Re: [Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation
Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: [...] Besides that, contemporary term for site is social network. There are just more and less successful social networks. Wikimedia is successful social network for a very specific type of demographics: young middle class males. Actually, not so young anymore. I think that we are loosing males from younger generations, too. That means that we have to work on diversification of our editor demographics. And one edit in ten days is better than no edits at all. We need cleverly created concepts which would make editing easy, fun, causal. With a lot of interesting content around; probably, based on existing Wikimedia content, but not necessary. The time when wiki concept was new and interesting passed a few years ago. And even Microsoft has better sense for new technologies than us. For example, our goal is not to make a possibility to read Wikipedia from iPhone. Apple did that. The goal is to have easy access to editing from iPhone. Isn't an iPhone one of those gadgets with about 10 cm of screen and no keyboard? Why would we want to encourage some- one to edit with such a device? It must be very frustrating to do so properly, and we don't profit, in fact it is to our disadvantage if it's done improperly. While I appreciate the efforts to encourage wider partici- pation, IMHO we should make sure that we keep the quality of our products and our human resources in mind. No edits at all may be better than one edit in ten days for probably 99% of the population. And I don't think that we will at- tract the right 1% who will wander the libraries and the web in search of the missing pieces of information, tackle thick books and pause before clicking on the Save button to es- timate whether their edit will find the approval of their peers, by emphasizing that editing is easy or fun - because it isn't. And it probably shouldn't be. Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Creating articles in small wikipedias based on user requirement
Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net wrote: [...] Of course, any way that people reply always leaves duplicate and unnecessary text in the email, which can be a pain when you're catching up with a large number of emails in a thread. That's just one of the downsides of the mailing list format, with a setup that can't cope with full conversation trees but instead assumes that the conversation is perfectly linear. JFTR: No, mailing lists don't assume that in any way. And one of Jussi-Ville's implicit points of criticism was espe- cially that top-posting is no conversation, but an exchange of monologues as the connection between two posts is not al- ways clear. Another way of arguing this (since I only just found Keegan's second reply when cropping the previous email...): having a mixture of posting styles reflects the rich historical culture of email transactions, and is something that we should foster rather than try to do away with. That may fly at a pitch for a local election campaign for the incumbent (our streets aren't dirty/potholed/whatever, they reflect the rich culture of our community), but in most cases people will define the term culture *much* nar- rower. And the success of Wikipedia, Wiktionary Co., not to speak of the UX initiatives of the WMF, seems to indicate that some forms of presentation are more likely to attract and please readers than others. But the advantage of email compared to body odours and choice or lack of clothing is that it is very easy to filter on the recipient's side so there's no need for fury. Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia trade mark misuse
Jiří Hofman hofm...@aldebaran.cz wrote: One of the Czech online news services, Aktuálně.cz ( http://aktualne.cz ) has launched its own encyclopedia a few weeks ago. Links to the encyclopedia's articles are used in news articles on this server. That would not be anything strange if the encyclopedia wasn't named Wiki. Even that would not be so strange. But it is not a wiki at all. Users and/or readers of this server cannot edit it. It looks like the name was not chosen after a generic word wiki but Wikipedia. I consider this as a misuse of the Wikipedia trade mark. [...] You are aware of [[en:Wiki]] for a history of wikis and WMF's part in it? Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com wrote: [...] Data is important. It's also not always possible to gather. When multiple things are competing for attention, you can make one or the other more prominent, and it will get correspondingly more clicks. But it's up to your judgment to assess whether that's a good thing or a bad thing: are more people finding what they actually want, or are people being distracted from what they actually want? If we have more clicks on interlanguage links and less on other interface elements, is that good or bad? If we wanted to maximize clicks on interlanguage links, we could always put them above the article text, so you have to scroll through them to get to the article text . . . but that's obviously ridiculous. As Greg said above, data is important, but it can be hard to apply correctly. Sometimes you really have to use judgment. But we could still use more data -- for instance, why do people usually click interlanguage links? Do they usually understand the language they're reading the article in, or not? We could have a little multiple-choice question that pops up a small percentage of the time when people click on an interlanguage link. My suspicion is that a long list is not ideal. Yes, people will see it for what it is and they'll be able to find their language easily enough if they look. But it's distracting, and it's not obvious without (in some cases) a lot of scrolling whether there's anything below it. If we could use some heuristic to pick a few languages to display, with a prominent More link at the bottom, I suspect that would be superior. But first we should gather data on click rates for the list fully expanded and unexpanded. Per-page click rates are important here -- many articles have no interlanguage links, so will obviously pull down the average click rate despite being unaffected by the change. What's the trend like as articles have more interlanguage links? How many more interlanguage clicks are there for articles in twenty languages as opposed to five? Can we plot that? For each wiki separately, for preference? All this data gathering takes manpower to do, of course. Maybe the usability team doesn't have the manpower. If so, does anyone qualified volunteer? If not, we have to make decisions without data -- and that doesn't automatically mean keep the status quo, nor change it back if people complain loudly. It means someone who happens to be in charge of making the decision needs to make a judgment call, based on all the evidence they have available. [...] But why base only the decision for interlanguage links on click data? A rough estimate would say that the Edit button is used by far less than 1% as well. (Not to speak of View history or the various fundraiser banners.) Yet, the original grant explicitly stated as a *goal* to ease the edit process. So there is not only evidence to consider, but also policy. We do want to emphasize: Everyone can edit!, so we put an Edit button up there, even if it might disturb someone's mind with clutter. Do we want to advertize: This article is available in 100+ languages!, so someone when reading another article without that long list will think about translating this article to his mother tongue? Or maybe just say: Awesome! Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Announcement list is active
Marcin Cieslak sa...@saper.info wrote: [...] Please share other thoughts or opportunities - on the meta page or on this list. And please also encourage others to widely subscribe to this list. Post to village pumps, on projects, etc. Could someone see to hooking it up to Gmane, please? Anyone can do it. I just posted a request to create gmane.org.wikimedia.community.announce (gmane.org.wikimedia.announce has been snarfed by Wikizine already). Thanks, it's available now at URI:nntp://news.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.community.announce. I usually refrain from doing these things myself as I find it helpful if the mailing list administrators are in the loop on related services. Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Announcement list is active
Jay Walsh jwa...@wikimedia.org wrote: [...] Please share other thoughts or opportunities - on the meta page or on this list. And please also encourage others to widely subscribe to this list. Post to village pumps, on projects, etc. Could someone see to hooking it up to Gmane, please? TIA, Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Announcement list is active
Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: [Quoting reordered.] Please share other thoughts or opportunities - on the meta page or on this list. And please also encourage others to widely subscribe to this list. Post to village pumps, on projects, etc. Could someone see to hooking it up to Gmane, please? I learned yesterday that the announcement list should have forwarded to the foundation-l it did not work because of a configuration issue.. In future announcements will forward as it should. That's not what I asked for. Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Call for Wikimania Scholarship Applications
Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: No, I am not confising anything :-). All EU countries citzens can enter Poland using their EU ID. They cross the same gates on airports as people from Shengen zone. The only diffrence is that non-Shengen countries' members are subject to diffrent custom regulations and they can be examined by custom officers. It also apply to EEA countries ((Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway) and based on separate treaty also Switzerland. I think you are confusing things... I am a British citizen and I'm fairly sure I need a passport to enter a Schengen zone country. Once I'm in a Schengen zone country, I think I can travel to another one with other ID, but I need a passport for the first Schengen country. No, British citizens with an identity card can enter the EEA and Switzerland without a passport in the same way that I as a German citizen do not need a passport to enter the UK. The Schengen zone has absolutely nothing to do with customs, as far as I know. If you are travelling from an EU country to an EU country, there is basically not customs (you walk through the blue channel). That's basically correct with some exceptions (Heligoland, Ceuta/Melilla, the French départements d’outre-mer, etc.). Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Call for Wikimania Scholarship Applications
Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: No, British citizens with an identity card can enter the EEA and Switzerland without a passport in the same way that I as a German citizen do not need a passport to enter the UK. http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAndTransport/Foreigntravel/BeforeYouTravel/DG_4016874 This official UK government page seems to disagree with you. This official UK government page seems to agree with me: | [...] | Entry requirements | Passport validity | You need a passport or a National Identity Card (see the | website of the Identity and Passports Service (IPS)) to en- | ter Poland. | [...] (from: URI:http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/europe/poland?ta=entryRequirementspg=4) Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 10th birthday edit drive?
Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote: (On the other hand, some people could consider that a kind of environment unfriendly spamming.) Decomposable stickers! ;-) At a recent local election, a party here used white spray chalk to put their slogans on the sidewalk (or, as the oppo- nents would see it, have them trampled on :-)). While it was decomposable, it wasn't gone by the first rain as promised by the campaigners. But I think Wikipedia probably has more unanimous support :-). If the weather in 2011 is similar to this year's however, it might be necessary to use black chalk in the northern he- misphere :-). Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] video presentation on explicit images on WMF projects
(anonymous) wrote: [...] while we're at it, is it fair to infer from Andrew's post above that media depicting 'a 16-year-old masturbating is not real child pornography, and is in fact legal..' is the foundation's official position? [...] ^^ I'm not a native speaker, but I'd think that you cannot omit Andrew's qualification , though explicit, in New South Wales, Australia) without changing his statement complete- ly. And I have a hard time trying to align this act of omis- sion with good faith. Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Pedophilia and the Non discrimination policy
George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: The hand in hand with children wording seems to conflate physical space with cyberspace. Please see my relevant reply to George William Herbert. There's a known and ancedotally (but not known to be statistically) significant trend of pedophiles attracting victims online. Also, apparently, of them coordinating amongst themselves to pass tips about possible victims in specific areas. Still, pedophiliac preying (whether on- or offline, not to speak of the coordination thereof) seems marginal at best compared to traditional run-of-the-mill child abuse which involves non-pedophiliac adults often related to the victim looking for substitute sex partners. Should those other potential perpetrators be banned as well? Do we care for their victims as much? And if we assume that it is the parents' duty to supervise their children's access to Wikipedia as content not suitable for them may be displayed, how could there be any danger to them? It would have been so much nicer if there had been a dif- ferent reason to ban this user. Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Consensus on Meta for suspecting every volunteer of abuse ?
Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Of course Google has this kind of logs. However, Google is just not transparant about it. Being transparent is nice and important, but being it is just as important to be nice. Filter log is just as correct and transparent as abuse log, but doesn't make a newbie feel that he's accused of abuse. Filter in current German discussions /can/ allude to the semi-governmental content filters deployed by most major German ISPs to deny users access to child pornography web- sites. So, should we find a term that is suitable for all six billion people on this planet, or should we covertly prefer users who are curious enough to just click on that link to find out what's behind it? Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Consensus on Meta for suspecting every volunteer of abuse ?
Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: [...] Most importantly, don't forget that you know what the abuse log is and you know that it's harmless, but newbies don't know it. Many newbies got really scared when they saw Windows 95's error messages about applications that performed illegal actions. (I actually saw it myself.) I gave several classes of basic Wikipedia editing to groups of newbies. The misunderstandings of the technical terms - and they do encounter these technical terms - are most unexpected. Actually, until today I did not even know what the abuse log was. But I would have treated it the same way as the block log: Oh, it's empty, can't be that bad then! Your experience with Windows users seems to differ vastly from mine though. I do not know of even a single one who was scared to play Minesweeper. On the other hand, they grasp in microseconds what a friend in a social network is, how a politician tweets without opening his mouth and that not all blackberries are edible. So if, as you say, newbies could be frightened off by /seeing/ an abuse log (or a block log) link, we should not try to find a short term that could explain to someone with no insights whatsoever in Wikipedia's inner workings what the link contains, but we should hide the link (if the log is empty). But personally, I would ask new users to endure that sight because if they want to participate in the community, there will be lots of other terms, rules and habits that they did not know beforehand. Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: The tech team prioritised other things over the dumps, had the community had the final say they may have done otherwise Or not done anything \o/ I said as much. I wasn't trying to suggest a definite solution, I was just responding to the claim that there was nothing to fix. JFTR: I did not claim in any way that there was nothing to fix. I asked what - in your opinion - was to be fixed and how a different form of organization - in your opinion - would affect that process positively. Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: The tech team prioritised other things over the dumps, had the community had the final say they may have done otherwise Or not done anything \o/ I said as much. I wasn't trying to suggest a definite solution, I was just responding to the claim that there was nothing to fix. JFTR: I did not claim in any way that there was nothing to fix. I asked what - in your opinion - was to be fixed and how a different form of organization - in your opinion - would affect that process positively. Apologies for misrepresenting you. My point stands, though - I wasn't trying to suggest a definite solution. What point? That a different form of organization may have led to different results? Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: [...] If it ain't broke, don't fix it. is a good principle for maintaining the status quo, it isn't a good principle if you want progress. The job isn't done yet, so progress would be good. If you want progress you have to be willing to implement enhancements as well as fixes. One of the main fundamental problems I have found with the WMF is with regards to prioritising. Often the WMF doesn't prioritise the same things as the community seems to want. The dumps that Anthony mentioned is a good example of that - a significant number of community members complained about the dumps not working for years before much progress was made and they still aren't completely working. The tech team prioritised other things over the dumps, had the community had the final say they may have done otherwise (or they may not, no detailed discussion of the options ever took place in public so it is difficult to know what conclusion would have been reached). Given the fact that no candidate for the board seems to have campaigned prominently for this issue in this year's elec- tion and it does not even seem to have been mentioned in the two before, I do not see why the board should have decided otherwise. As the re-prioritization seems to have primarily been triggered by River's rant to this very list, do you find his behaviour or the subsequent board decision disrepectful of the community? Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimania-l] Thank you!
Bod Notbod bodnot...@gmail.com wrote: [...] 2. On many videos, if not most, it is impossible to see the content of the slides. Could videos be uploaded in higher resolution? Obvious downsides: larger file size, more bandwidth required. Or maybe all presenters could be encouraged to upload their presentation slides (I know some already do this) so people can view along as they listen to the audio of the talk. [...] At another conference, the video switched from the camera viewpoint to the slides back and forth (I do not know wheth- er that was done while recording or in post-production). Ob- viously, this requires more manpower but the result was worth it. Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Use of moderation
Henning Schlottmann h.schlottm...@gmx.net wrote: [...] It is open to read worldwide without registration, first time posters have to authenticate their mail address in the from with gmane. ... and to subscribe to foundation-l with nomail AFAIR. Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: [...] The WMF as a membership organisation would be great, but I don't think it is practical. A better option (which I have discussed with a few poeple) would be having the chapters as members of the WMF and the community as members of the chapters. There are other global non-profits that work along those lines. (The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, for example.) Why? What's broken at the moment? The servers are running, and I really cannot see how a different form of organization would have any favourable impact on a few million people writing the best free encyclopedia (*1) in this solar sys- tem. Not to speak of this thing with the sum of all know- ledge being shared by every single human being. If for each message sent in this thread, one article was checked for vandalism according to Anthony's proposal, he could present some results in a few days. If one article was checked each time a message in this thread is read somewhere around the globe, he'd be done in a few minutes. Tim (*1) ... and dictionary and books and media repository and ... ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: [...] The WMF as a membership organisation would be great, but I don't think it is practical. A better option (which I have discussed with a few poeple) would be having the chapters as members of the WMF and the community as members of the chapters. There are other global non-profits that work along those lines. (The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, for example.) Why? What's broken at the moment? The English full-history dump, for one. And that would work if the WMF were a membership organiza- tion? Interesting. Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Email list archives
Andrew Turvey andrewrtur...@googlemail.com wrote: [...] Has anyone got any tips about how I can either format an email to begin with or view the email afterwards to solve this problem? Every at most 72 characters, hit the key known as [Enter]. Before sending the mail, read it. Secondly, has this technology been developed recently? Seems it needs a bit of investment, or alternatively, we need to move over to a better third party platform like, perhaps, Yahoo Groups. No, reading has been known to man for some millennia, type- writers since the early 19th century. Most modern user agents and editors will provide functions though that can help you with formatting your text. In Gnus for example, you can take a look at auto-fill-mode (which is enabled by de- fault). Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A heads up
Magnus Manske magnusman...@googlemail.com wrote:
[...]
I got another, loosely idea: Could we use the language templates in
the descriptions to build a missing matrix of translations, for
translators? I speak English and German; I would like to see images
that only have a German description, and translate it to English. A
special site (toolserver?) could show me the image and the German
description, I enter the English one in a text box, and go to a page
with everything prepared for me, just click save and be done.
Go ahead: Toolserver's Templatetiger database has - though
rather raw - data for Commons (cf.
URI:http://toolserver.org/~kolossos/templatetiger/tt-table4.php?template=Informationlang=commonswikiwhere=is=).
Problems I see:
- Tagging those pictures where the language of the descrip-
tion is not specified (cf. [[File:Quail1.PNG]] (English)
vs. [[File:Helsinkitram.jpg]] ((probably :-)) German).
- Dealing with all the pictures that do not use
{{Information}}.
Tim
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Re: [Foundation-l] Proposed revised attribution language
Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net wrote: Can we please drop the nonsense that a URL is no attribution at all in an offline context? I've made this point before, but URLs do not suddenly become devoid of meaning just because you're using a medium where you can't follow a hyperlink. I could just as soon say that print media aren't acceptable sources for Wikipedia articles because you can't check them by following a hyperlink, it's the same logic. We allow references that adapt the conventions of other media to our context, we should allow people using other media the same privilege in adapting our conventions to their context. The issue, from my point of view*, is that they do suddenly become devoid of meaning as soon as those links stop working. This can happen for a number of reasons, including article moves, deletions, and (insert deity forbid) wikipedia.org going away. There are no guarantees that I'm aware of that the links will continue to work for even a decade, let alone the full length of copyright (and, given the tendency to attribute authors even for PD works, afterwards). On the other hand, a local copy of the author list (normally) stays accessible as long as the work does. [...] Is this problem really exclusive to online references? I'd guess there is plenitude of author references to [...] et al. (or none at all) out there that cannot be resolved without access to a catalog or the source material itself and become devoid of meaning at the latest when these re- sources are destroyed or not accessible. If the shards of a coffee mug with a URL attribution get excavated 100 years in the future, I think a bit of research on the part of the archaeologists can be asked for. Tim ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
