Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Samuel Klein wrote (in two messages): *A wiki for book metadata, with an entry for every published work, statistics about its use and siblings, and discussion about its usefulness as a citation (a collaboration with OpenLibrary, merging WikiCite ideas) I could see this happening on Wikisource. Why could you not see this happening within the existing OpenLibrary? Is there anything wrong with that project? It sounds to me as you would just copy (fork) all their book data, but for what gain? (Plus you would have to motivate why a copy of OpenLibrary should go into the English Wikisource and not the German or French one.) -- Lars Aronsson (l...@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Andrew Gray wrote: 2009/8/1 John Vandenberg: On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 5:09 PM, Samuel Klein wrote: Also... *A wiki for book metadata, with an entry for every published work, statistics about its use and siblings, and discussion about its usefulness as a citation (a collaboration with OpenLibrary, merging WikiCite ideas) Why not just do this in the Wikisource project? 99% percent of every published work are free/libre. Only the last 70 years worth of texts are restricted by copyright, so it doesnt make sense to build a different project for those works. I think your estimate's a little off, sadly :-) Firstly, copyright lasts more than the statutory seventy years, as a general rule - remember, authors don't conveniently die the moment they publish. If we discount the universal one-date cutoff in the US eighty years ago - itself a fast-receding anomaly - extant copyrights probably last about a hundred years from publication, on average. But more critically, whilst a hundred years is a drop in the bucket of the time we've been writing texts, it's a very high proportion of the time we've been publishing them at this rate. Worldwide, book publication rates now are pushing two orders of magnitude higher than they were a century ago, and that was itself probably up an order of magnitude on the previous century. Before 1400, the rate of creation of texts that have survived probably wouldn't equal a year's output now. I don't have the numbers to hand to be confident of this - and hopefully Open Library, as it grows, will help us draw a firmer conclusion - but I'd guess that at least half of the identifiable works ever conventionally published as monographs remain in copyright today. 70% wouldn't surprise me, and it's still a growing fraction. Intuitively, I think your analysis is closer to reality, but, even so, that older 30% is more than enough to keep us all busy for a very long time. To appreciate the size of the task consider the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. It is well in the public domain, and most articles there have a small number of sources which themselves would be in the public domain. Only a small portion of the 1911 EB project on Wikisource is complete to acceptable standards; we have virtually nothing from EB's sources; we also have virtually nothing from any other edition of the EB even though everything up to the early 14th (pre 1946) is already in the public domain. Dealing with this alone is a huge task. Having all this bibliography on Wikisource is conceivable, though properly not in the Wikisource of any one language; that would be consistent with my own original vision of Wikisource from the very first day. A good bibliographic survey of a work should reference all editions and all translations of a work. For an author, multiply this by the number of his works. Paradoxically, Wikisource, like Wikipedia and like many another mature projects, has made a virtue of obsessive minute accuracy and uniformity. While we all treasure accuracy, its pursuit can be subject to diminishing returns. A bigger Wikisource community could in theory overcome this, but the process of acculturation that goes on in mature wiki projects makes this unlikely. Sam's reference to book metadata is itself an underestimate of the challenge. It doesn't even touch on journal articles, or other material too short to warrant the publication of a monograph. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
I could see this happening on Wikisource. I mention it as another project because it would eventually involve importing and organizing freely available metadata on roughly ten million books, and defining a style guide for helping organizing citations and comments about each as a source -- very different from the current work going on at WS. We need to publicly think about what each of the Projects will look like when they fully cover their scope... or at a few major milestones along the way. That view would also help define what long-term notability standards will look like for projects that currently reject free knowledge about certain topics. John V writes: 99% percent of every published work are free/libre. Only the last 70 years worth of texts are restricted by copyright, so it doesnt make sense to build a different project for those works. It's closer to only 10% that is free/libre -- the rate of publishing has been growing geometrically for a number of decades, and it's the last 85 years for some texts. --SJ On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 6:32 AM, John Vandenbergjay...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 5:09 PM, Samuel Kleinmeta...@gmail.com wrote: Also... *A wiki for book metadata, with an entry for every published work, statistics about its use and siblings, and discussion about its usefulness as a citation (a collaboration with OpenLibrary, merging WikiCite ideas) Why not just do this in the Wikisource project? 99% percent of every published work are free/libre. Only the last 70 years worth of texts are restricted by copyright, so it doesnt make sense to build a different project for those works. i.e. Wikisource could still have a page about a source even if the text is not present. But before that is feasible, we need a bigger Wikisource community, otherwise it will end up as a mess. -- 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] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 4:28 AM, Ray Saintongesainto...@telus.net wrote: Andrew Gray wrote: 2009/8/1 John Vandenberg: On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 5:09 PM, Samuel Klein wrote: Also... *A wiki for book metadata, with an entry for every published work, statistics about its use and siblings, and discussion about its usefulness as a citation (a collaboration with OpenLibrary, merging WikiCite ideas) Why not just do this in the Wikisource project? 99% percent of every published work are free/libre. Only the last 70 years worth of texts are restricted by copyright, so it doesnt make sense to build a different project for those works. I think your estimate's a little off, sadly :-) I should have added more qualifiers, such as important / valuable / interesting / highly referenced. sadly is an apt way of describing a large proportion of modern works. :-) The research industry has been using quantity metrics for quite a while, forcing university staff to publish *lots* in order to keep being funded. However governments around the world are now adopting quality metrics. e.g. the Australian govt has decided to stop counting journal articles published in journals that they have not approved and rated. snip correction of John's copyright simplification/ snip correction of John's exaggerated estimate/ :-) Intuitively, I think your analysis is closer to reality, but, even so, that older 30% is more than enough to keep us all busy for a very long time. snip EB/ In most topical areas, the 10%/30%/whatever that is free is far more important than a large percentage of current publications, a lot of which are republications, regurgitations, etc. If we have the original PD texts... - we can do free translations, - we can be a resource of useful annotations of these works, - we can analyse the raw data published by governments, - etc. We could also create modern or simple translations of older novels, making them more appealing to younger generations. With a stronger collection of public domain works, Wikibooks and wikiversity can build free resources, making a dent in the large quantity of new publications that are emitted each year. Sam's reference to book metadata is itself an underestimate of the challenge. It doesn't even touch on journal articles, or other material too short to warrant the publication of a monograph. Also, extensive bibliographies are an area that Wikisource is starting to become a focus. Currently the Wikisource rule is that we only permit a page in the Author namespace if the person: * is deceased, * has at least one work that is free, or * is mentioned in at least one work that is free This rule is intended to reduce our problem domain at the present time, in order to prevent vanity authors on Wikisource dominating the administrative resources. In the longer term, I think that Wikisource needs a better rule for Author pages so that it can host bibliographies of modern influential authors. However this may take quite a lot of discussion because the Wikisource community is quite opposed to any sort of notability rule. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 9:09 PM, Erik Moellere...@wikimedia.org wrote: 2009/7/31 Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com: On critical complex topics, the Foundation could benefit from more discussion and better planning. Why have we made it so hard to start new Projects? I would suggest that we use the strategy call for proposals to re-surface some of the most important project ideas that people would like to bring attention to. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Proposals Yes. IMO there's simply a lack of community support for a lot of ideas, either because people feel they are bad ideas, out of scope for our mission, already covered within the scope of existing projects, or hard to make work with the existing software. That said, I think there I was thinking particularly of Wikikids and Wikifamily (Rodovid), which are useful for significant audiences, implementable in an elegant way, about creating and sharing collections of free knowledge, and have existing multilingual communities. I don't know if they still need support of any kind, but their proposals for Wikimedia hosting remain. are definitely many ideas that are worth exploring further. My personal favorites: * a shared repository for structured data, the equivalent to Wikimedia Commons for data (some coherent synthesis of ideas from FreeBase, OmegaWiki, and Semantic MediaWiki); * a wiki for the global community of makers to share designs and prototypes for both functional and entertaining objects, which is becoming increasingly important as fabbing facilities become commonplace; * a wiki for annotated source code examples, similar to LiteratePrograms.org; +1 * a wiki for standardization; * a dedicated public outreach / evangelism wiki. What would this look like? Also... *A wiki for book metadata, with an entry for every published work, statistics about its use and siblings, and discussion about its usefulness as a citation (a collaboration with OpenLibrary, merging WikiCite ideas) Sj ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 5:09 PM, Samuel Kleinmeta...@gmail.com wrote: Also... *A wiki for book metadata, with an entry for every published work, statistics about its use and siblings, and discussion about its usefulness as a citation (a collaboration with OpenLibrary, merging WikiCite ideas) Why not just do this in the Wikisource project? 99% percent of every published work are free/libre. Only the last 70 years worth of texts are restricted by copyright, so it doesnt make sense to build a different project for those works. i.e. Wikisource could still have a page about a source even if the text is not present. But before that is feasible, we need a bigger Wikisource community, otherwise it will end up as a mess. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
2009/8/1 John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com: On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 5:09 PM, Samuel Kleinmeta...@gmail.com wrote: Also... *A wiki for book metadata, with an entry for every published work, statistics about its use and siblings, and discussion about its usefulness as a citation (a collaboration with OpenLibrary, merging WikiCite ideas) Why not just do this in the Wikisource project? 99% percent of every published work are free/libre. Only the last 70 years worth of texts are restricted by copyright, so it doesnt make sense to build a different project for those works. I think your estimate's a little off, sadly :-) Firstly, copyright lasts more than the statutory seventy years, as a general rule - remember, authors don't conveniently die the moment they publish. If we discount the universal one-date cutoff in the US eighty years ago - itself a fast-receding anomaly - extant copyrights probably last about a hundred years from publication, on average. But more critically, whilst a hundred years is a drop in the bucket of the time we've been writing texts, it's a very high proportion of the time we've been publishing them at this rate. Worldwide, book publication rates now are pushing two orders of magnitude higher than they were a century ago, and that was itself probably up an order of magnitude on the previous century. Before 1400, the rate of creation of texts that have survived probably wouldn't equal a year's output now. I don't have the numbers to hand to be confident of this - and hopefully Open Library, as it grows, will help us draw a firmer conclusion - but I'd guess that at least half of the identifiable works ever conventionally published as monographs remain in copyright today. 70% wouldn't surprise me, and it's still a growing fraction. -- - 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
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
I was thinking particularly of ... Wikifamily (Rodovid), If you're thinking of _this_ Rodovid http://en.rodovid.org/ (frontend is http://rodovid.org/) I would strongly vote for that. It's really is useful for significant audiences, and implementable in an elegant way In fact it's implemented already though development is going on (as never ending process). I would say that there is great synergy (between Rodovid and Wikipedia) opportunity as there is a lot of genealogy information to be described for Wikipedia. As of ... if they still need support of any kind, but their proposals for Wikimedia hosting remain. I don't know (and never new) the team that is not in need of help. On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 10:09 AM, Samuel Kleinmeta...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 9:09 PM, Erik Moellere...@wikimedia.org wrote: 2009/7/31 Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com: On critical complex topics, the Foundation could benefit from more discussion and better planning. Why have we made it so hard to start new Projects? I would suggest that we use the strategy call for proposals to re-surface some of the most important project ideas that people would like to bring attention to. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Proposals Yes. IMO there's simply a lack of community support for a lot of ideas, either because people feel they are bad ideas, out of scope for our mission, already covered within the scope of existing projects, or hard to make work with the existing software. That said, I think there I was thinking particularly of Wikikids and Wikifamily (Rodovid), which are useful for significant audiences, implementable in an elegant way, about creating and sharing collections of free knowledge, and have existing multilingual communities. I don't know if they still need support of any kind, but their proposals for Wikimedia hosting remain. are definitely many ideas that are worth exploring further. My personal favorites: * a shared repository for structured data, the equivalent to Wikimedia Commons for data (some coherent synthesis of ideas from FreeBase, OmegaWiki, and Semantic MediaWiki); * a wiki for the global community of makers to share designs and prototypes for both functional and entertaining objects, which is becoming increasingly important as fabbing facilities become commonplace; * a wiki for annotated source code examples, similar to LiteratePrograms.org; +1 * a wiki for standardization; * a dedicated public outreach / evangelism wiki. What would this look like? Also... *A wiki for book metadata, with an entry for every published work, statistics about its use and siblings, and discussion about its usefulness as a citation (a collaboration with OpenLibrary, merging WikiCite ideas) Sj ___ 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] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 7:52 AM, Ryan Lomonacowiki.ral...@gmail.com wrote: The rules did disenfranchise me, for example. It doesn't bother me that I can't vote, but that said, I would've liked to vote if eligible. I am not active on Wikipedia, but I do follow the mailing lists, and have followed the election process. If I really wanted to, I could've racked up 50 edits to get a vote, but that almost seems dirty, I guess, to make edits just to regain eligibility for the election. I think that mailing lists posts should be treated as edits. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Hello, On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 8:40 AM, Milos Rancicmill...@gmail.com wrote: I think that mailing lists posts should be treated as edits. Thank you; this sentence made my day. -- Guillaume Paumier [[m:User:guillom]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Hoi, When we have consensus on that one, someone has to count them.. So what piority do we give it and, what do we bumb down the list ? Alternatively who is volunteering to write the necessary software anyway and how are we going to get it operational ?? PS I like the idea grin Thanks, GerardM 2009/7/31 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 7:52 AM, Ryan Lomonacowiki.ral...@gmail.com wrote: The rules did disenfranchise me, for example. It doesn't bother me that I can't vote, but that said, I would've liked to vote if eligible. I am not active on Wikipedia, but I do follow the mailing lists, and have followed the election process. If I really wanted to, I could've racked up 50 edits to get a vote, but that almost seems dirty, I guess, to make edits just to regain eligibility for the election. I think that mailing lists posts should be treated as edits. ___ 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] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 8:51 AM, Guillaume Paumierguillom@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 8:40 AM, Milos Rancicmill...@gmail.com wrote: I think that mailing lists posts should be treated as edits. Thank you; this sentence made my day. Thank you, too. We share our happiness with each others' sentences. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Hoi, When it is agreed that people can vote based on their mail contributions, the one thing necessary is connecting people to their WMF user. When this information is available on a user, the global user may be made known as a voter. In my opinion you do not want to involve people when there is no need. Automate what can be automated and through a link to a user it can be automated. While I agree that this makes sense, I doubt very much that many people will have a vote as a result of this and even more, I doubt people will cast their vote because they can in this way. Thanks, GerardM 2009/7/31 John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 5:28 PM, Gerard Meijssengerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, When we have consensus on that one, someone has to count them.. So what piority do we give it and, what do we bumb down the list ? Alternatively who is volunteering to write the necessary software anyway and how are we going to get it operational ?? I have been developing a python library that does the mailing list analysis, grouping together posts from the same user that were sent with different email addresses, etc. and doing stats. Those stats can be published monthly onto meta. I think the easiest method of converting this into suffrage is to have a special list where people can be added when they have been granted suffrage for extra-ordinary reasons. At election time we inform people who dont qualify via normal means to check the various extra-ordinary suffrage criteria, such as their mail stats, and notify the election committee if they qualify. The election committee would then add the person to the special list. -- 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] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 7:52 PM, Gerard Meijssengerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, When it is agreed that people can vote based on their mail contributions, the one thing necessary is connecting people to their WMF user. When this information is available on a user, the global user may be made known as a voter. In my opinion you do not want to involve people when there is no need. Automate what can be automated and through a link to a user it can be automated. While I agree that this makes sense, I doubt very much that many people will have a vote as a result of this and even more, I doubt people will cast their vote because they can in this way. It is for this reason that it would be extra-ordinary. Most people who send email to foundation-l would meet the normal suffrage requirements. All I am saying is that _if_ we do agree that emails should be counted as edits, *I* can count them or publish stats that allow others to more easily count them. We have the technology. Do we have the need? Each year there are people who should have suffrage that do not. If I remember correctly, last year the techies were allowed to vote even if they didnt meet the edit criteria. We should learn from the previous elections, and have a panel that reviews extra-ordinary cases. It is worth the effort. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
2009/7/31 Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com: For me, the analogy is simple: just because you get a driver's license once doesn't entitle you to drive for the rest of your life. Unless you actively do something wrong and get disqualified, yes it does. The analogy works for not letting banned editors vote, it doesn't work for not letting lapsed editors vote. (And there is the obvious flaw from the fact that we don't require people to take a test to edit.) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Right on. I detect ageism supplementing the recentism. But seriously folks, if fraud were the issue then confirmed identify would overcome the problem. The number-of-recent-edits criterion has two effects that bother me. 1. It effectively puts the vote firmly in the hands of producers not consumers. 2. It effectively discriminates against those with RSI or who are otherwise impaired The first phenomenon is basic. We know damned lilttle about our users and often seem to care less. Perhaps having a little more representation would tilt toward responsiveness to the user base. As important as editors are, I can see at the project level how their interests just don't seem very responsive to users I have been appalled at some of the displays of attitude toward users (imbeciles etc.) The default set up of our wikis limits the ability of many with content knowledge or enthusiasm to contribute in any satisfying way. To entrench those who have encouraged keeping projects as sandboxes they share with the like-minded seems very pernicious to Wikimedia as a movement. I think the Bolsheviks need to have less influence. On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 8:15 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: 2009/7/31 Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com: For me, the analogy is simple: just because you get a driver's license once doesn't entitle you to drive for the rest of your life. Unless you actively do something wrong and get disqualified, yes it does. The analogy works for not letting banned editors vote, it doesn't work for not letting lapsed editors vote. (And there is the obvious flaw from the fact that we don't require people to take a test to edit.) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Dennis C. During Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinity with the deities of other faiths. - Ambrose Bierce http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cynolatry ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 2:40 AM, Milos Rancicmill...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 7:52 AM, Ryan Lomonacowiki.ral...@gmail.com wrote: The rules did disenfranchise me, for example. It doesn't bother me that I can't vote, but that said, I would've liked to vote if eligible. I am not active on Wikipedia, but I do follow the mailing lists, and have followed the election process. If I really wanted to, I could've racked up 50 edits to get a vote, but that almost seems dirty, I guess, to make edits just to regain eligibility for the election. I think that mailing lists posts should be treated as edits. It wouldn't contradict the argument I made. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
You know, this comes up every year. And there's always good argument to both sides but there's never consensus to actually change it. There has been an election in one form or another since 2004, and except in 2004 where the requirement was having an account that is at least 3 months old or be a sysop on a project that is less than 3 months old (hey, Wikimedia *was* new after all :D), there has been an edit requirement to vote. Between 2005 to 2007, a voter was required to have had made at least 400 edits to a particular project (by roughly a month before voting) and be at least 3 months old. Last year, the requirement were raised to 600 edits by 3 months prior and 50 edits any time in the previous 6 months with exceptions granted to server administrators, paid staff of at least 3 months old, and current or former trustees. This year the requirement were relaxed slightly such that the 600 edits can be made up to 2 months prior, and with unified accounts combined votes across projects. At the end of the day, what form the suffrage requirements take depends on what group of people we want making that decision. Is it on one extreme the end user of the product, i.e. the readers of Wikipedia, Wikinews, etc...? Is it on the other extreme only people the editing community has decided to entrust with additional privileges, i.e. sysops? Or perhaps only people who have supported the projects in the form of monetary contributions? Or somewhere in between the two extreme, as we have now. Once that has been decided, the technical means of restricting voters to only that group of people can be arrived at, hopefully relatively easily. X number of edits by Y time is just a method of restricting suffrage to the group of people we want. It's a waste of time arguing X should be Z, or edits should include mailing list posting (which mailing list?), MediaWiki commits, Bugzilla bug tickets, ... We could spend all day doing it. Instead of arguing over the method of restriction, define who we want to restrict it to first. KTC -- Experience is a good school but the fees are high. - Heinrich Heine PGP.sig Description: PGP signature ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Kwan Ting Chan k...@ktchan.info wrote: You know, this comes up every year. And there's always good argument to both sides but there's never consensus to actually change it. There has been an election in one form or another since 2004, and except in 2004 where the requirement was having an account that is at least 3 months old or be a sysop on a project that is less than 3 months old (hey, Wikimedia *was* new after all :D), there has been an edit requirement to vote. Between 2005 to 2007, a voter was required to have had made at least 400 edits to a particular project (by roughly a month before voting) and be at least 3 months old. Last year, the requirement were raised to 600 edits by 3 months prior and 50 edits any time in the previous 6 months with exceptions granted to server administrators, paid staff of at least 3 months old, and current or former trustees. This year the requirement were relaxed slightly such that the 600 edits can be made up to 2 months prior, and with unified accounts combined votes across projects. At the end of the day, what form the suffrage requirements take depends on what group of people we want making that decision. Is it on one extreme the end user of the product, i.e. the readers of Wikipedia, Wikinews, etc...? Is it on the other extreme only people the editing community has decided to entrust with additional privileges, i.e. sysops? Or perhaps only people who have supported the projects in the form of monetary contributions? Or somewhere in between the two extreme, as we have now. Once that has been decided, the technical means of restricting voters to only that group of people can be arrived at, hopefully relatively easily. X number of edits by Y time is just a method of restricting suffrage to the group of people we want. It's a waste of time arguing X should be Z, or edits should include mailing list posting (which mailing list?), MediaWiki commits, Bugzilla bug tickets, ... We could spend all day doing it. Instead of arguing over the method of restriction, define who we want to restrict it to first. KTC -- Experience is a good school but the fees are high. - Heinrich Heine Speaking of consensus, where can I find the consensus for severely restricting the number of people who can vote by an arbitrary rule, and where is the consensus for the particular rule? You make it clear that The Powers That Be sit around a coffee table and pick whatever they think is best. In the absence of such a consensus the default would be a more permissive voting system. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Philippe Beaudette wrote: I'm sure that if there is significant response to the edit count requirement, next year's committee will happily (he said confidently, with no intent to volunteer for next year's committee) review it then. LOL, how many have you been on now? :P There's no (planned) election next year, I don't think *anyone* is planning on volunteering for a committee that won't exist. ;-) KTC -- Experience is a good school but the fees are high. - Heinrich Heine PGP.sig Description: PGP signature ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: Allow me, please, to reinforce this, wearing my election committee member hat. This years' rules were mostly carryovers from last years' rules. When we started, we looked around, realized that no significant opposition to last years' rules had been expressed, checked the talk pages to be sure, and modified the rules to cover anything we thought needed to be changed (for instance, this year we were able to use edits from across wikis, using SUL - which was one of the points of opposition that was raised last year, but there was not a technically feasible method to do it at the time). I'm sure that if there is significant response to the edit count requirement, next year's committee will happily (he said confidently, with no intent to volunteer for next year's committee) review it then. Philippe It should be the goal of all those who hold power to convince the populace that they must arrive at a consensus in order to change the status quo. That way those with power can more easily enact laws that appear uncontroversial and have them enter the status quo. Their power is then enhanced by the inherent difficulty in achieving a consensus, especially when the tools available for reaching consensus on general issues are brittle and difficult to use. It is further enhanced by quoting the status quo standard often, discouraging any attempts to enact change by pointing out that it would be extremely difficult to get everyone to agree since you are a mere individual. An alternate system would, by default, put power back in the hands of the community frequently, taking advantage of the fact that technology makes it trivial to sample their voices as often as seems fair. I suppose you will tell me that I can do this - I just have to vote for a candidate for the board that agrees with my views. This is a great idea, except that I am not eligible to vote. The WMF is a far cry from the original vision of it as a membership organization. Also, the board propagates stale laws under the notion of status quo for which the original consensus is no longer remembered. There is further no top down effort to ask the community if they have any good ideas, and then ask the community what they think about the best of those ideas. That, in my view, is a broken system. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Brian wrote: The WMF is a far cry from the original vision of it as a membership organization. Also, the board propagates stale laws under the notion of status quo for which the original consensus is no longer remembered. There is further no top down effort to ask the community if they have any good ideas, and then ask the community what they think about the best of those ideas. That, in my view, is a broken system. I'm going to take particular issue with the last point here. On 3 June *2008*, right after last year election, Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild), one of last year election committee member, posted on the talk page of either Election 2009 or election 2008 (and subsequently merged with this year) If you have an idea on how to improve the 2008 board elections system for 2009, please post them below under a section name that briefly summarizes the subject. Philippe posted this year rules on this mailing list on 27 May. It has always been the case that election committee will take any feedback or concern expressed and change the rules based on those concern if needed. Example of that happened last year when the recent edit over last 3 months requirement was added and subsequently modified based on feedback to last 6 months. This year, the period of candidate presentation was extended significantly, right up to the start of the election, again based on feedback here on this mailing list. You can't complain that the election committee don't take on board new ideas or feedbacks if you haven't expressed it before the election started. KTC -- Experience is a good school but the fees are high. - Heinrich Heine PGP.sig Description: PGP signature ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Kwan Ting Chan k...@ktchan.info wrote: Brian wrote: I'm going to take particular issue with the last point here. On 3 June *2008*, right after last year election, Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild), one of last year election committee member, posted on the talk page of either Election 2009 or election 2008 (and subsequently merged with this year) If you have an idea on how to improve the 2008 board elections system for 2009, please post them below under a section name that briefly summarizes the subject. I believe I covered this in my post where I mentioned brittle and difficult to use tools that do not actually facilitate consensus building. Also, a single person providing a comment and the board acting is not, in any way, a consensus. If the litmus test for changing a rule is consensus, then why are rules being changed after only one member of the community thinks its a good idea? The answer is that this is not how the system works. Rules only change when those with power think its a good idea. Philippe posted this year rules on this mailing list on 27 May. I am arguing that the rules have always been broken and that the original consensus is no longer remembered. Thus, their merit, in its entirety, should be fully reconsidered. I do not know what conversations the board has amongst itself when considering how much they should restrict the voice of the community. I can say that it is not visionary in the technological sense and that it goes against the original vision for the WMF, as I remember it. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Jul 31, 2009, at 1:13 PM, Brian wrote: There is further no top down effort to ask the community if they have any good ideas, and then ask the community what they think about the best of those ideas. That, in my view, is a broken system. Really? Been to the strategic planning wiki lately? There's a whole big section there asking for proposals from the community. :-) Philippe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Jul 31, 2009, at 1:13 PM, Brian wrote: There is further no top down effort to ask the community if they have any good ideas, and then ask the community what they think about the best of those ideas. That, in my view, is a broken system. Really? Been to the strategic planning wiki lately? There's a whole big section there asking for proposals from the community. :-) Philippe I am definitely in favor of this new effort, particularly with the CentralNotices. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Dear everyone, As a reminder, we also discussed suffrage requirements on this list last year: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-April/042105.html As a response to concerns over the proposed requirement that there be 50 edits between April and June before the election, this period was lengthened to January to June, and now here we are. best, Phoebe, On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Philippe Beaudettepbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: Allow me, please, to reinforce this, wearing my election committee member hat. This years' rules were mostly carryovers from last years' rules. When we started, we looked around, realized that no significant opposition to last years' rules had been expressed, checked the talk pages to be sure, and modified the rules to cover anything we thought needed to be changed (for instance, this year we were able to use edits from across wikis, using SUL - which was one of the points of opposition that was raised last year, but there was not a technically feasible method to do it at the time). I'm sure that if there is significant response to the edit count requirement, next year's committee will happily (he said confidently, with no intent to volunteer for next year's committee) review it then. Philippe On Jul 31, 2009, at 12:31 PM, Kwan Ting Chan wrote: And from experience, I can tell you the reality of establishing the rules work by starting from last year, and updating or modifying based on feedbacks. And that mean, given no strong community consensus to change our present form of requiring some form of edit requirement, having that requirement. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at gmail.com * ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Philippe Beaudettepbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Jul 31, 2009, at 1:13 PM, Brian wrote: There is further no top down effort to ask the community if they have any good ideas, and then ask the community what they think about the best of those ideas. That, in my view, is a broken system. Really? Been to the strategic planning wiki lately? There's a whole big section there asking for proposals from the community. :-) Right. I sympathize with both Brian and Philippe here. There are those who want the Foundation to take a more active role in facilitating discussion, even from those who are apathetic or shy about discussing policy; they also want the Foundation to make decisions based on thorough community input.They feel that the Foundation is acting on the limited input given, and fooling itself that this is a functional way to survey a broad and underrepresented community. There are also those who feel the Foundation is open and encouraging public discourse, but there aren't many community members contributing to the discussion. They want the community to take a more active role in discussions and to start new ones where they don't exist, and to be bold with ideas about change; they also want the Foundation to make bold decisions where none has been proposed, and to make steady progress. They feel the community is not very communal, and needs guidance when a complex topic arises to overcome a tendency towards flame wars - or should be left out of discussions requiring expertise altogether. I am somewhere in-between. On critical complex topics, the Foundation could benefit from more discussion and better planning. Why have we made it so hard to start new Projects? When did we acquire 8 million dollars in annual upkeep? Where are metrics of site popularity, public citation, and reuse (for all projects, not just Wikipedia) in measures of the Foundation's success? These topics are not generally on the table; occasionally we get PR instead of detailed answers; and regularly people say things such as I don't post to foundation-l [because it's not a friendly enough environment / it is full of hot air]. If you ever find yourself saying that about a canonical place for discussion of community-wide issues, you've run into a deep problem that you should address publicly and immediately. On critical planning topics, the community has the ball in its own court -- a healthy foundation, hundreds of thousands of active supporters, worldwide acclaim, and the authority to chart its own course. And so far, many of its good planners are looking elsewhere and saying I think you have the ball. Perhaps local factions and detailed policy-making have won out over larger-scope planning; perhaps even the most active community members don't realize the position they are in to contribute to long-term discussions -- such as how to define membership, suffrage, community engagement. But if you find yourself spending more time writing eloquent challenges to authority than proposing better solutions, you should stop and consider whether you can just fix what needs fixing. Sj ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 4:45 PM, phoebe ayersphoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: Dear everyone, As a reminder, we also discussed suffrage requirements on this list last year: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-April/042105.html As a response to concerns over the proposed requirement that there be 50 edits between April and June before the election, this period was lengthened to January to June, and now here we are. It might help to have a list of tricky subjects worthy of steady discussion and improvement. We don't have much of a general philosophy of suffrage (we already have a number of somewhat arbitrary exceptions, and certainly early wiki contributors would have hated the idea of edit count being used as any measure of dedication), and it's important enough to be worth more than the occasional email thread. I don't take issue with that element of the requirements, but I do think we are excluding smaller projects, where each contribution takes more time and it is rare to have any qualified voters who aren't running bots. (why should bot-runners get special recognition? Is it truly such a valuable task to add batches of stubs?) A future request : It would be handy if the election tool redirected ineligible voters to a place where they can share their priorities and thoughts, at least to the tune of a short paragraph. 'Ineligible to vote' makes people sad, and should not mean 'unqualified to contribute to the future of the projects'. SJ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
2009/7/31 Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com: On critical complex topics, the Foundation could benefit from more discussion and better planning. Why have we made it so hard to start new Projects? I would suggest that we use the strategy call for proposals to re-surface some of the most important project ideas that people would like to bring attention to. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Proposals IMO there's simply a lack of community support for a lot of ideas, either because people feel they are bad ideas, out of scope for our mission, already covered within the scope of existing projects, or hard to make work with the existing software. That said, I think there are definitely many ideas that are worth exploring further. My personal favorites: * a shared repository for structured data, the equivalent to Wikimedia Commons for data (some coherent synthesis of ideas from FreeBase, OmegaWiki, and Semantic MediaWiki); * a wiki for the global community of makers to share designs and prototypes for both functional and entertaining objects, which is becoming increasingly important as fabbing facilities become commonplace; * a wiki for annotated source code examples, similar to LiteratePrograms.org; * a wiki for standardization; * a dedicated public outreach / evangelism wiki. What are yours? -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
2009/8/1 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: * a wiki for the global community of makers to share designs and prototypes for both functional and entertaining objects, which is becoming increasingly important as fabbing facilities become commonplace; Commons could do this tomorrow if the blender file type was allowed. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
2009/7/31 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2009/8/1 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: * a wiki for the global community of makers to share designs and prototypes for both functional and entertaining objects, which is becoming increasingly important as fabbing facilities become commonplace; Commons could do this tomorrow if the blender file type was allowed. Not sure it would be the right space for developing the policies and collaboration spaces around it, but yeah, we need additional filetype support. I think COLLADA is supposed to be the interchange standard for 3D applications, and is supported by Blender; there were some security issues last time we looked at it (as is often the case). -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
The Wikimedia Foundation was originally envisaged as a membership organization. Per my recollection, everyone who ever edited would become a member. That didn't happen for legal reasons, however, I believe in the spirit of it being a membership organization. Unfortunately we now subscribe to the recentist perspective that only those that maintain a certain pace of editing are eligible to vote. We ignore, not only new editors who do not yet have 600 edits, but all editors who have 600 edits but have contributed to the projects in other ways recently, or have lapsed into just using the projects as a useful information resource. I highly doubt that a statistical analysis was carried out which found that editors that don't meet this requirement skew the results. I also highly doubt that editors that don't meet this requirement are incapable of comprehending the statements created by those seeking election, ranking them and making a perfectly valid choice that increases the power of the result. In my view, the only reason to limit voting to editors with a certain number of edits is to limit the effects of ballot stuffing. However, technical measures can easily counteract this effect. Additionally, the more people you allow to vote the more effective your anti-ballot stuffing countermeasures will be, as the larger number of votes mutes the effect of those who vote for the same person from several ip addresses. Thus, I must conclude that this rule was created arbitrarily. And if it was voted on, I seriously consider the result of that vote suspect, given present knowledge. /Brian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 7:57 PM, Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.comwrote: Recentist? Ignoring the, ahem, fanciful language you've chosen, I'd like to throw my support behind the voting qualifications wholeheartedly. For me, the analogy is simple: just because you get a driver's license once doesn't entitle you to drive for the rest of your life. This isn't just about what will skew the results with ballot stuffing. It's about giving suffrage to people who can make an informed decision that will positively affect the work of the community by getting adequate representation on the Board. Steven Walling You have only said that you support the current plan, without making an argument as to why it is beneficial. There is no information in the current heuristic that indicates that the editor is more or less familiar with the candidates than an editor who does not. Given that it is an international election it is quite likely the case that many of the people who are qualified to vote are not familiar with the majority of the candidates and they will have to read up on them. I argued in my original post that the heuristic does not distinguish between the capability of people that it captures and people it does not to make an informed and valid ranking decision about the candidates. To reiterate, you simply said you agree with the current plan without arguing that this is false. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 8:06 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 7:57 PM, Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.comwrote: Recentist? Ignoring the, ahem, fanciful language you've chosen, I'd like to throw my support behind the voting qualifications wholeheartedly. For me, the analogy is simple: just because you get a driver's license once doesn't entitle you to drive for the rest of your life. This isn't just about what will skew the results with ballot stuffing. It's about giving suffrage to people who can make an informed decision that will positively affect the work of the community by getting adequate representation on the Board. Steven Walling You have only said that you support the current plan, without making an argument as to why it is beneficial. There is no information in the current heuristic that indicates that the editor is more or less familiar with the candidates than an editor who does not. Given that it is an international election it is quite likely the case that many of the people who are qualified to vote are not familiar with the majority of the candidates and they will have to read up on them. I argued in my original post that the heuristic does not distinguish between the capability of people that it captures and people it does not to make an informed and valid ranking decision about the candidates. To reiterate, you simply said you agree with the current plan without arguing that this is false. The second sentence should read: There is no information in the current heuristic that indicates that editors who are allowed to vote are more or less familiar with the candidates than those who are not. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 10:08 PM, Brianbrian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: The second sentence should read: There is no information in the current heuristic that indicates that editors who are allowed to vote are more or less familiar with the candidates than those who are not. Who says there needs to be? The recent edits criteria reduces the incentive to crack or otherwise collect old unused but qualified accounts. For example, I could setup a free watchlist aggregation service and users would give me their passwords. Over time I could obtain many and then wait for accounts to naturally become inactive, then I could vote with them. It also makes it harder to otherwise obtain votes from accounts whos owners have lost interest in the project and might be willing to part with theirs easily. Recent editing activity also provides more information for analysis in the event that some kind of vote fraud is suspected. A recent edits criteria is justifiable on this kind of process basis alone. 50 edits can easily be made in a couple of hours, even if you're not making trivial changes. If you're not putting that level of effort it seems somewhat doubtful that you're going to read the 0.5 MBytes of text or so needed to completely and carefully review the provided candidate material from scratch. Like all stereotypes it won't hold true for everyone but if it's true on average then it will produce an average improvement, we just need to be careful not to disenfranchise too many. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
I have no opinion on whether the rule should exist, but it is something that deserves to be looked at. There are valid reasons for requiring a minimum recent edit count, of course, but perhaps there are better ways to handle it. The rules did disenfranchise me, for example. It doesn't bother me that I can't vote, but that said, I would've liked to vote if eligible. I am not active on Wikipedia, but I do follow the mailing lists, and have followed the election process. If I really wanted to, I could've racked up 50 edits to get a vote, but that almost seems dirty, I guess, to make edits just to regain eligibility for the election. My thought is that there may be other ways to enfranchise users who are clearly community members, but who for some reason or another are inactive on the projects themselves. What those ways are, I don't know. One thought: If the only, or at least the major reason that we're doing this is to avoid fraud, users with committed identities - encrypted messages on their user page as a way to verify their identity in case an account is stolen - could be re-enfranchised on a case-by-case basis if they can provide the passphrase. On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 10:08 PM, Brianbrian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: The second sentence should read: There is no information in the current heuristic that indicates that editors who are allowed to vote are more or less familiar with the candidates than those who are not. Who says there needs to be? The recent edits criteria reduces the incentive to crack or otherwise collect old unused but qualified accounts. For example, I could setup a free watchlist aggregation service and users would give me their passwords. Over time I could obtain many and then wait for accounts to naturally become inactive, then I could vote with them. It also makes it harder to otherwise obtain votes from accounts whos owners have lost interest in the project and might be willing to part with theirs easily. Recent editing activity also provides more information for analysis in the event that some kind of vote fraud is suspected. A recent edits criteria is justifiable on this kind of process basis alone. 50 edits can easily be made in a couple of hours, even if you're not making trivial changes. If you're not putting that level of effort it seems somewhat doubtful that you're going to read the 0.5 MBytes of text or so needed to completely and carefully review the provided candidate material from scratch. Like all stereotypes it won't hold true for everyone but if it's true on average then it will produce an average improvement, we just need to be careful not to disenfranchise too many. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- [[User:Ral315]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
