Re: [Foundation-l] A discussion list for Wikimedia (not Foundation) matters
I don't know if this makes sense, so I beg your patience for my ignorance. But would it be an option to duplicate the archive? Then both the old and the new links will work. It would be a Great Pity if the new list would not contain the archive of the old list. Best, Lodewijk No dia 4 de Abril de 2012 01:43, Thehelpfulone thehelpfulonew...@gmail.comescreveu: One other thing to think about while you're making larger adjustments: it's possible to customize the listinfo page to not be so ghastly. For example, compare https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l with https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l. Perhaps one of the designers can work on making the new wikimedia-l listinfo page less ugly and off-putting? MZMcBride The designer could also use https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/accounts-enwiki-l for some inspiration, which is an improvement to the wikien-l mailing list (it has dynamic resizing for example). Source code is at https://github.com/enwikipedia-acc/mailinglist, https://github.com/enwikipedia-acc/mailinglist/blob/master/listinfo.html is the main page and https://github.com/enwikipedia-acc/mailinglist/blob/master/options.html is the page with all the subscription options once you've logged in. -- Thehelpfulone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Thehelpfulone English Wikipedia Administrator ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] New Project Process
I totally second SJ's poke for more new projects! Although our flagship project is highly successful, it would be good if we try to keep creating new communities. I have been sad for quite a while now that we don't create new projects any more. It would be great to see one new project every year :) Best, Lodewijk No dia 4 de Abril de 2012 05:53, Pharos pharosofalexand...@gmail.comescreveu: On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 4:22 PM, Samuel Klein sjkl...@hcs.harvard.edu wrote: On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 3:38 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 3 April 2012 07:47, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: We had started a stub table about this: https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_that_need_to_be_free This is brilliant! I've been after something like this for a while. Thanks for the reminder, Nemo. I was looking for this on Meta, but forgot to check the stratwiki. Embarrassing, since apparently I started the page... :) Liam: another reason to consider merging meta wikis. Ziko: what would a WMF evaluation of Wikinews or Wikispecies say? Should we shut down such a project... cease to mention it on Wikipedia main pages... or invest money in promoting it? Good questions, subtle answers. Those are not the only options; we might help them merge with a similar project. For instance, wikieducator and wikiversity have almost identical missions, and might benefit from being merged; the question of 'who hosts the site' is relatively minor compared to the loss of splitting energy and focus across two wikis. Liam (paraphrased): - project review : identify support each project expects from the WMF. - easy improvements with high value. Start with Wiktionary - rename Commons to WikiCommons? merge WikiSpecies w/ WikiData? - merge Outreach, Strategy and MetaWiki -- wikimedia.org - lower barriers b/t wikis: global userpages, talk, watchlists This whole class of brainstorming is important; making it less of a pain to travel between projects is good for all of them. Yaroslav: may be we could use the experience of langcom and appoint ten individuals who would recommend new proposals to the Board. That's not a bad idea. SJ Indeed, perhaps a 'Sister Projects Committee' could start looking into some of Liam's type of questions. (Of course, Wikipedia is a sister project too!) Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A university partner for Wikimania
And if memory serves me well 2007 was co-hosted by the Academica Sinica and 2008 by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (which probably can be categorized as academic albeit not university). Kind regards, Lodewijk No dia 26 de Março de 2012 11:04, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.netescreveu: On 03/25/12 12:34 PM, James Heilman wrote: Some academics need conferences to be sponsored by / associated with an academic institution to receive time off and funding to attend conferences. Is this something that Wikimania has ever attempted? Ie. having Wikimania hosted by the local chapter plus a local University? Wikimania in 2006 was co-hosted by the Harvard Law School. Ray __**_ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.**org foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/foundation-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Wiki Loves Monuments - will your country participate?
-crossposting- Hi all, we're well on our way getting started with Wiki Loves Monuments 2012! (feel free to forward) For those that don't know what Wiki Loves Monuments is all about, please read this blog post [ http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/02/165000-photos-submitted-during-second-annual-wiki-love-monuments-photography-contest/] on the WMF blog and this page about how the concept works [ http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012/Documentation#Concept]; here's also a small introduction to the main idea of the contest and what's awaiting us this year. *== Wiki Loves Monuments in a nutshell ==* The photo competition around physical cultural heritage (buildings, bridges, etc.) is running in September, organized in numerous countries around the world. The contest is being organized in each country separately, allowing to play to the local needs and wishes, but is joined by an umbrella contest for the whole world making it all a bit more exciting. Last year the contest was organized in 18 countries, and brought in 165.000 images by 5000 uploaders. More importantly, 4000 of these uploaders never uploaded anything before! *== Is your country participating? Helping hands are needed! ==* For 2012 already 24 countries [ http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012/Participating_countries] indicated that they will definitely participate, and 16 more say they possibly will participate. Please take a look at the list, and see whether your country is already there. If you would like to help organize this contest in your country, please join the team that signed up for it (often through a chapter or a local group) or start your own organizing group if there is none yet! Interested countries for example include India, United States, Chile, Sweden and Italy. *== So, why would you want to organize a WLM in your country? ==* Well, of course there are the images – it is great to have good images available of your country. But more importantly perhaps is the amount of individuals that might participate! Hundreds, maybe thousands of people who never contributed before can now help out with what they are best at: making photos. They often find it fun, and might hang around a bit longer if we receive them well. It also is a good opportunity to get in touch with local cultural heritage institutions. Finally, it is a good way to try and forge a local community to organize events together. It is an existing framework you can use, and although there are no guarantees, working in an international context like this (the largest collaboration between chapters and other Wikimedia organizations so far!) helps a lot to keep people motivated and close to each other. An international group will be helping interested groups with the basic infrastructure and other things, and on a national level, you can focus on the organizing of your own contest, lists and communications. *== Join the team and get started! ==* If you want to know more, feel free to leave a message[ http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012] or send us an email. But make sure to get started now if you're interested - because some parts of the work just require quite some time since external parties are involved. We would be delighted to help you out in any way possible to pull off this event. Best, Lodewijk (on behalf of the international coordinating team) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Copyright and cakes...
The cake designer can only release his/her part of the creative process under a free license (baking the cake/making the photo). I would suggest to just specifiy that the logo-part is copyright WMF, the photographic and cake-baking component to be released under CC-BY (not -SA to avoid the SA clause to make things complicated). That way everyone with permission of the WMF can reuse the design if wanted. Lodewijk No dia 5 de Março de 2012 15:54, Richard Symonds richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk escreveu: Silly question for you all: Is http://commons.wikimedia.org/**wiki/File:Wikimedia_cake.jpghttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_cake.jpgactually copyrighted to the WMF as a WMF logo? The cake was made for Wikimedia UK, so it's technically a derivative work, perhaps... Any ideas what the copyright status of this should be? Does the author (Jezhotwells) have the ability to release it under a free licence, if s/he wishes? Richard Symonds Office Development Manager Wikimedia UK +44 (0) 207 065 0992 -- Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited, a Charitable Company Registered in England and Wales, No: 6741827. Charity No:1144513 Office: 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. Wikimedia UK is the local chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). It is an independent non-profit organization with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents. __**_ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.**org foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/foundation-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Copyright and cakes...
eating the cake would damage the moral rights of the logo author. Since he cannot give general permission to violate moral rights, eating the cake would be illegal. No dia 5 de Março de 2012 23:08, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com escreveu: On 5 March 2012 22:07, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: On 5 March 2012 20:40, Chris Keating chriskeatingw...@gmail.com wrote: I suspect a court would hold that the set of cakes is disjoint from the set of objects on permanent display, and thus that a photograph of cake can never benefit from freedom of panorama. Well you say that but slices of Charles and Diana's wedding cake have turned up at auction as recently as 2008. I wonder how many cakes you would have if you assembled all the fragments. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing
Hi Castelo, just to make the discussion clearer: could you just give say 5 or 10 examples of topics where you believe oral citations are unavoidable? Then I hope that Ziko in his turn can explain how we can write about those examples without using them. Best regards, Lodewijk No dia 25 de Fevereiro de 2012 05:17, Castelo michelcastelobra...@gmail.com escreveu: On 24-02-2012 23:18, Ziko van Dijk wrote: Those people who would like to write on Wikipedia about any subject can write a book or pdf about it. It does not have to be a scholarly work in every aspect. And then, the Wikipedia in language X can decide that it accepts this kind of literature as reliable. (Those various standards are not uncommon in the different Wikipedias.) Not everything has to happen*in* Wikipedia. Kind regards Ziko In the case of Oral Citations, the people who tells the facts are not the same people who want to write on Wikipedia, and definitively, not people willing to write a book or pdf. Editors are recording them for using this material in Wikipedia. We are willing to apply this in Brazil, with indigenous traditions. Some of the indians cannot write a book, a pdf or a Wikipedia article and those are exactly who have more expertise on their traditions. This can give them authority when describing their rituals, clothings, artefacts, fights, cuisine, etc., much more than a wikipedian can. And we still have a huge lack on articles about them, because for certains indigenous nations, there are almost no published material (some have no written material at all, as far as i know). I live in the capital city, where some of them usually come for present their culture in a national museum, and go back to their territories. In moments like these, we wikimedians can go there, take photos and record an interview (most speak a bit Portuguese, as well as their own languages), for publishing in Commons and Commons/Wikinews, respectively, for using in Wikipedia articles. I'm not thinking only on Wikipedia, we have also other projects not mentioned here, that can work together on it. Each project for a kind of content. In Wikinews, original reporting is fine, in Wikiversity, even original research is fine. They can be more reliable than a book, in some cases. It depends on how we do that, by reviewing, approval, etc, there's a lot of extensions that can be used on it. Castelo __**_ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.**org foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/foundation-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012
Hi Ziko, what was presented at Wikimania, was only supposed to be very rough and a first phase. The idea was to then continue the process further - somehow that never really happened. I agree there were and are quite some flaws in the design (for which I don't necessarily see an immediate solution). When wordings are the problem, we can probably fix that together - it is more important that we agree on the actual content - and that seems hard enough as it is. I'm afraid that a new group at this point would bump into the same problems as the old one did, and has to go through that whole learning process all over again. So yes, lets be critical, and constructive as much as possible. best, Lodewijk No dia 14 de Fevereiro de 2012 00:57, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nlescreveu: Hello, I am afraid that the letter takes over the results of the MR group that where presented at Wikimania 2011. There nobody, as far as I remember, who was enthousiast about those results. My board colleague Marco, for example, was stunned that the MR group thought that the International Olympic Committee were a great model for us because of its transparency (!). The wordings were unsatisfying, and we couldn't make up much of the proposed charter text. On the talk page I later commented that the WMF should call for a new group. I would like to interpret this new letter as an invitation to think about entities and its names again. It would be nice if the expressions could be more self-explanitory, and if we had more information about what these new entities will be for. What problems will be solved by establishing them, what problems could emerge etc. Kind regards Ziko --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012
Hi Ziko, if you're saying that the proposals should not get 'extra points' because they happen to come from a working group that did not function optimally (far from that - although it was definitely not useless either) I totally agree. Just review the proposals on their own merits, and consider its impact rather than its source. Best, Lodewijk No dia 14 de Fevereiro de 2012 14:23, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nlescreveu: Lodewijk, I remember the session in Haifa very well. The audience found it extremely difficult to understand the texts and do anything with them - think of the awkward silence when the group asked for feedback. It must be possible to criticize the texts in spite of their alleged roughness. And indeed, after Haifa we never neard from the group again, its members also did not take part in the discussion on the concerning meta talk page. Now, suddenly, the content of what you call very rough and a first phase is put on the table again. So I take it seriously and say what according to me must be said. Kind regards Ziko 2012/2/14 Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org: Hi Ziko, what was presented at Wikimania, was only supposed to be very rough and a first phase. The idea was to then continue the process further - somehow that never really happened. I agree there were and are quite some flaws in the design (for which I don't necessarily see an immediate solution). When wordings are the problem, we can probably fix that together - it is more important that we agree on the actual content - and that seems hard enough as it is. I'm afraid that a new group at this point would bump into the same problems as the old one did, and has to go through that whole learning process all over again. So yes, lets be critical, and constructive as much as possible. best, Lodewijk No dia 14 de Fevereiro de 2012 00:57, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nlescreveu: Hello, I am afraid that the letter takes over the results of the MR group that where presented at Wikimania 2011. There nobody, as far as I remember, who was enthousiast about those results. My board colleague Marco, for example, was stunned that the MR group thought that the International Olympic Committee were a great model for us because of its transparency (!). The wordings were unsatisfying, and we couldn't make up much of the proposed charter text. On the talk page I later commented that the WMF should call for a new group. I would like to interpret this new letter as an invitation to think about entities and its names again. It would be nice if the expressions could be more self-explanitory, and if we had more information about what these new entities will be for. What problems will be solved by establishing them, what problems could emerge etc. Kind regards Ziko --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012
Hiya all, It would be great if we can have this discussion without making sarcastic remarks like this - I know it is a sensitive topic, but I also know that we're in a suboptimal situation here right now. In the past discussions we have talked about how we should try to engage volunteers and let them do what they are best at - I still stand behind that. That however also means that we should recognize that the chapters model will not work for every single person or group of persons. This does not necessarily have to correlate with a 'shift of power' or disengaging chapters - it *should* be about engaging more volunteers, and allowing them to do great work with the best tools available. So let us focus on that. I think there are two types of organizations within the Wikimedia movement relevant here besides the chapters and the WMF: 1) Organizations that will ideally grow into a chapter some day 2) Organizations that explicitely do not want to or cannot grow into a chapter The group 1) will probably mainly be the case because of either legal reasons or because there is not enough critical mass yet. I don't think anyone disagrees we should give them the space they need. This includes for example Wikimedia Croatia, Kazachstan and Georgia. The group 2) will in my expectation consist of groups that are indeed more aligned along cultural ideas. To mind come Amical (as discussed) and Esperantists. Now this is where things apparently become complicated, because somehow things can get conflicting when they start to compete with chapters. There are a few things relevant here in the recognition process by X-committee: * What will be the rights will determine to large extent how high the threshold will be * If there is a geographical component (explicit or not) there should, imho, be a consultation with the relevant other organizations overlapping with that component. I don't know if it is realistic to go as far as a veto, but it should definitely be a very serious part of the process. This should probably be reciprocal - if a chapter is to be recognized other groups in that area should be consulted, too. * We should have clear to what extent trademarks and fundraising rights go - both for chapters and non-chapter organizations. * We have to remain very careful about political statements. I am personally a bit hesistant with recognizing any organization which is politically oriented. Hence, this analysis should also be part of the recognition process of any movement organization. To give an entirely obvious example: I would not feel comfortable if any organization would be founded based on ethnically oriented principles, or would be discriminating in its membership based on principles that would be considered illegal in most countries (even if it is not illegal in that specific country). Another obvious example: I would feel extremely uncomfortable if any of these organizations would only allow men to vote in their assemblies or if there are religious requirements. * In general I would like to find a way to ensure that relations are good between the organization and the communities and relevant other organizations. I doubt we ever can formalize that into a demand, but all efforts should go into this of course. Probably there are some more criteria which are currently already checked upon (although not formally in a checklist) by the recognition of chapters that should be part of this. I think it would be helpful if chapcom can tackle that issue in it's berlin meeting. Anyway, just some thoughts. As a final remark, I sincerely hope that we will not fall in the trap of building policies around a single case - but rather focus on the big picture and then afterwards test that picture on the single scenario. Amical is a complicated case, and it would be very easy to loose ourselves in who's at fault, the details and what solutions do not work in their case. Warmly, Lodewijk No dia 13 de Fevereiro de 2012 15:29, marcos tal_t...@yahoo.es escreveu: There is a simpler solution: to dissolve the current structure of chapters and to leave everything in hands of the magnificent professionals of San Francisco... Marcos Tallés (aka Marctaltor) Secretario de Wikimedia España mar...@wikimedia.org.es tal_t...@yahoo.es (34) 658 395 060 www.wikimedia.org.es --- El lun, 13/2/12, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com escribió: De: Nathan nawr...@gmail.com Asunto: Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012 Para: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Fecha: lunes, 13 de febrero, 2012 15:03 I am concerned that trying to include them in that kind of process wouldn't work due to the very flexible nature of such organisations. One Chapter - One Vote is problematic as it is (eg. chapters represent geographies of very different sizes, have very different numbers of members, very different budgets, very different levels of activity, some represent countries while others
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: Building a new Legal and Community Advocacy Department Promotion of Philippe Beaudette
Hi Philippe, it sounds great. Awesome. But still, it doesn't make much sense to me, sorry. Saying people can 'edit' is of course bound to cheer people up - but if you don't understand *what* you're editing, it is also bound to either become a mess, or either just become what you pick it to become. I can't suggest changes to team or actions if I am unable to grasp behind the very broadly stated goals. Right now it is clear who is in the team, but honestly I don't know you guys well enough to derive from that what you should be doing. Lodewijk No dia 10 de Fevereiro de 2012 08:54, Philippe Beaudette phili...@wikimedia.org escreveu: I think we'll be doing some combination of all three of those. But here's the important part: you tell us. I built out the brainstorming page: people are acting as though there's a determined course charted for this team - if anything, it's the opposite. This is the opportunity for the community to tell us how you'd like to be supported by this team. From the ground floor, help us design it. Tell us what will work best. Do we need more Maggies? Do we need someone to help us track issues of free culture? Maybe we don't, because the community has a process in place for that and we just don't know about it. Help us design the team, and its high level goals. We have what we THINK some of those will be (they're on the page, but I've pasted them here [1], also)... but we're open to the community's input - actually, we're begging for it. Edit this team, and edit this plan. :-) pb [1]- - * Maintaining a proactive online content-protection strategy, defending the written and media work of the community on the Projects through litigation and other means with the involvement of the community; * Ensuring increasing amounts and efficacy of global community participation in WMF-generated initiatives (such as revisions to WMF policies); * Setting up international meet-ups that recognize and support the role of administrators and functionaries, including brainstorming ways that WMF can better help these critical roles within our movement (e.g., Arbcoms, checkusers, OTRS, etc.); * Providing international legislative and policy support to the community, such as providing information about legislative issues of interest like global censorship laws; and * Creating and learning from a community-based advisory board, including implementation of support ideas that serve the advocacy interests of the community and Foundation. On Thu Feb 9 23:42:23 2012, Lodewijk wrote: I must say that after reading all this and the detailed page with the beautiful graphic I am still confused what the department will actually do. There are beautiful abstract goals which everybody would obviously agree with, and there are highly diverse skills involved from on one end Maggie and on the other extreme Geoff. All great. But I hope you can help me by summarizing in one or two sentences of mortal English what you will *do* everyday. Will you be the ones executing decisions from Legal? Will you be nutshelling community decisions and act like an ambassador to the Wikimedia Foundation? Will you be working on guiding the community involvement processes Geoff handled so well with the Terms of Use? Thanks, Lodewijk No dia 10 de Fevereiro de 2012 07:46, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com escreveu: On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 12:07 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote: Advocacy is a much more general term in this context than people seem to be taking it as. It does not mean lobbying or fighting for something controversial with outside organizations. As I understand it, it's the opposite: advocating to the Wikimedia Foundation on behalf of the community. Yeah, that's my understanding of the game plan here as well. I think the announcement could have been clearer in that regard, but that's pretty much what Philippe and Maggie have already been doing, and what they'll continue to do in a structure that's set up for growth. Sometimes we have a tendency to speak in management lingo when we should be choosing simple, crisp clear terms. Honest feedback: Burn the chart on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/LCA_Announcement and draft a super crisp mission statement to slap on the first page for this group. I know, I've been guilty of this as well -- no criticism of the team. When working in an organization this kind of communication style is often expected from you in day-to-day work, but it's not necessarily helpful when communicating with people who have very little time and interest to parse it. I think the brainstorming page is a great start and hope it'll be utilized and further advertised in coming days: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/Community_Advocacy Congratulations
Re: [Foundation-l] Fundraising Letter Feb 2012
Hi Ting, thank you for the letter. Could you clarify to what extent this is the end decision, and how much discussion/process should be expected ahead of us? Going up to this board meeting I have heard both the opinions that the final decision would be made quickly, and also that definitely no decision would be made, but rather an inventory, which would allow for a real life discussion in Paris/Berlin with other stakeholders. Lodewijk No dia 9 de Fevereiro de 2012 09:11, Ting Chen tc...@wikimedia.orgescreveu: The Board approves the following letter to be sent to the community: Dear members of the Wikimedia Movement, As you are probably aware we have been discussing the the future of fundraising and fund dissemination for the Wikimedia Movement for almost 6 months now. After discussing fundraising and funds dissemination at this past meeting, the board has drafted the following statement. It our intention to discuss these matters in the coming weeks to come to a final decision mid March. But first we would like to thank everyone who took part in the discussion so far and spent their valuable time providing us with their viewpoints which we have of course taken into account in our decision making process. We hope that you will continue to participate by giving feedback on this letter. ==Funds dissemination== The board wants to create a volunteer-driven body to make recommendations for funding for movement-wide initiatives (Working title: Funds Dissemination Committee, FDC). The Wikimedia Foundation has decision-making authority, because it has fiduciary responsibilities to donors which it legally cannot delegate. The new body will make recommendations for funds dissemination to the Wikimedia Foundation. We anticipate a process in which the Wikimedia Foundation will review and approve all but a small minority of recommendations from the FDC. In the event that the Wikimedia Foundation does not approve a recommendation from the FDC, and the FDC and the Wikimedia Foundation aren't subsequently able to reach agreement, then the FDC can ask the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees to request the recommendation be reconsidered. #the FDC will be a diverse body of people from across our movement (which may include paid staff) with appropriate expertise for this purpose, whose primary purpose is to disseminate funds to advance the Wikimedia mission; #the WMF staff will support and facilitate the work of the FDC #Proposals can range from one time smaller contributions for small projects from individuals to larger financing for operational costs of chapters or associations The board intends to evaluate this process together with the FDC and see if it is working. ==Fundraising== Our thoughts on fundraising are less specific. We have come to the following two statements which are important * If and when payment processing is done by chapters, it should be done primarily for reasons of tax, operational efficiency (including incentivizing donor cultivation and relations), should not be in conflict with funds dissemination principles and goals, and should avoid a perception of entitlement. * The board is sharpening the criteria for payment processing. Payment processing is not a natural path to growth for a chapter; and payment processing will likely be an exception -- most chapters will not do so. The Wikimedia Board of Trustees NB: Please note that rather than spend a LOT of time on wording at this time, the board preferred to amend the above text if necessary when moving towards a resolution. This letter indicates our intent, and we may wordsmith as needed in our final resolutions. -- Ting Chen Member of the Board of Trustees Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. E-Mail: tc...@wikimedia.org __**_ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.**org foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/foundation-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: Building a new Legal and Community Advocacy Department Promotion of Philippe Beaudette
I must say that after reading all this and the detailed page with the beautiful graphic I am still confused what the department will actually do. There are beautiful abstract goals which everybody would obviously agree with, and there are highly diverse skills involved from on one end Maggie and on the other extreme Geoff. All great. But I hope you can help me by summarizing in one or two sentences of mortal English what you will *do* everyday. Will you be the ones executing decisions from Legal? Will you be nutshelling community decisions and act like an ambassador to the Wikimedia Foundation? Will you be working on guiding the community involvement processes Geoff handled so well with the Terms of Use? Thanks, Lodewijk No dia 10 de Fevereiro de 2012 07:46, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.comescreveu: On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 12:07 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote: Advocacy is a much more general term in this context than people seem to be taking it as. It does not mean lobbying or fighting for something controversial with outside organizations. As I understand it, it's the opposite: advocating to the Wikimedia Foundation on behalf of the community. Yeah, that's my understanding of the game plan here as well. I think the announcement could have been clearer in that regard, but that's pretty much what Philippe and Maggie have already been doing, and what they'll continue to do in a structure that's set up for growth. Sometimes we have a tendency to speak in management lingo when we should be choosing simple, crisp clear terms. Honest feedback: Burn the chart on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/LCA_Announcement and draft a super crisp mission statement to slap on the first page for this group. I know, I've been guilty of this as well -- no criticism of the team. When working in an organization this kind of communication style is often expected from you in day-to-day work, but it's not necessarily helpful when communicating with people who have very little time and interest to parse it. I think the brainstorming page is a great start and hope it'll be utilized and further advertised in coming days: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/Community_Advocacy Congratulations to Philippe and Maggie for their new roles. I think it's about time that we're creating this structure, and I think it'll generate lots of tangible value for the community. Then my suggestion would be, rename the department. I completely agree, it is about time Philippe and Maggie get more authority and a dedicated department. I am happy for both of them. They actually do and have been doing the heavy lifting for years when it comes to the community. I would actually be more in favor of calling their department the community department. ;) Regards Theo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Community Advisory Board / Volunteer Council
While reading the detailed Legal and Community Advocacy/LCA Announcement, on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/LCA_Announcement , I stumbled upon the following sentence: We would like to build a community advisory board to reinforce our commitment to a global perspective while understanding and promoting communities beyond English Wikipedia. This was quite a big news for me - and something worth much more than a simple side sentence in the details section of a department reshuffling announcement, so I'll be starting this thread. As many will know, I have always been a supporter of the Wikimedia Foundation asking more structural feedback and active input from the community. I don't believe myself that this 'Foundation-l' is the best venue for that, nor any of the other communication channels we have at our availability right now. In the past I have proposed a Volunteer Council which the board did not want to back up and died in silence. In the past several other mechanisms with similar goals have been proposed. So, at this announcement I see a good side - this 'community advisory board' could bring us exactly that: a more structural approach to getting continuous community input on Foundation governance decisions - other than having a board member election every two years. If we were to call it 'community advisory board' (who cares about the name) and still give it the same rights (right for information, right to be asked for its opinion before certain decisions are being made, right to give unasked advice, right to veto certain decisions even?) then it would be great news. But somehow I don't have the feeling that this department is aiming for that. So I hope it can be elaborated a bit what is a) the authority of this advisory board (who decided to build it - board, ED or team), b) what will be the purpose and c) what will be the rights. I know you won't have all detailed answers yet because you need to enter a consultation process with the community before setting such steps (which I am grateful for) but I would like to get a little more insight in the direction you want to aim for. Finally, I hope that in case this 'advisory board' is indeed toothless and very topic centered, I hope that this is being made obvious in its name as well. And I hope too that this wouldn't hold back people from keeping asking for a 'real' volunteer council. Best, Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Journal Boycott
Hi Andrea, could you perhaps elaborate how exactly the Free Knowledge would benifit from boycotting non-OA journals? (Not meant sarcastic, I really want to know) Also, how would you imagine such support? I could imagine that with any support by Wikimedia for a boycott, people would assume automatically that we would start blocking citations of said journals. Or are you thinking about that Wikimedia related scholars are asked to public Open Access? (I could imagine this is already the case) In the past Wikimedia has always taken the stance that if people or companies want to exercize their copyright within legal limits, we have no objection to that (although we may challenge some of the legal limits). Would you propose a standpoint that goes further than that? (because then, it would imho certainly require much more community discussion before we take such step) Best regards, Lodewijk No dia 1 de Fevereiro de 2012 17:32, Andrea Zanni zanni.andre...@gmail.comescreveu: I don't know if it's the case, but it would be very interesting to have the Foundation support officialy the campaign (single scholars can do decide to boycott, of course). But universal access to universal knowledge is pretty Open Access to me, and this think is taking momentum, hopefully will be effective. Aubrey 2012/2/1 Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net Another article: http://chronicle.com/article/Who-Gets-to-See-Published/130403/ Elsevier has supported a proposed federal law, the Research Works Act (HR 3699), that could prevent agencies like the National Institutes of Health from making all articles written by grant recipients freely available. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:h.r.03699: Research Works Act - Prohibits a federal agency from adopting, maintaining, continuing, or otherwise engaging in any policy, program, or other activity that: (1) causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher; or (2) requires that any actual or prospective author, or the author's employer, assent to such network dissemination. Defines private-sector research work as an article intended to be published in a scholarly or scientific publication, or any version of such an article, that is not a work of the U.S. government, describing or interpreting research funded in whole or in part by a federal agency and to which a commercial or nonprofit publisher has made or has entered into an arrangement to make a value-added contribution, including peer review or editing, but does not include progress reports or raw data outputs routinely required to be created for and submitted directly to a funding agency in the course of research. Fred ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] ACTA signed but not ratified Re: ACTA analysis?
Apparently the ambassador of the Netherlands did not get permission in time to sign the agreement. It seems nobody really knows yet why that was, but it is expected that the signature will follow. Also the signature of Spain, Slovenia and Cyprus seems to be missing yet. Source: http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/109330/nederland-mist-ondertekening-acta-verdrag---update.html No dia 27 de Janeiro de 2012 09:08, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.comescreveu: 2012/1/27 Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl: ==Update== ACTA has been signed by the EU and 22 member states, but must still be ratified. We have time for a good analysis, and time to set up a game plan before that time. OTOH If we decide to act, we shouldn't be *too* slow, or we'll lose the momentum that has built up. Currently la quadrature du net is coordinated best. http://www.laquadrature.net/en/acta-signed-by-the-eu-lets-defeat-it-together https://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/How_to_act_against_ACTA Yes. Exactly. Actually, from EU only Germany and Holland has not signed ACTA yet. Would be good to make a search on which stage there are formal discussions in these countries. In many countries - also in Poland, the ACTA formal discussion was made semi-secret - I mean, theoretically they were not secret, bo goverment made evrything to hide it from eyes of its own citizens. The ratification in EU Parliament was originally planned at June, but due to strike of Kader Arif it might be 1-2 months later. Before that there will be ratification debates in local EU-countries parliaments. -- Tomek Polimerek Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29title=tomasz-ganicz ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Nederland reports
Hi Ziko, I appreciate your email, but it seems you forgot the link. Also, I personally strongly prefer it if you could include the actual reports in the email. It makes searching finding much easier, as well as offline reading. Best regards, Lodewijk No dia 22 de Janeiro de 2012 22:32, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nlescreveu: Hello, Wikimedia Nederland is reporting monthly on its activities. We just completed December, and for convenience I send you here the link to the whole list of reports. Kind regards Ziko van Dijk president -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ --- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Just cruel (was: January 18: Nick Drake)
This is just cruel... read the rest yeah right :P -- Mensagem encaminhada -- De: English Wikipedia Article of the Day daily-articl...@lists.wikimedia.org Data: 18 de Janeiro de 2012 01:05 Assunto: [Daily article] January 18: Nick Drake Para: daily-articl...@lists.wikimedia.org 100px|Nick Drake's grave in Tanworth-in-Arden Nick Drake (1948–1974) was an English singer-songwriter and musician, best known for his sombre guitar-based songs. He failed to find a wide audience during his lifetime, but now ranks among the most influential English singer-songwriters of the last 50 years. Drake released his debut album, Five Leaves Left, in 1969. None of his first three albums sold more than 5,000 copies on their initial release. Drake suffered from depression and insomnia throughout his life, and these topics were often reflected in his lyrics. On completion of his third album, 1972's Pink Moon, he withdrew from both live performance and recording, retreating to his parents' home in rural Warwickshire. He died from an overdose of amitriptyline in 1974 (grave pictured). Drake was credited as an influence by numerous artists during the 1980s, including The Dream Academy, who in 1985 reached the UK and US charts with Life in a Northern Town, a song written for and dedicated to him. By the early 1990s, Drake represented a certain type of doomed romantic musician in the UK music press. In 2000, Volkswagen featured the title track from Pink Moon in a television advertisement, and within a month Drake had sold more records than he had in the previous 30 years. (more...) Recently featured: Mauna Kea – Press Gang – Diffuse panbronchiolitis Archive – By email – More featured articles... Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Drake ___ Today's selected anniversaries: 1126: Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty of China abdicated the throne in favour of his son Qinzong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Huizong_of_Song 1884: Welsh physician William Price was arrested for attempting to cremate his deceased infant son; he was acquitted in the subsequent trial, which led to the legalisation of cremation in the United Kingdom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Price_%28physician%29 1919: World War I: The Paris Peace Conference opened in Versailles, France, to set the peace terms for the Central Powers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Conference%2C_1919 1943: World War II: As part of Operation Iskra, the Soviet Red Army broke the Siege of Leningrad, opening a narrow land corridor to the city. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Iskra 1958: African Canadian Willie O'Ree of the Boston Bruins played his first game in the National Hockey League, breaking the colour barrier in professional ice hockey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_O%27Ree 1990: In a sting operation conducted by the FBI, Mayor of Washington, D.C., Marion Barry was arrested for possession of crack cocaine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry _ Wiktionary's word of the day: chiasmus (n): An inversion of the relationship between the elements of phrases http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chiasmus ___ Wikiquote quote of the day: Elohim, the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as God, but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean goddesses. Al Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still. --Robert Anton Wilson http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Anton_Wilson ___ Wikipedia Daily Article mailing list. To unsubscribe, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/daily-article-l Questions or comments? Contact dal-feedb...@wikimedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RESCHEDULED: Mailing lists server migration today
as explained in another email: it was actually sent today, with the wrong datestamp. L No dia 18 de Janeiro de 2012 16:35, Huib Laurens sterke...@gmail.comescreveu: gmail is having troubles the last few weeks... I miss e-mails daily that arrive much later... On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 2:43 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Just seen the datestamp... why did that email just come through now?! On 18 January 2012 13:42, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: I advise you delay it again - we need the mailing lists at the moment to coordinate the blackout. On 13 January 2012 13:54, Mark Bergsma m...@wikimedia.org wrote: (rescheduled after the cancelled maintenance of last Friday) Hi, Today I will be migrating the mailing lists from a very old server (lily) in Amsterdam, to a new server (sodium) in our new Ashburn data center. Mailman will be upgraded to version 2.1.13 along the way. During the migration, mail will be delayed as all data will need to be transferred to the new host. No mail should go lost, but no new mails will be sent out during the process until done, and the web interface will be unavailable. This shouldn't take about one hour, if all goes well. I will report here when things should be back up and running. Afterwards, please let us know of any new issues, in bugzilla or on IRC (#wikimedia-tech). We don't expect any problems, but as with any software upgrade or migration, this can't be guaranteed... Thanks, -- Mark Bergsma m...@wikimedia.org Lead Operations Architect Wikimedia Foundation ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Kind regards, Huib Laurens WickedWay.nl Webhosting the wicked way. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Spanish website blocking law implemented
We should be careful to start calling all copyright related laws evil (at least you seem to suggest that) because then that would devaluate very quickly. At least what I see quickly (but IANALawyer and IANASpaniard) this law is not thát evil: the government can ask to close a website that is actually infringing, and the actual enforcement remains with the courts (an ISP is allowed to disagree, and leave it to an impartial judge). What would be more dangerous is if there would be no judge involved, if linking to content alone is enough to block the site, if there are no copyright exeptions (Freedom of Speech etc) to be considered, etc. You can't really condemn every law trying to enforce copyright - but you should try to find a way that is least harmful (especially for 'innocent sites'), fair and considering other (ground)rights. L No dia 3 de Janeiro de 2012 09:26, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nlescreveu: Looks like .us is pushing other countries to implement similar laws, eg. .es : http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/03/0241248/spanish-website-blocking-law-implemented sincerely, Kim Bruning ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reminder: IRC office hours with the Head of Reader Relations, Thursday Dec. 22nd
Hi Jürgen, I didn't mean to specify a format, but rather how I would like to use it. If the same can be achieved in a way that is also open source etc (an can be used on multiple platforms) that deserved of course preference. Hence the some kind of :) Best, Lodewijk No dia 22 de Dezembro de 2011 19:34, Juergen Fenn schneeschme...@googlemail.com escreveu: Am 22. Dezember 2011 10:38 schrieb Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org: is there some kind of Google Agenda of this type of meetings that I could load into my own? Then I could use that as a reminder as well. I would appreciate it if you please could provide an iCal calendar that works with Thunderbird/Lightning and Apple iCal. Yes, we're open. ;-) Regards, Jürgen. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reminder: IRC office hours with the Head of Reader Relations, Thursday Dec. 22nd
Hi Steven, is there some kind of Google Agenda of this type of meetings that I could load into my own? Then I could use that as a reminder as well. Best, Lodewijk No dia 22 de Dezembro de 2011 00:29, Steven Walling swall...@wikimedia.orgescreveu: This is happening in about 30 minutes. -- Forwarded message -- From: Steven Walling swall...@wikimedia.org Date: Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 4:28 PM Subject: IRC office hours with the Head of Reader Relations, Thursday Dec. 22nd To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Hey all, I think most Foundation-l subscribers know Philippe Beaudette from the Foundation, but perhaps not all are aware of his title, Head of Reader Relations, or exactly what that department is and what role it fills. If you'd like to hear an update on the office of reader relations at the WMF and generally interrogate Philippe, ;) this Thursday at 0:00 UTC is your chance. Details are on Meta for how to join as well as time conversion.[1] Thanks, -- Steven Walling Community Organizer at Wikimedia Foundation wikimediafoundation.org 1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours -- Steven Walling Community Organizer at Wikimedia Foundation wikimediafoundation.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia India Program Trust
Dear Bishakha, I apologize for intruding in this discussion again as someone who has little knowledge about India and the local situation. I'm myself not entirely convinced that there always should be one organization in one country - but it is out default. That means that if we want to drift off drom that default, there should be a good reason for it. That is a different mindset of course than that organizations have to prove itself. There are a few things special here however. The first is that one of the organizations is a membership organization, and the other isn't. To me, with my limited knowledge and understanding, it would indeed seem logical given our background to put the membership organization at the center stage. However, at the same time I can understand that this organization might not be ready to handle the funds yet that it needs to. But again - the default would lie imho with the membership organization. If the Trust wants to deviate that is fine, but ideally that would always happen with the consent of the chapter. And of course, now that there *are* two organizations, they should communicate well with each other. Somehow we should ensure that, and I hope some good routes are being found to let everyone on the chapter believe that they are being communicated well with to the full extent. Like was noted somewhere else in this thread, if there is a paid organization just doing stuff you'd like to do as a volunteer as well - that can be pretty darn demotivating. And possibly harmful for the volunteer community in the long run. Lets just be careful. Another is the confusing name - both organizations have the words Wikimedia India in their name. Since chapters are usually identified with Wikimedia Country, this trust is already to me confusing, since it implies it is set up *by* the chapter. Choosing a different name might resolve some issues here. I'm not trying to say here whether those conversations and consent happened - at the beginning of the discussion I was merely trying to understand the situation better, to get a better grasp of who talked with who, who were involved in decision making processes here. From chapters we expect no less than transparent founding processes on meta, involving the community. Receiving feedback and even opening up the bylaws for discussion. I have not seen such a process, but may have missed it. If we are to place the trust at the center stage (are we? still unclear to me, so not suggesting anything here) we should *at least* require the same standards as we do for new chapters. At least for me this is the major part of why I started off this discussion in the first place. It is no attack, it has mainly been a set of questions which have gotten answered in many different ways throughout this discussion. That alone leaves me to believe that there are ways to improve. Best regards, Lodewijk No dia 16 de Novembro de 2011 04:08, Bishakha Datta bishakhada...@gmail.com escreveu: Dear Hari, Tinu, and Theo, Thank you for your heartfelt emails; all of them made me think, and want to take this conversation forward. One of the things I do want to say is that despite all the openness within the wiki-universe (and there is loads of it, no question), there are certain assumptions or 'logics' that are treated as sacred or as givens - these assumptions are rarely challenged or questioned, let alone explored in any depth. And any attempt to challenge these assumptions is treated almost as sacrilege. One of these assumptions is the idea that once a chapter has started operating in a country, no other entity has any business to be there - regardless of the size or potential of that country. This has been expressed in many emails on this thread, where the India chapter has implicitly and explicitly been positioned as legitimate - that which deserves to be there - and the program trust as illegitimate (or some sort of trespasser or gate-crasher). A related assumption is that the single-entity model is, by default, and without any questioning or critical analysis, the best one for every country in the world, including India. (Yes, this model may work for many countries - the question is: does it work for all? Is it the only workable model?) For example, the European Union has a population of 502 million (27 countries, 27 official languages) [1] - and 15-20 chapters if I'm not mistaken. India has a population of 1.2 billion (28 states, 7 union territories, atleast 28 official languages) [2], [3] - and 2 entities. If this data were to be presented to someone outside of the wikimedia movement, he or she might actually argue that India needs more entities, not less, to accomplish the movement's goal of spreading free knowledge to people in India. An outsider may not understand why the arrival of a second entity is causing so much angst and anxiety, more so when funding sources do not seem to be scarce. Related to the assumption
[Foundation-l] Thanking volunteers
I sent this request already to some internal lists, but here there might also be quite some volunteers who have a thought about thanking volunteers :) It is almost the end of the year, and that is for me personally usually a moment to thank some of the people I have worked with over the past twelve months. That triggered me to try and figure out what methods are currently being used in the Wikimedia universe to thank the real life volunteers. Therefore I have set up this questionnaire. I have tried to make it simplequick to answer, but at the same time to leave plenty of opportunity to leave suggestions. Please find it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_USformkey=dDBXU3l2LXlaeHZoWVJNWjRKQWtFb0E6MQ#gid=0 . It should take you roughly 3-4 minutes to fill it out. I hope you are willing to spend these minutes and help me (and others) understand better what thanking in Wikimedia is all about. I am targeting both individuals and organizations with this. If you want to seperate the two, just fill it out twice. Please focus on what *has been done* so far, not what you're planning to do. I want to be able to make the replies available publicly. For individuals without names etc of course, for organizations I would like to be able to add the name of the organization unless there is an objection. For the rest it is of course totally informal and it is for sharing practices. I'm trying to figure out: * How important you think thanking is * What are the best practices and the coolest ideas * Whether physical or online methods are used primarily Thank you for your help! Lodewijk ps: oh yes, of course: you can share this with everybody you like. I hope someone can send this to the chapters-l especially. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Internal-l] Fwd: Wikimedia India Program Trust
(not replying to Liam in particular and apologies for the longer email in advance) Thank you all for this thread. First of all a minor request from someone who's not that familiar with how India and Wikimedia in India exactly is structured: I appreciate it that people tell who they are and what their (apparent) conflicts of interest are, but I hope sincerely that we will be able to keep discussions about the validity of people to a minimum and focus on the validity of arguments. I think it brought up some issues that have to be dealt with that the Trust seemed to be unaware of, judging its initial replies. It is clear that some valued and active volunteers don't feel involved, and consider the trust to be a threat to the future development of the chapter in India. I can see some dangers in it too (although I don't know the specific situation as well - so I'll try to stay in general terms, some may or may not apply to India) and would like to share them. This doesn't mean I'm against the trust or not (I haven't made up my mind yet), but it may give a better insight in why I am interested and concerned, and perhaps some other worried people have similar feelings. When there are two organizations calling themselves Wikimedia in one country, there are some obvious and some less obvious problems. In the Netherlands we have encountered some of those problems in a lesser degree - but I will spare you the details of that specific situation and how it came to be. It is of course obvious that there is potential confusion in the press - personally I don't think that is the one with the most impact to our mission, but it certainly is annoying to volunteers. The press has on some occasions attributed projects of Wikimedia Nederland to the Foundation or even once to Wikimedia Deutschland - and here the chance for that to happen is quite small. So yes, brace for impact, if you have two organizations in one country, you *will* get lots more confusion. The money issue has been covered as well - Both are targeting the same companies for sponsoring their activities, both are aiming for perhaps the same major donors. Even though India is a huge country (understatement) it is likely that every now and then they will encounter each other here. Clear agreements on who does what and when seems vitally important. Probably this is one of the most important reasons why I think it would be good that if there is a seperate trust, that the chapter gets a say in the appointment of their trustees as well. Anyway, I don't need to cover this in detail, others did. But when it comes to money, there is one thing we have to be very careful of too: envy. I don't accuse people on this list of that, but it is something they have to consider in the back of their minds when they are bridging this information to their supporters and members. I have seen in several chapters a certain level of envy towards the foundation or richer chapters and that they were getting demotivated, because those other organizations should just hire people to do that stuff instead of bothering them with it. Again it seems likely this gets stronger the closer by it gets. What is perhaps less obvious, is that both organizations will be drawing on volunteers (I hope! If either wouldn't try to work primarily with volunteers, I would personally consider it a missed opportunity to use a euphemism), and that the volunteers will be likely confused about the organizations just like the press is. The really active ones will know, but I have seen a situation that very active Wikimedia Nederland members did not comprehend the differences between the WMF and WMNL - now again imagine how the situation must be when there are two organizations in one country. I definitely think that communication is very important, and some signals on this list have worried me. I also have heard a few times this is a first time etc, and I would like to remark that this doesn't excuse us from thinking this through very well. The Wikimedia Foundation strategic plan identifies India as a key country, and that is one of the reasons we cannot risk letting the chapter going down the drain because some experiment is executed. We should be very careful about side effects, exhausting volunteers simply because they feel their work becomes useless or giving people the feeling they are not needed because the WMF will hire other people anyway (this is a general concern I have about some initiatives throughout the world). Just to repeat myself: I have not yet taken a position, and I am not against anything. I applaud the intentions, but I am worried about many side effects. And if several very valued Indian volunteers are brave enough to step up and out this criticism, I become even more careful. Best regards, Lodewijk No dia Sábado, 12 de Novembro de 2011, Liam Wyattliamwyatt@gmail.comescreveu: On 12 November 2011 06:53, Bishakha Datta bishakhada...@gmail.com wrote: This thread started out
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia India Program Trust
Hi, thanks a lot all for exmplaining the differences. I would be very much interested to know more about the ''relationship'' between the trust and Wikimedia India. You seem to suggest that trustees get appointed by (or on the advice of - not sure of the legal wording) the WMF - but will Wikimedia India be involved in that too? Since they are the chapter in that country I could imagine them to have a say in it. How closely will this trust and the chapter work together? You mention that there is communication etc - but is cooperation likely to become the default or the exception? And how will it work with regards of who will be the primary point of contact in India for institutions who want to partner with Wikimedia? Will they have to approach one of the two or whichever they like (and if they dont get the answer they like, can they just approach the other?). Will the chapter and the trust be competing with each other or collaborating? Thanks for helping me seeing the situation more clearly, Lodewijk No dia 11 de Novembro de 2011 09:29, Gautam John gkj...@gmail.comescreveu: On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com wrote: Can you elaborate on the legal and practical differences between the new India Trust and the India Chapter? To add to what Bishakha has said - another reason for such a choice could very well be a difference in the methods of execution, where the Chapter depends on volunteers and members to help scale, and primary objectives, where the Chapter is also a collective voice for members. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Who *doesn't* suffer from adminitis these days?
I don't, and if you disagree, you are trolling and I'll block you! Lodewijk No dia 2 de Novembro de 2011 21:52, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nlescreveu: In reference to people wanting to be nicer to newbies, (and next to the obvious step of us really needing to make it more frelling obvious that YES YOU CAN EDIT) ... that doesn't help much if the entire community has come down with adminitis and kicks anyone who tries to edit out of the wiki and up into low earth orbit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adminitis So qua editor retention, 2 things are needed: * Make editing more obvious and easy, and bring the fun back. :-) * Work on The Cure For Adminitis (tm). O:-) sincerely, Kim Bruning -- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Global Fundraiser Test
Hi, thanks for the extra info. It would be great if a more extensive timeline could be entered into the actual information page. Dates I would be looking for: * When should translations be finished for the first batch * When are relevant deadlines? * When is the fundraiser scheduled to start full scale testing * When does the actual fundraiser start * When should chapters etc plan to send their press releases if at all (and when will the WMF version become available for inspiration translation) * When it is scheduled to end Of course not everything will be defined into a day range, but some level of indication would be nice. I know from historical reasons that it is likely it starts in November, but it would be great if also people who don't know that so well can easily find it. Of course the timeline doesn't have to be binding, but rather indicative for what you expect to happen at this moment, and it could change every day/week. Best, Lodewijk No dia 24 de Outubro de 2011 09:04, Till Mletzko till.mlet...@wikimedia.deescreveu: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2011#When_does_the_fundraiser_start.3F Best, Till Am 19.10.2011 20:01, schrieb Chris Keating: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011 and don't forget to check the discussion page for more places to discuss the fundraiser. As for a time-line, the fundraiser is scheduled to start within the first two weeks of November. I will see about adding some sort of time-line to the fundraising page. I heard back in June that it was November 1st. Since we're now two weeks away, perhaps we could have a confirmed start date ? Chris Wikimedia UK ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Mit freundlichen Grüßen Till Mletzko Fundraiser - Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. Eisenacher Straße 2 10777 Berlin Telefon 030 - 219 158 26-0 www.wikimedia.de Helfen Sie mit, dass WIKIPEDIA von der UNESCO als erstes digitales Weltkulturerbe anerkannt wird. Unterzeichnen Sie die Online-Petition unter https://wke.wikimedia.de/wke/Main_Page! Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch freien Zugang zu der Gesamtheit des Wissens der Menschheit hat. Helfen Sie uns dabei! http://spenden.wikimedia.de/ Gemeinnützige Wikimedia Fördergesellschaft mbH. Eingetragen beim Amtsgericht Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 130183 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/602/55599. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Global Fundraiser Test
Hi Charles, all, maybe I'm missing it - but I don't seem to be able to find an actual timeline (or planned timeline) for this year's fundraiser. Could you please point me to it? Thanks a lot, Lodewijk No dia 18 de Outubro de 2011 22:45, Charles A. Barr cb...@wikimedia.orgescreveu: The global test is now set for today @ *21:00 - 22:00 UTC.* Charles A. Barr Production Coordinator Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org On 10/18/11 13:23, Charles A. Barr wrote: The global test is delayed due to operations issues. The test is still planned for later today. More information will be sent along when available. Charles A. Barr Production Coordinator Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org On 10/18/11 10:47, Chris Keating wrote: Sorry for the confusion. No we are not testing in*US, AU, DE, FR, CH, GB.* Thanks for clearing that up. Good luck with the test. :-) Chris ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] IMDb sued for revealing actresses age
Why is it that after reading such a message, I only get more curious who this actress is ;) No dia 19 de Outubro de 2011 14:49, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ruescreveu: On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:40:18 +0100, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15360864 I'm not sure of the details of this case, but it looks like it would be worth us keeping an eye on it since it could potentially have repercussions for us. Hopefully, the case will either be thrown out or it will turn out to depend on the existing relationship between the site and the actress (she signed up to something called IMDbPro). I can't really see how anything like this could be successfully brought against us, but you never know. I thought the BLP policy clearly implies that the birth year should be referenced otherwise it must go. I do not think we should wait till somebody sues the WMF (unless the birth year is referenced to IMDB and as a result of the case it will be hidden). Cheers Yaroslav ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Is random article truly random
I would guess that the odds of arriving at such article are so low, that it would not be worth the huge discussion it would definitely result into, to make this change because there is barely any improvement. Have we ever received complaints from people who arrived at such articles after pressing the random article button? Best, lodewijk No dia 18 de Outubro de 2011 16:00, Fae f...@wikimedia.org.uk escreveu: Rather than filtering the unreferenced, I had in mind articles such as [[Human penis]] and [[Vagina]] where the lead may be NSFW (Tom's main thrust) or unstable articles that are currently locked due to edit-warring, blatant lobbying or similar. Cheers, Fae ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia - What exactly does the proposed law say?
No dia 6 de Outubro de 2011 14:01, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.comescreveu: This doesn't mean that we've misinformed users: prominent jurists agree that the proposed law is absolutely crazy for Wikipedia and other websites; and the community had discussed and assessed the effects of the proposed law for a long time before. it's not that I dont trust you - but several people have asked me for such opinions. Is there somewhere an overview of legal experts interpreting this? Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia - What exactly does the proposed law say?
I mean Wikipedia (or websites like Wikipedia) specific. Italian text will have to do - Google translate does miracles :) I think what would be really great is a set of statements/suggestions, so not just by one expert. For one, the Rodotà statement was not exactly what I was looking for at some point, so perhaps another statement by someone else clarifies better. Thanks a lot, Lodewijk No dia 6 de Outubro de 2011 15:20, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.comescreveu: Lodewijk, 06/10/2011 14:24: No dia 6 de Outubro de 2011 14:01, Federico Leva (Nemo) escreveu: This doesn't mean that we've misinformed users: prominent jurists agree that the proposed law is absolutely crazy for Wikipedia and other websites; and the community had discussed and assessed the effects of the proposed law for a long time before. it's not that I dont trust you - but several people have asked me for such opinions. Is there somewhere an overview of legal experts interpreting this? Yes, there are some, but do you mean for websites in general or for Wikipedia specifically? Are Italian texts enough? I've linked only a statement by Rodotà before because I can't imagine a more authoritative one now (I'm open to suggestions), but WMI is now asking more thorough analysis to legal experts. Nemo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Given that we have won, can we turn Italian Wikipedia back on now?
The WIki is back online already. But the village pump page was (at least for the last day) available. Lodewijk No dia 6 de Outubro de 2011 18:17, teun spaans teun.spa...@gmail.comescreveu: As I understand, the change has only been proposed. Possibly another interesting issue will develop: the italian wiki was discontinued by a short vote or poll. I suppose the most democratric way to terminate it would be another vote or poll. How are they gonna have that poll if they locked themselves out? Teun On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 6:27 AM, Jimmy Wales jwa...@wikia-inc.com wrote: http://www.linkiesta.it/wikipedia-law It'd be nice to have Italian Wikipedia back up as people are waking up in Italy. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] WMF blog post on Italian Wikipedia
If you even think that is a comparable situation, then you clearly don't understand at all what this law is all about. Lodewijk No dia 5 de Outubro de 2011 09:39, emijrp emi...@gmail.com escreveu: The Wikimedia Foundation supports the rights of all people to access our free knowledge content everywhere in the world The Wikimedia Foundation supports a damn. Now, all Wikipedias know that it is allowed to blank the entire site when community doesn't like things. For example, the image filter. 2011/10/5 Jay Walsh jwa...@wikimedia.org Hi folks - apologies for starting a new thread on this topic... We've just posted a short blog post on the topic of the unfolding issues around Italian Wikipedia http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/04/regarding-recent-events-on-italian-wikipedia/ We've had a few calls to WMF - not many, and we've responded with the basic messages in this post. Thanks, jay -- Jay Walsh Head of Communications WikimediaFoundation.org blog.wikimedia.org +1 (415) 839 6885 x 6609, @jansonw ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Image filter again (was: WMF blog post...)
(changing the topic, since hijacking a thread is considered inpolite) I think indeed they are incomparable. One is an internal political discussion, the other is totally external and legal. That alone makes it a totally different discussion - because I still believe the Wikimedia Foundation will be reasonable in this and if there is a true majority against it, I can hardly see them implementing it without further ado. If the WMF would persue this, you would still have the option to fork Wikipedia - and continue elsewhere. However, forking a country has proven to be more controversial and is significantly harder. And if you dont cooperate with the image filter, the worst thing really that could potentially (and still unlikely) happen, is getting blocked from *editing* Wikipedia. In the Italian case, you would get sued and pay high fines. We're talking about totally different ball parks here. Lodewijk No dia 5 de Outubro de 2011 10:53, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com escreveu: On 5 October 2011 09:26, Jalo jal...@gmail.com wrote: If you don't even think that is a comparable situation, then you clearly don't understand at all what some people think the image filter is all about. You're comparing a wiki without images with a world (the italian world) without wiki. mumble To me, it seems to be slightly different it.wiki are specifically saying that they feel this new law would impact their ability to provide free and open content. de.wiki are saying much the same about the image filter... Tom ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia
I think it is fairly easy to make such statements when you live abroad, and are not directly influenced by its outcomes. As a side note, if this strike goes through (I could both understand it if it does, and if it doesn't), I would recommand to add a link to an English translation at least, for all those foreigners who might be visiting it.wikipedia as well. An alternative could be to use a really huge sitenotice, so that people are forced to scroll down a lot every time - which is very frustrating, but doesn't deprive you of the actual contents. Best, Lodewijk No dia 4 de Outubro de 2011 15:23, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com escreveu: Because of such a risk (it’s easily understandable that this rule will make encyclopedia articles as pure “frames” for unchangeable text imposed by others), the Italian community has decided, by a vast majority (see http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bar/Discussioni/Comma_29_e_Wikipedia ) to lock both read and write access to encyclopedia articles and to publish the following text as full screen sitenotice: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Vituzzu/comunicato (an English translation is available here: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Vituzzu/comunicato/en). This decision will be implemented as soon as possible, during the next 12 hours. Being polite; I'd call that a serious overreaction. Akin to throwing the baby out with the bath water! I bought my tame Italian lunch and she likes me again; so deigned to have a read of this law. As far as we can make out there doesn't seem to be a leg to stand on.. or any real likelihood of risk to editors or content... In the modern world countries love to try it on and apply their internet laws across the world. Fortunately courts tend to give that short shrift. Which, at least, will mean incoming legal issues or inquiries to be managed by WMF, withrelated expenses. To the extent of a polite response saying not a chance, sorry, and an offer to hand them off to a volunteer to help resolve any issues. Which is what happens at the moment :) Tom ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia
The WMF has not taken a stance even at this - individuals at the WMF did, and the WMF did decide so far that it will not break the strike. That is something else than the WMF taking an active stance. Which it maybe should, maybe shouldn't (that depends on the wordings etc). Lodewijk No dia 5 de Outubro de 2011 00:26, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.comescreveu: On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 7:58 AM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: The Wikimedia Foundation first heard about this a few hours ago: we don't have a lot of details yet. Jay is gathering information and working on a statement now. It seems obvious though that the proposed law would hurt freedom of expression in Italy, and therefore it's entirely reasonable for the Italian Wikipedians to oppose it. The Wikimedia Foundation will support their position. Is this the first time that WMF has actively taken a stance on politics and legislation? -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] We need more information (was: Blog from Sue about ...)
(not responding to anyone in particular) I'm one of the people who tried to participate in the discussion without taking a strong standpoint (intentionally - because I'm quite nuanced on the issue, and open for good arguments of either side) and I have to fully agree with Ryan. I have yet been unable to participate in this discussion without either being ignored fully (nothing new to that, I agree) or being put in the opposite camp. I basically gave up. So I do have to say that I agree with the sentiment that the discussion is not very inviting, and is actually discouraging people who want to find a solution in the middle to participate. In that respect I do agree with Sue's analysis. However, considering the background and the 'German issue' I don't have the feeling it was particularly helpful in resolving that either. Anyhow, about the filter issue. I think at this stage it is very hard to determine any opinion about the filter because everybody seems to have their own idea what it will look like, what the consequences will be and how it will affect their and other people's lives. I myself find it hard to take a stance based on the little information available and I applaud the visionaries that can. Information I am even more missing however (and I think it would have been good to have that information *before* we took any poll within our own community) is what our average 'reader on the street' thinks about this. Do they feel they need it? What parts of society are they from (i.e. is that a group we are representative of? Or one we barely have any interaction with?) What kind of filter do they want (including the option: none at all). Obviously this should not be held in the US, but rather world wide - as widely as possible. With that information we can make a serious consideration how far we want to go to give our readers what they want - or not at all. I don't think we should be making that choice without trying to figure out (unless I missed a research into that) what they actually do want. We are making way too many assumptions here which don't strike me as entirely accurate (how do people get to an article page for example (by Béria), or how many people are offended by the image on the autofellatio article (by Erik)) - and we don't have to do that if we would just ask those people we're talking about - rather than talking about them on our ivory mountain. One final remark: I couldn't help but laugh a little when I read somewhere that we are the experts, and we are making decisions for our readers - and that these readers should have to take that whole complete story, because what else is the use of having these experts sit together. (probably I interpreted this with my own thoughts) And I was always thinking that Wikipedia was about masses participating in their own way - why do we trust people to 'ruin' an article for others, but not just for themselves? Hoping for a constructive discussion and more data on what our 'readers' actually want and/or need... Lodewijk No dia 30 de Setembro de 2011 11:40, Béria Lima berial...@gmail.comescreveu: I'll go by pieces in your mail Erik. *The intro and footer of Sue's post say: The purpose of this post is not to talk specifically about the referendum results or the image hiding feature (...) So it's perhaps not surprising that she doesn't mention the de.wp poll regarding the filter in a post that she says is not about the filter. ;-) * It is quite surprise yes, since she gave half of the post to de.wiki main page issue[1]. And also, if we decide to ABFhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ABFof the other side (like that post pretty much does) I would say that she doesn't mention because would not help her case. *Now, it's completely fair to say that the filter issue remains the elephant in the room until it's resolved what will actually be implemented and how. * You forgot the *IF*: IF the elephant will be or not implemented. *What Sue is saying is that we sometimes fail to take the needs and expectations of our readers fully into account * Well, if we consider the referendum a good place to go see results[2] we can say that our readers are in doubt about that issue, pretty much 50%-50% in doubt - with the difference that our germans readers are not: They DON'T WANT it. *Let me be specific. Let's take the good old autofellatio article (...) If you visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Autofellatio , you'll notice that there are two big banners: Wikipedia is not censored and If you find some images offensive you can configure your browser to mask them, with further instructions. (...) And yet, it's a deeply imperfect solution. The autofellatio page has been viewed 85,000 times in September. The associated discussion page has been viewed 400 times. The options not to see an image page, which is linked from many many of these pages, has been viewed 750 times. We can reasonably
Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter
I understand that the details (well, quite big and relevant details) of this concept was the topic of the survey. So probably it has not been mapped out yet (because it was/is unknown), but that would be the next step. I also would like to make a sidenote: if the main argument of the German Wikipedians would be that this categorization an sich would be evil because it can be used by governments and ISP's etc, then I have to disappoint you: even if only one project would like to make the implementation of a filter possible for their readers, categorization would appear. Further, categorization of images will be happening likely on Commons (my guess) - so even if you opt out as German Wikipedia (although personally I think it would be more interesting to do a reader survey inside the German langauge visitors before deciding on that) it would not help that specific scenario. Lodewijk Am 19 de Setembro de 2011 09:47 schrieb David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: On 19 September 2011 06:28, David Levy lifeisunf...@gmail.com wrote: Additionally, if and when the WMF proudly announces the filters' introduction, the news media and general public won't accept bad luck to those using the feature as an excuse for its failure. Oh, yes. The trouble with a magical category is not just that it's impossible to implement well - but that it's fraught as a public relations move. What is the WMF going to be explicitly - and *implicitly* - promising readers? What is the publicity plan? Has this actually been mapped out at all? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki Loves Monuments (Was: On curiosity, cats and scapegoats)
Yes, there is (thanks Béria for linking) - however I think I speak for many on that list that it would be appreciated if you can hold off the more general 2012 discussions until October :) Just to state the obvious. Best regards, Lodewijk Am 13. September 2011 12:28 schrieb Béria Lima berial...@gmail.com: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments _ *Béria Lima* http://wikimedia.pt/(351) 925 171 484 *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a fazer http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Nossos_projetos.* On 13 September 2011 11:26, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru wrote: On Tue, 13 Sep 2011 11:39:52 +0300, Strainu strain...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Naoko, Thanks for your pointers. What I'm seeing this year is that in order to go global, we'll probably need around 10 people to coordinate the event (I'm thinking that this year there were only 2 people involved in all the steps and a few more that helped in different areas). This means that it's not too early to start talking about WLM2012, but perhaps a better place for this is the WikiLovesMonuments lists. We would like to see you participate in discussions there :) Is there a public WLM list open for discussion? Cheers Yaroslav ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] On Wikinews
Am 13. September 2011 13:34 schrieb Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com: snip The biggest strength that a Wikinews like project can always have, is the most diverse contributor base anywhere. We have contributors from so many countries, they all know how to contribute, they speak a hundred languages and have access to things a news/wire service will never have. Wikinews was never able to capitalize on this. Theo Do we really have such a diverse base? I agree that Wikimedia is quite diverse - although even Wikipedia is made up of way too many intellectual white men (or rather, too few elderly people, women, people from the 'global south', people who did not have a university degree or are getting one etc etc etc) - even Wikipedia is quite biased in its community. And then we're only talking about the English language - you can imagine that the Dutch language projects have relatively many people living in... (no kidding) the Netherlands. We are not perfectly diverse, but we do have the potential to be very diverse indeed. On some aspects we might be *relatively* diverse, but on many others we're not. It is this potential that does matter though - but to achieve that, we should work on it. But more importantly - you are correct that Wikinews' user base is simply too small. You can theoretically write an encyclopedia with 3 skilled people, as long as you take your time and do a hell lot of research. However, this is not true for a news source - to make that work you always need up to date everything, you need to cover the latest news and have interesting research. If Wikipedia stands still for a week (no edits) we can just continue after that. If the New York Times would do the same, most likely they have lost a lot of their readers. Continuity and masses are even more important for Wikinews than for Wikipedia to make it work. Therefore, I'm not so sure if forking is good per se. Wikinews was already too small to my liking, and splitting it up might bring the community even further below the critical mass. At the same time it might bring the apparently needed changes for some, and make them work - I do hope though that both communities will quickly figure out what methods work best, and join together again to make it more likely to pass this threshold of activity. Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Welcome to Wikimedia D.C.
Hi Tomasz, Like Béria states, this is not very unusual. In some jurisdictions, the usage of a trademark in your name is tricky, and sometimes there are other legal reasons to choose a different official name. However, all chapters use Wikimedia XX as their 'trade name' in everyday life. This is something chapcom and the board is definitely aware of. Normally the official name is used in the resolutions, but for some reason this must have slipped this time. You can however see on http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Recognition_of_Wikimedia_District_of_Columbia that the linked bylaws (which is what is defining the entity) explicitely state the legal name, even in the link. There is no confusion possible therefore, also from a very formal point of view. Best regards, Lodewijk Am 13. September 2011 15:17 schrieb Béria Lima berial...@gmail.com: Tomasz, Some chapters use Wikimedia as official name, and some don't. Wikimedia UK for example has *Wiki UK Ltd* as official name. There are no real problem with that, since the chapter use the Wikimedia country/city/state as working name. _ *Béria Lima* *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a fazer http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Nossos_projetos.* 2011/9/13 Tomasz W. Kozłowski odder.w...@gmail.com Errrm.. this is an official approval of the organisation called Wiki Society of Washington, DC Inc. or I miss something? From a *very* formal point of view, the Board has just recognised a non-existing organisation, as there is no single mention of the name Wikimedia in the bylaws of Wiki Society of Washington, DC Inc.. Why does Wiki Society of Washington, DC Inc use the name Wikimedia District of Columbia as their official/convenient name, then? Am I the first one to spot such a difference in the name of the chapter? All (or almost all) existing chapters use the name Wikimedia -- WMNYC's official name, for example, is Wikimedia New York City. -- Tomasz W. Kozłowski ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Wiki Loves Monuments (Was: On curiosity, cats and scapegoats)
Hi, just a few clarifications: I totally agree with Naoko of course. However, for me the main goal is not even just the photos itself, but the reach it gives us to involve more people. If I understand the statistics correctly; up to date, we have been able to involve roughly 1000 people throughout Europe in this contest who never before uploaded/edited anything. Involving new people was also the reason to set WLM up as a contest - that assists at least in Europe very well in attracting attention of people who normally do not edit Wikipedia, and persuade them to participate. However, in the end they often keep participating because it is fun and because they like it that their images appear on Wikipedia. @Yaroslav: the main reason to focus on Europe this year was the large concentration, intergovernmental support (European Commission Council of Europe) and lack of resources (mainly man power). If there are next year enough people to carry on the idea, I'm sure we can include more countries, *if* the concept works for them. Then lists etc are a very practical precondition - not a fundamental one. If we can find other ways to make it work, that is find of course. Also, if countries rather run a project on different topics (volunteer involvement is important, otherwise it won't work) they should definitely do that (I heard suggestions for Wiki Loves Wildlife, Wiki Loves Rivers and many others!). Finally a note about chapters. Yes, having a chapter is very helpful - usually it is a group of organized volunteers who has existing experience with media and volunteer coordination (because some coordination is necessary) and they have access to some kind of budgeting / bank accounts. But also this is very practical - this year four countries without any chapter participated: Andorra (with the help of Amical), Belgium Luxembourg (with a lot of dedicated volunteers, mostly in Belgium) and Romania (with the help of a local pro-linux association and local volunteers). So there is definitely no rule against chapters without a chapter to participate, but it does require a steeper learning curve, and some extra dedication. You can find much of the thinking behind this concept in our post-mortem of 2010 and the notes on the Berlin meeting last May with many participating countries; all available on Commons. Of course I invite all comments regarding improvements for next years in our post-mortem after September. Best regards, Lodewijk Am 12. September 2011 07:49 schrieb Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru: On Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:51:33 +0900, KIZU Naoko aph...@gmail.com wrote: Off topic alert: I haven't given a closer look to your main topic, Milos, so I cannot give a responsible statement in any way. But your reference to Wiki Loves Monuments, while I agree it's heavily Europe-focused, I strongly disagree with you on its decadency, as an (retired) aesthetic. While the determination what artworks are heavily depends on the community to appreciate, so partly I understand your concern, if WLM is carried on only by European chapter people, it can hardly of NPOV at some future moment, but artworks belong to the critical part of the sum of human knowledge along with the information who created them and then have appreciated or rejected them. Only countries which have lists of monuments compiled by the government and having the status of the law are eligible for WLM. This is in some sense POV but no more POV than say writing articles of members of parliament who were elected by direct vote. If Japan has such a list (I hope it does) next year it would be eligible to participate. My understanding is that somehow the organizers did not expect such interest and did not try to contact chapters outside Europe. Presumably next year they will do. On the other hand, by the next year some of the European countries may exhaust their monuments (in the sense that the most of the pictures will be taken and the articles written or judged to be impossible to write). Thus, NPOV does not seem to be a problem to me. I do see two other problems with WLM, which are (i) competition format, which implicitly stimulates certain strategies we normally do not want to stimulate; (ii) involvement of the chapters as a precondition - some countries do not have chapters, some chapters showed no interest, some were unable to organize anything in the end. But I am not sure such discussion belongs to this thread. Cheers Yaroslav ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki Loves Monuments (Was: On curiosity, cats and scapegoats)
Am 12. September 2011 11:04 schrieb Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru: @Yaroslav: the main reason to focus on Europe this year was the large concentration, intergovernmental support (European Commission Council of Europe) and lack of resources (mainly man power). If there are next year enough people to carry on the idea, I'm sure we can include more countries, *if* the concept works for them. ... Finally a note about chapters. Yes, having a chapter is very helpful - usually it is a group of organized volunteers who has existing experience with media and volunteer coordination (because some coordination is necessary) and they have access to some kind of budgeting / bank accounts. But also this is very practical - this year four countries without any chapter participated: Andorra (with the help of Amical), Belgium Luxembourg (with a lot of dedicated volunteers, mostly in Belgium) and Romania (with the help of a local pro-linux association and local volunteers). So there is definitely no rule against chapters without a chapter to participate, but it does require a steeper learning curve, and some extra dedication. Well, as one example, we had some private correspondence about involvement of Russia: The chapter failed to organize anything, mostly because they failed to realize that the database they were pointed out to is workable, they did not want or dis not manage to contact other people who understand the subject, and there was no way for any other group of people to organize the contest. As the result, I just had to fill up the (previously empty) category WLM 2011 in Russia myself single-handedly, not obviously expecting any credit for this, but just to avoid creating an impression that there are no monuments in Russia. Also, if there was no group let us give a random example - in Macedonia - who wanted to organize the contest, still it would be a good idea to open a category for WLM in Macedonia, just to get a chance to indeed involve new people and to possibly get a number of good quality image previously missing. Especially if people would know this in advance and could take pictures for instance during the summer holidays. Just to be understood correctly, I think WLM is in general a good idea, and my criticism is not to undermine it is any way, but to possibly create some input for the next time. (I am a WLM supporter and I uploaded so far I believe about 1% of the total amount of images). Thanks for the clarification - I understand better what you mean now. We indeed chose explicitely only to organize WLM in countries where there could be an effort to make the necessary preperations (preparing monument lists that are useful for non-Wikipedians, having a national jury and awards to attract attention of newbees etc). So it was indeed necessary to have an organizing team locally to organize Wiki Loves Monuments. This because otherwise the images would indeed end up on Commons, but most likely unused, because the monument is not clearly identified etc. Anyway, lets have this discussion more in depth later on, after we can see some more clearly the final results of the 2011 edition in all countries. Best regards, Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] board meeting minutes: Aug 3 2011
Hi Phoebe, thanks a lot! Reading the minutes, I am wondering - are the reports of the independent companies (KPMG and Daniel J. Fusco Company) available online so that the considerations of the board can be better understood? If so, it would probably be helpful to link them from the minutes :) Thanks, Lodewijk Am 12. September 2011 19:27 schrieb phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com: FYI: the minutes from the August 3rd, 2011 Board meeting in Haifa (the Wikimania meeting) are now posted: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2011-08-03 Regards, Phoebe Ayers p.s. Digression on minutes: Since I recently had to learn the process by which board minutes are written and approved, I thought I would share it with you all -- possibly of interest to long-time foundation watchers :) 1. both the executive assistant to the board the board secretary take notes during the meeting; the executive assistant makes sure that no important items are lost and their presence as recorder allows the board secretary to fully participate in the meeting. [in this case additionally since it was a transition meeting both SJ and I took notes and shared with each other]. 2. notes are typed up in minute form by the the executive assistant, who then gives the document to the board secretary, who then reviews and edits, and then shares the minutes with the board. This process may take some time (e.g. after Wikimania when everyone is traveling or participating in the conference afterwards). 3. the minutes are voted on as a regular resolution; this means a week for the full board to discuss/edit onwiki if there are any typos or if the minutes don't reflect the meeting accurately. After finalization there is then a two-week period to vote to approve (in practice the voting period for minutes is generally shortened to a week); occasionally minutes may get approved by a vote at the next meeting. 4. after approval, the board secretary posts the minutes to the foundation wiki, as the copy of record for the community/board/auditors etc. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] EU Consultation on Open Access (deadline coming soon)
Hi, just to be clear: was this submitted /on behalf/ of the wmf? or as a community effort? lodewijk Am 9. September 2011 22:44 schrieb Daniel Mietchen daniel.mietc...@googlemail.com: The Wikimedia response has been submitted, based on http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research:Committee/Areas_of_interest/Open-access_policy/EU_Consultation_on_scientific_information_in_the_digital_ageoldid=2888771 . Thanks to all who helped on the way. Daniel On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 9:31 PM, Daniel Mietchen daniel.mietc...@googlemail.com wrote: While the EC may weigh non-EU responses differently, being in the EU or having EU citizenship is technically not required - any individual, organization or institution can submit a response. Daniel On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 8:26 PM, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote: On Tue, Sep 06, 2011 at 11:50:13PM -0500, Keegan Peterzell wrote: On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 6:40 PM, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote: You can fill it in as a citizen, (which I did) Who, me? Haha, yes, you too, provided you're in an EU country. :-) Sincerely, Kim Bruning -- I question the question of questioning all questions. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats
(as a side-respons: besides being quite rude of making your point this way; it is nonsensical, because in this case it is the broadcaster (you) who decides what to leave out, and not the receiver (me). Showing everything or showing only the parts people want to see have just as much chance for bias. You could even argue that forcing people to look at pictures and make them feel uncomfortable gives them in their specific interpretation a larger bias about the topic than you can ever induce by leaving the pictures out for that same group. Lodewijk Am 7. September 2011 20:38 schrieb Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl: On Tue, Sep 06, 2011 at 05:30:54PM +0200, Kim Bruning wrote: On Tue, Sep 06, 2011 at 05:51:40PM +0200, Lodewijk wrote: The question shouldn't [...] be about whether we want to offer [...] people [...] Wikipedia? ( just as a note: This quote is intended as an illustration of why it may be preferable to have an all-or-nothing policy for wikipedia articles, as opposed to we-hide-parts-of-the-article. If part of a story is hidden, you can introduce very strong bias. Obviously, it is not normally my intention to deliberately twist people's words. (Other than as an illustration here) ) sincerely, Kim Bruning ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats
I think it is obvious that some people will have a problem with those images, and others don't. Apparently Sarah is (justified or not - that doesn't matter) under the impression that it would not be appreciated at her work if she would open such images there. That she has this impression is a fact. That she is because of that unable to access the textual contents of the article is also a fact. The question in place is now - should Sarah, if she wants to, be enabled to selectively filter out images so that she can browse on Wikipedia without worrying too much about whether the next page will contain an image that people on her workplace would find inappropriate? Of course people are allowed to have all kind of opinions on this - I heard Kim (and others of an alledged vocal minority) saying very clearly no, even though he found it necessary to twist my words for that. And the board clearly said yes. Lodewijk Am 6. September 2011 22:45 schrieb Béria Lima berial...@gmail.com: *My boss (...) can't open the pregnancy article at work because the intro is NSFW our workplace. * I'm sorry but i don't find the problem in this article. *I can't open the [[vagina]] article at work either, because of the really in your face photo of a vagina when you open it up * The article is about vagina. The only picture there who might be NSFW is this one: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Azvag.jpg who only shows what are the anatomy of a vagina. I find very educational. And BTW, if you don't want to see a vagina, don't open the article. *who is totally grossed out by that photo on the vagina article, gahhh, surely she can't be the only one! * No it was not. There are in fact a category in commons ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Vagina ) and in that category i found the image who replaced the Image you dislike so much http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_vulva_with_visible_vaginal_opening.jpg . But not because you don't like, because the one in the article now is more clear. _ *Béria Lima* http://wikimedia.pt/(351) 925 171 484 *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a fazer http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Nossos_projetos.* On 6 September 2011 15:15, Sarah Stierch sarah.stie...@gmail.com 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. My boss, who is bound to have a baby any day now, can't open the pregnancy article at work because the intro is NSFW our workplace. I can't open the [[vagina]] article at work either, because of the really in your face photo of a vagina when you open it up, however, I can totally read the intro to [[penis]] since there isn't a big giant penis in one's face upon opening it. I work in an educational environment (a museum institution, which has exhibits on sexuality, gender, etc) and I can't even look at these articles at work, take that as you will. Sarah who is totally grossed out by that photo on the vagina article, gahhh, surely she can't be the only one! -- GLAMWIKI Partnership Ambassador for the Wikimedia Foundationhttp://www.glamwiki.org Wikipedian-in-Residence, Archives of American Arthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SarahStierch and Sarah Stierch Consulting *Historical, cultural artistic research advising.* -- http://www.sarahstierch.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ 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
The question shouldn't be about who is right - whether it is good that certain images are not considered safe for work - we are not in a position to change the opinion of society, and we shouldn't want to be in such position either. The discussion however should be, if at all, about whether we want to offer people the option to view content in such environments without being constantly on their guard for what content might pop up. Do we want to offer people to tweak the images of Wikipedia in such a way that it suits their life style, that they can use Wikipedia where and when they would want to? The board clearly answered that question with yes. Do you think it is better to force people to choose between watching an article with an image they do not want to see, and not seeing the article at all? Lodewijk Am 6. September 2011 16:44 schrieb Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com: On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 5:15 PM, Sarah Stierch sarah.stie...@gmail.com 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. My boss, who is bound to have a baby any day now, can't open the pregnancy article at work because the intro is NSFW our workplace. I can't open the [[vagina]] article at work either, because of the really in your face photo of a vagina when you open it up, however, I can totally read the intro to [[penis]] since there isn't a big giant penis in one's face upon opening it. I work in an educational environment (a museum institution, which has exhibits on sexuality, gender, etc) and I can't even look at these articles at work, take that as you will. This raises twin issues. First, it raises the presumption that you and your boss's workplace ought to be the model for how people around the world determine what they should or shouldn't see -- at home OR at work. Second, it echoes my first paragraph that it makes a judgment call about the appropriateness of a specific image based on the perceived immoralness or embarassment of that image. The majority of the women (and men) who participate in this anti-sexualized environment are generally liberal left-wing political individuals. Many are pro-sex and embrace liberal sexual lifestyles or are open minded to what other people do in their bedrooms. Some don't even live in America. I think you need to rethink your statements before you go around accusing supporters, including women, of this referendum as sexually dysfunctional conservatives. The above paragraph is one massive Citations Needed, but that aside, it misses the point. Many are carries with it that some aren't. Some don't implies that some do. In criticizing Milos for generalizing the opinions of one population, you yourself are doing the exact same thing. We don't have that data, and I'm sure if there WERE any it could be easily picked apart on methodological issues. The broader lesson is that attempting to generalize a view on morality to any populace is doomed to inaccuracy and failure. -Dan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced
there are however generic internet filters - foundations which serve as internet provider and filter out unsafe pages (usually with a religious foundation). These usually have problems though, because they are recognized as open proxy, and thus blocked. this is a popular service in parts of NL - and potentially keeps editors away because they have no on-site way of filtering. But maybe some think we shouldn't want those people as editors anyway... (yes, that last is sarcasm) Please note that the group wikipedians, authors, is somewhat self selected, and we're just running a self fulfilling prophecy. Wikipedians will often be relatively more liberal - but why should we force liberal views upon other people? I don't like the filters, and i wouldn't want them (except when someone comes up with a troll-filter) - but I do think that people have the right not to see/hear things, just like you should have the right to say them. I do however not understand why we are having the fundamental discussion all over again. I think it is pretty clear there is a large group of people who want the technology developed - we could next discuss where we want it implemented (it seems dewp isn't too excited about it for example, others might be). Let us focus on having a good implementation rather than the things that (whether we like it or not) already seem to have been decided for us. Lodewijk Am 5. September 2011 18:00 schrieb Andre Engels andreeng...@gmail.com: On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 5:04 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: On 5 September 2011 11:02, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org wrote: On 05/09/2011 10:55 AM, Andrew Gray wrote: As to why no-one is distributing a filtered version of Wikipedia, I think that falls more under the general heading of where are the major third-party reusers that anyone actually cares about? - the non-existence of a commercial filtered version is less of a surprise when we consider the dearth of commercial packaged versions at all... You'd think a safe version would be a valuable service that many would be willing to pay for, given the hordes of people beating down our doors demanding just that... oh, wait. They already exist, and have for years. We call them mirrors. Yes, but most mirrors are just that - mirrors. As far as I know, there is no Wikipedia mirror that actually contains extra functionality - like improved searching, wisiwyg editing, automatic translation, image filtering, or whatever else one could think of. -- André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Wikimedians team up to make European Cultural Heritage Accessible to the World
Hi all, Several of you may have noted Wiki Loves Monuments - you can also find an article about it in the Signpost of this week. Please find below our International press release. Best, Lodewijk * * *== PRESS RELEASE ==* * * *Wikimedians team up to make European Cultural Heritage Accessible to the World * *Volunteers from 16 European Countries Have Uploaded 15,000 Images and Counting* Amsterdam, September 6, 2011--- Wikimedians from 16 European countries announced the first-ever Pan-European Wiki Loves Monuments contest, a photography contest, running throughout the month of September, focused on capturing and sharing images of important monuments and buildings in Europe. Since its September 1st launch, more than 1000 images have been uploaded from a few of the most active countries: France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain. Europe has hundreds of thousands of historically and culturally significant monuments and buildings, most of which still have no freely-available images on the Internet. These important structures are often damaged or destroyed overtime, endangering the opportunity for people all over the world to access and learn about them. Although some prominent cultural artifacts are protected and documented by various international organizations and agencies, a majority of them are not. Wikipedia is one of the only freely-accessible shared places on the Internet offering a digital home to these artifacts, however, most of the culturally significant buildings and monuments in Europe are missing. This contest aims to make sure that they are represented in the form of images so that everyone, European or not, has access to Europe's cultural heritage. “Wikimeda’s ultimate goal is to make all information freely available to everyone in the world, and images of Europe’s important cultural structures are needed to complete this mission. All over Europe, important monuments are tucked away from the rest of the world--they haven't been documented or shared on a website like Wikipedia, said Lodewijk Gelauff, one of the lead organizers of the European contest. There are hundreds of thousands of monuments that people walk past every day and they have no idea these structures are culturally significant and should be shared. The contest is inspired by the successful 2010 pilot contest conducted in the Netherlands, which resulted in 12,500 freely-licensed images of monuments and buildings now freely-available to be used on Wikipedia and by anybody in the world. Wiki Loves Monuments runs throughout the entire month of September and is organized in independent national contests. Winning images from regional contests will then be submitted to the pan-European Jury. Participating partner countries include: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. The contest is supported by international organizations including the Council of Europe, the European Commission, Europeana and Europa Nostra. The month of September was selected as it coincides with European Heritage Days organized throughout Europe. Prizes, including a full scholarship to Wikimania in Washington, DC, will be awarded to winners medio December. More information about the contest and how to enter can be found at: www.wikilovesmonuments.eu “Europe's cultural artifacts have universal significance. And it’s not just about the documentation of these artifacts, it's about making sure they’re accessible to people no matter who you are or where you live in the world,” says Gelauff. Press Contacts: Lodewijk Gelauff, European co-ordinator Wiki Loves Monuments, +31 (0)6 49 74 82 81 (Netherlands) - lodew...@wmnederland.nl Press contacts and press releases per country: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011/Press About Wikimedia Wikimedia is the movement behind Wikipedia, supporting the same goals on realizing a world where all knowledge is freely available for every human being. This is possible through the US-based Wikimedia Foundation and a network of national associations which co-operate closely with the volunteers on the Wikimedia projects, such as Wikipedia. About Wikipedia Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation receive more than 390 million unique visitors per month, making them the 5th most popular web property world-wide (July 2011). Available in more than 270 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 18 million articles contributed by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. === Q A === *How are Wikimedia and the European Partners working together on this?* Wiki Loves Monuments is lucky to be supported by a wide contingent of European organizations - including the Council of Europe, the European Commission, Europeana and Europa Nostra. These organizations support Wikimedia through their extensive networks with their national partner organizations
Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters
2011/8/30 Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net On 08/29/11 1:55 AM, Lodewijk wrote: It may be a logical consequence for the WMF giving out these grants (I don't know but wouldn't be surprised if i.e. Ford Foundation has similar requirements), but it clearly is a nasty side effect of the choice of the board to no longer allow chapters to fundraise. How can they stop chapters from fundraising? They can certainly stop chapters from participating in the WMF's fundraising campaign, but they will still have no control over a chapter's own fundraising programmes. I have heard this argument too often now, so let me finally reply to it. Perhaps I should rephrase my statement to not allowing good faith chapters to fundraise. Because that is basically what is happening - a chapter that has the best with the movement in mind, will not try to compete with the Wikimedia Foundation by fundraising on its own. I have never heard of any international organization which had two organizations (national and world wide) fundraising at the same time in the same country. And why would not-online fundraising suddenly be OK if the main reasons of the WMF are transparency and not following the WMF strategy closely enough? Why would it be so different? Because at the same time, chapters would still be asking donors to support those goals Wikipedia stands for: the sum of all knowledge available for every human being. The message doesn't change, the accountability doesn't suddenly improve and the performed activities with the money don't change. The only thing that is different is that it is less visible and that the fundraising agreement doesn't forbid it. Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters
John is unfortunately right. The (currently not publicly available as I understand) draft includes clauses that require every chapter that receives a grant to abide all US law, including but not exclusively US anti terrorism laws and trade bans (unless a court has ruled that... etc). This puts imho chapters in an awkward position - being forced to follow laws they cannot reasonably know about unless they hire expensive expertise. It may be a logical consequence for the WMF giving out these grants (I don't know but wouldn't be surprised if i.e. Ford Foundation has similar requirements), but it clearly is a nasty side effect of the choice of the board to no longer allow chapters to fundraise. Because although it is claimed differently (and although Thomas seems to hope differently) the interpretation by the staff is clearly that no chapter except WMDE should fundraise - no matter how hard they work to improve. The exact reason for this seems to be vague to me. I really do hope the board will step forth and makes clear what their reasoning was and is - and doesn't hide behind staff (board members who already did so are being appreciated, but I'm still missing important voices). Is the reason really transparency? Is it about transferring money? Because that is important, but (sometimes easily) fixable. Or is the reasoning you don't like the projects the chapters work on? Because *then* we should have a discussion about that, and not hide behind non-reasons. Lodewijk 2011/8/29 John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com wrote: On 8/28/2011 9:00 PM, Victor Vasiliev wrote: On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 7:24 AM, Nathannawr...@gmail.com wrote: Which activities are these? Copyright and internet law lobbying. This is incorrect. Michael, Have you seen the draft Chapters Grant Agreement? -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikilovesmonuments
Hi billy, thanks for your attention. Wiki Loves Monuments is being organized by several chapters in over 15 countries in Europe. The main page for that is indeed www.wikilovesmonuments.eu . The Wikimedia Foundation is not involved in organizing the events, nor is it responsible for its websites - this is one of the projects run by chapters. Unfortunately, it is not affordable to register every possible domain which might be hijacked. We were aware that there would be a risk for that, and that potentially, this could be organized in even many more countries. We did choose to register wikilovesmonuments.org (registered by WMDE) but didn't register the .com - we had to draw a line somewhere. For a possible intercontinental contest, we would have to rely on the .org domain. Lodewijk 2011/8/26 billy joel billyonl...@hotmail.nl Yes, I understood that. But I think its kind of stupid that the foundation didn't buy the .com domain and that it was possible to hijack it... ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions on controversial content and images of identifiable people
I think there are definitely some neutral criteria which might be applicable. And maybe there are some criteria which are harder to neutralize (yeah, i know - has a different meaning :) ) Take for example nudity. It should be possible to create a category Images that show a vagina, images that show a penis which can even be subcategorized into (...) as main topic of the picture or (...) as detail of the picture. It will require some work and thinking by neutrality thinkers like you, but it should be possible. And I'm confident that you and the likes of you will stay close on the topic to help us remember that we should make it as objective as possible. The next step is that someone can use these neutral categories to choose what he/she wants or does not want to see. For example, maybe someone has a fear of elevators, so that person can hide all images in the category images that show an elevator. Violence is definitely a topic harder to define objectively - but I'm confident we'll find a way to do that. If people have problems with that, we shouldn't change the categories (we could add more), but they should change their filter, and choose other categories to hide/show. The only truely non-neutral part could be where we suggest which categories someone might want to hide. Or packages of categories. Lodewijk 2011/8/26 Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 01:25:32PM +0530, Bishakha Datta wrote: On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 6:45 AM, David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com wrote: I want to ask you something else. It's been suggested several times at various places that the present resolution is justified as a compromise to prevent a considerably more repressive form of censorship. This implies that the proposed image hiding feature is a less repressive form of censorship. I do not see the proposed feature as censorship - all the images remain on the site. Nothing is removed. Nothing is suppressed. Everything remains. The image hiding feature itself is not a form of censorship, as far as I'm aware of. The data used to feed the image hiding feature can be classified as a censorship tool (Source: ALA... Read The Fine Thread for details). Even if we *never* build the image hider itself, but just prepare special categories for it, we would be participating in (stages of) censorship. sincerely, Kim Bruning -- [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters
Hi Jimmy, There are several side effects to the idea of not allowing chapters at all to fundraise (I note that boardmembers and staff members have a different take on this, so I'll keep it general - keeping in mind there are many other aspects to be considered, such as transparancy. However, imho fundraising through chapters should remain the best way). * Having one organization spreading around money is going to lead, sooner or later, to that organization solely making decisions on what is important and what is not. Centralized decision making, centralized prioritising. * Forcing chapters to abide the WMF cyclus is centralization - an efficient grant system likely includes fixed moments to ask for grants. Many chapters currently still have a lot of flexibility to try out programs. If we would not have had such flexibility, we would not have had Wiki Loves Monuments for example - a lot of the budget part happened late in the execution because 95% happens with volunteers. * Asking grants automatically means language issues. Chapters not having English as a mother tongue, *will* be more hesistant, no matter what help you put in place. It will be a big effort, because more bottle necks (English speakers) are introduced. * Asking for external grants is much harder - many Dutch grant organizations for example have a requirement that maximum x% of your budget can come from grants (For example, Mondriaanstichting has a maximum of 40% grant money). If we are forced to grant request to the foundation, that cuts off that income source too. * Not giving chapters access to donor data has many side effects - because they will no longer be the organization responsible for communicating with them. Sure, they would need to be responsible in that too, but denying them access also means they cannot communicate their activities at the same time, and get more volunteers involved from externally. Maybe centralization is not your goal, but it is what you are doing. Having a non-grant funding just makes an organization more independent, and makes it more flexible and responsible. That organization is more likely to develop itself professionally. That does not leave out that there are many problems with the current distribution system (50/50 etc) but that is a whole other discussion. Lodewijk 2011/8/11 Jimmy Wales jwa...@wikia-inc.com On 8/10/11 8:51 PM, birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: I don't think chapters are being cut off I think they are being centralized. Centralization, not lack of funding, is what I believe will make chapters ineffective. Chapters are not being centralized. I don't know how I can be more clear. The idea that the only thing that can make chapters really decentralized is the very narrow question of who actually processes the donation is mistaken. --Jimbo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Referendum 2011 mailout — issues
Maybe we could catch this discussion on wiki - it is an ever returning issue, and the lessons could be valuable for other campaigns too. Lodewijk 2011/8/20 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com (It seems that mail server is not functioning properly. I've got local delivery failed. Trying again or tomorrow.) On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 04:14, Andrew Garrett agarr...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 9:43 AM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com 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. I supposed that's the problem. Anyway, may you do something like: * Check for accounts with the same email address. * If some of the accounts have bot in the name (something like bot($|\W)), remove them. * If none of the accounts have it, don't touch. * If all of the accounts have it, don't touch. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Genuine, Generous, and Grateful
Of course there's the infamous @wikipedia_mk and @itwikiquote :) 2011/8/18 Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk On 18 August 2011 17:39, Tom Morris t...@tommorris.org wrote: More useful for smaller wikis. Tweeting new pages or recent changes for enwiki would probably destroy Twitter very quickly. When I was more involved with Citizendium, I wrote a script to pipe new pages into Twitter. It's still running: http://twitter.com/cz_newdrafts Wikimedia article feeds on twitter: @en_wikinews @dewikinews @wikinews (Chinese) @el_wikipedia is an article counter @wikipedia_de is the daily FA @zhwiki_newpages is all new pages @ZHWP is some form of selected article feed Anyone know of other active ones? The German approach here seems a pretty good one, at least to test the water - daily featured article, plus possibly other front-page content. Perhaps a feed of all new (rather than featured-that-day) quality content would be interesting, to give people something they might not see from the main page? A feed of enwiki's newly graded FA + GA + FP would be about ten a day, which seems quite a reasonable figure; I'm not sure what the figures are like for others, though, and this would be a bit more unpredictable than the daily feeds. As far as new articles, well. Feeding an unfiltered list would get a lot of junk (and, perhaps more annoyingly, a lot of quickly dead links). If we look at *surviving* pages, and assume we somehow would be able to not send out the ones that are going to get deleted, then we're looking at an article every forty seconds on enwiki, five minutes on itwiki, ten minutes on jawiki, twenty minutes on huwiki... (This might be an interesting tool for trying to stoke interest in less active projects - feeds slow enough to not be annoying, but varied enough they might catch people's attention. Hmm. I wonder what overlap there is between [language groups common on twitter] and [small WP projects needing users].) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia chapters' raison d'être?
Hi Teofilo, most likely some people will tell me afterwards that I should not have answered your email, because of famous internet laws, but I will do so none the less to avoid that people are being misinformed by your email. Teofilo: (...) they also absorb funds (...) Chapters do not 'absorb' funds, but they do collect them, provide a part of those to the Wikimedia Foundation to run the infrastructure, and spend another part to run programs which should result in more free knowledge. Chapters (and WMF) should however keep working / work harder (depending on the organization) to share these projects and their outcomes so that there is less confusion about this. Teofilo: (...) and hire people (...) which is different from what a volunteer based project should be. Some chapters do indeed hire people, and most currently don't. When they hire people, that is not to replace volunteers - that would be, imho, a stupid thing to do. However, having run projects in chapters for quite a while as a volunteer, I can confirm that sometimes the help of staff can help volunteers to become more motivated, effective and efficient if well implemented. Most chapters I know of are extremely careful who to hire as staff, and the balance between staff and volunteers is constantly scrutinized. Even further, every chapter is in the end controlled by its General Assembly, a body made up of... volunteers. More democratic than the Foundation even. Teofilo: and take volunteer seats at the WMF board of trustees Unfortunately yet another mistake. Chapters do not 'take' volunteer seats. The chapters are able to nominate two of the ten board seats - they don't 'own' the seats. If your point is that the Wikimedia Foundation could use more democracy, I would agree to some extent. I am however not sure if changing the board structure is the best way to implement that. Teofilo: But I am afraid they are not [being helpful] I'll leave that comment for your account. However, I would like to recommand you to see my lecture on Wikimedia Chapters at this year's Wikimania, outlining some 45 interesting projects executed by Wikimedia chapters in the past year - and this was only a small selection. The slides are available on Wikimedia Commons ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Chapters_-_Wikimania_2011.pdf) and the video will become available later. Several of these projects might also have come off without the existance of a chapter, but most likely many of them wouldn't. You may disagree with the use of some - but I think that overall it should be clear that chapters are helpful to our mission both directly through programs and indirectly through supporting the foundation, the movement and the community. That is not the same as that every chapter is doing exactly what you would like them to. You are very welcome to join a chapter (as a member or (long distance) volunteer) or another non-chapter organizational group inside the movement. With kind regards, Lodewijk 2011/8/17 Teofilo teofilow...@gmail.com Wikimedia chapters are not only an example of what should not be seen in Wikimedia projects (an institution[...], of any kind, [...] claiming to represent [...] individuals [1]) they also absorb funds and hire people, pushing with more weight the goal to make money (a salaried person expects his/her salary to be increased by X % each year) which is different from what a volunteer based project should be. They aslo are de facto put in a position where people expect them to perform decision making. It is already bad that they deprive the communities of a decision making of their own, and take volunteer seats at the WMF board of trustees, but they don't do the job. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:CC-AR-Presidency#Bad_template_for_new_files . If the chapters showed that they are helpful in doing things better than what volunteer communities alone can do, they could prove that they are useful. But I am afraid they are not doing this. If they are not present when we need them... [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content#7._Wikimedia_Projects_serve_the_Information_Needs_of_Individuals.2C_Not_Groups ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] disconnected
(after a bit of thinking, I'll post this to foundation-l after all. As a bit of context, the whole fundraiser discussion continued on internal-l and a discussion emerged about disconnect between the board of the WMF and the chapters, of which the letter would be an example. Based on that discussion, I wrote the email below. As far as I am aware, it contains no confidential information, so after consideration, this would be a better place actually) I think we should be honest with ourselves here: yes there is disconnect - but it is not /just/ about the foundation. It is a wider problem than that - but I agree with Dan that this *is* a typical example. Not because of the direction of the decision even (which I totally disagree with as it is explained by Sue, but agree with as it is explained privately by some board members, like noted before) but how it is taken. I could not have imagined the board changing its bylaws without consulting the community (not asking approval, but consulting) a few years ago. I could not have imagined these important decisions to be taken without serious discussions with those involved. And that someone then notes we could have discussed it but honestly they wouldn't have changed their mind anyway (my interpretation) is the most striking for where we are today. Small groups of people sitting in their ivory towers taking decisions. Sure they do their best to come out and talk with people, but it too often fails. I have seen it too many times. I know of several chapters too, which are malfunctioning because they are not able to connect to the editing community any longer - Wikimedia Nederland has been there too (I hope I'm correct to speak in the past sense). Listening is hard, involving is even harder. I see it with the board even stronger - some individuals are still working hard to engage in conversations, but it is no longer default procedure. Another striking example is that we had to learn about this discussion from Stu's blog - and nobody bothered to involve others in that discussion by sending an email to internal or foundation-l. It is happening in chapcoms, it is happening in staff (I cannot count anymore how often I got into the position that I have to defend what Sue and several other people in the foundation are doing and the saleries they are alledgedly getting for that) - we all seem to do an extremely bad job in communicating /with/ the community - not /to/ the community. I have been saying this a lot of times during the chapters meeting - but I know there were no foundation people there unfortunately (another example?) so let me repeat it just once more: talking to people will not suffice, will not involve them. We are no priests or teachers that will tell them what to do, but we can motivate them and cooperate with them and be part of it by talking with them, involving them in conversations. I know it is very hard to actually accomplish it - and I know it is easy to say that you're trying and will try even harder - but that won't be good enough. Lodewijk -- Forwarded message -- From: Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com Date: 2011/8/11 Subject: Re: [Internal-l] Board letter about fundraising and chapters To: Local Chapters, board and officers coordination (closed subscription) interna...@lists.wikimedia.org Well, I think this entire debate over the fundraising letter is a great example. The board and office seriously miscalculated how strongly the chapters would feel about such a drastic change. I think, frankly, you still do. The us vs. them tone of these discussions, especially from some of Erik and Jan Bart's emails, appears to me to be causing people to become defensive and entrenched in their beliefs. The fact that this is all being done last minute when many these issues were known back as of the 2010 fundraiser* sends the message to me that nobody adequately expressed to the chapters what frustrations the WMF was facing, at least not in any sort of way that would have prompted a thoughtful series of responses like we have seen here. Then we see things like Jimmy saying WMF owns Wikipedia -- something that I believe we have always shied away from saying on ComCom due to the various interpretations of what does own mean?; the side dispute with Thomas blaming his chapter for not living up to certain standards that they may or may not have been actually obligated to do…. I should have probably said In my view, this is an example of a growing disconnect… because I certainly can't speak for others. But I think broadly looking at this whole debacle, it's hard to see anything BUT a disconnect.** *(such as the inadequacy of the fundraising agreement; as well I vaguely remember there being several chapters that were not in compliance at some point and we had discussions about it, but it was so long ago and I don't have access to any notes at the time I couldn't say for sure) *notwithstanding recent alternative proposals and attempts
[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Chapters and some of their coolest activities
Hi all, this year I had the honour of presenting an overview of some of the Wikimedia Chapters' coolest and most interesting/inspiring activities. This is not only about big budget projects, but can also be meetups in a city. The video of my presentation should be up in a few days on youtube/commons (keep an eye on http://www.youtube.com/user/WikimediaIL, which will include all sessions' videos ) but the slides are already available through Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Chapters_-_Wikimania_2011.pdf - unfortunately Wikimedia Commons still doesn't accept any presentation format (.ppt, .pptx, .odp) so the layers within the slides are not visible. If you would like to see those too, just email me offlist and I'll send you the .odp I would like to encourage people to make any derivatives from it they think interesting. With kind regards, Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters
Indeed, chapters have no jurisdiction over the content of the projects whatsoever - and they dont want that either. I dont think any chapter would be crazy enough to actually draft such a resolution in any binding tone. It is true however that many chapters do important work for the local projects, and serve their local needs in the sense of activities, press contacts and fundraising in a more effective way (less culturally challanging, more sensitive to what works locally and better in touch with other activities and situations). Not all chapters do this in the same extent, and not all do it similarly good. But that is the idea of a chapter - it is not a fanclub organizing beer events only to have fun. Best regards, Lodewijk 2011/8/9 Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru On Tue, 9 Aug 2011 10:11:49 -0500, birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: And just to add to the argument, the projects are divided by language, and not by jurisdiction. Whereas in many cases it may be unimportant (for instance, we can safely assume that most of the activbities of the Swedish chapter are more related to Swedish-language projects, and if there is any chapter which caters to Swedisg-language projects it is the Swedish chapter), this is not correct for most of the major languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian ...) You are quite right about the limitations of chapters. However, I don't see how these limiting factors are addressed by instead dealing with WMF directly. I think this is an example of perfect being the enemy of good enough. BirgitteSB Well, to give an example, I am perfectly fine with the recent WMF resolution on BLP and I am willing to comply. However, if such a resolution were issued by one of the chapters (for this matter it is irrelevant which chapter would do it) I would not feel myself in any way obliged to comply with such a resolution. No chapter has any jurisdiction over the Russian Wikipedia to which I used to contribute and over English Wikipedia to which I contribute now. Cheers Yaroslav ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Going to far
The ombudsman commission ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission ) handles complaints about violations of privacy policy. It is not so much a committee to actually do the deletions indeed, but if you feel wrongly treated by the administrators because they refuse to execute the privacy policy, the Ombudsman commission should be the right way to go. This list might be a proper forum if you identify that the ombudsman commission does not function at all though, but as I understand it, you have not yet explored the options there. With kind regards, Lodewijk 2011/7/19 Huib Laurens sterke...@gmail.com Did you even read the E-mail? How should the Ombudsman commission handle this case, it are administrators copying personal information into Wikimedia Wiki's... 2011/7/18 MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com Huib Laurens wrote: I regret the fact that I need to e-mail to this list, but I tried and tried but can't work it out with the people involved. I talked about letting it go but that doesn't seem the right thing to do also, so maybe a discussion on this list can make something happen. I can't imagine you regret sending this e-mail as much as I regret trying to parse it. From what I can tell, this list isn't the appropriate forum. Whatever your issue is, it's buried beneath a wall of text and what appears to be years of antics on your part. If you have reason to believe that the Wikimedia privacy policy has been violated, you should contact the Ombudsman commission: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission. If you would like to have certain information removed from a particular Wikimedia wiki, you can try contacting the wiki's oversighters or Arbitration Committee. If you've ruined or soured those relationships to the point that those individuals are unwilling to respond, then that's a bed of your own making and you'll simply have to live with the consequences of your actions. You're also free to contact individual members of Wikimedia Foundation staff or OTRS, but there doesn't appear to be much (if anything) that needs to be discussed that relates to the purpose or mission of this mailing list. MZMcBride ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Kind regards, Huib Laurens WickedWay.nl Webhosting the wicked way. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] roadmap for WM affiliation ; a name for self-identified affiliation
I am not sure if this is about the same thing. I read Alec's questions as being about content projects that want to affiliate themselves with Wikimedia - want to become the new Wikimedia project. I know that in the past this question has lived for example with OmegaWiki/WiktionaryZ . SJ, would you consider this to be similar to Wikimedian groups who want to have a slightly more formal relationship with the Movement? Lodewijk 2011/7/13 Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com We're discussing setting up an Affiliation committee to oversee simple, low-overhead wikimedia affiliates and associations. These could be organizations 'under the umbrella' of free knowledge -- requiring just basic review of their work and standards to confirm they are in line with our basic principles. [1] Wikimedia Associations could be individual wikiprojects, clubs, or meetups run by one or more people that want to establish a lasting identity as part of the movement. Third-party wikis and larger groups could be Wikimedia Affiliates. Both could use web-badges and icons to identify them with the movement (derived from the WM community logo?). SJ [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_roles_project/New_group_models On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 8:32 PM, Alec Conroy alecmcon...@gmail.com wrote: Prompted by discussions in another thread, I ask a related question-- ;1-- A roadmap towards affiliation How should a currently-unaffiliated project go about becoming 'part of' Wikimedia? One easy step they could take would be to simply say, on their website, This site considers itself to be part of the Wikimedia Movement. (alternate text welcome ) Later, a self-identified affiliate could be formally designated as part of the Wikimedia Movement by the global community or the foundation or both. Such recognition would have lots of benefits for the new projects that share our values-- other WM projects would know to visibly link to them whenever they have relevant content (as we currently do across WMF projects). We could permit access to the unified login, we could allow template-sharing or image-sharing. We could set up interwiki-linking, and other interoperability functions. Such recognition would have even bigger benefits for us. We could get an affiliation with an established, successful project that shares our values. The kinds of project that we would build ourselves if someone else hadn't already built it. Their userbases and readership would see get to Wikimedia as something larger than just WP, and it would help cement public understanding that Wikimedia is a Movement, very big, very diverse, and very special. ; 2-- We need a name for self-identified project affiliation. External projects needs to be able to claim, on their own initiative, that they are part of something.That something should be a something that is connected to us. But self-identified affiliation has no gatekeeper, so whatever it is new projects can be part of, there could be lots that we don't approve of. I'm the founder of a project and I want signal my ideological affiliation to WM. I think my own project's values match the Wikimedia's values, in my opinion anyway. Recognizing that I may or may not be right-- what should I say I am a part of? We could just tell projects in this situation to say they are Part of the Wikimedia Movement, but perhaps that name is one we want to reserve just for officially recognized projects. If so, what name should such projects use instead? Note that they need to be saying something different than just I like Wikipedia, here's a link. They need to be _identifying_ their own efforts as _under the umbrella_ of what we do. They need to be investing in us and our mission, saying This project is our attempt to help share the world's information. Right now, I think we can craft any statement, logo, or button we want and like-minded projects would use it if prompted. We just have to be thoughtful about what we want those things to look like. We will no longer have total control over whichever name or logos we recommend projects use for self-identified affiliation. So that's my question -- what should third-party wikis say they are part of, if they want to express a connection to us? Alec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Samuel Klein identi.ca:sj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe
Re: [Foundation-l] Welcome to new wikis
I assume you mean Argentinian chapter, and not arabic? Best, Lodewijk 2011/7/12 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com We've got four new wikis: two for content and two for chapters: * Mingrelian Wikipedia: http://xmf.wikipedia.org * Argentinian Wikiveristy: http://ar.wikiversity.org * Arabic chapter: http://ar.wikimedia.org/ * Mexican chapter: http://mx.wikimedia.org/ For the content projects import is on the way. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns
Sure it would reduce the amount of private data considered, but also the nameaddress could (should) be considered private, and hence it wouldn't take away the fundamental concerns as they are stated by several people. Best, Lodewijk 2011/7/12 Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com A notarized statement wouldn't need to contain all the personal info. Just a name and something else to distinguish common names (I suggest an address as the snail mail method pretty often will include a return address anyway). The rest of the info like age, nationality, race, identification numbers, etc. is only seen by the notary who puts a seal on the document to verify that the signature was made by the person with that name. Birgitte SB - Original Message From: Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: r...@slmr.com Sent: Mon, July 11, 2011 6:50:57 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns I am not sure if that would solve any of the problems that some people have with the current situation. Still the notarized statement (which includes all personal data) would end up with an individual if I understand correctly. It would only add quite a lot of costs... 2011/7/11 Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 02:28, Robin McCain ro...@slmr.com wrote: I'd say that if you've blocked someone who is a sockpuppet or other abuser the burden of validating such a person should be on them, not the wiki staff. At least a notary (or other public official) would have to look at an identity document - verify its validity as well as see that it indeed matches the person in question - then sign a document to that effect. This completely removes the wiki staff from the need to access the validity of a copy. I guess it is nice to offer the blocked people this alternative, privacy-enhanced method along the old one. I'm sure current poster would be pleased, and I guess the dutch wikigods could accept that solution, too. -- byte-byte, grin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns
I am not sure if that would solve any of the problems that some people have with the current situation. Still the notarized statement (which includes all personal data) would end up with an individual if I understand correctly. It would only add quite a lot of costs... 2011/7/11 Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 02:28, Robin McCain ro...@slmr.com wrote: I'd say that if you've blocked someone who is a sockpuppet or other abuser the burden of validating such a person should be on them, not the wiki staff. At least a notary (or other public official) would have to look at an identity document - verify its validity as well as see that it indeed matches the person in question - then sign a document to that effect. This completely removes the wiki staff from the need to access the validity of a copy. I guess it is nice to offer the blocked people this alternative, privacy-enhanced method along the old one. I'm sure current poster would be pleased, and I guess the dutch wikigods could accept that solution, too. -- byte-byte, grin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns
Medewerker can mean staff - but literally it just means cooperator, and it is generally used for anyone editing the encyclopedia on a regular basis. (ie. active community members). It is however open for misinterpretation. Just to be clear: the alternative situation was, and would probably be, that people who currently can choose to use this clause, would simply be blocked forever without a way of getting unblocked. Still not taking any stand or opinion, Lodewijk 2011/7/10 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com On 10 July 2011 10:55, Huib Laurens sterke...@gmail.com wrote: Is mentioned in a offiical policy on the Dutch Wikipedia here: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sokpopmisbruik The relevant paragraph appears to be http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sokpop#Ontsnappingsclausule The Google translation is In order to be unblocked, the person behind the corresponding IP address is a letter (paper) to a community trust staff. Does it actually mean staff in Dutch? Does it imply *in any way* that the person to contact is officially sanctioned to deal with private information? http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blokkeringsmeldingen#Ontsnappingsclausule The Google translation for this one appears to quite definitely be trying to imply official status. Does it carry such implications in the original Dutch? It doesn't matter if Huib was blocked for good reason. This still looks very like a privacy disaster in the making, and the Foundation, and particularly the staff relating to privacy concerns, need to look into it very closely. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns
Just to give this a bit of context, without taking any position: On the Dutch Wikipedia, you can get blocked for sockpuppet abuse. This block has an infinite length because the opinion of the community has been that sockpuppet abuse is unacceptable. This has happened to Huib - it was concluded he abused sockpuppetse and he got blocked for infinite duration. This /besides/ a finite block by the arbitration committee for other issues. Quite a while ago, there were some cases where people did get blocked, but they wanted to change for the better. Individuals provided these people the option to send them a physical letter with identification. The idea behind this was mainly (as I understood) that it would give a significant threshold to the person requesting to get unblocked, but it would also ensure it would only happen once. Of course this physical letter with a promise to never do it again would not be legally enforced in the end. If you get caught once again after that, there will be no extra options any more to get unblocked. So let it at least be clear that there is no obligation whatsoever to send your identity to someone. It is the main route to get unblocked after an infinite block for sockpuppet abuse. From what I can tell, it is quite clear that the letter and identification goes to an individual. The individual usually taking care of this (but it could be any trusted user) is a former board member of Wikimedia Nederland, but currently holds no position. He is active on OTRS too, but it was explicitely chosen to make this a snail mail process. Just to state it once again: I do not intend to take *any* position on this, but rather to explain the facts as I understand them. With kind regards, Lodewijk 2011/7/9 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com David Gerard, 09/07/2011 12:46: On 9 July 2011 11:02, Béria Limaberial...@gmail.com wrote: The WMF is not responsible for private mails you send to anyone. The only people who officialy can receive a copy of any ID you may have are Philippehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Philippe_%28WMF%29, Christinehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Christine_%28WMF%29or Meganhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mhernandez. If you send a copy of your ID to anyone else is not WMF problem. I do think it is absolutely a problem when people on a WMF-hosted wiki are using an unofficial mechanism to demand copies of people's passports. While Beria is technically right (probably), I agree with David. Gerard Meijssen, 09/07/2011 10:06: If you do not trust the person involved, you are crazy to send him a copy of your passport. This is a common sense. This policy as it obviously works.. what is really your issue ? Do we really need a theoretical approach that only can bring us less functionality ? I do not think so. Gerard is right as well. This system makes sense and could work as an extension of those occasions when a trusted user says oh, but I met both User:Whatever and User:AllegedSockpuppet in person at that wikimeetup, I grant you they really exist!, but probably there shouldn't be any official page, policy or guideline suggesting people to send private data like Huib described. Nemo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Invitation to connect on LinkedIn
Perhaps one of the list admins could at least build in a filter for the linked in emails :) Possibly file a request with LinkedIn for change of the account details too? Best, Lodewijk 2011/6/28 Mohamed Ibrahim mido.archit...@gmail.com basically, how can someone register on linkedIn with foundation-l address? it was a linked account that caused this problem On 28 June 2011 11:42, Tanvir Rahman wikitan...@gmail.com wrote: #mega #Fail dunno why the list is saved as a contact with that name Can we add something like Invitation to connect on LinkedIn in the filter so this kind of e-mail will be automatically discarded? Regards, -- Tanvir Rahman [[User:Wikitanvir]] On Wikimedia Projects ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Mohamed Ibrahim Architect Cell : +966 54 4680745 E-mail: arch.m.ibra...@gmail.com http://eg.linkedin.com/in/mohamedibrahims ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Nominating Committee
Hi, I read from several posts that the process with the nominating committee did not work out at all. In the mean time the whole nominating committee (and therefore any formal procedure where non-board members, read: the community, have any say on who gets onto the board in the appointed seat). I might have missed it (probably have) but is there some kind of evaluation of the functioning of the NomCom and a good reasoning why it was totally abolished? Is it clear /why/ it did not work? Birgitte seems to suggest it didnt work because procedures were not followed. Earlier (don't recall where exactly) (a) board member(s) seemed to suggest that it did not work because they were too slow and did not do their job. Both arguments seem to me something that can be solved quite easily - by starting to follow procedures or by getting different people on the committee. Perhaps someone who was there on the board at the time could clarify? Thanks a lot, Lodewijk 2011/6/25 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com On 06/24/2011 07:57 PM, birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: I also sat on NomCom during this time period. I cannot agree that Matt's appointment was more problematic than Stu's or Jan-Bart. Frankly all the appointed board seats are problematic, and I cannot understand how you can focus on Matt's appointment alone as a significant issue, nor how you reach the conclusion that disorganization on the part of the board had any significant role in the problems of appointed board seats. I am going to be frank and clear about how the issue appears to me: The bylaws, in regard to appointed board seats, are unredeemably flawed. I find it offensive that any appointed Board Member should be singled out and undermined merely because an impossible appointment process failed to offer them greater legitimacy. All the appointments fell so far short of the outlined process that I believe concluding one appointment to be less acceptable than the others is impossible to objectively judge. Yes Bishakha's seat was settled with more active discussion from NomCom than any of the others. However the outlined process for appointed seats is not at all what occurred. I suggest you re-read the by-laws (pay attention to the time-line as well), consult your notes and dates, and honestly tell me how the board might have believed that NomCom had any hope fulfilling the official process at the time of Matt's appointment. That's other issue and I am not a legal expert. My logic behind suggesting to keep current members was probability that changing them would bring more instability in already unstable Board at that time. Board is today more stable than it was at that time and it is good that this issue has been opened, so we can go further. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Closing projects policy now official
Hi, could someone perhaps explain why the board delegated closing policy to *individual language committee members*? Because as I read it, this advice to the board is given by one individual, even if the rest of the committee disagrees (there is a two week discussion but in the end it is a one-person-call). Also, I do not understand why the *language* committee has a role in this in the first place. Is closing projects often about whether or not it actually is a language (the expertise field of langcom)? Lodewijk 2011/6/25 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com Board has decided to make Closing projects [1] official. The text of the policy is below (as well as at the mentioned page). Language committee members who decided to take care about this would be listed inside of the section Tasks of the members list [2]. During the next weeks present requests will be normalized after the discussion at the LangCom list. [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Closing_projects_policy [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Members * * * This policy proposal defines the process to close (and in some situations delete) a wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. The proposals are handled by [[Language Committee]] members who opt-in to take care of this, and the [[Board of Trustees]] has final authority over the member's decision. ==Problem situation and new authority== The current [[Proposals for closing projects]] lack a clear policy. Several proposals have been made for a policy, but so far none has been adopted. Because of that, a lot of small inactive wikis are proposed to be closed. Some people support out of principle (wiki is inactive), while others oppose out of principle (let it grow). Often, users came by and made a decision, which could even be the opposite of the actual consensus. This policy tries to address this problem by: * requiring a valid reason for closure, and defining several reasons as either valid or invalid reasons * putting the procedure in hands of language committee members and final Board decision The community has no longer authority over closing projects, but only an advising task. This puts the procedure in line with the [[language proposal policy]], which is also dependent on language committee and Board approval. That means closing projects is no longer easier than opening one. Although the decision is made by a member of the Language Committee and no longer through community consensus, the Board will have final authority, and the LangCom is convinced that this procedure will improve the decision-making and that both the LangCom and the Board are the appropriate authority for dealing with closing Wikimedia wikis. ==Policy proposal== ===Types of proposals=== In order to distinguish routine situations from potentially more complex or unusual ones, projects that are proposed to be deleted are classified as one of two types: # Regular language editions that are small/inactive but do not generally harm to stay open (automatic spam is always blocked, contrary to the past). #: ''For example: Afar Wiktionary, Gaeilge Wikiquote, Guarani Wikibooks, ...'' # Other (often relatively more active) wikis that may be controversial, questionable or in another way uncommon. #: ''For example: Quality Wikimedia, Simple English Wikiquote, ...'' ===Definition of actions=== * Closing a wiki means locking the database so it cannot be edited but all pages are still visible to public. User rights (sysop, ...) are removed and can be restored on user request when the wiki is re-activated. * Deleting a wiki means deleting the database so it is completely unavailable on the web. An XML file with the wiki's content will still be available for external use. * Transferring or importing content means moving useful articles/pages, along with the contribution history, to the [[Wikimedia Incubator]], [[oldwikisource:|OldWikisource]] or [[betawikiversity:|BetaWikiversity]] (or another site when explicitly mentioned). smallSee [[incubator:I:Importing]] for more info./small ** Files are left on the wiki because of a lack of an export function. When the wiki will be deleted, files could be downloaded manually if needed. smallWhen such a software feature becomes available, files should be exported./small ===Proposing=== Anyone can propose to close a wiki. The following must be done: * The proposal must be categorised under either type 1 or type 2 (see above). * If you want the wiki to be deleted as well, that must be explicitly mentioned in the proposal. * When the proposal is submitted, the local wiki should be informed as soon as possible. * A good reason should be given why it should be closed/deleted. ** Inactivity in itself is ''no'' valid reason; additional problems are. When the Wikimedia Incubator is at a stage where it is usable to a certain extent like a real wikirefIn the future, the Wikimedia Incubator is intended
Re: [Foundation-l] Closing projects policy now official
2011/6/25 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com On 06/25/2011 11:20 AM, Lodewijk wrote: could someone perhaps explain why the board delegated closing policy to *individual language committee members*? Because as I read it, this advice to the board is given by one individual, even if the rest of the committee disagrees (there is a two week discussion but in the end it is a one-person-call). Also, I do not understand why the *language* committee has a role in this in the first place. Is closing projects often about whether or not it actually is a language (the expertise field of langcom)? The answer to the last question is simple: Nobody else bothered to normalize the situation and Robin took initiative. (Besides that, all of the issues were described inside of the LangCom report from the meeting in Berlin, so you could object before. And it was not posted at the regional court on Alpha Centaur, but on this list, as well.) As you may remember, the report was very long, and even though I speeded through it, I did not notice it since I wouldn't ever expect it there :) The fact you published it before doesnt make arguments less valid though. I do agree we need some procedure, I am just not sure this is the right one. Just to be super clear: the board approved this procedure explicitely in a vote? (I can't find the resolution yet on foundationwiki) Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Simple Wikipedia: different projects
Hi Milos, First of all, in my opinion this should not be a discussion about language but rather about viability. Like Ray explained, if you try to define everything into detail (we cannot allow...) then you might kill the idea before it is born. Let us first think about whether we /want/ to have such projects before we dive into details about specific definitions etc. That is also the reason why I personally think this should not be an issue for the Language Committee in the first place. Now your concerns about whether a simple Dutch community would be viable are reasonable ones, and I agree it would worry me too. Not because of Wikinews (because that just has little interest) but because of the diversity of goals etc. So that is why a significant group of editors should be a prerequisite - then that worry has been taken away - or it should be part of existing structures (namespaces etc). I agree with Rupert that it would be great to see which technical developments would be needed to make this possible (although I personally am no big fan of many different age-projects. But also there: as long as there is a viable community... why not?) If it is technically viable, I would love to see some way to create such projects (standalone or not) - although I am not sure if incubator would be the best option for that. After all, in the case of simple Dutch, the Dutch Wikipedia community would be much better equipped to nourish such a new initiative than incubator. Best, Lodewijk 2011/6/24 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com On 06/24/2011 11:40 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote: On 06/22/11 1:46 PM, Milos Rancic wrote: I have a friendly advice for you (and I hope that Michael and Gerard wouldn't kill me because of that): If you are able to create really valid community and your language is not considered as a world one (as the case with Dutch is), and you really want to create Wikipedia in simple language: (1) Create it inside of the main Wikipedia's namespace. (2) Ask developers to install Incubator Extension when it becomes a bit more mature. (3) Ask IETF for the language subtag (something like nl-simpel or nl-eenvoudige or whatever you think it is appropriate). (4) Ask Language committee for redirect. I suppose that we would need a year or two to full implementation of the Incubator Extension and redirects. I also think that no one from LangCom would object such arrangement. Having the whole nl.wp community behind such project is one thing, having a separate community is another. If supported by nl.wp community, I wouldn't have anything against not having scientific basis. By attaching enough bureaucratic requirements to an idea you can insure that anything fails. What is this scientific basis? No other Wikipedia has had to face that challenge. Leave it up to the people involved in a simple project to develop their specifications as they go along. Demanding that before they start is an effective way of blocking the project before it starts. Wikipedia as a whole never achieved its success by imposing such barriers on editing. Simple writing is more difficult than writing for a general audience. If there is a small group of Dutch speakers ready to put something of the sort together, preferably with a couple of educators among them, let's encourage them to get on to it sooner rather than later. If such a project dies from neglect that's no big deal. If language educators see this as a viable model it may be just the thing that draws them. The main difference between simple and natural languages is that simple languages are not natural. They are constructed (or, more precisely, controlled) languages with particular purpose. So, the logical questions are: is that a valid constructed language (a reliable and published definition is needed) and what's the purpose of that language? Basic English and French definitions sound good (have to check other) as the basis, and it is possible to write an encyclopedia in those languages. Because of the same reason why we are not able to allow encyclopedia in pidgin languages (not to be confused with creole languages with the word pidgin in their names), we are not able to allow writing encyclopedia in COBOL, no matter how it looks like a natural language: it is not possible to create encyclopedia in those languages. Similar would be applied to any controlled language which doesn't have possibility to express the full variety of contemporary knowledge. Because of the same reason, encyclopedias in historical languages are not possible. [1] Humans are intelligent enough to develop any language into fully functional one. That's not a question. I am curious enough to see encyclopedia written in COBOL, as well as contributors of Classical Chinese and Old Church Slavonic are doing that interesting task whenever they try to explain a thing which didn't exist in the time when those languages were used
Re: [Foundation-l] Simple Wikipedia: different projects
Hi, just to be totally clear: I do not intend to pursue simple Dutch Wikipedia myself, I only took that as an example of a typical language that is not a world language etc - for major languages present in many countries/regions the need can only be higher (simple Spanish, French, Chinese, German, Portuguese to name a few). Alec, I think the biggest resource would be time. However, if we would want a new technical interface allowing to have both simple and normal Dutch (or Spanish etc) in one wiki, then it would probably require more technical development - I cannot estimate honestly how much work that would be. Maybe someone with a better technical background and insight in what already exists (maybe other parties have developed something similar?) can give a fair estimate on that. Best, Lodewijk 2011/6/24 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com On 06/24/2011 01:42 PM, Lodewijk wrote: Let us first think about whether we /want/ to have such projects before we dive into details about specific definitions etc. That is also the reason why I personally think this should not be an issue for the Language Committee in the first place. LangCom's decision and LangCom's good will is the best which simple projects could get inside of the Wikimedia community. Requests for simple projects regularly don't pass community's confidence. Simple English Wikipedia would be turned off if it would go to voting. And note that I've given to you at least two valid paths to create Simple Dutch Wikipedia. Anyway, good luck! ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
Thank you for sharing! This potentially has a big impact indeed, and the support of the WMF seems more than appropriate. Is this something the WMF will do more often in the future (or has done in the past) or is this an extreme exception due to its importance? With kind regards, Lodewijk 2011/6/22 Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.org Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus (friends of the court) brief in Golan v. Holder, a case of great importance before the Supreme Court that will affect our understanding of the public domain for years to come. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder. The EFF is representing the Wikimedia Foundation in addition to the American Association of Libraries, the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the University of Michigan Dean of Libraries, and the Internet Archive. This case raises critical issues as to whether Congress may withdraw works from the public domain and throw them back under a copyright regime. In 1994, in response to the U.S. joining of the Berne Convention, Congress granted copyright protection to a large body of foreign works that the Copyright Act had previously placed in the public domain. Affected cultural goods probably number in the millions, including, for example, Metropolis (1927), The Third Man (1949), Prokofiev's Peter in the Wolf, music by Stravinsky, paintings by Picasso, drawings by M.C. Escher, films by Fellini, Hitchcock, and Renoir, and writings by George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, and J.R.R. Tolkien. The petitioners are orchestra conductors, educators, performers, film archivists, and motion picture distributors who depend upon the public domain for their livelihood. They filed suit in 2001, pointing out that Congress exceeded its power under the Copyright Clause and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They eventually won at the district court level, but that decision was overturned on appeal in the Tenth Circuit. The U.S. Supreme Court - which rarely grants review - did so here. Petitioners filed their brief last week, and you can find it here: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6684. We are expecting a number of parties to file friends of the court briefs. The EFF's brief can be found here: http://www.eff.org/cases/golan-v-holder . The Wikimedia Foundation joined the EFF brief in light of the tremendously important role that the public domain plays in our mission to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. We host millions of works in the public domain and are dependent on thousands of volunteers to search out and archive these works. Wikimedia Commons alone boasts approximately 3 million items in these cultural commons. To put it bluntly, Congress cannot be permitted the power to remove such works from the public domain whenever it finds it suitable to do so. It is not right - legally or morally. The Copyright Clause expressly requires limits on copyright terms. The First Amendment disallows theft from the creative commons. Such works belong to our global knowledge. For this reason, we join with the EFF and many others to encourage the Court to overturn a law that so threatens our public domain - not only with respect to the particular works at issue but also with respect to the bad precedent such a law would set for the future. We anticipate the Court will reach a decision sometime before July 2012. -- Geoff Brigham General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Simple Wikipedia: different projects
2011/6/22 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com There are at least three serious issues in creation of such projects, if they are not defined strictly linguistically: * Scope. Which age do we cover, approximately? Any valid theory would be useful, but it should be defined. According to Piaget, less than 15 [in Northern France]; according to the age when we could be sure that child knows to read, more than 7 or 8. Which knowledge is appropriate for that range of age? What's appropriate for one 8-years old and what's appropriate for one 14-years old? https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l snip some very interesting remarks based on this age assumption I think you assume too quickly that only young people would benifit from simple texts. In the Netherlands we have 1.5 million low literate adults (people having trouble to read write) and I think the Netherlands actually is having quite low percentages in that field compared to many other countries. These are not even people who speak Dutch as a secondary language. Besides that there are indeed many children who might also benifit from this content, and also non-natives (consider for example people from Wallonia or Surinam (if non-native Dutch) who would like to look up something in Dutch for some reason. Now this easily scales towards many other languages. Sure, we could think about all kind of complicated definitions, detailed scopes etc - but first I would like to try and get an answer to the more fundamental question: would we see benifit for such projects? Would we see a potential community to run such projects? The next question would be (independent of your definitions etc) whether this would work best as a seperate project, or as a part of existing projects (namespaces or Erik Zachte's solution - that is a rather technical issue), and then if we would choose for the last, whether we would be willing to invest into making this technically possible (there are several challanges, such as how to resolve linking, searching etc). And then there are many other questions to answer. But... back to the original question: would you (yes, you who is reading this. No, don't look behind you, I really mean you!) see benifit community potential for this? Are there people out there who would find it *fun* to write articles in a simple way explaining the basics understandable for everybody in simple language? Best regards, Lodewijk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Simple Wikipedia: different projects
Lets try to approach this from another angle. Perhaps simple Wikipedia should not be considered as a different language, but rather as a different project - a simplified Wikipedia. Because the purpose of simple wikipedia's can be debated of course, but one potential is to give more people understandable access to the contents. Then the simplified version might not just be about simpler language, but also simpler explanations (no long mathematical equations, but only that introduction in a way that someone can understand the basics - in simple understandable English). I would find it wonderful if I could let my little nephew or sister read on a simple project without worrying they will panic over the complexities. Partially for learning the language, partially for getting the knowledge. When approached like that, this would not really be a matter for the language committee, and every language with enough potential community (!) could get their own simple project. Another option along the same lines could be a Simple namespace within Wikipedia, if there would be an interface allowing you easily to focus on just that namespace. That way, we don't have to come up with artificial routes and explanations to allow our communities the creation of such wonderful projects. Best regards, Lodewijk 2011/6/21 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com On 06/21/2011 12:25 AM, MZMcBride wrote: Thanks for the detailed response. :-) Milos Rancic wrote: As usual, discussion would be held on Meta. If there are serious arguments against creation of Simple French Wikipedia, we would consider them, of course. However, arguments like I don't like simple projects won't be counted. Well, I'm sure some of them would say that in French; would that help? ;-) I do wonder if arguments such as Wikimedia should not be in the business of making simplified language-versions of projects would be counted. There is one more thing in which I agree with Michael... As he is in the group which creates BCP 47 language subtags, I told to him that we should get generic subtags for simple languages. His response was that we should think about it when the time comes, not before. I think that we will wait for some time, maybe even long, before we get a valid request for Simple French Wikipedia. When that time comes, we'll think about details. I mean, there are other things to be done and we've already spent a lot of time in it. The only reason why we've done so is to normalize the situation. I started with the position we should recommend to the Board to close all simple projects during the Berlin meeting. However, normalization went into other direction and I am fine with it, too. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] content ownership in different projects
I guess that Amir was rather referring to the cultural aspect than the legal aspect. Even if you are legally allowed to change something, that doesnt mean the original author likes it. I assume that all Wiki projects have this culture in them, that nobody owns an article - this doesn't mean however that there are no exceptions (people who think they are exceptions or policies allowing temporary exceptions to be able to make a nice draft - for example in ones own usernamespace). Amir, is there a specific background that you are thinking of which is why you are asking this? Maybe that helps people answering your question. Best, Lodewijk 2011/6/17 Strainu strain...@gmail.com 2011/6/17 Strainu strain...@gmail.com: Think about a CC-BY-NC-ND wiki. Theoretically, one could only add content to that wiki, not edit what has already been written. Actually, I'm not even sure you could add content to articles on a CC-BY-NC-ND wiki. Would have to check with a lawyer... Strainu ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Elections email
I think it is based on your home project :) I voted from meta, but got an
email in Dutch - which is almost only on nlwiki my preferred language. I
made some other suggestions on how to improve the email next time, maybe it
would make sense to collect other suggestions there too:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2011#Email
Best regards,
Lodewijk
2011/6/10 Strainu strain...@gmail.com
I think the system did NOT work for you :) It seems strange to send
the same email in several languages. I only received it in Romanian. I
think this is taken based on your language preferences (on meta?)
Strainu
2011/6/10 Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il:
Hallo,
I just received an email (see below) that invites me to participate in
the elections.
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.
2. The subject says 2009.
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.
Thank you,
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace. - T. Moore
הודעה שהועברה
מאת: Wikimedia Board Elections Committee
board-electi...@lists.wikimedia.org
תאריך: 10 ביוני 2011 14:56
נושא: Wikimedia Foundation Elections 2009
אל: Amire80 amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il
Dear Amire80,
You are eligible to vote in the 2011 elections for the Board of
Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates projects such as
Wikipedia. The Board of Trustees is the decision-making body that is
ultimately responsible for the long term sustainability of the
Foundation, so we value wide input into its selection.
For more information, please see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2011/en . To remove
yourself from future notification, please add your user name at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_nomail_list .
/div
div style={{quote style}}
שלום Amire80,
הנך זכאי להשתתף בבחירות 2011 לחבר הנאמנים של קרן ויקימדיה, המפעילה
מספר מיזמים כגון Wikipedia.
חבר הנאמנים הוא הגוף המחליט הנושא באחריות הכוללת לקיומה של הקרן בטווח
הארוך, ולכן אנו מקבלים בברכה השתתפות רחבה בבחירתו.
למידע נוסף, אנא ראו please see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2011/he . להסרת שמך
מקבלת הודעות דומות בעתיד, אנא צרפו את שמכם בדף
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_nomail_list .
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Re: [Foundation-l] Elections email
2011/6/10 Andrew Garrett agarr...@wikimedia.org On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 10:06 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il 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. The list of accounts which have voted is publicly available. I assume you could use that to eliminate accounts that have voted already? I guess there might be a few false connections there, but you would be able to eliminate most of the unnecessary emails. Of course this problem would be less if the emails next time would be sent at the beginning of the elections. 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] CentralNotice use
Thanks for bringing this up, Tobias. I have been pondering about the same, and the thinking points you give sound sensible. I would like to add another, which might seem obvious, and that is geo- and project targeting. Do you really need centralnotice on all projects, or only on a few. Because of the high amount of notices lately (not only centralnotice, but also local notices by the community) they do indeed become annoying. However, more importantly it seems that there might be negative impact because people get used to them, and will start ignoring them. Not just by technical means, but also because they simply devaluate. Lodewijk 2011/5/19 church.of.emacs.ml church.of.emacs...@googlemail.com Hi all, Do we have any guidelines limiting the use of CentralNotices? I noticed there are a lot lately (fundraising, wikimania and most recently board elections and commons POTY), some of which are not of much interest to the audience. Take for example one of the most recent banners about candidate submissions for Wikimedia's Board Elections[1]. Until most recently, it has been displayed on every single page view for most of our 400 Million readers or so, according to the setup for 20 days. 99.% of our readers won't be candidates and for most of them, this is of no interest at all. Which is sad of course, we'd love to get more qualified and diverse candidates – that is to say, not only members of Wikimedia's core community. Nevertheless, the question remains: do the positive effects (chances on higher diversity) outweigh the negative consequences (readers/authors are annoyed)? Take another example: The call for votes on common's anual picture of the year competition has two very large banners with colorful images on them [2]. I think, there has to be a serious consideration for each banner, whether its positive effects outweigh negative consequences. Most importantly, the fact that banners divert the readers attention and are therefor in most cases not in his direct interest, has to be considered. There are several ways of minimizing negative effects: 1. Display it for logged-in users only. This is especially useful for information concerning active Wikimedians, e.g. Wikimania, POTY, etc. 2. Reduce weight - don't display a banner on every page view, but only on one in ten. (We have to use blank banners to do that, right?[3]) 3. Reduce duration. (e.g. Don't display banners for a month, only a week) 4. Reduce banner size and intrusiveness. Use text banners instead of colorful images. What do you think? Do we need to limit the use of CentralNotice through guidelines or introduce technical measurements (e.g. blank banners[3]) or just appeal to meta admins to consider negative effects or is everything fine the way it is? Regards, Tobias / User:Church of emacs [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/viewtemplate=boardvotecandidates [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CentralNoticemethod=listNoticeDetailnotice=poty2010 [3] Afaik changing weight alone only changes the distribution of banners. We'd have to add a pseudo banner which is completely empty and then give it some weight. Using that, we ensure that there isn't a banner on *every* page view, only on 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 or so. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] IRC Group Contacts Chairship handover
Hi Sean, thanks for your work in the past years! Although you say it was unimportant, I think one of your values is that you managed to keep it that way. Infrastructure that goes well and can be relied upon often is confused with unimportant. Nonetheless we Wikimedians manage often to talk for long times about unimportant thinks around the color of the bikeshed, and I think one of your helps has been that you have been able to keep thát to a minimum. With kind regards, Lodewijk 2011/5/19 Sean Whitton s...@silentflame.com I’m not a very active Wikimedian at the moment (though hopefully someday I shall return) and so the time has come to handover my chairship of the IRC Group Contacts. I am ceding it to Casey Brown, but this is just a formality, and really it is both Filip and Casey who I leave in charge of Wikimedia’s IRC presence. I imagine that they may well want to make some changes to how things are done on IRC and they have my blessing in this, even if I might disagree with the specifics. It has been a great pleasure to work with them both for the past few years, and with James F. before that, in running our IRC channels. IRC is not important, and it should remain unimportant, so I don’t expect most people to appreciate this, but it has been good to solve problems together and I think we all learnt a lot from the experience, and, hopefully, kept IRC useful for everyone else. S -- Sean Whitton / s...@silentflame.com OpenPGP KeyID: 0x3B6D411B http://sean.whitton.me/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Fwd: Re: Do WMF want enwp.org?]
Maybe I should rephrase that into a way to redirect nicely to... because with the current layout I would not be very tempted to use it since it suggests one made an error. (maybe with good reason, but still) Lodewijk 2011/5/17 Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 9:24 AM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org wrote: Of course unless someone finds a way to redirect en.wikipedia.org/Example to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example . Did you mean to type http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example? You will be automatically redirected there in five seconds. :-) It already redirects there, though we don't want to advertise that we have a link shortener because the 404 page redirects. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Fwd: Re: Do WMF want enwp.org?]
Although you do have a point here, just to be complete, the number of characters for en.wikipedia.org is of course longer. You would have to compare en.wp.w.org/Example with en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example - which makes it 12 vs 22 (+article name), which is already more significant. Of course unless someone finds a way to redirect en.wikipedia.org/Example to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example . Best, Lodewijk 2011/5/11 Neil Harris n...@tonal.clara.co.uk On 11/05/11 11:32, HW wrote: I think the advantage is that it would allow us to generalize the concept behind enwp.org, which is that we want short urls for all languages and all projects. I'm thinking along the lines of http://en.wp.w.org . From that angle I would say that short urls of this type have become rather popular. You could of course use goo.gl, but then your url is obfuscated, whereas in this case it's not. I can't really see en.wp.w.org (11 characters, four components, hard to remember) as being that much better than en.wikipedia.org (16 characters, three components, easier to remember, contains the Wikipedia branding). enwp.org, on the other hand, is 8 characters long, has only two components, and is a natural contraction of en.wikipedia.org. -- Neil ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] For japan kids..
I'm not sure... is this supposed to be a real email or does everybody see a random string of characters? Lodewijk 2011/4/27 widiyanto jokarwilis2...@gmail.com jokarwilis2...@gmail.com Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 01:52:57 + Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Windows-1252 MIME-Version: 1.0 SGkuLi5JIGxvdmUgamFwYW4gYnV0IGZvciBpbnRyb2R1Y3Rpb24gY2FuIHNlZSBteSBibG9nIGh0 dHA6Ly9zZGd1bnVuZzAzLmJsb2dzcG90LmNvbSB0aGlzIGJsb2cgaW4gYWN0aW9uIGZyb20gc2No b29sIGFuZCBhbnl3aGVyZS4udGhhbmtzDQpQb3dlcmVkIGJ5IFRlbGtvbXNlbCBCbGFja0JlcnJ5 rg== ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: A lack of newbies that stick
Or they can be people scared away by unfriendly welcome :) There are many reasons, and it's hard to guess. The best is still to have a range of criteria, and see where they differ. As far as I understand the trend remains the same in all evaluated criteria, although the steepness differs. Lodewijk 2011/4/3 Sarah slimvir...@gmail.com On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 11:51, Isabell Long isabell...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Apr 03, 2011 at 06:33:32PM +0100, Phil Nash wrote: We've not had SUL (Single User Login) for that long, and my impression is that this will tend to inflate the number of registered accounts compared with the number of active accounts. Yes, due to the sheer number of accounts that are created on various wikis through that, I think. Has this been taken into account? And another question following on from this one: how can it be taken into account? It can be taken into account by not attributing significance to user names that make one edit then disappear -- because they're almost certainly not separate people deciding not to get involved with Wikipedia, but Wikipedians fiddling around (because of SUL, or with alternate accounts). ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia, The Book
This is already somewhat outdated - at least 2009. I wonder how it would look like nowadays. Lodewijk 2011/3/31 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 7:42 AM, teun spaans teun.spa...@gmail.com wrote: If i interpret the link correctly, these are only featured articles? Exactly: I was asking how big it would be if you added the good articles as well. 2011/3/30 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 7:34 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: http://www.rob-matthews.com/index.php?/project/wikipedia/ Rob, May I direct your attention to: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/Commons:Upload Fred This is quite cool! I've seen those diagrams of how many shelves en.wikipedia would fill if printed, but now I'm wondering: if you only printed the nearly 17 thousand featured articles and good articles, how big would that be? -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Vector, a year after
I did a preliminary measure, and it actually showed a decline, starting the exact week it was implemented on nlwiki :( However, this preliminary measure was unscientific, not precise and would need better testing/measuring. Lodewijk 2011/3/31 Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il The Vector skin, the main product of the Usability Initiative, was deployed on Wikimedia projects in April 2010. Quoting usability.wikimedia.org: The goal of this initiative is to measurably increase the usability of Wikipedia for new contributors by improving the underlying software on the basis of user behavioral studies, thereby reducing barriers to public participation. In the year that passed since then, did anyone measure whether the usability of Wikipedia for new contributors increased? -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace. - T. Moore ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] [Announce-l] Wikimédia France report for July - December 2010
Wow Adrienne, thanks a lot for the helpful overview. It is very enlighting for understanding what WMFR has been doing! Best, Lodewijk 2011/3/23 Adrienne Alix adrienne.a...@gmail.com Dear Chapters, Please find below the chapter report of Wikimédia France for July, August, September, October, November and December 2010. It is also available on Meta http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_France/2010-07-12 == Partnerships == === French National Library − BnF === After several years of talks, a partnership was concluded between Wikimédia France and the French National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de France). Signed in April 2010, it consisted of two parts. First, an experiment in collaborative proofreading taking place on Wikisource, with the donation of 1400 books in the public domain, including scans and OCR text (automatically generated during the digitization process and prone to many errors, especially with old texts). Second, the exploitation of the authority files of the Library on Wikimedia projects. A team of three chapter members undertook the technical work. Three board members oversaw their work, acting as a steering committee, and interfaced with the Library staff; one acted as a Library Science and Wikisource advisor. Their work consisted in an extensive study of the formats used by the BnF and on Wikisource, and in the design and creation of a production line for the material. This line had to be able to sustain the sheer load of 1400 books, and handled the analysis and processing of metadata, format conversions, smart trimming and cropping of the scans, and preparation of a deliverable for the final upload to Wikimedia Commons. Because of the number and size of books, the actual upload was requested to WMF system administrator Tim Starling and was done in July. After that, the team produced various documents, help pages, project reports for the chapter, and a progress report. This last document contains fairly advanced statistical analysis of the characteristics of the proofreaders body, and the work done, making use of mathematical tools to measure the amount of work accomplished during the proofreading process. See the the hub-page on Meta http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/BnF_%E2%88%92_Wikim%C3%A9dia_France_cooperation_project === City of Toulouse === As part of the partnership with the City of Toulouse, signed in October 2010, two projects were undertaken with local cultural institutions. The first one, named Phœbus project, was with the Muséum of Toulouse. It involved mobilizing Wikimedians to take high-quality photographs of objects in the non-permanent collections of paleontology and prehistory. The photographs taken in June by volunteers Rama and Ludovic were uploaded in November, and join the ones uploaded by Didier Descouens in April. More than 450 documents are available on Wikimedia Commons, many of which were assessed Featured Pictures, Quality Images or Valued Images. See on Wikimedia Commons the project page http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Projet_Phoebus and the images http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Supported_by_Projet_Phoebus The second project involved the Archives of the City of Toulouse, who contributed digitised photographs by its former curator, French naturalist, mountaineer, geologist and photographer Eugène Trutat. A Wikimédia France volunteer processed the extensive metadata provided by the Archives, in order to fit it into Wikimedia Commons auto-translated templates and provide accurate categorisation. The 200 resulting files hit Commons in December. See on Wikimedia Commons the project page http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Archives_municipales_de_Toulouse the images http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Fonds_Trutat_-_Archives_municipales_de_Toulouse and brief Signpost coverage http://enwp.org/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-01-10/News_and_notes#In_brief == Rencontres Wikimédia 2010 == On 3–4 December, Wikimédia France organised the « Rencontres Wikimédia 2010 » in Paris, in an annex of the Palais Bourbon, the building of the French National Assembly. The event aimed to gather as many cultural actors as possible to discuss new online collaborative practices and opportunities to take free access to culture a step further. The conference was part of the Glam-Wiki series, and included a series of talks and panels given by wikimedians, professionals from the cultural sector, local representatives, and representatives of government cultural agencies. See the detailed Signpost coverage http://enwp.org/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-12-13/Rencontres_Wikimédia and Wikimédia France blog posts http://blog.wikimedia.fr/tag/rencontres-wikimedia-2010 == Activities == === Participation to international Wikimedia events === GlamWiki UK Five members of the chapter and staff Bastien
Re: [Foundation-l] multilingual mailing list
Hi Milos, thanks for your attempt - it is appreciated :) I think you grasped it well, and I can imagine that a native Serbian speaker has more trouble with Dutch than a native English speaker. But yeah, probably neither of you would be able to understand it fully. My last sentence was referring to the fact that spelling mistakes suddenly have much larger consequence when you are using translation devices. There is no did you mean option, the word will just remain untranslated. It was no important remark, but rather a short comment and actually useful when you *don't* want others to understand you ;-) Lodewijk 2011/3/15 dex2...@pc.dk: Fra: Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com Til: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Dato: Tir, 15. mar 2011 04:19 Emne: Re: [Foundation-l] multilingual mailing list 2011/3/14 Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org [mailto:lodew...@effeietsanders.org]: Het enige lastige van meertalige lijsten is dat spelfouten ineens veel grotere consequenties hebben. If Google Translator has given the right sentence structure, this sentence is not so structurally complex. However, translation is not guessable. May you word your sentence in some other way? (Translation is: The only tricky multilingual spelling lists is that suddenly many greater consequences. ) * * * My guess based on a certain knowledge of European language would be, that spelfoutens means spelling faults. They are inded an additional problem for machine translators :-) Regards, Sir48/Thyge ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] multilingual mailing list
Ik denk dat dat niet helemaal eerlijk is om zo te stellen - als jij er wat moeite voor zou doen, zou je de meeste andere talen ook prima begrijpen. Hetzij door gewoon langzaam te lezen, hetzij door vertaalprogramma's die op het internet beschikbaar zijn te gebruiken. Het belangrijkste bij meertalige maillijsten is niet zozeer dat mensen er gebruik van moeten maken, maar juist dat er een acceptatie is en een positieve atmosfeer in het geval dat iemand besluit er gebruik van te maken. Wanneer je een bericht vervolgens niet begrijpt, kun je natuurlijk nog altijd vragen om een toelichting. Het enige lastige van meertalige lijsten is dat spelfouten ineens veel grotere consequenties hebben. Met vriendelijke groet, Lodewijk 2011/3/12 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: On 12 March 2011 14:53, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: A really (and not only formally) multilingual list is the new iberocoop list, started after the last Wikimania (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Iberocoop ). I didn't know about that list. That's very interesting - thanks for the heads up! It is a lot easier to manage a multilingual discussion where all the languages are, to at least some extent, mutually intelligible, though. It would be useful to hear what measures, if any, that list has taken to make things easier, though. They might work more generally. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Announce] Brion Vibber to rejoin Wikimedia Foundation
Mi ne havas kontraŭstaron pri Esperanto en ĉi tiu specifa temo. Bedaŭrinde mankas Google traduki en ĉi tiu lingvo! 2011/3/9 Domas Mituzas midom.li...@gmail.com if this is true, then we should implement a better solution for foundation-level discussions in other major language families. I nominate SJ to translate all emails. I saw him do that before, he's good! Brion would suggest Esperanto though. You two will have to fight it out. Domas ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Amical: December-February Report
Thank you Goma for this report! Always nice to hear so much is going on everywhere on the world and I am glad you are reporting about your part. Could you perhaps share more detailed information/links about the 20k grant you received? And how you plan to create a Strategic plan of Wikipedia ? Thanks! Lodewijk 2011/3/8 J. G. Góngora ganasto...@hotmail.com Dear fellows, The following message is just to keep you informed about the activities developed during the last three months by Amical. Kind regards, J. Gustavo Góngora (As a member of Amical) * Courses and conferences* *2nd December. Conference about Wikipedia at Òmnium culturalhttp://www.omnium.cat/ca/noticia/la-viquipedia-a-punt-de-fer-10-anys-protagonista-d-els-dijous-de-l-omnium-4512.html%20. User:Gomà User:Pallares *21st December. Workshop on how to edit Wikipedia at the Carlos III University of Madrid. [[User:Gomà]] *11th February. http://www.centrecivicporqueres.cat/index.php?option=com_jeventstask=icalrepeat.detailevid=597%20Talk on Wikipediahttp://www.centrecivicporqueres.cat/index.php?option=com_jeventstask=icalrepeat.detailevid=597%20at the Civic Centre of Porqueres. [[User:Gomà]] *18th February Workshop on how to edit Wikipediahttp://www.golferichs.org/eines-multimedia/conferencies/iniciacio-a-les-tics/viquipedia-introduccio-a-ledici/%20at the Golferichs House of Barcelona. [[User:Gomà]] * Wikiproject:Viquifabricació. The test corresponding to the first semester of the course has successfully come to an end. The following people have taken part in Catalan: 3 teachers, 23 students that have worked on 41 articles. In Spanish: 3 teachers, 21 students and have edited 23 articles. This test has been useful to find the list of more common mistakes, in order to prepare the content of the first courses and to develop the wikiprojects and bots of support for the appropriate management of the project. Many articles still need significative improvements. * Wikiproject Viquibalear http://Viquibalear.cat%20. The registration period and that concerning the creation of articles have been completed. The best ones are being moved to Wikipedia. 9 teachers and 44 students have completed the test. Up to now, 138 articles have been moved to Wikipedia. [[User:Paucabot]] * Wikiproject Viquiescoles http://viquiescoles.cat. It is based on the Viquibalear Project but its aim is to work with the richness of the many educational systems and the diversity of languages in which many students attend their lessons across the Catalan-speaking territories. The aim of this year is to test and create the infrastructure which will enable its expansion. Mediawiki has been installed and some teachers have already joined the initiative. In total, 16 teachers from all the Catalan-speaking territories are currently involved. [[User:Barcelona]] * Mediawiki course at the School ow webcrafhttp://p2pu.org/webcraft/mediawiki-appropiationt [[User:Esenabre|Esenabre]] * Course of introduction to the wiki edition corresponding to the subject Bioinformatics of the UPF http://bioinformatica.upf.edu [[User:Toniher]] *Release of contents* * It has already been processed by OTRS a permission to publish the book *Les Plantes Cultivades*. Cereals de Pujol Palol, Miquel and we have started dumping it on Wikisource: *Les Plantes Cultivades*http://ca.wikisource.org/wiki/Llibre:Les_plantes_cultivades._Cereals_%282008%29.djvu . This book contains many high-quality images on cereals that can be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles. We are currently uploading them to Commons with the collaboration of Joancreus. (Example). *Media* There has been much activity in the media during the last three months, mainly around four themes: * 300,000 articles from Wikipedia in Catalan. On 21 December the press reported that the Catalan Wikipedia had reached 300,000 articles. They were echoed by several means: racó catalàhttp://www.racocatala.cat/noticia/24984/viquipedia-en-catala-tanca-any-ple-dexits-assolint-300.000-articles, Bits catalanshttp://www.bitscatalans.com/2010/12/22/la-viquipedia-creua-una-altra-barrera-i-ja-te-300-000-articles/, Directe.cathttp://www.directe.cat/noticia/97916/la-viquipedia-en-catala-arriba-als-300.000-articles, La tafanerahttp://latafanera.cat/historia/viquipedia-arriba-als-300.000-articles. On 24 December Ssola is interviewed by Com radio. . * 10th anniversary of Wikipedia. Following this, there have been several videos and interviews on the radio: Video done at the Citylab of Cornellàhttp://citilab.eu/que-esta-passant/videos/entrevistes/la-wikipedia-es-un-exemple-que-el-coneixement-lliure-es-viable-i KRLS http://www.viquimedia.cat/viqui/Usuari:KRLS Gomàhttp://www.viquimedia.cat/viqui/Usuari:Gom%C3%A0, TV3 http://www.3cat24.cat/video/3316010/ciencia/Deu-anys-de-Wikipedia KRLS http://www.viquimedia.cat/viqui/Usuari:KRLS Gomàhttp://www.viquimedia.cat/viqui
Re: [Foundation-l] [Chapters] Fwd: [Wikimedia Announcements] Chapter report Wikimedia Nederland, February 2011
Hi, We sent information around about Wiki Loves Monuments a few times on several lists, but it is also available on WIkimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011 . It would be great if you could find enough volunteers to let the Czech Republic participate! The strategy weekend was indeed no entertainment and a lot of working on the Wikimedia Nederland strategy. It was working groups, general discussions etc. Unfortunately I am not able to report on the details (yet) The board interest meeting is a concept we introduced last year to lower the threshold for people to candidate themselves or show interest. That way they can get their qeuestions answered before they take the decision. It also gives people an opportunity to realize that they might not be a good candidate after all if there are many better candidates. It mainly involved informal chatting and talking with current and former board members and exchanging information and experiences. Best, Lodewijk 2011/3/5 Juan de Vojníkov juandevojni...@gmail.com Hey Lodewijk, it is interesting, I haven't red about Wiki Loves Monuments yet so I hope, I'll get it in Wroclaw! I would like to ask about STRATEGY WEEKEND. What does it mean? Two days working on issue? No entertainment? And BOARD INTEREST MEETING, that sounds interesting! Could you tell us more about this? Is it just about questions from potential candidates to the board members, or how it works? Thanks, Juan de V. WMCZ ___ Chapters mailing list chapt...@wikimedia.ch http://lists.wikimedia.ch/listinfo/chapters ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Genisis of WMF Identification policy?
The reason for that policy is exactly what this discussion is all about. If I understand correctly, Philippe is going to do some research into that and will get back to us once he has a clear answer. Of course when there are good reasons for it, there is nothing against discriminating anonymous people - you can't run for the board without giving that up either, for example. But to make that decision you would need more information. Lodewijk 2011/2/26 Pronoein prono...@gmail.com Hello, I'm wondering one thing about this new policy applied with some haste, but I could'nt find the answer - the discussion really lengthy -: how will discrimation between those who shared their identity and those who declined will be avoided? Or maybe I should ask if we should discriminate the anonymous volonteers? Why are we putting names and faces on persons, in synthesis? Can someone wrap a summary? Le 25/02/2011 18:51, Lodewijk a écrit : Hi Birgitte, thank you for finding that link. I know it has been discussed, but was not able to find the discussions. The main reason why I asked for the reasoning behind the policy was not so much because I was shocked (I was surprised by their choosing of communications etc, not so much by the choice itself) but rather to be able to make some estimates. The WMF has been collecting this information for a long time already of course of stewards and checkusers - and they already have my ID-copy for example. However, there were talks about identifying to a chapter, and it also is a very big group to suddenly force to do this based on only a policy which no employee was able to explain to me the reasoning behind. If we don't know those reasons, even if we can look it up, we might want to reconsider the policy as well - because maybe times have changed and there is no need for it, or a different need. It should be clear and transparant why the WMF is collecting this information, and what they intend to do with it. If they want to be able to sue people - fine, but then just say that. Then people know what they are up against, and what the reasoning is. That way alone volunteers can make their rational decision. But also chapters, because it might have quite some legal complications if the WMF wants to force a chapter to submit private data about one of their members because they want to sue this person. Therefore I am glad that the staff is taking this back to the board (I presume) and that there will be a clarification on these points. I do think that we still need a formal answer from the WMF about why they gather this information - not because this new influx of to-be-identified people, but also for the people currently identified for other functions. With kind regards, Lodewijk 2011/2/25 Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com I was looking for something unrelated in the archives and came across an email [1] that I believe people might find informative wrt to the Identification Policy which I believe has had discussion tabled for the moment. It seems to be the original suggestion that WMF needs some sort of identification policy by then volunteer/board-member Erik. He was *not* a staff member at the time of this message, just to be clear, since people seem to be fond of re-framing debate along such lines lately. Summary of the context follows (Not perfectly accurate chronologically speaking): A female leader in the zh.WP community was harassed/threatened by the creation of an account User:Rape[HerRealName]. Advice was sought in handling the situation. There was talk about going to the authorities. There was talk about which information about the account creator could be given to the authorities under what circumstances. The existing privacy policy was quoted as 6 Where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of the Wikimedia Foundation, its users or the public. . There was talk about it essentially being a matter of mature judgment to differentiate between derogatory comments, which however reprehensible, do not merit violating a user's privacy and threats of violence which would compel the violation of privacy in order to attempt to prevent such threats from being carried out. The idea was suggested that perhaps those with the technical ability to access private information need to be identified to WMF so that WMF will know who deal with in case of abuse. It seemed to me that many people were quite surprised that the WMF was planning on recording the identifications of those with access to private information, instead on the non-recording of this correspondense which I believe has been the previous practice. It even seemed to me as though some were shocked at the implication that WMF may perhaps be looking for legal accountability for the judgments made by those
Re: [Foundation-l] Genisis of WMF Identification policy?
Hi Birgitte, thank you for finding that link. I know it has been discussed, but was not able to find the discussions. The main reason why I asked for the reasoning behind the policy was not so much because I was shocked (I was surprised by their choosing of communications etc, not so much by the choice itself) but rather to be able to make some estimates. The WMF has been collecting this information for a long time already of course of stewards and checkusers - and they already have my ID-copy for example. However, there were talks about identifying to a chapter, and it also is a very big group to suddenly force to do this based on only a policy which no employee was able to explain to me the reasoning behind. If we don't know those reasons, even if we can look it up, we might want to reconsider the policy as well - because maybe times have changed and there is no need for it, or a different need. It should be clear and transparant why the WMF is collecting this information, and what they intend to do with it. If they want to be able to sue people - fine, but then just say that. Then people know what they are up against, and what the reasoning is. That way alone volunteers can make their rational decision. But also chapters, because it might have quite some legal complications if the WMF wants to force a chapter to submit private data about one of their members because they want to sue this person. Therefore I am glad that the staff is taking this back to the board (I presume) and that there will be a clarification on these points. I do think that we still need a formal answer from the WMF about why they gather this information - not because this new influx of to-be-identified people, but also for the people currently identified for other functions. With kind regards, Lodewijk 2011/2/25 Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com I was looking for something unrelated in the archives and came across an email [1] that I believe people might find informative wrt to the Identification Policy which I believe has had discussion tabled for the moment. It seems to be the original suggestion that WMF needs some sort of identification policy by then volunteer/board-member Erik. He was *not* a staff member at the time of this message, just to be clear, since people seem to be fond of re-framing debate along such lines lately. Summary of the context follows (Not perfectly accurate chronologically speaking): A female leader in the zh.WP community was harassed/threatened by the creation of an account User:Rape[HerRealName]. Advice was sought in handling the situation. There was talk about going to the authorities. There was talk about which information about the account creator could be given to the authorities under what circumstances. The existing privacy policy was quoted as 6 Where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of the Wikimedia Foundation, its users or the public. . There was talk about it essentially being a matter of mature judgment to differentiate between derogatory comments, which however reprehensible, do not merit violating a user's privacy and threats of violence which would compel the violation of privacy in order to attempt to prevent such threats from being carried out. The idea was suggested that perhaps those with the technical ability to access private information need to be identified to WMF so that WMF will know who deal with in case of abuse. It seemed to me that many people were quite surprised that the WMF was planning on recording the identifications of those with access to private information, instead on the non-recording of this correspondense which I believe has been the previous practice. It even seemed to me as though some were shocked at the implication that WMF may perhaps be looking for legal accountability for the judgments made by those with this access. So I found it very interesting when I stumbled across evidence of public discussion of the need to record the identities of trusted users in order to be able to deal with any abuse of private information by one of the Community-seat Board Members before the adoption of the resolution that has become controversial so recently. I don't mean to suggest that the surprise and shock were insincere, just that they seem to be rather uninformed as to the genesis of the resolution. It seems to me that those things were in fact the original intentions behind the resolution and the staff does have an obligation, however unpopular this obligation may have become during the time period it has been left unfulfilled, to see to recording such identities. Granted there are good reasons the obligation was left unfulfilled before, namely the lack of confidence in the WMF Office's technical and organizational ability to keep these records secure. But once the WMF Office reaches a level of reliability in organizational and technical competence
Re: [Foundation-l] An agenda for the meeting of the language committee
As far as I am aware, but please correct me if I'm wrong, the language committee has always tried to gather a large diversity from all over the world. However, it seems hard to find people from underrepresented regions to bother themselves with this boring matter (no offense). So if you know a good candidate from a region you feel is underrepresented, just put them in touch with Gerard and I'm confident they will be able to at least incorporate the knowledge. Best regards, Lodewijk 2011/2/24 M. Williamson node...@gmail.com To me, this is still a problem. If the committee never made any decisions and instead relied 100% on the opinions of others, then perhaps the composition wouldn't matter. However, think about this: if you gather a committee to make decisions about agriculture and recruit only from European countries, you will find a very different group of opinions than if you recruit from Africa or India. The same is certainly the case here. The way people think about languages and linguistic diversity differs around the world, and it is not to our benefit to have a committee composed of mostly people from one part of the world, especially considering that over 60% of Earth's population lives in Asia. What I am not suggesting is that we should invite the world's foremost expert on Hindi or Sino-Tibetan languages to be a member of the committee; what I am suggesting is that we should invite people similar to existing members, except that they happen to be from Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc. So people with a deep interest in many languages, who can bring us different perspectives. 2011/2/23, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org: On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 06:55, Bishakha Datta bishakhada...@gmail.com wrote: One thought occurred to me: there is no representation of Asian languages in the committee (and I don't mean only Indian languages). Would the committee want to consider an expansion in membership to include someone who is fluent in one or more Asian languages? In principle yes, but... [1] Linguistic qualifications for becoming a LangCom member are not so simple. After a couple of years in LangCom, I may say that many professors of linguistics don't fit. And the main reason is not their knowledge, but attitude toward languages. Or, to be more precise, their boldness. For example, LangCom tasks require from one Indo-Europeanist to give expertize on any Indo-European language, but many of them would say that the classification of, let's say, Kurdish languages is not the part of their job, but the part of the job of an expert in Iranian languages. Such expert in LangCom is basically useless. Doesn't the language committee also actively seek out experts in different languages when they need to? I seem to recall you guys having all test wikis checked by a linguist/expert who speaks the language before they are created. So it's not like people who speak Asian (or other similar) languages aren't being actively involved, it's just that none of them are in the administrative committee at this time. At least that's how I remember it being explained many threads ago. :-) -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- skype: node.ue ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] An agenda for the meeting of the language committee
{{sofixit}} :)
2011/2/24 M. Williamson node...@gmail.com
There are currently 13 members of the committee, all of them live in
Europe, the US or Canada with the sole exception of Amir Aharoni, who
currently lives in Jerusalem but lived in Russia until 1991 and whose
native language is Russian. I find it hard to believe that the
language committee has been actively recruiting Wikimedians or others
in Asia, Latin America or Africa but faced constant rejection and lack
of interest from all people in those places, which is the impression I
got from what you said. I think the appropriate reaction to such a
strong imbalance (and it is a very strong one) is not to say Well, we
will be happy to have them if they ever want to join but to say We
recognize that this is an issue and we will actively recruit people to
try to rectify it.
2011/2/24, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org:
As far as I am aware, but please correct me if I'm wrong, the language
committee has always tried to gather a large diversity from all over the
world. However, it seems hard to find people from underrepresented
regions
to bother themselves with this boring matter (no offense). So if you know
a
good candidate from a region you feel is underrepresented, just put them
in
touch with Gerard and I'm confident they will be able to at least
incorporate the knowledge.
Best regards,
Lodewijk
2011/2/24 M. Williamson node...@gmail.com
To me, this is still a problem. If the committee never made any
decisions and instead relied 100% on the opinions of others, then
perhaps the composition wouldn't matter. However, think about this: if
you gather a committee to make decisions about agriculture and recruit
only from European countries, you will find a very different group of
opinions than if you recruit from Africa or India. The same is
certainly the case here. The way people think about languages and
linguistic diversity differs around the world, and it is not to our
benefit to have a committee composed of mostly people from one part of
the world, especially considering that over 60% of Earth's population
lives in Asia. What I am not suggesting is that we should invite the
world's foremost expert on Hindi or Sino-Tibetan languages to be a
member of the committee; what I am suggesting is that we should invite
people similar to existing members, except that they happen to be from
Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc. So people with a deep interest in
many languages, who can bring us different perspectives.
2011/2/23, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org:
On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com
wrote:
On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 06:55, Bishakha Datta
bishakhada...@gmail.com
wrote:
One thought occurred to me: there is no representation of Asian
languages
in
the committee (and I don't mean only Indian languages). Would the
committee
want to consider an expansion in membership to include someone who
is
fluent
in one or more Asian languages?
In principle yes, but... [1]
Linguistic qualifications for becoming a LangCom member are not so
simple. After a couple of years in LangCom, I may say that many
professors of linguistics don't fit. And the main reason is not their
knowledge, but attitude toward languages. Or, to be more precise,
their boldness. For example, LangCom tasks require from one
Indo-Europeanist to give expertize on any Indo-European language, but
many of them would say that the classification of, let's say, Kurdish
languages is not the part of their job, but the part of the job of an
expert in Iranian languages. Such expert in LangCom is basically
useless.
Doesn't the language committee also actively seek out experts in
different languages when they need to? I seem to recall you guys
having all test wikis checked by a linguist/expert who speaks the
language before they are created.
So it's not like people who speak Asian (or other similar) languages
aren't being actively involved, it's just that none of them are in the
administrative committee at this time. At least that's how I
remember it being explained many threads ago. :-)
--
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023
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