter. We have the technology and the capacity to allow users to make nuanced decisions about what they do and don't want to see. Why is this a problem? -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] moderation soft limit
On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: > This is very very meta. But in my own defence, I haven't posted > anything for over a year. Mourning my dearly departed mother. I have > said before that monthly limits are prejudicial against those that > rarely post, but do post when the expletive hits the fan; and do so > with the full force of conviction they are expressing the views of the > community. Nuff said. Go ahead and moderate this, if you like. It's all very well to say that you should be able to post as much as you like when something you feel really passionate about comes up. But if you can't get your point across in thirty posts over a month, maybe it's time to stop trying. These discussions have gone in circles for a month now, and it's the same five or ten people (yes, I am again being rhetorical, please don't bother checking that number) arguing past each other and posting their entrenched positions again and again. There's no reason to think that these loud people on foundation-l are representative of the community at large. There's no reason to think that any of them are likely to change their minds. And, as I say, at this point, they've probably made their arguments as well as they can. I don't think many people are even reading the discussion any more. -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Is random article truly random
On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 12:16 AM, David Gerard wrote: > On 19 October 2011 14:14, Andrew Garrett wrote: > >> Well, let's make sure that in any implementation of an image filter >> that does go ahead, we've thought through and addressed each of those >> consequences. You won't find any argument from me on that. > So from the Foundation side, what are the current plans? I assume this > is a subject of internal discussion. To clarify, I'm not privy to any internal discussion and am posting as a community member. -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Is random article truly random
On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 12:10 AM, MZMcBride wrote: > Andrew Garrett wrote: >> My point is about quick wins. We can attack a large portion >> (that may or may not be exactly 90%) of the problem by offering >> readers the opportunity to hide a small number of categories that >> people commonly don't want to see. > > The simplest solutions can often have the gravest consequences. As a PHP > developer, I would've thought you would know this better than anyone. Well, let's make sure that in any implementation of an image filter that does go ahead, we've thought through and addressed each of those consequences. You won't find any argument from me on that. -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Is random article truly random
On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 12:03 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: > If I may be so blunt. What part of non-negotiable don't people quite grasp? I'm not sure I understand. Could you tell me what you think is non-negotiable? -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Is random article truly random
On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Béria Lima wrote: > I would freaking LOVE to see the study who proves 90% of the population > (btw, which population? USA, Americas, Europe, Asia, World, Wikipedians?) > are offended by ANYTHING. > > If you show me, I myself change course in College and go study a way to > create a filter. Yes, I'm being rhetorical. Surely you understand what I'm trying to say and that "90%" is not intended to be interpreted literally. Just in case, I'll recap without using statistics for rhetorical purposes: My point is about quick wins. We can attack a large portion (that may or may not be exactly 90%) of the problem by offering readers the opportunity to hide a small number of categories that people commonly don't want to see. -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Is random article truly random
On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 8:10 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: > I've said this before. I would like to not look at women with > humongously oversize breasts (And yes, Dolly Parton, this means you > too) or women with perfect teeth whitened to porcelain level shine, > smiling with their teeth. If you must smile, do it with the lips, not > the teeth. But am I going to get that from wikipedia. No chance. > Should I get that from wikipedia. Emphatically no. As offensive as I > find huge bazoomba-lollobrigidas, they should be served to me and to > everyone else on wikipedia. Because we don't hide huge bosoms on > wikipedia. Period. Let's not pretend that there's no difference between this sort of preference and a preference for not seeing medical things, or for not seeing nudity, or for not seeing things that are religiously offensive, or for not seeing PTSD triggers or whatever. It's not a black and white issue, and we need to exercise some common sense and praxis. You need to weigh the administrative burden of maintaining categorisation (along with any other consequences of offering personal opt-out to individual classes of images, such as interface clutter and, yes, the potential for use by totalitarian regimes) against the participatory benefits afforded by giving readers more choice about what they see. Because images are high impact, they are good candidates for personal, opt-in content filtering. There are certain classes of image that allow us to attack 90% of the problem – that is, nudity that causes embarrassment at work and in public places, gore and bodily functions that 90% of the general public are offended by, and triggers for medical conditions such as PTSD or vasovagal conditions. I don't think anybody is suggesting we run around and identify every last image that could possibly offend anybody. Sure, there's no *qualitative* difference between things that offend 90% of the general public and some arbitrary thing that you make up that offends you. But there sure as hell is a quantitative difference, and any nuanced perspective on this argument should have an understanding of this. In my opinion it's worth giving a simple way for people to avoid 90% of the things that they might be offended by. -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content
On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 7:59 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: > Yes, but that is not proof of what we as a community understand the > principle to mean, it means the board is on crack. That's not a helpful contribution to this discussion. -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] CC by-sa upheld in Germany, over a Commons photo
On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 11:41 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: > Too bad Wikimedia TOS still labors under the misapprehension that the > licence doesn't mean what it says. Can you be specific, to make this into actionable feedback? -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced
On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 1:56 AM, Milos Rancic wrote: > On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 17:44, Stephen Bain wrote: >> On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 1:26 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen >> wrote: >>> "We do realize that what we did was wrong, and this is clearly not a >>> situation where we can go on with the 'your opinions have been >>> duly noted' haughty attitude. We apologize for even going that route >>> ever in the first place. The community rules, we serve, that is what >>> we are being payed for." >> >> "Let us now prostrate ourselves at the feet of that segment of the >> community which opposed this idea, who we realise are the just and >> righteous leaders of the Wikimedia movement due to having the loudest >> voices, and beg for their absolution." > > "We accept the fact that our motives and motives of those who > supported us lay in our suppressed unconscious part of mind; that it > shows how deep are our fears to face the real world. But, as we said, > we've learned the lesson and we'll try to face reality, no matter how > painful it is. That's our job, as we are the leaders of Wikimedia > movement." Could we not? This isn't very useful to anybody. -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats
On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 3:56 AM, Kim Bruning wrote: > Well, when I ask people why they want the feature, that's what it > comes down to. They say they want to be able to hide things that are > offensive to their own culture. (Given that it would work) This > method would allow them to do so, without imposing straight-out > censorship on their fellow (wo)man. > > Why else would you need to hide things from yourself, if not because > somewhere in your past, you learned that it was "wrong" or > "uncomfortable" to look at? I'll answer with an example. I am very uncomfortable with medical images. It's not a cultural thing, you can get these things by in PG movies these days. But whenever I see an image of somebody being given an injection, or being seriously injured, or who is seriously injured, I am physically sick and in danger of passing out. It's called 'vasovagal syncope', if you're curious. When I want to look up a medical term (that I often don't understand in the first place and have no idea what to expect of) on Wikipedia, I have to very quickly scroll down or look away if it's illustrated with a particularly graphic image. Obviously, I would like to view Wikipedia in such a way that I am warned before I'm shown something that is going to affect me in such a way. However, I realise that I am not everyone and there is no reason to remove thousands of high-quality, educational images from articles because I'm not comfortable with medical imagery. That really would be "censorship". Therefore, it would be really nice if I could choose, just for my own sake and on my own behalf, to have these images hidden to start with, and if I want to see them I can click on them and have them shown to me. Maybe you don't have any problems viewing any image whatsoever, but there are plenty of people for whom it's more than just a 'preference' based on some cultural norm that you don't agree with because you're modern and you transcend cultural taboos. But I'd wager that, in general, (if you get away from Wikipedians) you're in the minority. —Andrew -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats
On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 10:17 PM, Kim Bruning wrote: > The end game for this strategy of giving every (sub-) culture their own > subset of the images and/or text (when every medium agrees all at once), > and where everyone lives past each other is actually well known and well > studied: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillarization > > Due to my knowing the historical context, I would actually prefer that > people were confronted by cultural differences and have a healthy > dialogue about them, to prevent or mitigate pillarization. I think you're taking the use of an image filter to a bizarre absolute. There *are* shades of grey here. My understanding of the proposal is that it people will voluntarily have certain images that have the potential to cause offense hidden by default, with a click-to-show. When somebody starts saying that they want meaningfully different article content for every country or point of view, then I think you'd be justified in bringing this up. -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats
On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 12:44 AM, Dan Rosenthal wrote: > On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 5:15 PM, Sarah Stierch wrote: > >> > >> > Does your feminism excludes necessity for sexual education? >> > >> > >> No, but, I can send you some pictures on Commons that have been "speedy >> keeps" of strippers with their legs spread wide because they are >> "educational and high quality." >> > You're saying that a picture of a stripper with her legs wide open can in no > way be educational and high quality? The undertone from this statement is > that "It would be better and less offensive if her legs were closed" which > to me highlights the censorship problem precisely. This is the point of the image filter. There are images that, notwithstanding their being educational and high quality, I don't necessarily want to see without warning. Even if I'm looking up 'vagina' for whatever reason. It's about taking into account the visual preferences of readers (click to show images like that to avoid being surprised) while still recognising that such images are usually of high quality and have a valid educational use. -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced
On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 9:04 AM, Marc A. Pelletier wrote: > And that's the best argument *against* the filter I've seen in a while > because it reiterates that it has - at its core - the insurmountable > problem that it attempts to provide a method by which "objectionable" > material can be filtered without being able to define what > "objectionable" means in any meaningfully culturally-neutral way. > (Hint: the answer is "it cannot be done"). > > It wouldn't even be possible to define a meaningful "nudity" category, > and that's arguably the simplest of all. That's not a sensible assertion. The fact that being in or out of a category is inherently a matter of degree rather than a binary thing doesn't mean that there's no difference between a picture of a rabbit and a screengrab from (freely licensed, of course) hardcore pornography. Sure, there'd need to be some understanding of what's in and what's out of various categories, and it's not possible to make that completely objective. But that doesn't mean it's not a useful or worthwhile exercise. -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Referendum 2011 mailout — issues
On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 9:43 AM, Milos Rancic wrote: > While it is not a big deal for me to get six emails (including one in > Polish) instead of once, I want to say that I already added pattern > for my bot accounts at the Wikimedia nomail list and it existed at > Friday morning there, at least [1]. Sorry, that list doesn't accept regular expressions. It's a straight list of account names, which, until yesterday, had to go through about twenty minutes of preprocessing before it was useful. -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Referendum 2011 mailout — issues
Hi all, I've just started sending out over 750,000 emails to folks who are eligible to vote in our Wikimedia Referendum. I've learned from past mailouts in trying to exclude more bots, multiple accounts and folks who've already voted. However, if you receive an email which doesn't apply to you (for example, if you're not eligible to vote, or you've requested to be excluded from such mailouts), or if there's a problem with the email that you receive (for example, it's in the wrong language), I've set up a page [1] where you can report it. Remember that you can always opt out from all future mailings [2]. I'm hoping that having a central page for this information will help in investigating the issues associated with errant mail, and allow future mail to be better targetted. Thanks a lot for your help, —Andrew [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_filter_referendum/Email/False_positives [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_nomail_list -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Image filter referendum
On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 9:16 PM, Huib Laurens wrote: > Hello, > > I just recieved this e-mail while I'm not enigble to vote and not able to > remove myself from the list. There isn't currently any handling for removing people who are blocked on more than two projects nor for people who are globally blocked. You fall into one of these categories, and you received the email despite your ineligibility for this reason. My apologies for the confusion and inconvenience. —Andrew -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Elections email
On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 1:38 AM, Casey Brown wrote: > It would be a good idea for someone to make a list of things that need > to be done/were done to make your job easier in the future. > Pathoschild, do you remember what was done in the past? Could you > start such a list? :-) http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/SecurePoll#Email_spam -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation Elections 2009 ( 2011 ? ) & Bots
On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 12:19 AM, Béria Lima wrote: > Well, i received a mail to my global bot account (Ripchip Bot) and the bot > has - at least - 60 local bot flags. So we should assume there are no > checking for bot flags at all. In this case, the bot qualified on Norwegian Wikipedia. It's looking like global bots which aren't flagged everywhere are an edge case that should be addressed next time around. -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Elections email
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 11:30 PM, Yann Forget wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I also received one, with
>
> {{GENDER:Yann|Cher|Chère|Cher/Chère}} Yann,
>
> Well, is this an attempt to be politically correct for BTGL? ;o)
Ha, looks like we need to give better instructions to the translators
next time :-)
--
Andrew Garrett
Wikimedia Foundation
agarr...@wikimedia.org
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Re: [Foundation-l] Elections email
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 11:22 PM, Sarah wrote: > I was invited to vote too, as was a little-used alternative account of > mine, one that's obviously mine from the name. Sorry, there were 43,000 accounts to email. I've used SUL to filter for duplicates, but we could hardly filter them for duplicates manually :-). -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation Elections 2009 ( 2011 ? ) & Bots
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 10:09 PM, CherianTinu Abraham wrote: > Interesting to see accounts with bot flags are also invited to vote for > Board elections :) This bot isn't flagged on all wikis that it's eligible to vote. In particular, azwiki (I think). Accounts on wikis with blocked and bot accounts were excluded, but I didn't globally exclude them. —Andrew -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Elections email
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 10:32 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: > > On Fri, 10 Jun 2011 15:06:14 +0300, "Amir E. Aharoni" > wrote: >> Hallo, >> >> I just received an email (see below) that invites me to participate in >> the elections. >> >> There are several technical issues with it: >> > > I also got one, even though one of my accounts (to which is was sent) is > globally blocked, and another one has an insufficient number of edits and > both are thus ineligible to vote. I only got the e-mail in English, but I > assume this is because I use English interface in all projects. There were checks for regular blocks, but none for global blocks. I figured (inaccurately as it turns out) that globally blocked accounts were unlikely to qualify. :-) -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Elections email
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 10:06 PM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote: > There are several technical issues with it: > > 1. I already voted. It may be a good idea to send this only to people > who didn't. I don't think this is possible. > 2. The subject says "2009". Whoops. I updated everything except the subject. > 3. The email is sent in English and Hebrew. I don't know how did the > system find out that that is my preferred language, so it's a bit > weird, but in general i'm happy about this localization. There is > still a problem, however: since the text is bidirectional and this > email is sent in plain text, the Hebrew text is garbled and hardly > readable. One way to solve this is to send the email as HTML and to > define the Hebrew part as dir="rtl". This is relevant for all RTL > languages - Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Pashto, Divehi and many others. That's very good feedback, thanks for letting me know. -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarr...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Plea for candidates: WMF Movement Communications Manager
On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 8:24 AM, Sarah wrote: > On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 16:16, Fred Bauder wrote: >> Well, I would not be surprised to be wrong, but I don't think your legal >> theory would be valid, after all the candidate fluent in Urdo may well be >> an American citizen and have read at Oxford. The question is whether a >> global organization hires globally, hiring people who have experience and >> skill in communicating globally. >> > Right, I understand that. But my question is whether an employment ad > in America could lawfully say (or imply), "Ideally your native > language is not Urdu." It looks like the problem here is that there is confusion on what is meant by "as a native speaker". Some people are taking it to mean "We'd like it to be your first language", in which case Sarah is quite correct that it specifically excludes people whose first language is English from the "ideal" requirements. Others are taking it to mean "We'd like your ability to be as good as if it were your first language", in which case Berìa is correct that it is pragmatic, reasonable, and legitimately useful for the job. I'd like to invoke the principle of charity and think that Wikimedia means the latter, but I can see why somebody might be interpreting it as the former, since the latter reads a bit more into the words. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness
On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 7:54 AM, Jim Redmond wrote: > The *entire point* of any wiki is that it should be easy to fix most > problems quickly. If a newbie makes mistakes - and they always will, > no matter how awesome our policies and tools are - then experienced > editors should just fix the mistakes and gently (!) inform the newbie > why they did what they did. Not only is that approach faster and > easier and less bite-y, but it also makes our content better *now*, > and it gives the newbie a chance to learn how we work. Sadly, as long as there are buttons that let you revert an edit in one click (and requests for adminship that count the number of times you do so) people are going to click the button instead of fixing templates. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness
On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Dror Kamir wrote: > Are there people who would like to help me collect such cases like those > of Astrology, Kosovo, the Middle East etc. and/or cases that were sent > to arbitration which didn't help much and the like, and productively > analyze them in order to think of better ways to treat them and the > users involve? I am going to talk about the issue on Wikimania 2011 (in > Haifa), but there is no reason to wait. I believe that this is one of > the major reason why potential users are reluctant to join and new users > are driven out. I don't mean to minimise the importance of keeping our established users happy and free from harassment, but I want to caution against the biases that we will undoubtedly have in considering our focus. Anecdotally, we tend to hear a lot more about established users picking up and leaving, because these are our friends — we work with them, chat with them on IRC, and whatever else. But for every story we hear about an established user leaving because of harassment, there are ten new-ish users who encounter the same hostile environment and stop editing without all the pomp and ceremony that necessarily accompanies the departure of a popular or well-known member of the community. So let's make sure we deal with the factors that make our overall editing environment conducive to hostile conduct. I don't want to see us fall into the trap of thinking only about long-term established users who are harassed in the long term, rather than the newer users who don't get a chance to be harassed in the long term because they pick up and leave straight away. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki-revolution
On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 8:03 PM, Dan Rosenthal wrote: > Virgilio: > > Your userpage claims you speak American English at an en-4 "near-native > level". Want to try again? Your messages are deliberately obnoxious, unpleasant, and off-topic to boot. Cut it out, please. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser
On Sunday, March 6, 2011, geni wrote: > I know you follow the media with regards to wikipedia to at least some > extent. You must have noticed the "WMF is a tiny little organisation > running a great big website" story played well. The foundation was > still trying to play that card until fairly recently. We might be growing, but I don't think anybody in the industry would hesitate to say that we're still "small" and "running on a shoestring budget". The websites that we compete with run budgets in the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. -- Andrew Garrett ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki[p/m]edia
On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Stephen Bain wrote: > Thanks for the explanation. It seems some people assumed bad faith > before, when really we can see it was just a good-natured attempt to > deceive these people as to where their money would go. Maybe you're trying to be funny, but could you not? -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Executive Director?
On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 10:19 AM, John Vandenberg wrote: > This is an important point to raise regarding cultural and legal > differences in regards to advertising, however the banner in question > is not appearing in Australia. > > The Australian chapter is managing the banners and appeal text that > appear within Australia, and there is no way 'Wikipedia Executive > Director' would have been approved by the WMAu committee. > For the record, I don't think that this arrangement is working well. There are a lot of people working on the fundraiser, both Wikimedia staff and hundreds of volunteers from the community. The Foundation has allocated substantial staff and resources to running a campaign that is agile and data-driven. In the United States, this has had a strong result -- US editors stopped seeing the Jimmy banners (which people are getting tired of despite their effectiveness) a week ago. Elsewhere in the world, bringing in the new editor/Sue appeal banners has been held up by this sort of bureaucracy. If we believe (as I do) that the central fundraising team is the best team for the job, then we should give them the ability to roll out their best work quickly, without going through the bureaucratic quagmire of requiring chapter approval for each special region. The rest of the world is missing out on the best that they can do. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] "Personal Appeals for individual editors" strikes the right chord
On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 5:32 AM, Alec Conroy wrote: > I just wanted to write in to compliment all those who are behind the > banners on the site right now-- Personal Appeals from individual > editors with inspiring visions about how Wikimedia can help change the > world for the better. > I'm also a huge, huge fan of these new banners. When can we get them in Australia? :-) -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Report from Day 1 of technical testing
On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 2:17 AM, Philippe Beaudette wrote: > In the last 22 hours, we've accepted about $510,000 directly to the > Foundation. I don't yet have numbers from the chapters to report. The > Foundation's donors alone represent nearly 19,000 individual donors. My congratulations to Philippe, the rest of the community team at the Foundation, and all of the volunteers who have helped get the fundraiser to this stage. For us to earn $516,882 on the very first full day of the fundraiser (a pre-launch day no less) is nothing short of outstanding; and, if my suspicions are correct, it's not going to be the biggest day of the fundraiser, either. So congratulations, and keep up the good work! I and many others will be watching and hoping that you can make our launch day a Million Dollar Monday. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] PediaPress
On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 5:55 PM, MZMcBride wrote: > The problem I have with statements like these is that they feel > disingenuous. The mission statement is as vague or as specific as the person > arguing deems it to be. There are thousands of potential projects that > Wikimedia could engage in that would fit perfectly within the current > mission statement[1] and thousands more that would loosely fit in. > > It's mostly a matter of how many steps removed you choose to allow a > particular venture to be. If I sell Wikimedia T-shirts, I'm building the > Wikimedia brand, which leads to more donations during the fundraiser, which > leads to more servers, which further enables the dissemination of > educational content. Does that mean that selling T-shirts is within > Wikimedia's mission? > > What is and isn't "mission-relevant" seems to be (perhaps intentionally) > completely ambiguous. Ultimately, who decides whether a partnership with a > company like PediaPress is mission-relevant? The Board of Trustees? The > Executive Director? The Head of Business Development? And beyond who makes > the decision, is there any guarantee that it will be a valid one? Given the > vagueness of the mission statement, how much of a stretch is acceptable? Shockingly, making decisions like this does not necessarily involve reasoning, but judgement. Yes, the answers are not simple and logical — because you have to weigh the costs against the benefits. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] preferences statistics
On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 6:44 PM, Ashar Voultoiz wrote: > On 02/11/10 15:03, Andrew Garrett wrote: > >> If you wrote it before I rewrote the preferences system in 2009, then >> it is out of date. > > Since it use the internal abstraction layer, I would expect it to still > be working. Ah, then it will probably be hopelessly inefficient. You should just use a query like this: SELECT up_property,up_value,count(*) FROM user_properties GROUP BY up_property,up_value; -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] preferences statistics
On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 11:26 PM, Ashar Voultoiz wrote: > On 01/11/10 08:47, Amir E. Aharoni wrote: >> Are there statistics about users' preferences on Wikimedia sites? >> >> For example, a statistic that would say things like how many users use every >> skin and how many users have "Show preview before edit box" disabled. >> >> Correct me if i'm wrong, but the defaults for new users never seem to change >> (except the Vector skin recently) and maybe we could learn something from >> these stats. > > Hello, > > I have wrote one a few years ago which might suit your needs. It is in > the maintenance directory and would need a shell access to run: > > maintenance/userOptions.php --usage > > On my development Wiki the output is: > > Usage for (default: '0'): > 1 user(s): '1' If you wrote it before I rewrote the preferences system in 2009, then it is out of date. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Audited Financial Statements for 2009-10 Fiscal Year Now Available
On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 3:06 PM, John Vandenberg wrote: > On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 2:45 PM, Robert Rohde wrote: >> On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 4:24 PM, John Vandenberg wrote: >>> The community is being defined in terms of 'people', rather than >>> 'users'. There are also people with more than one account; iirc, one >>> 'crat on English Wikiquote had ~hundred accounts with more than five >>> edits (Kalki). >> >> There are also another ~75000 IP accounts generating at least 5 edits >> per month. It would be even harder than the username case to figure >> out how many unique people this represents. > > Sage Ross suggested in todays IRC office hours that it would be > interesting to look at anon members of our community , and I hadn't > thought about this cohort. > > Are you sure these are not accounted for in stats.wm.org? > > A consideration with these is how often do they become a named > account, and therefore would be counted twice if we simply add > accounts+anons. > >> However, it would still >> seem likely that there is a non-trivial fraction of the contributor >> community who only edit anonymously. > > Indeed. This is why we Wikimedians are awesome. The Foundation's audited financial statements are posted, and our main point of discussion is the accuracy of a tidbit of background information in the introduction. :-) -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Audited Financial Statements for 2009-10 Fiscal Year Now Available
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 9:40 AM, geni wrote: > On 26 October 2010 16:40, Veronique Kessler wrote: >> I am pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation's audited >> financial statements for the years ended June 30, 2010 and 2009 are >> available on the Foundation wiki at: >> >> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/c/cc/FINAL_09_10From_KPMG.pdf >> >> >> In anticipation of any questions, we have also prepared a Question and >> Answer sheet also posted on the Foundation wiki at: >> >> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2009-2010_Financial_Statements_Questions_and_Answers >> >> >> I am happy to answer any questions you might have. >> >> Veronique >> > > 470K on travel. Quite impressive for an web based organization. At > British airways prices that's still over 500 return journeys from new > york to london. Assuming our staff sleep on sidewalks and beg for food when they travel. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] privacy and usability of user talk pages (inc. LiquidThreads)
On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 12:07 AM, Peter Coombe wrote: > Perhaps a better solution (if this is a common enough problem) would > be to edit > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Editnotices/Namespace/User_talk > to inform/remind people that messages they leave there are public. I > just checked and it seems it would stack ok with individuals' custom > editnotices for their talk page. Please no. We have more than enough annoying boxes on Wikipedia as it is. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Foundation-l word cloud
On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 8:48 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote: > Milos Rancic, 04/10/2010 11:29: > > May you exclude headers from the cloud? > > Well, I did. Which additional (parts of) headers would you like to > exclude? (Suggest them on talk page.) > I left only timezones, years and months to give a clue on activity in > different times; and text/plain vs. html given the frequent discussions > there are on this topic. :-p > > It's probably easier to strip them entirely before pushing them into the generator, rather than using them as stopwords. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Banner ads in sitenotice
On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 9:17 PM, Bod Notbod wrote: > On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 10:43 PM, geni wrote: > >> Job adverts? Really?. Site notice is for critical stuff (fund raising, >> servers about to explode) even if you play with the notice to only >> appear ~%10 of the time. > > Personally I was quite pleased to see it. > > It can only add to the number of applicants, which I think is a good thing. Everybody has known for a long time that long-term Wikimedia contributors are far more sensitive to Foundation imposition of visual clutter than the average person. We can only hope that some day we all become just as sensitised to the clutter we put on the site ourselves ;-). -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] WikiCite - new WMF project? Was: [Wiki-research-l] UPEI's proposal for a "universal citation index"
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 9:04 PM, Neil Harris wrote:
> On 21/07/10 22:38, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>> Дана Monday 19 July 2010 22:20:15 Brian J Mingus написа:
>>
>>> Feel free to provide your feedback on this idea, in addition to your own
>>> ideas, in this thread, or to me personally. I am especially interested in
>>> the potential benefits to the WMF projects that you see, and to hear your
>>> thoughts on the potential of this project on its own, as that will feature
>>> prominently in the proposal. Additionally, what do you think WikiCite would
>>> eventually be like, once it is fully matured?
>>>
>> I was thinking about this too. Main advantages that I see are that citations
>> will become easier to use for editors while more informative for readers. Too
>> often I just link to something instead of properly filling a cite template
>> because it's just too bothersome. For example, instead of this crud:
>>
>> {{cite book|author=Š. Kulišić |coauthors=P. Ž. Petrović, N. Pantelić |
>> title=Српски митолошки речник |origyear=1970 |publisher=[[Nolit]] |
>> location=Belgrade |language=Serbian |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
>>
>> we would have just:
>>
>> {{cite|work=Српски митолошки речник |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
>>
>
> Since there might be more than one edition of the same book, you'd still
> have to do a unique identifier, and expanding the cite into the text of
> the article is still a good idea. I would suggest making the system work
> like the current {{cite pmid}}, {{cite isbn}} and {{cite medline}}
> templates, where you'd add (say)
>
> {{cite citeid|345343095}}
>
> to the article, and a bot would come round to the article and replace
> this with:
>
> {{cite book|author=Š. Kulišić |coauthors=P. Ž. Petrović, N. Pantelić |
> title=Српски митолошки речник |origyear=1970 |publisher=[[Nolit]] |
> location=Belgrade |language=Serbian |pages=161
> |chapter=Јерисавља|citeid=345343095}}
>
> Doing this would combine the advantages of a central database, which has
> great advantages for providing authoritative centralized data, with the
> redundant copying of the same information into the article, which has great
> advantages for archival purposes, so that, were the central database ever to
> be lost, or access to be unavailable, the information would remain accessible
> in the article text itself.
>
> By retaining the link in the expanded template, corrections and improvements
> to data in the authoritative database could then, as necessary, be propagated
> into articles using a bot. However, if bad data is ever uploaded into the
> database, the full expansion of the cite would still be available in the
> article history, again aiding archival access, and protecting against data
> corruption.
Whatever syntax is used, we should absolutely not expect users to
remember it and the unique identifier of the cited work. There should
be a "Cite" button in the toolbar that will allow users to look up
(with search suggestions) the correct work, request any further
information, and add the information into the page. Then we don't need
to get hung up on the syntax, except for readability's sake.
--
Andrew Garrett
http://werdn.us/
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Re: [Foundation-l] ASCAP comes out against "copyleft"
This discussion is utterly and unsalvageably out of scope for this mailing list. If you wish to continue it, please do so on another forum, preferably one which does not result in the inundation of uninterested parties with your opinions on the enforcement of copyright law. On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 1:27 PM, wrote: > wjhon...@aol.com wrote: >> In a message dated 6/30/2010 5:36:14 PM Pacific Daylight Time, >> wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk writes: >> >> >>> If a way of halting the gross infringements can't be done. Then go back >>> to hitting the seeders with $22,000 fines per infringed work. The >>> economic costs of simply walking away and not stopping the piracy are >>> too much.>> >> >> >> They know perfectly well how to do it, they've been doing it. >> If you can't actually get 85 million dollars out of a 13-year-old girl, >> well then that's your tough luck, welcome to jurisprudence U.S. style. >> > > The loss to the economy is staggering. Yet you'd do nothing, apply no > sanctions, bitch about rights management, and let $billions each year be > filtch from the creative industries. That 13 yo is as much a thief as > the person that smashes the jewelers window and throws the contents into > the street. Maybe we should have her MySpace and Facebook page branded > with THIEF. > > >> And if after you keep attacking housewives and children, your image is >> horrible, well that's your tough luck as well. >> If people hate you because you're trying to protect a work on which you >> haven't *actually* made any income in thirty-five years that's your tough >> luck. >> >> I shouldn't use the work "luck" however in this case, since it implies you >> didn't bring it upon yourself. > > > What that someone who creates something that others want is to blame, > because others have decided that they somehow have an entitlement to take? > > >> How about this counter-offensive. Threaten to repeal copyright to the >> point, where any holder *only* gets ten years. That's it. >> Ten years to make your money then it's public domain. We can call it the >> "Knock it off or else" proposal. >> > > The bulk of the theft is contemporary works, not the works from 10 years > ago, but the works that were created last week. > > That aside if I invest a bunch of money in some stocks that gives me a > share in the profits of that companies I've invested in. No one says > that in 10 years time my rights to a share in those profits are forfeit, > and the rights devolved to some general class of whiners and moaners > with an inflated sense of entitlement. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Foundation-l
I don't know why you bothered putting him on moderation if you were just going to forward all of his emails to the list. Please, keep the discussion off this list, in order to prevent the disruption which you sought to limit by placing Jeffrey on moderation. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 6:23 AM, Roan Kattouw wrote: > Chad writes: >> I'd like to touch on this one particular point. The community HAS spoken >> and clearly wants it back the way it was. A volunteer even did so [0] but >> was reverted [1] with the message that UI changes to Vector are off-limits >> without some sort of prior discussion and approval. >> >> This sits with me _very_ badly. I don't disagree (in principle) that changes >> to >> our user experience should be discussed and not implemented via fiat. But >> when you've got overwhelming consensus that this is the right course of >> action, reverting the change and declaring it off-limits to our committers >> is just wrong. Our volunteer developers do a pretty good job of judging and >> implementing community consensus, and saying that some things aren't >> negotiable sets a bad precedence. >> > I completely agree with this. Although the people that made and executed this > decision are my friends and coworkers, I increasingly feel the need to call > them > out on this particular action. We, the usability team, exist to improve the > appearance and usability of the site, not to own or monopolize these topics. > This revert, particularly the tone (and, to a lesser degree, the substance) of > the revert summary, sends the message that we do in fact claim that monopoly; > that any decision about usability goes through us; that "our" code is a sacred > work that may only be touched with prior approval of a staff member, and that > any mortal who dares violate these sacred commandments will experience the > Wrath > of the Immediate Revert. I will say to be fair that the best response to what you perceive as a poor design choice in somebody else's code is not to revert them and say "There, I fixed it for you. Thank me later.", but perhaps to discuss it with them first and find a compromise. There's an imperative to listen and respond to community feedback, but quietly changing somebody else's code against their explicit wishes is not a good way to make your point. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 10:17 PM, David Gerard wrote: > Can someone from the Foundation confirm whether any testing was done > with people who would actually be affected by the decision to remove > the language links - or only on people who wouldn't care? If only the > latter, then the stated reason for removal would be in serious need of > urgent review. I won't speak for the Foundation, but my understanding is that sampled click-rates were measured on the live site, so it would have been a representative sample of our visitors. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Renaming "Flagged Protections"
On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 2:25 AM, MZMcBride wrote: > No, it really isn't a legitimate concern. It wasn't a legitimate concern > when the "AbuseFilter" was enabled and every user had a public "abuse log". > And with that feature came the ability to tag edits. We now mark edits with > generally inflammatory remarks that are impossible to have removed. Naming > wasn't a concern when file description pages were all prefixed with > "Image:". It wasn't a concern when RevDelete was enabled (first for > oversighters, then for everyone else). RevDelete doesn't apply to just > revisions, and the user rights associated with it could not have been more > confusingly named if someone had tried deliberately. Contradiction aside, I think that what you've proven here is that under no circumstances should any engineer be permitted to name anything. We should institute this as a rule in Wikimedia development in general. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] drive-by site updates
On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 7:19 PM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote: > The people who decided to enable without any proper testing and announcement > the collapsible sidebar that hides interlanguage links, the search box that > can't search and the new Wikipedia logo which nearly everybody hates - > please don't do this again. I'll feed. Those people happen to be five or six talented developers who've spent a year and a half developing and testing a more useful, usable interface for our project. They've spent the last few days chasing obscure bugs and connecting with the community on other issues; if there are problems with this rollout, they're certainly not because of "drive-by site updates". Perhaps this thread should be titled "drive-by complaints" — you've made little attempt to understand and engage with people who have been working their asses off to bring Wikipedia a better user experience. No software rollout is ever perfect, and there are perhaps improvements to make, but your post is thoroughly unconstructive and entirely devoid of substance. If you have bugs to report, report them properly, with more useful details and less attitude (Hint: name the component that's failing, the steps you took, what you expected to happen, and what actually happened). If you have constructive feedback on the rollout process, engage with the already-ongoing discussion on this mailing list, first reading the existing posts to check that your comments haven't been made already. If you simply enjoy writing unhelpful and toxic comments about other people's work, then I suggest you refrain from sending them, or send them to somebody else. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Samuel Klein wrote: > Wedrna, later: >> The *ONLY* rating and classification system that I can support >> is a descriptive one. That is, it describes the nature of the >> content, and allows humans or computers to filter it accordingly. >> The infrastructure would be technically simple. > > Yes. Our categorization system already exists and should suffice. To be specific, the technical infrastructure would involve parser functions which can apply ICRA tags to images, and can pass them through to the articles in question. It could be implemented with parser functions and the page_props table in an afternoon, taking no more than a week to tweak and review. If you want this functionality, you should look at implementing it, or you should lobby the Foundation to support it with staff developer time. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 10:07 AM, Andreas Kolbe wrote: >> So... are we now going to start writting "USfamilyfriendlypedia(tm)" ? >> There is plenty of stuff to be delete then... not only penis and >> vagina pictures... For example delete all biographies of porn-stars, >> articles about addictive violent computer games, and there is tons of >> things to be deleted in order to make our projects more "family friendy". > > Has it occurred to you that we could simply _age-rate_ articles, rather > than delete them? An article on a pornographic novel could be 18-rated, > just like the novel itself. Same with porn star bios, which aren't likely > to be of interest to 9-year-olds. I object to the assertion that images and discussion of reproductive organs is "unsuitable" for children under a certain age. This is primarily a Western Anglophone cultural assumption – and it doesn't hold true in all such parts of the world either. There's certainly no medical or psychological research which suggests that exposure to educational content about reproduction has a negative impact on child development. I grew up in Suburban Sydney. When I was barely five years old my parents gave me, as part of a "How My Body Works" series, a book about human reproduction, including detailed diagrams and illustrations. It is *NOT* *OUR* *ROLE* to decide what is and is not "appropriate" for children to view on our website. That role is to be discharged solely by parents and supervisors of those children. The *ONLY* rating and classification system that I can support is a descriptive one. That is, it describes the nature of the content, and allows humans or computers to filter it accordingly. The infrastructure would be technically simple. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:33 PM, Samuel Klein wrote: > On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 8:13 AM, Andrew Garrett wrote: >> This isn't an ideal situation. We should have a situation in which >> Jimmy's technical power derives from the authority of the board of >> trustees or from a community mandate, or we should have a situation in >> which Jimmy does not have unlimited technical power. > > I don't think this is a technical issue at all. Considering how > flexible and reversible wiki-actions are, it seems eminently > appropriate to me for the project founder to have 'unlimited technical > power' on the projects -- just as you and all of our developers do, at > a much higher level. Perhaps I should have written "Exercised unlimited technical power". I'm referring to the general idea that Jimmy does what he feels like, and communities have no recourse except to the Foundation and to the Board. As you rightly point out, developers and staff have the same powers, but none of us make a habit of using them deliberately for large-scale content deletion. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:07 PM, Samuel Klein wrote: > How can you call this 'affirmed'? Jimbo has made strong suggestions, > but it is the Commons community that must create and enforce its own > policies. The founder flag is an indication of respect, and provides > 'crat rights on all projects, but doesn't provide any more 'power' > over the project than any bureaucrat has. The real power on wikis is > social, not technical -- and where there is a vacuum without local > consensus, Jimbo is often persuasive and effective at providing > guidance. However once the community decides how to proceed, it > should do so with confidence. Let's talk about Jimmy's role, then. What happens now is that he has unlimited technical power over all projects, and everybody is of the impression that they are not permitted to remove or limit it, lest it be restored and their access similarly or more harshly curtailed. Community efforts to reverse actions taken by Jimmy with the assistance of his technical power have been immediately reversed by him without any further explanation, and occasionally threats or actual retaliation made against those reversing his actions. This isn't an ideal situation. We should have a situation in which Jimmy's technical power derives from the authority of the board of trustees or from a community mandate, or we should have a situation in which Jimmy does not have unlimited technical power. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How to reply to a mailing list thread
On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 9:51 AM, Gerard Meijssen wrote: > Hoi, > The easiest way to deal with such issues is use a decent mail client. I use > Gmail and it ensures that all the threads are together and in order. It > hides all the copies of old replies and given the copious amount of storage > it is no problem that all the crap is still there. > > When you argue that this is not best practice, my question to you is, when > has your best practice been re-evaluated for the last time.. Does it > consider the improved functionality that is there for you to have ? We don't all use gmail. And if you're relying on people's mail clients hiding the original text, why don't you just remove it so that it goes away for everyone? -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] video presentation on explicit images on WMF projects
On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 2:23 AM, K. Peachey wrote: > On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 11:39 AM, John Vandenberg wrote: >> iirc, there is already a mediawiki capability for images to be >> completely removed from the servers. >> >> I can't see this capability in the sysop tools, so maybe I only imagined it. >> >> Is that capability still available? Which users have access to it? >> >> If it is part of the software, I think oversighters should have access to it. > That was rewritten ages ago to allow the files to be kept and > undeleted and need be (so in theory they are now only removed from > accessible part of the software, not the file system), they would need > to be kept and not destroyed if they were brought you in > court/criminal proceedings because they would become evidence. It's possible for system administrators to delete files entirely from the servers for legal reasons, but because it is quite labour-intensive, I for one have only ever performed such a deletion when it is real child pornography (hint: a 16-year-old masturbating is not "real" child pornography, and is in fact legal, though explicit, in New South Wales, Australia). We don't really want to be handling any more than a request or two each week/month under this system, and it's done mostly in the interest of taste – the images that I've had to delete have made me extremely uncomfortable, and deleting them is mostly about protecting innocent snooping administrators from seeing them. If there are legal issues involved, they should be discussed directly with our General Counsel, and not speculated about by volunteers who may lack the requisite legal expertise to make a decision on the Foundation's behalf. The community should be discussing editorial and administrative reasons for dealing with these images, not legal ones. -- Andrew Garrett agarr...@wikimedia.org http://werdn.us/ Sent from London, Eng, United Kingdom ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] LiquidThreads almost ready for deployment
Hi all, With the Foundation's support, I've spent the last few months churning away at LiquidThreads [1], a new discussion system that is proposed for use on Wikimedia projects. Essentially, it's an attempt to marry the radical openness of the wiki paradigm with the usability and practicality of a forum-like system. As the name implies, LiquidThreads is designed to allow any user to easily refactor discussions while maintaining edit history, to edit other users' comments, and to collaborate on a summary of an ongoing discussion. LiquidThreads also brings many standard communication features lacking from wiki discussion pages, such as watching and protecting individual discussion threads, RSS feeds of comments in a discussion or on a discussion page. In the world of online communication, its approach is entirely unique. LiquidThreads has been in alpha testing on Wikimedia Labs [2] for several months, and, more recently, it's been used in a production context on the strategy wiki, where it has been quite well-received. It's been easy to run these smaller trials, as the extension allows the activation and deactivation of LiquidThreads discussions on individual pages with a simple parser function. While there are still some issues remaining before wider trials, I believe I can resolve most of them quite quickly (within a few weeks when my vacation finishes at the end of next month), and I'd like to get the ball rolling in proposing small-scale trials on some of the larger wikis, so that a full discussion can be had, and so that adjustments can be made on the basis of ongoing feedback. I'd especially like to see LiquidThreads used on some of the higher-traffic discussion pages on English Wikipedia (such as the technical village pump), and progressive rollout on some of our mid to large sized wikis. So, I'd like to encourage you to have a play with LiquidThreads, either on the strategy wiki or on the test site (which generally runs a newer version). Tell me what you like about it, and (far more importantly) what improvements you think it needs before we can expand our trials to wider parts of the Wikimedia Universe, and perhaps move towards a full rollout of this very exciting technology. I should give the following caveats about LiquidThreads as it stands. These are all issues that I intend to address before any trial expansion occurs. * Presently the system is somewhat vulnerable to abuse. I intend to make changes to the way signatures work, and improve tracking and listing of thread actions by specific users. * While LiquidThreads allows for thread summaries and discussion headers, the system does not currently have support for collaboratively-edited posts which are unsigned or signed by a group of people. These are a key piece of any decision-making framework, and I intend to make adjustments to make this possible. * There is no support for embedding LiquidThreads discussion pages on other pages. * There are plenty of minor interface issues which I intend to clean up. Feedback is best directed to the dedicated Feedback page [3], or, alternatively, to bugzilla [4] (although before filing a bug, you should check the list of existing LiquidThreads bugs [5]). [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:LiquidThreads [2] http://liquidthreads.labs.wikimedia.org [3] http://liquidthreads.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Feedback [4] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensions&component=LiquidThreads [5] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensions&component=LiquidThreads&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED -- Andrew Garrett agarr...@wikimedia.org http://werdn.us ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Can you tell us about ... - An Idea to encourage more edits
On 25/11/2009, at 12:00 AM, Geoffrey Plourde wrote: > We also might want to look into policy overhauls to reduce barriers > to contribution. > > From: David Moran > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List > > Sent: Tue, November 24, 2009 5:53:35 AM > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Can you tell us about ... - An Idea to > encourage more edits > > I actually like this idea, a LOT. The main page basically poses > Wikipedia > as a warehouse of content, which is fine, it is that, but also does > little > to pose Wikipedia as a collaborative project. Yeah, new visitors can > technically TRY to edit our main page articles now, but generally > the stuff > that makes it there is already so polished, or so intensely guarded, > that > neophyte editors have little to no chance of making meaningful edits > on > them. I've had a couple articles I created in the Did You Know > space, so I > can definitely say that they aren't the editor-magnets that Featured > Articles or In the News are, but I think putting out there on our > front page > articles that need CONTRIBUTORS rather than just READERS (in an > obvious way, > I mean--of course all our articles need contributors) would be a very > helpful, and very easy thing for us to do. In general, redesigning the reader-facing parts of the site to encourage contribution is something I strongly support. It will benefit us in the long run. The emphasis at present appears to be on presenting us as a place to go to learn and discover things. This is great, but it does not necessarily encourage contribution. -- Andrew Garrett agarr...@wikimedia.org http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Minors and sexual explicit stuff
On 16/11/2009, at 1:04 AM, private musings wrote: > Hi all, > > On Wikipedia Review, 'tarantino' pointed out that on WMF projects, > self-identified minors (in this case User:Juliancolton) are involved > in > routine maintenance stuff around sexually explicit images reasonably > describable as porn (one example is 'Masturbating Amy.jpg'). > > http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=27358&st=0&p=204846&#entry204846 > > I think this is wrong on a number of levels - and I'd like to see > better > governance from the foundation in this area - I really feel that we > need to > talk about some child protection measures in some way - they're > overdue. > > I'd really like to see the advisory board take a look at this issue > - is > there a formal way of suggesting or requesting their thoughts, or > could I > just ask here for a board member or community member with the advisory > board's ear to raise this with them. You just won't give up this topic, will you? I'm not sure where you get the idea that it's somehow inappropriate for minors to be viewing or working on images depicting human nudity and sexuality. Cultural sensibilities on this matter are inconsistent, irrational and entirely lacking in substance. I'm also unsure how you propose to define "sexually explicit". The definitions under law are elaborate, attempting to make distinctions that would be irrelevant to any negative impact on children, if one existed. Are images of the statue of David, the Mannekin Pis or the Ecstacy of Theresa deserving of such restrictions? What about the detailed frescoes of sexual acts displayed in brothels and living rooms in ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum? How are those distinct from the image you've used as an example, and how is that distinction relevant to whatever supposed harm you are claiming to children? If it is truly inappropriate or harmful for children to be working on such images, then those children should be supervised in their internet access, or have gained the trust of their parents to use the internet within whatever limits those parents (or, indeed, the minor) believe is appropriate. It is absolutely not the job of the Wikimedia Foundation, nor the Wikimedia community, to supervise a child's internet access and/or usage, and certainly not to make arbitrary rules regarding said usage on the basis of a single culture's sensibilities on children and sexuality, especially sensibilities as baseless and harmful as this one. -- Andrew Garrett agarr...@wikimedia.org http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Deletopedia for the history of Kosovo
On 06/10/2009, at 9:54 AM, jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote: > In case it is not clear, > I would like a copy of this file : > > http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20090929/ > # 2009-09-29 02:50:45 done Deleted page and revision data. (private) > > For the purposes of extracted the kosovo related data from it, > to create a POV specific collection of wikipedia material > for the further promotion of free knowledge and culture. > > I will not post anyones private data, or post any articles that are > out of scope. > > My approach will be to review the artlcles and select authors and ones > that I feel relevant. As I've told you on IRC, there is absolutely no chance of you getting hold of that particular data file, especially not with the purpose of publishing parts of it. There might be other options for you to get hold of what you need without us handing you every revision ever deleted on English Wikipedia (which includes numerous revisions which are damaging to users' privacy). -- Andrew Garrett agarr...@wikimedia.org http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] LiquidThreads in Beta testing at labs.wikimedia.org
For those of us who don't follow the tech blog [1], I'm pleased to announce that LiquidThreads is now in beta testing in the Wikimedia Labs [2]. LiquidThreads is a next-generation discussion system for MediaWiki, which turns talk pages into a real forum, while maintaining the essential aspects of a wiki that make them so effective. It was originally developed as a Google Summer of Code project by David McCabe, and I've spent the last 4 months preparing it for deployment on Wikimedia sites, under contract from the Foundation. Presently, we're waiting for the labs project to become relatively stable, and have all the features we need. Once that's been done, we will commence a staged roll-out of LiquidThreads on various Wikimedia sites. It should be noted that LiquidThreads has a mode in which it can be switched on or off per-page. My intention is to activate it on sites in that mode, and allow users to discuss pages that would benefit from the enhanced discussion management (I'm thinking of high- traffic noticeboards and discussion pages). Once it's been rolled out and people are familiar with it, we can think about the possibility of turning it on for all discussion pages. LiquidThreads is very much a work in progress, and your feedback is essential for it to get to a point at which we can deploy it on this wiki. Please do send any and all constructive feedback to the feedback page on the test wiki, and I will do my best to accommodate it. I'm very excited about the opportunity to bring this technology to Wikipedia, and to give our discussion pages a long-needed overhaul. [1] http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/10/mediawikis-new-discussion-system-in-testing-on-wikimedia-labs/ [2] http://liquidthreads.labs.wikimedia.org [3] http://liquidthreads.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Feedback -- Andrew Garrett agarr...@wikimedia.org http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
