Re: [Wikimedia-l] The new narrowed focus by WMF (cleaner version), apology
Just a comment on the discussion: I would find it refreshing if people were not defending funds that apply mostly to themselves. I saw, in discussions of the essay, arguments by researchers saying that more money should go to researchers, by fellows and want-to-be fellows that the fellowship program should not be cut, by chapter associated that funding for supporting the chapters should not be cut, and by people who have been to Wikimania that the money for supporting Wikimania should not be cut. If we remove all arguments of I am an X, and money supporting X should not be cut this discussion would become rather short as of now. One of my favorite 20th century philosophers, a specialist on justice and fairness, has described an interesting concept, and I would very strongly recommend to adopt it during policy and strategic discussions like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance Cheers, Denny 2012/10/26 David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com: I owe a number of good people an apology. I have worked for several self-protecting bureaucracies myself, and it is possible, though not easy, , for individuals to do good work there. I never intended to imply that everyone there is incompetent, though it is certainly my opinion that some of the people assigned to some of the programs I have been involved in have been. I admit that my anger is an inappropriate reflection of my frustration at my inability to work with those in one particular program. On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 8:54 PM, David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com wrote: One obvious possibility for support is the chapters and the thematic organizations; even if the WMF continues these fellowships as it should, the other bodies in the movement should supplement them--it is good to have more than one source of funds and more than one body deciding on requests. But whether their work can be actually implemented at those levels is another matter. The proposal at meta says the Wikimedia Foundation was never able to resource the fellowships to the point where they could achieve significant impact: I don't think the resource at issue is primarily money, considering that in all recent years we have had not only surpluses, but greater than expected surpluses. The resource which is lacking is sufficient qualified people at the Foundation to work with the fellows and help implement their projects. Rather than get such people--which admittedly would require a change in WMF culture--the WMF staff finds the easiest thing is to not even attempt to make the improvements; it is too troublesome to deal with the good ideas of the community, so the reaction is what one expects of self-protecting incompetent bureaucracies: diminish the flow of good ideas. On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 7:57 PM, Steven Zhang cro0...@gmail.com wrote: In my opinion, the value of fellowships in my opinion is huge, and I feel that ceasing to support projects like the Teahouse would be a real shame. That said, I do feel there are other ways that individual editors could get the support they need to work on critical projects. As long as this remains in some capacity, then I think that could work too. Regards, Steve Zhang Sent from my iPhone On 22/10/2012, at 10:25 AM, Jacob Orlowitz wikioca...@yahoo.com wrote: A letter in support of the Community Fellowship program from past, current, and prospective Fellows, The WMF has expanded profoundly over the past decade, and especially in the last few years. Recently initiatives to streamline and focus the WMF have been undertaken; while these efforts are worthy in spirit and necessary at some level, one useful if not vital program has been caught in that process: The Community Fellowship program. We would like to express our strong support of this valuable and important program. The Fellowship program is first and foremost a community-based program. It selects editors to work on projects -- those which are novel and have yet to be tried, those that have been tried but have not been rigorously developed or tested, and those otherwise that need financial, technical and institutional backing to succeed. It represents a direct line of support from the WMF to community-organized, community-driven, and community-maintained projects. We strongly believe that the Fellowship program is a great way to jump start many projects cheaply, efficiently, and with low-risk. Most importantly, because Fellowship projects are community-organized, there is high potential for their broad community support. We recognize that the Wikimedia Foundation’s allocation of funding must reflect the priorities of the Foundation’s annual and strategic plans, and we understand that the future of the Fellowship program is at risk under the justification that it does not fit within those plans. The Fellowship program of course has a cost, but it is one we believe is well justified by its impact. The
Re: [Wikimedia-l] The new narrowed focus by WMF (cleaner version), apology
Well, I am a former Fellow e.g. there is no chance that I'll get another Fellowship and I have no connection to the research but wholehartedly agree with thses programmes continuation. And your theory of give us, [insert you definiton here] more money completely breaks down on the Global South support - they don't participate in this discussion, because they have more important thing to do such as earning a living in very harsh conditions. Regards Victoria On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Denny Vrandečić denny.vrande...@wikimedia.de wrote: Just a comment on the discussion: I would find it refreshing if people were not defending funds that apply mostly to themselves. I saw, in discussions of the essay, arguments by researchers saying that more money should go to researchers, by fellows and want-to-be fellows that the fellowship program should not be cut, by chapter associated that funding for supporting the chapters should not be cut, and by people who have been to Wikimania that the money for supporting Wikimania should not be cut. If we remove all arguments of I am an X, and money supporting X should not be cut this discussion would become rather short as of now. One of my favorite 20th century philosophers, a specialist on justice and fairness, has described an interesting concept, and I would very strongly recommend to adopt it during policy and strategic discussions like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance Cheers, Denny 2012/10/26 David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com: I owe a number of good people an apology. I have worked for several self-protecting bureaucracies myself, and it is possible, though not easy, , for individuals to do good work there. I never intended to imply that everyone there is incompetent, though it is certainly my opinion that some of the people assigned to some of the programs I have been involved in have been. I admit that my anger is an inappropriate reflection of my frustration at my inability to work with those in one particular program. On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 8:54 PM, David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com wrote: One obvious possibility for support is the chapters and the thematic organizations; even if the WMF continues these fellowships as it should, the other bodies in the movement should supplement them--it is good to have more than one source of funds and more than one body deciding on requests. But whether their work can be actually implemented at those levels is another matter. The proposal at meta says the Wikimedia Foundation was never able to resource the fellowships to the point where they could achieve significant impact: I don't think the resource at issue is primarily money, considering that in all recent years we have had not only surpluses, but greater than expected surpluses. The resource which is lacking is sufficient qualified people at the Foundation to work with the fellows and help implement their projects. Rather than get such people--which admittedly would require a change in WMF culture--the WMF staff finds the easiest thing is to not even attempt to make the improvements; it is too troublesome to deal with the good ideas of the community, so the reaction is what one expects of self-protecting incompetent bureaucracies: diminish the flow of good ideas. On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 7:57 PM, Steven Zhang cro0...@gmail.com wrote: In my opinion, the value of fellowships in my opinion is huge, and I feel that ceasing to support projects like the Teahouse would be a real shame. That said, I do feel there are other ways that individual editors could get the support they need to work on critical projects. As long as this remains in some capacity, then I think that could work too. Regards, Steve Zhang Sent from my iPhone On 22/10/2012, at 10:25 AM, Jacob Orlowitz wikioca...@yahoo.com wrote: A letter in support of the Community Fellowship program from past, current, and prospective Fellows, The WMF has expanded profoundly over the past decade, and especially in the last few years. Recently initiatives to streamline and focus the WMF have been undertaken; while these efforts are worthy in spirit and necessary at some level, one useful if not vital program has been caught in that process: The Community Fellowship program. We would like to express our strong support of this valuable and important program. The Fellowship program is first and foremost a community-based program. It selects editors to work on projects -- those which are novel and have yet to be tried, those that have been tried but have not been rigorously developed or tested, and those otherwise that need financial, technical and institutional backing to succeed. It represents a direct line of support from the WMF to community-organized, community-driven, and community-maintained projects. We strongly believe that the
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Improving dialogue between editors and tech people
David Gerard, 26/10/2012 11:06: Note the suggestion: set aside $1m of tech resources for community-chosen work. Heck, projects other than Wikipedia might get the slightest attention. WMDE has done this since 2010 with WissenWert and they budgeted 250.000 € for 2013, they'd surely have the competence to expand it (if they want). I've added some links to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants Maybe the FDC could kindly ask them to take a million instead of what they asked, and make it global. ;) Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Improving dialogue between editors and tech people
Thanks, Nemo, but WissensWert is not the same as the Community Project Budget. WissensWert is a contest for projects also from out of the Wikimedia scope and with a budget of less than 5.000 Euros per project. http://wikimedia.de/wiki/Wissenswert Community Project Budget is supporting projects with a budget from over 5.000 Euro and is budgeted with 250k in 2013. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community-Projektbudget I will change the information on the meta grants page. Happy to answer further questions, all best, Nicole On 26 October 2012 11:53, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: David Gerard, 26/10/2012 11:06: Note the suggestion: set aside $1m of tech resources for community-chosen work. Heck, projects other than Wikipedia might get the slightest attention. WMDE has done this since 2010 with WissenWert and they budgeted 250.000 € for 2013, they'd surely have the competence to expand it (if they want). I've added some links to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants Maybe the FDC could kindly ask them to take a million instead of what they asked, and make it global. ;) Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Nicole Ebber Projektmanagerin Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | NEU: Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin Tel. +49 30 219158 26-0 http://wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Improving dialogue between editors and tech people
Nicole Ebber, 26/10/2012 13:11: Thanks, Nemo, but WissensWert is not the same as the Community Project Budget. WissensWert is a contest for projects also from out of the Wikimedia scope and with a budget of less than 5.000 Euros per project. http://wikimedia.de/wiki/Wissenswert Community Project Budget is supporting projects with a budget from over 5.000 Euro and is budgeted with 250k in 2013. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community-Projektbudget I will change the information on the meta grants page. Thank you and sorry for the mistake, I got the names a bit confused in my mind. Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikipedia-l] Sort it
Too often what happens is: I try to help a newbie by email; but before they make much progress another admin comes and blocks them for the damage they've already caused. Obviously the newbie gives up. Suggested technical improvement: create notices like editnotice on the block screen saying Admin xyz is mentoring this newbie - please consult him before you bite. On Oct 26, 2012 1:03 PM, Magnus Manske magnusman...@googlemail.com wrote: As a biologist, I'd say it's the I need to figure this out mentality, which leads to frustration if the system (which you had believed you figured out!) apparently turns against you. My advice here is: That should not happen, but there is so much more to do on Wikipedia; let this specific issue rest, for month or years or forever, and contribute something else. The issue will get sorted, with or without you, eventually. Magnus On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Charles Andrès charles.and...@wikimedia.ch wrote: Amir is right, without judging this specific case, the pattern describe here is a problem. Especially the massive revert attitude , it's really a challenge for retaining new specialist editor. Charles ___ Charles ANDRES, Chairman Wikimedia CH – Association for the advancement of free knowledge – www.wikimedia.ch Skype: charles.andres.wmch IRC://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-ch Le 26 oct. 2012 à 13:43, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il a écrit : Shortened, and grossly over-simplified: A biologist wrote some things about biology and they were not challenged. Then he wrote some things about dinosaurs, and they were reverted. If I understood correctly, the reason for the reverts was that it appeared to be original research (WP:NOR). And now the biologist is pissed off, possibly for a good reason, and wants his previous contributions removed, too. This is a story that repeats itself quite often, with surprisingly similar details: an expert does some acceptable things, then doing some things that turn out to rouse controversy, then wanting to retire with a storm. I'm not implying that the expert is bad, absolutely not; I'm just noting a pattern. Whatever the details of the story are, it's not good and it may justify discussion. But as a meta-comment, it should be done on wikien-l or on wikimedia-l, and not on this list, which is called wikipedia-l, but is not active in practice. -- Amir 2012/10/26 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com TL;DR (Too long; didn't read.) Please provide a summary that makes clear what point you are trying to make... On 26 October 2012 11:55, John Jackson strangetrut...@gmail.com wrote: Greetings – I hope this is a good place to send a weighty message to Wikipedia. You’ll want to read all through. I am a scientist who has always liked the Wikipedia idea, and I like your implementation. Lately I’ve started making contributions. Although I’m a cognitive scientist who taught biological psychology at degree level for several years and have done AI research since the ‘80’s, I’ve diverted for a decade or more to resolve a set of major evolutionary puzzles. Fairly peripheral but within the overall project was an investigation of bird breathing, and I decided to piece together the research into it, and deliver it properly to the public. Trust me, the finer details were obscure. On the way I discovered why penguins’ lungs don’t collapse even at 500m when whales’ lungs collapse by 100m; I found out what the neopulmo did (though not why) and why penguins don’t have it, and I changed our understanding of flow within it; I also resolved the old chestnut of whether birds had counter-current exchange in their lungs. That is, completely discovered, not just for myself. By careful editing and addition including the long overdue diagram the subject needed, I converted the two Wikipedia pages dealing with bird breathing from an incomplete mire to a place of revelation (though the German version needs starting afresh, and Duncker agrees). But it was an honour do so. More central to my overall project was cladogenesis, the heart of palaeontology and just the thing that I, as an MSc in info. sys. engineering would be expected to get into. I’ve written my own clad. software, invented and implemented my own heuristic version, proved the theorem in graph theory that resolves an issue in checking evolutionary trees by time and rooting them, and highlighted a serious statistical fallacy invalidating another major current of work in the time-checking of trees. In these activities I was almost entirely alone as regards other workers in the overall field, since that field, dinobird palaeontology, is notorious for its abuse of the lack of scientific and indeed academic constraint that all historical disciplines are
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 103, Issue 54
From: WereSpielChequers werespielchequ...@gmail.com Date: 26 October 2012 09:25 Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Improving dialogue between editors and tech people To: English Wikipedia wikie...@lists.wikimedia.org Firstly move Bugzilla to Meta. Currently it is a different user experience to the rest of our wikis, and it isn't even part of the Single User Login. My god, please, no! I think the lived in experience that Meta shows us is that while Wikis are good for some things, for tracking things like bugs and discussions, they're really terrible. Use a tool that's fit for purpose, and don't try to bang a wiki-shaped peg into a bugzilla-shaped hole. (single sign-on across to bugzilla would be very cool though!) Cheers, Craig Franklin ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Improving dialogue between editors and tech people
I`m wondering why this discussion is on the English Wikipedia since it concerns all projects, it should be on Meta in my opinion. Thanks, JP Beland aka Amqui 2012/10/26, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: Note the suggestion: set aside $1m of tech resources for community-chosen work. Heck, projects other than Wikipedia might get the slightest attention. - d. -- Forwarded message -- From: WereSpielChequers werespielchequ...@gmail.com Date: 26 October 2012 09:25 Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Improving dialogue between editors and tech people To: English Wikipedia wikie...@lists.wikimedia.org Hi Guillaume, Firstly move Bugzilla to Meta. Currently it is a different user experience to the rest of our wikis, and it isn't even part of the Single User Login. Secondly try to shift from a developer led Software program to more of a community led one. Yes of course there are going to be things going on which have to happen anyway for valid technical reasons, from what I've seen the WMF has a significant budget to invest on programming changes. But there isn't a way for the community to prioritise development projects. So part of the clash is the dissonance between the community empowerment ethos which is the norm for most community activities, and the disempowerment that characterises community involvement in IT development. If a million dollars of the annual IT budget was set aside for projects that the community could suggest and prioritise via a page on meta, then the relationship between IT and the community would be transformed, as would be the project. WSC On 25 October 2012 14:07, Guillaume Paumier guillom@gmail.com wrote: Hi, [Posting this from my personal address because I'm not subscribed to the list with my work account.] I've started a discussion on the technical Village pump on how to establish a better dialogue between editors and tech people (developers, Wikimedia engineers, etc.): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Improving_communication_between_editors_and_.22tech_people.22 I'd love to get more comments and suggestions, so that the outcome isn't only representative of the subset of the community who reads VP/T. You can participate there or here on the list, I'll follow both. Also, feel free to advertise this discussions to fellow editors, particularly those whom you know to be interested in these issues. Thanks! Below is the text I've posted on VP/T: --- Hi. I'm posting this as part of my job for the WMF, where I currently work on technical communications. As you'll probably agree, communication between Wikipedia contributors and tech people (primarily MediaWiki developers, but also designers and other engineers) hasn't always been ideal. In recent years, Wikimedia employees have made efforts to become more transparent, for example by writing monthly activity reports, by providing hubs listing current activities, and by maintaining activity pages for each significant activity. Furthermore, the yearly engineering goals for the WMF were developed publicly, and the more granular Roadmap is updated weekly. Now, that's all well and such, but what I'd rather like to discuss is how we can better engage in true collaboration and 2-way discussion, not just reports and announcements. It's easy to post a link to a new feature that's already been implemented, and tell users Please provide feedback!. It's much more difficult to truly collaborate every step of the way, from the early planning to deployment. Some big tech projects are lucky enough to have Oliver Keyes who can spend a lot of time discussing with local wiki communities, basically incarnating this 2-way communication channel between users and developers. The $1 million question is: how do we scale up the Oliver? We want to be able to do this for dozens of engineering projects with hundreds of wikis, in many languages, and truly collaborate to build new features together. There are probably things in the way we do tech stuff (e.g. new software features and deployments) that drive you insane. You probably have lots of ideas about what the ideal situation should be, and how to get there: What can the developer community (staff and volunteers) do to get there? (in the short term, medium term, long term?) What can users do to get there? I certainly don't claim to have all the answers, and I can't do a proper job to improve things without your help. So please help me help make your lives easier, and speak up. This is intended to be a very open discussion. Unapologetic complaining is fine; suggestions are also welcome. Stock of ponies is limited. -- Guillaume Paumier [[m:User:guillom]] http://www.gpaumier.org ___ WikiEN-l mailing list wikie...@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Improving dialogue between editors and tech people
Hi, On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 4:26 PM, JP Béland lebo.bel...@gmail.com wrote: I`m wondering why this discussion is on the English Wikipedia since it concerns all projects, it should be on Meta in my opinion. To avoid the Not my wiki effect [1], I've chosen to start multiple discussions on local wikis instead of a central one on meta. This week, I'm focusing on all English and French language wikis, and I'm planning to expand to other languages next week. With that in mind, I welcome comments on this list as well, and if you'd like to start the discussion on your wiki now, please feel free to do so; your help will be much appreciated. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Not_my_wiki -- Guillaume Paumier Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation https://donate.wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Improving dialogue between editors and tech people
On 26 October 2012 20:05, JP Béland lebo.bel...@gmail.com wrote: There isn't such things as my wiki or your wiki... it's all our wikis. Ideally, yes. In practice, no. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Improving dialogue between editors and tech people
I read a while back something saying that no article on Wikipedia belongs to anybody, meaning that despite how much you contributed to it, anybody else is also entitled (for lack of a better term) to modify it and contribute to it. I would like to see that policy or way of seeing things expanded to the Wikis themselves. When reading things like my wiki, it seems like we are incorporating a sense of possession in the way we see things. I mean, after all, Wikipedia really belong to its readers, not its contributors anyway. I guess it's more rhetoric than anything... JP 2012/10/26, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: On 26 October 2012 20:05, JP Béland lebo.bel...@gmail.com wrote: There isn't such things as my wiki or your wiki... it's all our wikis. Ideally, yes. In practice, no. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Improving dialogue between editors and tech people
On 10/26/2012 1:49 PM, JP Béland wrote: I read a while back something saying that no article on Wikipedia belongs to anybody, meaning that despite how much you contributed to it, anybody else is also entitled (for lack of a better term) to modify it and contribute to it. I would like to see that policy or way of seeing things expanded to the Wikis themselves. When reading things like my wiki, it seems like we are incorporating a sense of possession in the way we see things. I mean, after all, Wikipedia really belong to its readers, not its contributors anyway. I guess it's more rhetoric than anything... That's true, but it deals with a separate problem. When we say that nobody owns a Wikipedia article, it's because people may be doing things to take possession of it (editing), but we all must be willing to share ownership with everyone else. In the context of encouraging dialogue between groups that rarely interact, the issue is not that too many people are claiming ownership, but that nobody is. These people may have the same ideals, but it's asking them to occupy a new and unfamiliar workspace that they may not have the time or attention for. It's the difference between a toy that all the children want to play with (and end up fighting over), and the lonely and neglected toy in the corner that none of them show any interest in. --Michael Snow ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
