Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Anthony Cole]

Pete, I love this review committee idea. My concern is about who drives it.
Provided it's driven by intelligent, skeptical volunteers (along the lines
of the FDC), I'm very comfortable. If it's owned by WMF management, I
wouldn't bother reading their reports.

If you and Andreas were to sign on, that would be a very good start.

On Wednesday, 24 February 2016, Pete Forsyth  wrote:

> Hi Anthony,
>
> Thank you for sharing this. It's a very interesting, highly detailed
> exposition of the history of Flow, and its predecessor, LiquidThreads. (And
> some interesting points I hadn't been aware of, such as Hassar's efforts
> dating back to 2004 to improve talk pages.) At least on a quick read, it
> aligns well with what I know.
>
> I want to reiterate, though, the significance of the organization itself
> publishing, and engaging with/incorporating feedback on, reports like this.
> Scott Martin's piece appears to have value to whoever happens to read it;
> but a post-mortem by the organization will tend to attract the input of all
> significant stakeholder groups, and will command the attention of those
> doing the work in the future.
>
> What I think is most valuable is the *learning process*, not merely the
> *collection of factual/historical information*. The latter is valuable, of
> course; but the learning is the key to an organization getting better at
> what it does over time.
>
> -Pete
> [[User:Peteforsyth]]
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Anthony Cole  > wrote:
>
> > Wrong link. It's here.
> >
> >
> http://wikipediocracy.com/2015/02/08/the-dream-that-died-erik-moller-and-the-wmfs-decade-long-struggle-for-the-perfect-discussion-system/
> >
> > On Wednesday, 24 February 2016, Anthony Cole  > wrote:
> >
> > > This time last year, Scott Martin wrote up a history on Wikipediocracy
> > > that seems to cover most of the milestones.
> > >
> >
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082313.html
> > >
> > > On Monday, 22 February 2016, Pete Forsyth  
> > > ');>>
> wrote:
> > >
> > >> Brandon and Sarah:
> > >>
> > >> I'm going to resist the urge to delve into the specifics of Flow here,
> > as
> > >> I'd really like to stay on the topic of whether post-mortems on
> divisive
> > >> issues are valuable, and how they should be approached.
> > >>
> > >> Do you agree that an annotated summary of what has gone well and what
> > >> hasn't, in the case of discussion technology like Liquid Threads and
> > Flow,
> > >> might help us to have generative conversations on this topic? Or do
> you
> > >> disagree? What kinds of approaches do you think might help the
> > >> organization
> > >> and the community learn the best lessons from past efforts, avoid
> > >> repeating
> > >> mistakes, and find ever more effective ways to engage with each other?
> > >>
> > >> -Pete
> > >> [[User:Peteforsyth]]
> > >>
> > >> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 7:42 PM, SarahSV  >
> > wrote:
> > >>
> > >> > On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 8:19 PM, Pete Forsyth <
> petefors...@gmail.com >
> > >> > wrote:
> > >> >
> > >> > >
> > >> > > Is it possible to imagine an effort that would not be shot down,
> but
> > >> > > embraced?
> > >> > >
> > >> > > What would need to be different?
> > >> > >
> > >> > > These are the kinds of questions I wish the Wikimedia Foundation
> > would
> > >> > get
> > >> > > better at asking and exploring.
> > >> > >
> > >> > > ​Lila is good at asking the right questions of the community,
> which
> > is
> > >> > why
> > >> > (so far as I can tell) editors like her. If you look at her meta
> talk
> > >> page,
> > >> > you can see her asking good questions about Flow and trying to find
> > out
> > >> > what editors need.
> > >> >
> > >> > That was literally the first time we felt we were being listened to.
> > >> There
> > >> > was one point when Flow was introduced – and I have been trying to
> > find
> > >> > this diff but can't – where there was something on the talk page
> that
> > >> > amounted to "if you agree with us that x and y, then you're welcome
> to
> > >> join
> > >> > the discussion."
> > >> >
> > >> > So from the start, it felt as though staffers had ruled out the
> > >> community
> > >> > as people who might know something about what tools are needed to
> > >> > collaborate on an article (which is not the same as chatting).
> People
> > >> who
> > >> > had been doing something for years were not regarded as experts in
> > that
> > >> > thing by the Foundation.
> > >> >
> > >> > We would say "we need pages," and they would explain why we didn't.
> We
> > >> > would say "we need archives," and they would explain why good search
> > >> was a
> > >> > better idea. We would say "there's too much white space," and they
> > would
> > >> > explain that 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

[Josh Lim]

Lane, it’s one thing to have nominees.  It’s another to win the election.  
Global South candidates obviously didn’t win the community-selected seat 
selection, so I’d approach with some skepticism the possibility that we’ll 
suddenly have a Board member from those regions of the world as a result of the 
ASBS process.

That said, it’s early.  Maybe things will change this time around.  But if this 
process didn’t lead to an ASBS member from the regions of the world Amir talked 
about in his e-mail, then what will?

Josh

> Wiadomość napisana przez Lane Rasberry  w dniu 
> 23.02.2016, o godz. 23:05:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Could I remind you all that there is a board election in progress right now
> for 2 of the 10 seats? Please see details for the 2016 Affiliate-selected
> board seats election at
> 
> 
> Amir, you said that you wanted representation from "India, China, Russia,
> Iran, Brazil, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Arab countries and
> finally, all of Africa". If you like, you may encourage anyone from those
> countries to seek a nomination. Also, it would be very helpful if you could
> encourage the Wikimedia chapters in those countries to participate in the
> election in any way that they could, especially by planning to vote during
> the upcoming voting period.
> 
> Thyge - we do have a sort of house of representatives and it has a board
> election happening right now.
> 
> Nominations for the board are open till March 8! Election starts March 24!
> Please share the message.
> 
> Thanks - if anyone has questions post on the election page.
> 
> yours,
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter 
> wrote:
> 
>> On 2016-02-23 14:54, Thyge wrote:
>> 
>>> We should not have direct elections to the board. We should have a "house
>>> of representatives" with X members from each part of the world and charged
>>> with electing the board and decide major issues like location of the WMF,
>>> changed of bylaws etc.
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> Thyge
>>> 
>>> 
>> I do not think it could solve the diversity issue.
>> 
>> To appoint the number of individuals with a set of skills and needed
>> diversity, one needs candidates which will have needed skills and desired
>> diversity to start with.
>> 
>> Our experience as a movement (and also of people in other organizations in
>> different contexts) that these people do not always queue at the doors of
>> the WMF office to wait for being elected. They need to be scouted,
>> negotiated with, and convinced to be willing to sit at the board. This is
>> what currently various companies are paid to do, and this seems to be a
>> reasonable arrangement to me.
>> 
>> As far as the candidates are there, I do not see much of a difference
>> whether the community, a selected group (like house of representatives), or
>> the Board votes for them. And as soon as there is no difference there is
>> also no need to make the structure more complicated. I thus conclude that
>> this House of representatives is not needed for the Board elections.
>> 
>> (It might be needed for other things, which are outside the scope of this
>> discussion).
>> 
>> 
>> Cheers
>> Yaroslav
>> 
>> ___
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>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Lane Rasberry
> user:bluerasberry on Wikipedia
> 206.801.0814
> l...@bluerasberry.com
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> 

JAMES JOSHUA G. LIM
Bachelor of Arts in Political Science
Class of 2013, Ateneo de Manila University
Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines

jamesjoshua...@yahoo.com  | +63 (977) 831-7582
Facebook/Twitter: akiestar | Wikimedia: Sky Harbor
http://about.me/josh.lim 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

[Adrian Raddatz]

I like the idea of reserved seats for the global south. I would prefer to
still have some appointed members for expertise, but that number should be
diminished to give the community seats a majority.

Somewhat controversial: I'd prefer to scrap the affiliate - selected seats.
Chapters vary so much in organization and effectiveness that having seats
for them isn't ideal to me.

And, of course, let's remove Jimbo's seat. He contributes little to the
board or movement these days except for the occasional response on his talk
page, accepting awards on our behalf, and making ridiculous public comments
which are listened to due to his status. I actually have nothing against
the guy personally, but I see no need for this relic of a seat to continue.
Salam,

I sincerely appreciated any effort to craft a reform for the Board of
Trustees membership. Thank you, Dariusz and Todd. Also, apologize for
(possibly) flawed English, since it isn't my first language :)

As a volunteer from the so-called Global South community, I'm much more
concerned about the diversity issue in the Board. The issue here is that
geographical and linguistic groups that are significant in the current
state of our community should be proportionally represented. We must ensure
that their voice will be heard on deciding important issues that might also
affect them, in one way or another. Our current Board consist of no Asian
or African, a very disturbing reality especially if we consider the immense
potential and rapidly growing community in these two region.

Allow me to propose the Board composition I felt the most suitable to
accommodate this issue. This Board will be comprised of fifteen members,
all with same voting power:

- One Founder's Seat, reserved for Jimbo. While I believe that some might
found this as a strangely contrast position for any reform needed by the
Board, I think that we still need him in the Board as the voice of
moderation and what makes us completely unique to other Internet
institution.
- Six regional seats, popularly elected by the regional communities. The
proposed "regional communities" would be North America, South and Central
America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and
Asia Pacific and Oceania.
- Five at-large seats, or what we call today as community seats. Like the
regional one, it will be popularly elected --- but by the whole community.
- Three affiliate seats, elected by the affiliate and thematic
organizations.

Yes, there might be some flaw in this proposal. The biggest concern will be
how to define and categorize a project into a specific "regional
community". Maybe we could categorize the editors based on where do they
edit (English Wikipedia editors will be voting for European seat) or where
do they reside (which also possibly will raise question about privacy etc).

Some might also question about why there is no more appointed seats. While
I do agree with those who are saying that we need professional experts to
sit in the Board, I believe that their power and influence should be
nowhere more than the community to avoid another Arnnon-like controversy.
So I would like to see them as members of the Advisory Board (as discussed
in another thread before), possibly with increased function.

I'd be very grateful to know your thoughts.

Best,

Ramzy
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

[Sydney Poore]

Thanks for writing this email Brion. I agree that the movement needs to
invest more in people and the processes that support people.

One of the largest challenges facing the wikimedia movement, including WMF,
is creating good models for how people in the movement can successfully
engage with each other.

This means investing in people and structures that provide ample time and
motivation to engage/collaborate with other people.

For the past 4 years (at least), I've had the sense that WMF is attempting
to accomplish important public facing projects/programs/initiatives on a
tight time line, and it is causing strain inside WMF, with affiliate
organization, and with the larger wikimedia community.

Instead of a well executed "continual improvement process"1  like "Kaizen" 2,
"Agile" 3, or "Lean" 4, the timelines are rushed and too often WMf staff is
redirected from their planned activities.

Affiliates and the community have to shift their priories so are not well
positioned to engage with WMF. The work sprints appeal to people in the
wikimedia movement who tend towards addictive personalities and
unfortunately it normalizes the process. And the tight timelines hinder
engagement from people in the global movement who do not regularly engage
on meta.

While there has been justification made in each situations for the
accelerated timelines, this form of community engagement is far from ideal
and it has contributed to the miscommunication and stress felt by WMF staff
and the whole wikimedia movement.

So, while I'm eager to have changes that improve governance of WMF and
strengthen the wikimedia movement as a whole, I strongly urge that an
adequate time, resources and people are invested in the process to
implement the changes.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continual_improvement_process
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_management
4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development#Lean_principles
Warm regards,
Sydney Poore
User:FloNight

Sydney Poore
User:FloNight
Wikipedian in Residence
at Cochrane Collaboration

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 4:29 PM, Brion Vibber  wrote:

> I think there are many different interpretations of what it means to "be a
> high-tech organization", which makes it a difficult label to base arguments
> around; readers will interpret it very differently depending on their
> personal experiences and biases.
>
> One view might concentrate on notions of "innovation", "excellence", or
> "return on investment" achieved through super-smart people creating unique
> technology -- this view associates "high-tech" with success, competitive
> advantage, brand awareness/marketshare, and money (profit for traditional
> corporations, or investment in the mission for non-profits).
>
> Another view might concentrate on other features considered common to
> "high-tech" companies such as toxic work environments, lack of diversity,
> overemphasis on engineering versus other disciplines, disconnection from
> users' needs, and a laser-focus on achieving profits at the expense of
> long-term thinking. This view associates "high-tech" with social and
> economic inequality and exploitation of employees and users for their labor
> & attention to the detriment of their physical and emotional health.
>
> And there are many, much subtler connotations to be found in between.
>
>
> I believe a high-tech organization should invest in smart people creating
> unique technology. But I also think it should invest in people, period.
> Staff and volunteers must be cultivated and supported -- that's how loyalty
> and passion are developed, and I believe they pay dividends in productivity
> and recruitment.
>
> Absolutely Wikimedia Foundation needs to build better technologies --
> technologies to serve the needs of our editors, our readers, our
> photographers, our citation reviewers, etc. This means Wikimedia Foundation
> needs a good relationship with those people to research, brainstorm, plan,
> develop, test, redevelop, retest, and roll out software successfully. The
> people who represent Wikimedia Foundation in those relationships are its
> staff, so it's important for management to support them in their work and
> help them succeed.
>
> It is my sincere hope that when the current crises are resolved, that the
> Board of Trustees and the executive can agree on at least this much as a
> shared vision for the Foundation.
>
> -- brion
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "BuzzFeed: Days of Counting Pageviews and Unique Visitors Are Over"

[Pine W]

Rosemary and Toby, do you have any thoughts that you could share from the
perspectives of Reading and PC about what level(s) of priority we should
place on expanding the reuse of our content off of the Wikimedia sites, and
what quantitative and qualitative methods Reading and PC might use to
measure impact?

Jeff and Ed, thanks for the comments. It's interesting to hear about how
the blog and WMF social media are communicating our content in new
channels. I'm curious to know if you could share a little more about how
you see these uses of our content aligning with the bigger picture of the
Wikimedia mission to make human knowledge be universally accessible. I'd
also be interested in learning about  fundraising on social media; do we
know how many people donated because of Facebook and Twitter fundraising
requests and are there plans to evolve the Facebook and Twitter fundraising
strategies?

Thanks!

Pine



On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 6:19 PM, Jeff Elder  wrote:

> These are good thoughts, Pine! I'm glad you brought them up.
>
> One of my favorite things about our social media in my five months at the
> WMF has been reaching people who are enthusiastic about the movement and
> eager to connect more.
>
> “Wikipedia is why, even though I spent most of my adult life out of school
> as a refugee, when I finally got to a safe place and into a university I
> was able not only to compete with my peers, but to excel,” a Facebook user
> named Ali who was born in Iraq and now lives in the United States posted on
> our page.
>
> We have more than 2 million Facebook followers in the "Global South," and
> many are enthusiastic and curious to know more. We have at times asked
> people on Facebook to tell us where in the world they are, and the
> greetings we get back from around the world
>  are
> fantastic.
>
> At the same time, we also hear from editors such as Lilit from Armenia, who
> posted: “Wikipedia has become our way of living, the idea which unites all
> the editors around the world!”
>
> If Ali and Lilit sound familiar, they were featured on our Wikipedia 15
> website  with these Facebook comments. Reaching
> budding Wikipedians is a big part ofour social strategy
> .
>
> Our verified Facebook ,
> Twitter
>  and Instagram
>  accounts are places to showcase our
> content and show that it is part of a movement of people.
>
> We need more Wikipedians who enjoy social media and would like to help
> guide our accounts. If that's you, I'd love to hear from you.
>
> Jeff Elder
> Digital communications manager
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 704-650-4130
> @jeffelder 
> @wikipedia 
> The Wikimedia blog 
>
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 5:18 PM, Ed Erhart  wrote:
>
> > Hi Pine,
> >
> > A big part of our efforts are to humanize the movement, surface our
> > content, and reach new audiences—research shows that public awareness of
> > Wikipedia and what it does is not as high as you'd think in emerging
> > communities.
> >
> > The blog has been running in-depth and detailed articles like "News on
> > Wikipedia: Antonin Scalia and the editor tracking his legacy,"[1] "These
> > Texans are on a quest to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of their state’s
> > revolution,"[2] and "Fifteen years ago, Wikipedia was a very different
> > place: Magnus Manske"[3] to showcase our editors and contributors, along
> > with their contributions to the movement. We plan to continue this in the
> > coming months.
> >
> > Our posts that look at article popularity try to go deeper, examining the
> > editing behind them. Antonin Scalia does that, as does "Millions read
> Bowie
> > biography following sudden death."[4] We highlight featured articles
> > wherever possible.
> >
> > We also surface fantastic content from our contributors, such as
> > "Recording romanticism and filling Wikimedia Commons with 19th-century
> > music"[5] or "Love is strange: ten weird Valentine’s facts from
> > Wikipedia,"[6] although I freely admit that our social media platforms
> can
> > do this far more often than the blog can.
> >
> > I'm cc'ing Jeff Elder, Digital Communications Manager, on this email so
> > that he can talk about his fantastic work on social media. Some of the
> > comments we get are astounding, and we've started the process of
> expanding
> > to new platforms—including Instagram.[7]
> >
> > Best,
> > --Ed
> >
> > [1] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/17/scalia-wikipedia/
> > [2]
> >
> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/06/30/improving-wikipedia-texas-revolution/
> > [3]
> >
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/18/fifteen-years-wikipedia-magnus-manske/
> > [4] 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership

[Steven Zhang]

I don't really know Lila at all, and I've not been paying an awful lot of 
attention to all of this until recently, when my former manager Siko Bouterse 
resigned. This act alone, plus her email rang alarm bells that things with the 
WMF aren't going great. The subsequent resignation of others (including today, 
Oliver Keyes, whom I also have much respect for) is quite concerning. I worked 
for WMF for 6 months as a Community Fellow back in 2012, and for a long period 
of time always wanted to work there again. It felt like a great place to work. 
While I recently applied for a role and was unsuccessful, recent events have 
made me feel that cannot maybe I dodged a bullet.

Lila's current position cannot one that anyone wants to be in. I am reminded of 
the recent appointment and subsequent resignation of Arnon Geshuri, where one 
way or another, he realised that all the discussion around him was a 
distraction for the community. It's not my place to say (or really, anyone's 
except the BoT) but I would hope that Lila would consider whether it is really 
in the best interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, and the community in general 
to stay on as the ED, given the loss of significant key staff, for a multitude 
of reasons, and the significant distraction and "drama" this has caused. I 
would respectfully suggest that it might be time to step aside.

Best,

Steven Crossin (formerly Steven Zhang)
Sent from my iPhone

> On 24 Feb 2016, at 3:41 PM, Pine W  wrote:
> 
> I appreciate the many constructive comments in this thread. I wish that we
> knew
> that the Board was having similar discussions, and that these discussions
> were transparent.
> 
>> I don't think it would be wise to have a total simultaneous Board
> step-down
>> though - at least a situation of zero continuity is dangerous.
> 
> Agreed. My choice of the term "transition plans" was carefully considered.
> I agree with several of the comments made above in this thread regarding
> the Board and options for an orderly Board transition in the next several
> months. Perhaps some of those transitions will involve replacing some of
> the newer board members with former board members who have valuable
> experience and who have demonstrated knowledge with how we work
> in WMF and the Wikimedia community to create positive change.
> 
> To clarify some thoughts about Lila:
> 
> For the record, I think I too may have had a part in the selection of Lila
> for ED.
> I advocated for someone with private sector performance-management
> perspective to be brought into WMF. At the time I didn't appreciate that
> this
> might create a culture clash with our values and practices regarding
> transparency, communications, and community participation. I feel like I
> share part of the blame for my advocacy at the time, which in hindsight
> should have been more carefully nuanced.
> 
> Based on nonpublic communications, I believe that Lila generally has good
> intentions, and I would like her to feel good about things that have gone
> well while she has been here. For example, the community consultation
> regarding PC, and also the plans for re-imagining grants. We are also
> seeing some exciting developments in Analytics and revision scoring,
> the "big English" fundraiser in late 2015 went well, and there seems
> to be strong community support for WMF taking legal and technical
> steps to protect our editors and readers from mass surveillance.
> 
> I have heard allegations that some of the information about the Knight
> grant as presented to the public were intentionally deceptive.
> I have *not* seen evidence, in public or private, that yet convinces me
> that there was any intent to deceive. On the other hand, communications,
> planning, and transparency regarding the Knight grant were deeply
> problematic, to the point where WMF Board members and staff seemed to
> be confused and were themselves uncertain about what the right
> answers were.
> 
> Going forward, I believe that the staff of WMF and the larger Wikimedia
> community would be best served with new leadership in the executive
> director role. The retention of skilled staff, the relations with donors
> such
> as Knight, and the handling of strategic, financial, and product planning
> in an orderly and transparent manner are all important roles for the ED.
> 
> I hope that Lila and the Board will ponder the points raised in this thread
> and many others, as well as the information in this *Signpost *commentary
> 
> and in http://mollywhite.net/wikimedia-timeline/. It seems to me that the
> leadership at WMF simply must change, and that Lila and the Board would
> act in the best interest of WMF by making transition plans.
> 
> Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Pete Forsyth]

Hi Anthony,

Thank you for sharing this. It's a very interesting, highly detailed
exposition of the history of Flow, and its predecessor, LiquidThreads. (And
some interesting points I hadn't been aware of, such as Hassar's efforts
dating back to 2004 to improve talk pages.) At least on a quick read, it
aligns well with what I know.

I want to reiterate, though, the significance of the organization itself
publishing, and engaging with/incorporating feedback on, reports like this.
Scott Martin's piece appears to have value to whoever happens to read it;
but a post-mortem by the organization will tend to attract the input of all
significant stakeholder groups, and will command the attention of those
doing the work in the future.

What I think is most valuable is the *learning process*, not merely the
*collection of factual/historical information*. The latter is valuable, of
course; but the learning is the key to an organization getting better at
what it does over time.

-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Anthony Cole  wrote:

> Wrong link. It's here.
>
> http://wikipediocracy.com/2015/02/08/the-dream-that-died-erik-moller-and-the-wmfs-decade-long-struggle-for-the-perfect-discussion-system/
>
> On Wednesday, 24 February 2016, Anthony Cole  wrote:
>
> > This time last year, Scott Martin wrote up a history on Wikipediocracy
> > that seems to cover most of the milestones.
> >
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082313.html
> >
> > On Monday, 22 February 2016, Pete Forsyth  > > wrote:
> >
> >> Brandon and Sarah:
> >>
> >> I'm going to resist the urge to delve into the specifics of Flow here,
> as
> >> I'd really like to stay on the topic of whether post-mortems on divisive
> >> issues are valuable, and how they should be approached.
> >>
> >> Do you agree that an annotated summary of what has gone well and what
> >> hasn't, in the case of discussion technology like Liquid Threads and
> Flow,
> >> might help us to have generative conversations on this topic? Or do you
> >> disagree? What kinds of approaches do you think might help the
> >> organization
> >> and the community learn the best lessons from past efforts, avoid
> >> repeating
> >> mistakes, and find ever more effective ways to engage with each other?
> >>
> >> -Pete
> >> [[User:Peteforsyth]]
> >>
> >> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 7:42 PM, SarahSV 
> wrote:
> >>
> >> > On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 8:19 PM, Pete Forsyth 
> >> > wrote:
> >> >
> >> > >
> >> > > Is it possible to imagine an effort that would not be shot down, but
> >> > > embraced?
> >> > >
> >> > > What would need to be different?
> >> > >
> >> > > These are the kinds of questions I wish the Wikimedia Foundation
> would
> >> > get
> >> > > better at asking and exploring.
> >> > >
> >> > > ​Lila is good at asking the right questions of the community, which
> is
> >> > why
> >> > (so far as I can tell) editors like her. If you look at her meta talk
> >> page,
> >> > you can see her asking good questions about Flow and trying to find
> out
> >> > what editors need.
> >> >
> >> > That was literally the first time we felt we were being listened to.
> >> There
> >> > was one point when Flow was introduced – and I have been trying to
> find
> >> > this diff but can't – where there was something on the talk page that
> >> > amounted to "if you agree with us that x and y, then you're welcome to
> >> join
> >> > the discussion."
> >> >
> >> > So from the start, it felt as though staffers had ruled out the
> >> community
> >> > as people who might know something about what tools are needed to
> >> > collaborate on an article (which is not the same as chatting). People
> >> who
> >> > had been doing something for years were not regarded as experts in
> that
> >> > thing by the Foundation.
> >> >
> >> > We would say "we need pages," and they would explain why we didn't. We
> >> > would say "we need archives," and they would explain why good search
> >> was a
> >> > better idea. We would say "there's too much white space," and they
> would
> >> > explain that people like white space. And so on.
> >> >
> >> > Sarah
> >> >
> >> > ​
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

[Ramzy Muliawan]

Salam,

I sincerely appreciated any effort to craft a reform for the Board of
Trustees membership. Thank you, Dariusz and Todd. Also, apologize for
(possibly) flawed English, since it isn't my first language :)

As a volunteer from the so-called Global South community, I'm much more
concerned about the diversity issue in the Board. The issue here is that
geographical and linguistic groups that are significant in the current
state of our community should be proportionally represented. We must ensure
that their voice will be heard on deciding important issues that might also
affect them, in one way or another. Our current Board consist of no Asian
or African, a very disturbing reality especially if we consider the immense
potential and rapidly growing community in these two region.

Allow me to propose the Board composition I felt the most suitable to
accommodate this issue. This Board will be comprised of fifteen members,
all with same voting power:

- One Founder's Seat, reserved for Jimbo. While I believe that some might
found this as a strangely contrast position for any reform needed by the
Board, I think that we still need him in the Board as the voice of
moderation and what makes us completely unique to other Internet
institution.
- Six regional seats, popularly elected by the regional communities. The
proposed "regional communities" would be North America, South and Central
America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and
Asia Pacific and Oceania.
- Five at-large seats, or what we call today as community seats. Like the
regional one, it will be popularly elected --- but by the whole community.
- Three affiliate seats, elected by the affiliate and thematic
organizations.

Yes, there might be some flaw in this proposal. The biggest concern will be
how to define and categorize a project into a specific "regional
community". Maybe we could categorize the editors based on where do they
edit (English Wikipedia editors will be voting for European seat) or where
do they reside (which also possibly will raise question about privacy etc).

Some might also question about why there is no more appointed seats. While
I do agree with those who are saying that we need professional experts to
sit in the Board, I believe that their power and influence should be
nowhere more than the community to avoid another Arnnon-like controversy.
So I would like to see them as members of the Advisory Board (as discussed
in another thread before), possibly with increased function.

I'd be very grateful to know your thoughts.

Best,

Ramzy
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership

[Pine W]

I appreciate the many constructive comments in this thread. I wish that we
knew
that the Board was having similar discussions, and that these discussions
were transparent.

> I don't think it would be wise to have a total simultaneous Board
step-down
> though - at least a situation of zero continuity is dangerous.

Agreed. My choice of the term "transition plans" was carefully considered.
I agree with several of the comments made above in this thread regarding
the Board and options for an orderly Board transition in the next several
months. Perhaps some of those transitions will involve replacing some of
the newer board members with former board members who have valuable
experience and who have demonstrated knowledge with how we work
in WMF and the Wikimedia community to create positive change.

To clarify some thoughts about Lila:

For the record, I think I too may have had a part in the selection of Lila
for ED.
I advocated for someone with private sector performance-management
perspective to be brought into WMF. At the time I didn't appreciate that
this
might create a culture clash with our values and practices regarding
transparency, communications, and community participation. I feel like I
share part of the blame for my advocacy at the time, which in hindsight
should have been more carefully nuanced.

Based on nonpublic communications, I believe that Lila generally has good
intentions, and I would like her to feel good about things that have gone
well while she has been here. For example, the community consultation
regarding PC, and also the plans for re-imagining grants. We are also
seeing some exciting developments in Analytics and revision scoring,
the "big English" fundraiser in late 2015 went well, and there seems
to be strong community support for WMF taking legal and technical
steps to protect our editors and readers from mass surveillance.

I have heard allegations that some of the information about the Knight
grant as presented to the public were intentionally deceptive.
I have *not* seen evidence, in public or private, that yet convinces me
that there was any intent to deceive. On the other hand, communications,
planning, and transparency regarding the Knight grant were deeply
problematic, to the point where WMF Board members and staff seemed to
be confused and were themselves uncertain about what the right
answers were.

Going forward, I believe that the staff of WMF and the larger Wikimedia
community would be best served with new leadership in the executive
director role. The retention of skilled staff, the relations with donors
such
as Knight, and the handling of strategic, financial, and product planning
in an orderly and transparent manner are all important roles for the ED.

I hope that Lila and the Board will ponder the points raised in this thread
and many others, as well as the information in this *Signpost *commentary

and in http://mollywhite.net/wikimedia-timeline/. It seems to me that the
leadership at WMF simply must change, and that Lila and the Board would
act in the best interest of WMF by making transition plans.

Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

[Brion Vibber]

On Feb 23, 2016 7:01 PM, "Dario Taraborelli" 
wrote:
>
> Brion,
>
> there was a very constructive, heartfelt session on models of bottom-up
> open innovation at this year's WMF All Hands. You can find extensive notes
> from this session on the Office Wiki ("Embracing skunkworks") which I
> encourage you to read and that I'd love to share publicly in a more
> readable format at some point.

Awesome, I'll check it out and read up on the prior art. :) Looking forward
to further discussion on these ideas once we have a chance to clean it up.

> There are obvious tradeoffs between allowing more flexibility on the one
> hand and making sure we have a reasonable budget plan, accountability to
> donors and stakeholders and appropriate resource allocation on the other
> hand, but I believe this model would work much better than the current
one,
> at least for projects that are not core initiatives.

*nod* I like the idea of an internal small grants-like system to provide
some documentation, a little oversight, and help coordinate needed
additional people/equipment/contracting budget on small projects with a
shorter turnaround time than waiting for next year's annual budget.

-- brion

>
> Skunkworks is what got us revision scoring, EventLogging, countless
> initiatives by TechOps and innovative MediaWiki extensions.
>
> Dario
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 6:14 PM, Yuri Astrakhan 
> wrote:
>
> > Does it make sense to have an "Incubator team" ("Bell Labs" if you
will),
> > whose core competency is to nurture small projects? When projects are
> > mature and need to switch into maintenance mode, they move under the
> > umbrella of a different team.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:06 AM, Brion Vibber 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > On Feb 23, 2016 5:52 PM, "Dan Andreescu" 
> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > but also, some projects that were not so useful, sure.  But we
learn,
> > > move
> > > > on, we're not the first group of people to make mistakes : )
> > >
> > > Yep... High-tech organizations call it "failing fast".
> > >
> > > -- Brion
> > >
> > > > ___
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https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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> > >
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> >
>
>
>
> --
>
>
> *Dario Taraborelli  *Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation
> wikimediafoundation.org • nitens.org • @readermeter
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 10:21 PM, Matthew Flaschen 
wrote:

> On 02/21/2016 11:03 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
>
>> So, if you speak of structurally connecting *open* sources, as a basis for
>> smart editing tools, you seem to be saying that such copyrighted yet
>> openly
>> accessible sources, as well as all genuinely paywalled sources, should be
>> excluded from these efforts.
>>
>> If that's correct, and I am not misunderstanding what you mean to say here
>> (please correct me if I do!), how do you square it with the Wikimedia
>> vision?
>>
>
> She did not say anything about excluding references to proprietary sources
> like those you mentioned above.  I think we're all in agreement they will
> still be referenced.
>


Thanks for your reply, Matt. At the Knowledge Engine FAQ on Meta, your
colleague Chris Koerner told me, when I asked what criteria a source will
have to fulfil in order to be included in the Knowledge Engine's search
results, that he personally believed "that not only should the sources be
open-access, but they should be in agreement with our other values, neutral
point of view, free license, etc."

So evidently we're not *all* in agreement.



> She described possible enhanced support for including/connecting to open
> data.  That may not be possible/advisable to do for proprietary data, which
> might require proprietary licenses or software.
>


Enhanced support for including/connecting open data could, I guess, benefit
both editors adding that data to a Wikimedia project's page (Magnus tweeted
an interesting application earlier today, see [[Falkensee]] in the English
Wikipedia) and commercial re-users.



> Of course, it depends on the actual details, but as an analogy think of
> how fair use images are allowed on some specific projects (e.g. English
> Wikipedia), but the central repositories (Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata)
> only include open content/data.
>


Thanks. That is a good analogy.

I see that there is now a record of a candid discussion between Lila and
the Discovery team of what happened with the Knowledge Engine project here:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/2016-02-16_Discussing_Knowledge_Engine_with_Lila

That is good to see.

Best,
Andreas
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

[Dan Andreescu]

That's funny, there's also an active reading group looking into flatter
organizational structures.  I think we're maybe ready for a more official
lack of hierarchy, or at least a more solid acknowledgement that it's
flexibility that makes us strong and it should be cherished.

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 10:01 PM, Dario Taraborelli <
dtarabore...@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Brion,
>
> there was a very constructive, heartfelt session on models of bottom-up
> open innovation at this year's WMF All Hands. You can find extensive notes
> from this session on the Office Wiki ("Embracing skunkworks") which I
> encourage you to read and that I'd love to share publicly in a more
> readable format at some point.
>
> There are obvious tradeoffs between allowing more flexibility on the one
> hand and making sure we have a reasonable budget plan, accountability to
> donors and stakeholders and appropriate resource allocation on the other
> hand, but I believe this model would work much better than the current one,
> at least for projects that are not core initiatives.
>
> Skunkworks is what got us revision scoring, EventLogging, countless
> initiatives by TechOps and innovative MediaWiki extensions.
>
> Dario
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 6:14 PM, Yuri Astrakhan 
> wrote:
>
> > Does it make sense to have an "Incubator team" ("Bell Labs" if you will),
> > whose core competency is to nurture small projects? When projects are
> > mature and need to switch into maintenance mode, they move under the
> > umbrella of a different team.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:06 AM, Brion Vibber 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > On Feb 23, 2016 5:52 PM, "Dan Andreescu" 
> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > but also, some projects that were not so useful, sure.  But we learn,
> > > move
> > > > on, we're not the first group of people to make mistakes : )
> > >
> > > Yep... High-tech organizations call it "failing fast".
> > >
> > > -- Brion
> > >
> > > > ___
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> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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> > > > Unsubscribe:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > 
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> >
>
>
>
> --
>
>
> *Dario Taraborelli  *Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation
> wikimediafoundation.org • nitens.org • @readermeter
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

[Dario Taraborelli]

Brion,

there was a very constructive, heartfelt session on models of bottom-up
open innovation at this year's WMF All Hands. You can find extensive notes
from this session on the Office Wiki ("Embracing skunkworks") which I
encourage you to read and that I'd love to share publicly in a more
readable format at some point.

There are obvious tradeoffs between allowing more flexibility on the one
hand and making sure we have a reasonable budget plan, accountability to
donors and stakeholders and appropriate resource allocation on the other
hand, but I believe this model would work much better than the current one,
at least for projects that are not core initiatives.

Skunkworks is what got us revision scoring, EventLogging, countless
initiatives by TechOps and innovative MediaWiki extensions.

Dario

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 6:14 PM, Yuri Astrakhan 
wrote:

> Does it make sense to have an "Incubator team" ("Bell Labs" if you will),
> whose core competency is to nurture small projects? When projects are
> mature and need to switch into maintenance mode, they move under the
> umbrella of a different team.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:06 AM, Brion Vibber 
> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 23, 2016 5:52 PM, "Dan Andreescu" 
> wrote:
> > >
> > > but also, some projects that were not so useful, sure.  But we learn,
> > move
> > > on, we're not the first group of people to make mistakes : )
> >
> > Yep... High-tech organizations call it "failing fast".
> >
> > -- Brion
> >
> > > ___
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>



-- 


*Dario Taraborelli  *Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation
wikimediafoundation.org • nitens.org • @readermeter

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

[Yuri Astrakhan]

Does it make sense to have an "Incubator team" ("Bell Labs" if you will),
whose core competency is to nurture small projects? When projects are
mature and need to switch into maintenance mode, they move under the
umbrella of a different team.



On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:06 AM, Brion Vibber  wrote:

> On Feb 23, 2016 5:52 PM, "Dan Andreescu"  wrote:
> >
> > but also, some projects that were not so useful, sure.  But we learn,
> move
> > on, we're not the first group of people to make mistakes : )
>
> Yep... High-tech organizations call it "failing fast".
>
> -- Brion
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

[Brion Vibber]

On Feb 23, 2016 5:52 PM, "Dan Andreescu"  wrote:
>
> but also, some projects that were not so useful, sure.  But we learn, move
> on, we're not the first group of people to make mistakes : )

Yep... High-tech organizations call it "failing fast".

-- Brion

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

[Oliver Keyes]

Amusingly I plan to contribute _more_ now. I'll be working a job that
lets me out at 5pm!

My first project is turning our article on Aaron Burr into a Good
Article. My second project is finding someone who wants the 12 Aaron
Burr biographies I now own.

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 8:47 PM, Anthony Cole  wrote:
> We've had our differences but I respect you, and hope this means we'll be
> seeing more of you on en.Wikipedia. All the best in your future endeavours.
>
> On Wednesday, 24 February 2016, James Forrester 
> wrote:
>
>> On 23 February 2016 at 15:35, Oliver Keyes > > wrote:
>>
>> > I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior
>> > Data Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be
>> > on 18 March.
>>
>>
>> Oliver,
>>
>> It's been a while
>>  since
>> we first met in person. I even followed you across the world to work in San
>> Francisco! Don't think you can get away from our friendship that easily!
>> ;-)
>>
>> Take care, and go in peace and with my respect. My very best wishes.
>>
>> Yours,
>> --
>> James D. Forrester
>> Lead Product Manager, Editing
>> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>>
>> jforres...@wikimedia.org  | @jdforrester
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

[Dan Andreescu]

>
> If I remember correctly, I think that's how the Content Translation project
> started -- it was someone's personal project, which got more people and
> attention because it's a great idea and showed real success.


and Event Logging, and the Graph extension, and Mediawiki Vagrant , and ...
and ... Wikipedia!!

but also, some projects that were not so useful, sure.  But we learn, move
on, we're not the first group of people to make mistakes : )
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

[Dan Andreescu]

Well, I see nothing in the rule-book [1] that says we have to be rigid.
Sure a lot of our work aligns with Reading, Editing, Discovery, and
Infrastructure.  But some of our work needs bits and pieces from each
vertical, and even if managers and "hierarchists" [2] moan and groan, it
doesn't make the need for that work go away.

I'll give you one example.  This graph that Yuri shared earlier [3] has a
dark secret if you click Edit twice.  The data for that graph is
copy-pasted into the graph in a most unsightly way.  So now it lives in
both wikitext format in the table below and eye-piercing JSON format inside
the graph.  Obviously, this data should live somewhere as a first class
citizen, and be used from both the table and the graph.  Yuri, me, Dario,
and a *bunch* of community members have been talking about the fact that we
need this for at least 2 years.

So why hasn't it happened?  Well, it's because people moaned and groaned
and it didn't fit into our structure.

So let's do it.  Starting now, I am no longer going to be rigidly defined
by my title [4].  I will dedicate some (not all) of my time to helping make
this structured data a first class citizen so we can use it on wikis and
stop turning people's eyeballs to mush with our weird JSON.  I know there's
community desire and support for this, it makes sense, and we're all trying
to work on it in our spare time and at 3am on Sunday the last day of the
hackathon.  Not a great way for a complicated feature to make it out to our
dear community!

Much love, and hopefully inspiration for others to find and do useful
projects not necessarily defined by their title.

Dan

p.s. this email was written with a smile and light-hearted attitude


[1] There is no rule-book :)
[2] hierarchists: people who love hierarchy
[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_paintings#Interactive_graph
[4] I am a "Front End Javascript UX/UI Engineer, Analytics"  *whatever*
that means... : )

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 7:53 PM, Yuri Astrakhan 
wrote:

> Something in Oliver's departure email caught my eye:
>
>
> *  "Because we are scared and in pain and hindered by structural biases and
> hierarchy, we are worse at our jobs." (quoted with Oliver's permission)*
>
> And that got me thinking. WMF, an organization that was built with the open
> and community-driven principles - why have we became the classic example of
> a corporate multi-level hierarchy? Should we mimic a living organism rather
> than a human-built pyramid?
>
> This may sound naive and wishful, but could we have a more flat and
> flexible team structure, where instead of having large teams with
> sub-teams, we would have small self-forming teams "by interest".  For
> example, someone decides to dedicate their 20% to building support for
> storing 3D models in wiki. Their efforts are noticed, the community shows
> its support, and WMF reacts by increasing project resourcing. Or the
> opposite - the community questions the need of a project, and neither the
> team nor WMF can convincingly justify it - the project resources are
> gradually reduced.
>
> An organism reacts to the change of its environment by redistributing
> resources to the more problematic areas. Would small, flexible, and more
> focused teams achieve that better?
> ___
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> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

[Anthony Cole]

We've had our differences but I respect you, and hope this means we'll be
seeing more of you on en.Wikipedia. All the best in your future endeavours.

On Wednesday, 24 February 2016, James Forrester 
wrote:

> On 23 February 2016 at 15:35, Oliver Keyes  > wrote:
>
> > I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior
> > Data Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be
> > on 18 March.
>
>
> ​Oliver,
>
> It's been a while
>  since
> we first met in person. I even followed you across the world to work in San
> Francisco! Don't think you can get away from our friendship that easily!
> ;-)
>
> Take care, and go in peace and with my respect. My very best wishes.
>
> Yours,
> --
> James D. Forrester
> Lead Product Manager, Editing
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>
> jforres...@wikimedia.org  | @jdforrester
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

[Brion Vibber]

I've advocated for flexible/ad-hoc/cross-functional teams before, and I
would advocate for that again.

Many of our successful projects -- both software and social -- start as
initiatives from individual staff members, often in concert with volunteers
providing research, testing, feedback, usage, and even patches. This is
something I think we should embrace in how we structure new projects.

Central budgeting and a standing team are great for maintenance and for
ongoing work on large projects, but I think we need to be more flexible in
spinning up new projects.

Communication should be handled by people close to the planning and
implementation; we've seen startling failures of centralized communication
in the Knowledge Engine project, and the difficulty for the *actual*
Discovery team to control and communicate their own narrative and be judged
on their own merits has been very painful for that team.

Anyway, I think there's plenty of place for planning and big teams and
predefined KPIs, but I think we can be more... dare I say "agile"... than
we have been. (Little "a".)

I hope once the current troubles pass, that we will all be able to talk
more openly and safely about how we can all help ourselves, our org and our
movement succeed.

-- brion
On Feb 23, 2016 4:53 PM, "Yuri Astrakhan"  wrote:

> Something in Oliver's departure email caught my eye:
>
>
> *  "Because we are scared and in pain and hindered by structural biases and
> hierarchy, we are worse at our jobs." (quoted with Oliver's permission)*
>
> And that got me thinking. WMF, an organization that was built with the open
> and community-driven principles - why have we became the classic example of
> a corporate multi-level hierarchy? Should we mimic a living organism rather
> than a human-built pyramid?
>
> This may sound naive and wishful, but could we have a more flat and
> flexible team structure, where instead of having large teams with
> sub-teams, we would have small self-forming teams "by interest".  For
> example, someone decides to dedicate their 20% to building support for
> storing 3D models in wiki. Their efforts are noticed, the community shows
> its support, and WMF reacts by increasing project resourcing. Or the
> opposite - the community questions the need of a project, and neither the
> team nor WMF can convincingly justify it - the project resources are
> gradually reduced.
>
> An organism reacts to the change of its environment by redistributing
> resources to the more problematic areas. Would small, flexible, and more
> focused teams achieve that better?
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Anthony Cole]

Wrong link. It's here.
http://wikipediocracy.com/2015/02/08/the-dream-that-died-erik-moller-and-the-wmfs-decade-long-struggle-for-the-perfect-discussion-system/

On Wednesday, 24 February 2016, Anthony Cole  wrote:

> This time last year, Scott Martin wrote up a history on Wikipediocracy
> that seems to cover most of the milestones.
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082313.html
>
> On Monday, 22 February 2016, Pete Forsyth  > wrote:
>
>> Brandon and Sarah:
>>
>> I'm going to resist the urge to delve into the specifics of Flow here, as
>> I'd really like to stay on the topic of whether post-mortems on divisive
>> issues are valuable, and how they should be approached.
>>
>> Do you agree that an annotated summary of what has gone well and what
>> hasn't, in the case of discussion technology like Liquid Threads and Flow,
>> might help us to have generative conversations on this topic? Or do you
>> disagree? What kinds of approaches do you think might help the
>> organization
>> and the community learn the best lessons from past efforts, avoid
>> repeating
>> mistakes, and find ever more effective ways to engage with each other?
>>
>> -Pete
>> [[User:Peteforsyth]]
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 7:42 PM, SarahSV  wrote:
>>
>> > On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 8:19 PM, Pete Forsyth 
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > >
>> > > Is it possible to imagine an effort that would not be shot down, but
>> > > embraced?
>> > >
>> > > What would need to be different?
>> > >
>> > > These are the kinds of questions I wish the Wikimedia Foundation would
>> > get
>> > > better at asking and exploring.
>> > >
>> > > ​Lila is good at asking the right questions of the community, which is
>> > why
>> > (so far as I can tell) editors like her. If you look at her meta talk
>> page,
>> > you can see her asking good questions about Flow and trying to find out
>> > what editors need.
>> >
>> > That was literally the first time we felt we were being listened to.
>> There
>> > was one point when Flow was introduced – and I have been trying to find
>> > this diff but can't – where there was something on the talk page that
>> > amounted to "if you agree with us that x and y, then you're welcome to
>> join
>> > the discussion."
>> >
>> > So from the start, it felt as though staffers had ruled out the
>> community
>> > as people who might know something about what tools are needed to
>> > collaborate on an article (which is not the same as chatting). People
>> who
>> > had been doing something for years were not regarded as experts in that
>> > thing by the Foundation.
>> >
>> > We would say "we need pages," and they would explain why we didn't. We
>> > would say "we need archives," and they would explain why good search
>> was a
>> > better idea. We would say "there's too much white space," and they would
>> > explain that people like white space. And so on.
>> >
>> > Sarah
>> >
>> > ​
>> > ___
>> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
>> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
>> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> > 
>> >
>> ___
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>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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>> 
>
>
>
> --
> Anthony Cole
>
>
>

-- 
Anthony Cole
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

[Danny Horn]

If I remember correctly, I think that's how the Content Translation project
started -- it was someone's personal project, which got more people and
attention because it's a great idea and showed real success.

It's hard to know what the mechanism would be for how to gauge community
support at meaningful intervals. Most people aren't paying a lot of
attention to what the WMF is working on from one day to the next, and
there's only so many big surveys you can do before people get tired of
them. It's a tough problem.


On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 4:53 PM, Yuri Astrakhan 
wrote:

> Something in Oliver's departure email caught my eye:
>
>
> *  "Because we are scared and in pain and hindered by structural biases and
> hierarchy, we are worse at our jobs." (quoted with Oliver's permission)*
>
> And that got me thinking. WMF, an organization that was built with the open
> and community-driven principles - why have we became the classic example of
> a corporate multi-level hierarchy? Should we mimic a living organism rather
> than a human-built pyramid?
>
> This may sound naive and wishful, but could we have a more flat and
> flexible team structure, where instead of having large teams with
> sub-teams, we would have small self-forming teams "by interest".  For
> example, someone decides to dedicate their 20% to building support for
> storing 3D models in wiki. Their efforts are noticed, the community shows
> its support, and WMF reacts by increasing project resourcing. Or the
> opposite - the community questions the need of a project, and neither the
> team nor WMF can convincingly justify it - the project resources are
> gradually reduced.
>
> An organism reacts to the change of its environment by redistributing
> resources to the more problematic areas. Would small, flexible, and more
> focused teams achieve that better?
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Anthony Cole]

This time last year, Scott Martin wrote up a history on Wikipediocracy that
seems to cover most of the milestones.
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082313.html

On Monday, 22 February 2016, Pete Forsyth  wrote:

> Brandon and Sarah:
>
> I'm going to resist the urge to delve into the specifics of Flow here, as
> I'd really like to stay on the topic of whether post-mortems on divisive
> issues are valuable, and how they should be approached.
>
> Do you agree that an annotated summary of what has gone well and what
> hasn't, in the case of discussion technology like Liquid Threads and Flow,
> might help us to have generative conversations on this topic? Or do you
> disagree? What kinds of approaches do you think might help the organization
> and the community learn the best lessons from past efforts, avoid repeating
> mistakes, and find ever more effective ways to engage with each other?
>
> -Pete
> [[User:Peteforsyth]]
>
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 7:42 PM, SarahSV  > wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 8:19 PM, Pete Forsyth  >
> > wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Is it possible to imagine an effort that would not be shot down, but
> > > embraced?
> > >
> > > What would need to be different?
> > >
> > > These are the kinds of questions I wish the Wikimedia Foundation would
> > get
> > > better at asking and exploring.
> > >
> > > ​Lila is good at asking the right questions of the community, which is
> > why
> > (so far as I can tell) editors like her. If you look at her meta talk
> page,
> > you can see her asking good questions about Flow and trying to find out
> > what editors need.
> >
> > That was literally the first time we felt we were being listened to.
> There
> > was one point when Flow was introduced – and I have been trying to find
> > this diff but can't – where there was something on the talk page that
> > amounted to "if you agree with us that x and y, then you're welcome to
> join
> > the discussion."
> >
> > So from the start, it felt as though staffers had ruled out the community
> > as people who might know something about what tools are needed to
> > collaborate on an article (which is not the same as chatting). People who
> > had been doing something for years were not regarded as experts in that
> > thing by the Foundation.
> >
> > We would say "we need pages," and they would explain why we didn't. We
> > would say "we need archives," and they would explain why good search was
> a
> > better idea. We would say "there's too much white space," and they would
> > explain that people like white space. And so on.
> >
> > Sarah
> >
> > ​
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org 
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> ?subject=unsubscribe>
> >
> ___
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-- 
Anthony Cole
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

[James Forrester]

On 23 February 2016 at 15:35, Oliver Keyes  wrote:

> I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior
> Data Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be
> on 18 March.


​Oliver,

It's been a while
 since
we first met in person. I even followed you across the world to work in San
Francisco! Don't think you can get away from our friendship that easily! ;-)

Take care, and go in peace and with my respect. My very best wishes.

Yours,
-- 
James D. Forrester
Lead Product Manager, Editing
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

jforres...@wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

[George Herbert]

Good luck.

George William Herbert
Sent from my iPhone

> On Feb 23, 2016, at 4:01 PM, Oliver Keyes  wrote:
> 
> I genuinely misread this as describing my wit as "strange and
> wonderful and awful".
> 
> ...actually you know what that still totally works ;p
> 
>> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 6:55 PM, Brion Vibber  wrote:
>> Oliver, thanks for all your work -- and for helping to keep many of us sane
>> with your wit through times strange and wonderful and awful alike.
>> 
>> Take care of yourself and do good things!
>> 
>> -- brion
>>> On Feb 23, 2016 3:36 PM, "Oliver Keyes"  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Dear all,
>>> 
>>> I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior
>>> Data Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be
>>> on 18 March.
>>> 
>>> After 12 months of continual stress, losses and workplace fear, I no
>>> longer wish to work for the Wikimedia Foundation.
>>> 
>>> While I appreciate that the Board of Trustees may take steps to
>>> rectify the situation, I have no confidence in their ability to
>>> effectively do so given their failure to solve for the problem until
>>> it became a publicity issue as well as a staff complaint.
>>> 
>>> I wish the movement and community the best of luck in building a
>>> fairer, more transparent and more representative governing structure.
>>> 
>>> All the best,
>>> Oliver Keyes
>>> Of these last 5 years, Wikimedia Foundation
>>> 
>>> ___
>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
>>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
>>> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>>> 
>> ___
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>> 
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

[pajz]

Sarah,

thank you and Brion for some really insightful e-mails. I'll just add one
thought to one of your points.

On 24 February 2016 at 00:41, SarahSV  wrote:

> Should the Foundation be paying for that kind of work
> and thinking in those ways? I would say not.

[...]

4. Rethinking Sue's decision that the Foundation would never pay for
>
content. I can think of several ways in which the Foundation could either
> pay or facilitate payment.
>

Well, we all know about the problems of giving monetary compensation to
editors. Just thinking aloud here, but I guess if you want to reward
editors in some way, but don't want to pay them directly, there's some
middle ground: Don't pay them, but let them donate their share of the cake.

At the beginning of the year, the WMF would set a budget, add some buffer,
and all that is received on top of that goes to a charity pool which
"belongs" to the editors. However, they can't claim any of the money for
themselves, but instead can choose how much they'd like to give to charity
A, charity B, etc. So, for instance, I'm a fan of the work of UNICEF and a
lesser-known charity called Evidence Action. So "my" compensation for my
Wikipedia work would be an amount X that I prorate between these two
organizations. Other editors would also take part in this scheme.

That would ensure we have a fully-funded (but not over-funded) WMF, we've
all done something good for the world, readers have a way to show
appreciation for editors, we don't negatively affect the intrinsic
motivation of editors by giving them money, all while transaction costs are
low as there'd just be one cumulative transfer per organization.
Economically speaking, I also think it's quite efficient: The WMF has a
great shiny product to showcase: Wikipedia. Wikipedia is something that
lots of people use, and benefit from, so it's rather easy to get them to
donate. On the other hand, if a more "classical" charity spends money on
installing water dispensers in Malawi, that goes unnoticed by most people.
So you'd expect that redirecting money to other charities should also
increase the total amout of donations made. Aside from that, the marginal
utility of the 50,000,001st dollar received the WMF is probably pretty low,
whereas if you're in the business of installing water dispensers, one would
expect it to be pretty high.

Best,
Patrik
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

[Sydney Poore]

Sorry to hear this news. Best wishes for the next phase of your life.

Warm regards,
Sydney
On Feb 23, 2016 6:36 PM, "Oliver Keyes"  wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior
> Data Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be
> on 18 March.
>
> After 12 months of continual stress, losses and workplace fear, I no
> longer wish to work for the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> While I appreciate that the Board of Trustees may take steps to
> rectify the situation, I have no confidence in their ability to
> effectively do so given their failure to solve for the problem until
> it became a publicity issue as well as a staff complaint.
>
> I wish the movement and community the best of luck in building a
> fairer, more transparent and more representative governing structure.
>
> All the best,
> Oliver Keyes
> Of these last 5 years, Wikimedia Foundation
>
> ___
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> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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[Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

[Yuri Astrakhan]

Something in Oliver's departure email caught my eye:


*  "Because we are scared and in pain and hindered by structural biases and
hierarchy, we are worse at our jobs." (quoted with Oliver's permission)*

And that got me thinking. WMF, an organization that was built with the open
and community-driven principles - why have we became the classic example of
a corporate multi-level hierarchy? Should we mimic a living organism rather
than a human-built pyramid?

This may sound naive and wishful, but could we have a more flat and
flexible team structure, where instead of having large teams with
sub-teams, we would have small self-forming teams "by interest".  For
example, someone decides to dedicate their 20% to building support for
storing 3D models in wiki. Their efforts are noticed, the community shows
its support, and WMF reacts by increasing project resourcing. Or the
opposite - the community questions the need of a project, and neither the
team nor WMF can convincingly justify it - the project resources are
gradually reduced.

An organism reacts to the change of its environment by redistributing
resources to the more problematic areas. Would small, flexible, and more
focused teams achieve that better?
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

[Sam Klein]

Oliver - Best of luck to you; there is certainly much to secure.
May you keep channeling your strange, wonderful, awful wit.

Sam

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 7:01 PM, Oliver Keyes  wrote:

> I genuinely misread this as describing my wit as "strange and
> wonderful and awful".
>
> ...actually you know what that still totally works ;p
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 6:55 PM, Brion Vibber 
> wrote:
> > Oliver, thanks for all your work -- and for helping to keep many of us
> sane
> > with your wit through times strange and wonderful and awful alike.
> >
> > Take care of yourself and do good things!
> >
> > -- brion
> > On Feb 23, 2016 3:36 PM, "Oliver Keyes"  wrote:
> >
> >> Dear all,
> >>
> >> I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior
> >> Data Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be
> >> on 18 March.
> >>
> >> After 12 months of continual stress, losses and workplace fear, I no
> >> longer wish to work for the Wikimedia Foundation.
> >>
> >> While I appreciate that the Board of Trustees may take steps to
> >> rectify the situation, I have no confidence in their ability to
> >> effectively do so given their failure to solve for the problem until
> >> it became a publicity issue as well as a staff complaint.
> >>
> >> I wish the movement and community the best of luck in building a
> >> fairer, more transparent and more representative governing structure.
> >>
> >> All the best,
> >> Oliver Keyes
> >> Of these last 5 years, Wikimedia Foundation
> >>
> >> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

[Oliver Keyes]

I genuinely misread this as describing my wit as "strange and
wonderful and awful".

...actually you know what that still totally works ;p

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 6:55 PM, Brion Vibber  wrote:
> Oliver, thanks for all your work -- and for helping to keep many of us sane
> with your wit through times strange and wonderful and awful alike.
>
> Take care of yourself and do good things!
>
> -- brion
> On Feb 23, 2016 3:36 PM, "Oliver Keyes"  wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior
>> Data Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be
>> on 18 March.
>>
>> After 12 months of continual stress, losses and workplace fear, I no
>> longer wish to work for the Wikimedia Foundation.
>>
>> While I appreciate that the Board of Trustees may take steps to
>> rectify the situation, I have no confidence in their ability to
>> effectively do so given their failure to solve for the problem until
>> it became a publicity issue as well as a staff complaint.
>>
>> I wish the movement and community the best of luck in building a
>> fairer, more transparent and more representative governing structure.
>>
>> All the best,
>> Oliver Keyes
>> Of these last 5 years, Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>> ___
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

[James Salsman]

Sorry, http://mediawiki.org/wiki/Accuracy_review


On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 4:59 PM, James Salsman  wrote:
> SarahSV wrote:
>>
>>... how does a tech organization nurture and support its unpaid
>> workforce of mostly writers and researchers?
>
> I remain convinced that http://wikimedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_review can
> solve this problem through a new spinoff such as WikiEd Foundation,
> but that's still probably at least a year off.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

[James Salsman]

SarahSV wrote:
>
>... how does a tech organization nurture and support its unpaid
> workforce of mostly writers and researchers?

I remain convinced that http://wikimedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_review can
solve this problem through a new spinoff such as WikiEd Foundation,
but that's still probably at least a year off.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

[Brion Vibber]

Oliver, thanks for all your work -- and for helping to keep many of us sane
with your wit through times strange and wonderful and awful alike.

Take care of yourself and do good things!

-- brion
On Feb 23, 2016 3:36 PM, "Oliver Keyes"  wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior
> Data Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be
> on 18 March.
>
> After 12 months of continual stress, losses and workplace fear, I no
> longer wish to work for the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> While I appreciate that the Board of Trustees may take steps to
> rectify the situation, I have no confidence in their ability to
> effectively do so given their failure to solve for the problem until
> it became a publicity issue as well as a staff complaint.
>
> I wish the movement and community the best of luck in building a
> fairer, more transparent and more representative governing structure.
>
> All the best,
> Oliver Keyes
> Of these last 5 years, Wikimedia Foundation
>
> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

[aude]

On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 12:35 AM, Oliver Keyes  wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior
> Data Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be
> on 18 March.
>
> After 12 months of continual stress, losses and workplace fear, I no
> longer wish to work for the Wikimedia Foundation.
>

quite sad and frustrated about the situation :(

We will miss you and wish you the best.

Cheers,
Katie


>
> While I appreciate that the Board of Trustees may take steps to
> rectify the situation, I have no confidence in their ability to
> effectively do so given their failure to solve for the problem until
> it became a publicity issue as well as a staff complaint.
>
> I wish the movement and community the best of luck in building a
> fairer, more transparent and more representative governing structure.
>
> All the best,
> Oliver Keyes
> Of these last 5 years, Wikimedia Foundation
>
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> 




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@wikidata
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

[Brion Vibber]

Thanks for the thoughtful response; you've raised some excellent points
that strongly warrant further discussion.

Some more recent initiatives like the Community Tech team have been
specifically meant to help "power users" get stuff done; I hope that's
working out and helping, and that the focus on providing tools that our
contributors want and need continues.

The topic of unpaid labor -- and exploiting addictive behaviors -- is a
general one with free and open source software specifically, as well as
user generated content generally, and I agree it deserves a lot more
thought.

-- brion
On Feb 23, 2016 3:41 PM, "SarahSV"  wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 4:02 PM, Brion Vibber 
> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > I think first we have to ask: why did many people feel attacked or in
> > unwanted adversarial positions before (both among volunteers, and among
> > staff)? What sort of interactions and behavior were seen as problematic,
> > and what led up to them?
> >
>
> ​The crux of the problem is that we all see ourselves as bosses.
> ​The paid workers don't want to be told what to do by the unpaid, and vice
> versa.
>
> There were clashes around the introduction of software, but these were only
> flashpoints. There was (and remains) a simmering resentment of the paid
> among the unpaid, for obvious reasons. And the paid staff seemed to regard
> experienced editors as "power users" who need to be chased off, missing the
> point that (a) "power users" have invaluable experience and a very unusual
> skill set that should be used not discarded, and (b) that the new users the
> Foundation wants to cultivate will become "power users" too one day if
> they're cultivated well – unless the idea is to appeal only to occasional
> users who want to fix typos, but you won't get an encyclopaedia that way.
>
> You mentioned the "exploitation of employees and users for their labor
> " in your email, and I'm glad you did, because that's almost never
> discussed. It was in part why there was such a strong reaction to the
> misunderstanding about the Knowledge Engine. We had visions of the
> Foundation trying to create yet another unpaid workforce to "curate" search
> results.
>
> I don't want this email to be essay-length, but let me raise an issue
> that's closely related to exploitation, namely addiction. A lot of the
> unpaid workers are addicted to what they do, and I've seen staffers discuss
> how to keep them that way (e.g. by creating feedback loops of responses to
> keep people going). Should the Foundation be paying for that kind of work
> and thinking in those ways? I would say not.
> ​
> So the question of how to support volunteers involves:
>
> 1. Recognizing that we are an unpaid workforce.
>
> 2. Recognizing that there are questions about exploitation and addiction
> that should be discussed, and that these are serious ethical and perhaps
> even public-health issues.
>
> 3. Developing an attitude of social responsibility toward us within the
> Foundation, rather than seeing us as a nuisance and an obstacle.
>
> 4. Rethinking Sue's decision that the Foundation would never pay for
> content. I can think of several ways in which the Foundation could either
> pay or facilitate payment.
>
> I'll leave it there, because this is long, and perhaps reply to your other
> points in another email. Just one final thought. When I lived in London
> years ago, a new newspaper started for homeless people, The Big Issue. It
> is sold by the homeless on the streets, with the idea of giving them a way
> to earn an income. The homeless and other volunteers also used to help
> write it. The idea was that, as it became more successful, everyone would
> be paid, because the concept of it was to lift everyone up.
>
> I would love to see the Wikimedia Foundation embrace that philosophy,
> namely that part of its job is to nurture its workforce (paid and unpaid),
> offer them opportunity where it can, lift them up, educate them, show them
> how to educate others, and respect them, so that everyone who gets involved
> seriously with Wikipedia finds their lives improved because of that
> involvement.
>
> Sarah
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

[SarahSV]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 4:02 PM, Brion Vibber  wrote:

>
>
> I think first we have to ask: why did many people feel attacked or in
> unwanted adversarial positions before (both among volunteers, and among
> staff)? What sort of interactions and behavior were seen as problematic,
> and what led up to them?
>

​The crux of the problem is that we all see ourselves as bosses.
​The paid workers don't want to be told what to do by the unpaid, and vice
versa.

There were clashes around the introduction of software, but these were only
flashpoints. There was (and remains) a simmering resentment of the paid
among the unpaid, for obvious reasons. And the paid staff seemed to regard
experienced editors as "power users" who need to be chased off, missing the
point that (a) "power users" have invaluable experience and a very unusual
skill set that should be used not discarded, and (b) that the new users the
Foundation wants to cultivate will become "power users" too one day if
they're cultivated well – unless the idea is to appeal only to occasional
users who want to fix typos, but you won't get an encyclopaedia that way.

You mentioned the "exploitation of employees and users for their labor
" in your email, and I'm glad you did, because that's almost never
discussed. It was in part why there was such a strong reaction to the
misunderstanding about the Knowledge Engine. We had visions of the
Foundation trying to create yet another unpaid workforce to "curate" search
results.

I don't want this email to be essay-length, but let me raise an issue
that's closely related to exploitation, namely addiction. A lot of the
unpaid workers are addicted to what they do, and I've seen staffers discuss
how to keep them that way (e.g. by creating feedback loops of responses to
keep people going). Should the Foundation be paying for that kind of work
and thinking in those ways? I would say not.
​
So the question of how to support volunteers involves:

1. Recognizing that we are an unpaid workforce.

2. Recognizing that there are questions about exploitation and addiction
that should be discussed, and that these are serious ethical and perhaps
even public-health issues.

3. Developing an attitude of social responsibility toward us within the
Foundation, rather than seeing us as a nuisance and an obstacle.

4. Rethinking Sue's decision that the Foundation would never pay for
content. I can think of several ways in which the Foundation could either
pay or facilitate payment.

I'll leave it there, because this is long, and perhaps reply to your other
points in another email. Just one final thought. When I lived in London
years ago, a new newspaper started for homeless people, The Big Issue. It
is sold by the homeless on the streets, with the idea of giving them a way
to earn an income. The homeless and other volunteers also used to help
write it. The idea was that, as it became more successful, everyone would
be paid, because the concept of it was to lift everyone up.

I would love to see the Wikimedia Foundation embrace that philosophy,
namely that part of its job is to nurture its workforce (paid and unpaid),
offer them opportunity where it can, lift them up, educate them, show them
how to educate others, and respect them, so that everyone who gets involved
seriously with Wikipedia finds their lives improved because of that
involvement.

Sarah
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[Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

[Oliver Keyes]

Dear all,

I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior
Data Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be
on 18 March.

After 12 months of continual stress, losses and workplace fear, I no
longer wish to work for the Wikimedia Foundation.

While I appreciate that the Board of Trustees may take steps to
rectify the situation, I have no confidence in their ability to
effectively do so given their failure to solve for the problem until
it became a publicity issue as well as a staff complaint.

I wish the movement and community the best of luck in building a
fairer, more transparent and more representative governing structure.

All the best,
Oliver Keyes
Of these last 5 years, Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

[Brion Vibber]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:34 PM, SarahSV  wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:29 PM, Brion Vibber 
> wrote:
>
> >
> > I believe a high-tech organization should invest in smart people creating
> > unique technology. But I also think it should invest in people, period.
> > Staff and volunteers must be cultivated and supported -- that's how
> loyalty
> > and passion are developed, and I believe they pay dividends in
> productivity
> > and recruitment.
> >
>
> ​Brian, I'd be interested to hear how volunteers could be cultivated and
> supported. We felt under attack by the Foundation until Lila arrived, and I
> think a lot of editors are grateful to her for having improved that
> relationship. But not feeling attacked isn't the same as feeling supported.


> The Foundation often boasts that it only has around 200 employees, but the
> truth is that it has an enormous unpaid workforce. Most of us don't go to
> meet-ups, so we don't even see travel expenses. We're grateful if we can
> get a free JSTOR subscription.
>
> Sue Gardner once declared that the Foundation would never pay for content,
> which was a blow to those of us who produce it. Unpaid workers with
> technical skills might one day be paid, but if your skills are editorial,
> forget it. That very much supports the idea that the Foundation is a tech
> organization and not an educational one.
>
> So – how does a tech organization nurture and support its unpaid workforce
> of mostly writers and researchers?
>

Excellent questions, and important ones for WMF and the wider Wikimedia
movement to explore and answer.


I think first we have to ask: why did many people feel attacked or in
unwanted adversarial positions before (both among volunteers, and among
staff)? What sort of interactions and behavior were seen as problematic,
and what led up to them?

Second we have to ask: given that several people on this list have
described improved relationships with staff in the last year or so, what
has actually changed in those interactions, and what can we do to make sure
we keep doing well?

Third we have to ask: what do our volunteer editors, module writers,
template tweakers, copyright divers, and library researchers need to
further the mission that they don't already have, and what can WMF do to
help them?

I know I'm answering questions with questions, but I think that's where we
stand; I do not have a "do this" answer to give beyond listening and
adjusting our behavior based on what we hear. I suspect that folks who have
worked on the 'product' side of WMF in talking to users about our software
projects have already been learning some of these lessons, but it's
important that we document and retain that knowledge and make it a
deliberate part of how WMF operates.


In that third subquestion is an implicit decision point, which is the crux:
"what can WMF do to help them?" can only be answered within the context of
what monetary and human "resources" the company has available or believes
it can develop.

It may well be that the answer is "WMF concentrates on building and
operating the tech that content-contributing Wikimedians use to accomplish
amazing things" while things like coordinating activity in specific content
areas is managed by other organizations -- I've seen people cite the Wiki
Education Foundation which helps organize professor & student activity as
being a good example of this sort of work going on, though I have to admit
I'm not intimately familiar with them.

I would personally love to see people employed to do serious content work,
and I'd rather see them supported through educationally-minded institutions
than be hired by random PR firms to work on their clients' articles. I
don't know whether that's politically feasible through WMF now or in the
future, but I also think it's important that the WMF not be seen as the
only funding game in town either.

That, too, might need further thinking about how we fundraise as a movement.

-- brion
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

[SarahSV]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:29 PM, Brion Vibber  wrote:

>
> I believe a high-tech organization should invest in smart people creating
> unique technology. But I also think it should invest in people, period.
> Staff and volunteers must be cultivated and supported -- that's how loyalty
> and passion are developed, and I believe they pay dividends in productivity
> and recruitment.
>

​Brian, I'd be interested to hear how volunteers could be cultivated and
supported. We felt under attack by the Foundation until Lila arrived, and I
think a lot of editors are grateful to her for having improved that
relationship. But not feeling attacked isn't the same as feeling supported.

The Foundation often boasts that it only has around 200 employees, but the
truth is that it has an enormous unpaid workforce. Most of us don't go to
meet-ups, so we don't even see travel expenses. We're grateful if we can
get a free JSTOR subscription.

Sue Gardner once declared that the Foundation would never pay for content,
which was a blow to those of us who produce it. Unpaid workers with
technical skills might one day be paid, but if your skills are editorial,
forget it. That very much supports the idea that the Foundation is a tech
organization and not an educational one.

So – how does a tech organization nurture and support its unpaid workforce
of mostly writers and researchers?

Sarah
​
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

[Leigh Thelmadatter]

As a humanities person myself, I did read into Lila's post that the 
non-engineering aspects of Wikimedia would take a back seat... perhaps a far 
back seat to all the shiny new things happening in Silicon Valley. This may not 
be the case, but if it is, I can understand it as to an engineer, everything is 
a tech issue.
I have been a college professor for 20 some-odd years and despite my linguistic 
and humanities background, don´t hate technology. I dont love it as much as 
others, but simply the fact that I will touch it has made me something of the 
technology "expert" in the various colleges and universities language 
departments I have taught.
Brion touches on something very important here... especially with the words 
"user disconnection."  Integration computer technology has been the buzzword 
for decades, but we are still in many ways no closer to effectively using 
technology in educational institutions than we were in the 1990s.  Some of it 
is how fast technology changes, but most, IMHO, is a lack of understanding of 
how to best use the tools that we have and will be invented.
Teachers and administrators, in my area at least, either swing toward 
"Technology is useless." to "If we buy stuff, it will solve all our problems."  
Heck, I had to laugh when MOOC's got introduced as a way to have large classes 
with only one lecturer. We have learned nothing from the first online classes 
in the 1990s, mostly because adminstrators still pray for 1000-student classes 
paying for only one professor. I exaggerate, but not by much.
Perhaps the most difficult thing is matching technology with the needs of end 
users, often because computer people and the rest of us look at the technology 
so differently. Unlike a doctor, who can tell patients what is good for them 
(or rather their bodies), engineers often understand what we non-techie end 
users need about as much we understand how to code.
This is one reason why schools waste so much money when it comes to technology. 
We have teachers who understand their classes but not the technology, and 
technology experts that do not know how to teach writing, history, philosophy, 
foreign language etc. 
Finding someone to bridge the gap, IMHO is crucial. 
It could be tempting for a Foundation in Silicon Valley to work solely on the 
technology end, but the end users (readers and editors) see Wikipedia/Wikimedia 
as a reference first. The technology serves the goal of informing and 
educating.  Not all technologies do help this. For example, in the 1990s and 
part of the 2000s, early research seemed to indicate that the immediate 
feedback from foreign language practice software was a benefit for students, as 
they could do more practice in less time. More recent research seems to 
indicate this benefit is limited at best. Fast and superficial feedback seems 
to get ignored, especially after the novelty has worn off.
My point is that it is necessary to monitor trends and make sure Wikipedia does 
not get so aniquitated that is it left behind. But on the other hand, blindly 
chasing new tech fads can tear the organization and the humans still very much 
needed to add to, improve and update a huge gathering of data. Any new 
technologies we want to explore must conform to the main purpose of Wikimedia, 
the free dissemination of information. I have no problem with, say, Wikipedia 
content be reused for other formats (it is already.) but that encyclopedic 
basis needs to remain intact and accessible to all, not just those who know all 
the new tech gizmos.


> Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2016 13:29:17 -0800
> From: bvib...@wikimedia.org
> To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization
> 
> I think there are many different interpretations of what it means to "be a
> high-tech organization", which makes it a difficult label to base arguments
> around; readers will interpret it very differently depending on their
> personal experiences and biases.
> 
> One view might concentrate on notions of "innovation", "excellence", or
> "return on investment" achieved through super-smart people creating unique
> technology -- this view associates "high-tech" with success, competitive
> advantage, brand awareness/marketshare, and money (profit for traditional
> corporations, or investment in the mission for non-profits).
> 
> Another view might concentrate on other features considered common to
> "high-tech" companies such as toxic work environments, lack of diversity,
> overemphasis on engineering versus other disciplines, disconnection from
> users' needs, and a laser-focus on achieving profits at the expense of
> long-term thinking. This view associates "high-tech" with social and
> economic inequality and exploitation of employees and users for their labor
> & attention to the detriment of their physical and emotional health.
> 
> And there are many, much subtler connotations to be found in between.
> 
> 
> I believe a high-tech 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Matthew Flaschen]

On 02/21/2016 11:03 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote:

So, if you speak of structurally connecting *open* sources, as a basis for
smart editing tools, you seem to be saying that such copyrighted yet openly
accessible sources, as well as all genuinely paywalled sources, should be
excluded from these efforts.

If that's correct, and I am not misunderstanding what you mean to say here
(please correct me if I do!), how do you square it with the Wikimedia
vision?


She did not say anything about excluding references to proprietary 
sources like those you mentioned above.  I think we're all in agreement 
they will still be referenced.


She described possible enhanced support for including/connecting to open 
data.  That may not be possible/advisable to do for proprietary data, 
which might require proprietary licenses or software.


Of course, it depends on the actual details, but as an analogy think of 
how fair use images are allowed on some specific projects (e.g. English 
Wikipedia), but the central repositories (Wikimedia Commons and 
Wikidata) only include open content/data.


Matt Flaschen

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

[Liam Wyatt]

On 23 February 2016 at 18:22, Todd Allen  wrote:

> So, five community elected seats, five filled by other means. No Founder
> seat. If Jimmy wants to serve, he's of course welcome to run for a
> community-elected seat, or seek appointment to one of the appointed seats.
>

Since you raise this point, it might be worth noting that Jimmy's
"Founder's Seat" was renewed at the November board meeting. The new term
continues until the end of 2018 - when it may be renewed again.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Resolution_to_renew_the_Founder%27s_seat_(2015)

This resolution might not have gone unnoticed by many because the minutes
for that Board meeting were approved in December (and not published on Meta
until January) during the same meeting that also appointed Arnnon Geshuri
and removed James Heilman. Issues that, shall we say, occupied a lot of our
attention at the time!

[Chronological list of resolutions here:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions ]

-Liam / Wittylama

wittylama.com
Peace, love & metadata
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

[Todd Allen]

Dariusz,

It's very good to know that those changes are being considered at all. I do
tend to agree with Andreas about two chapter seats being a slight
overrepresentation, but I think there should be one.

If I were to make my ideal board (and I realize you may have something else
in mind, but just to throw the idea out :) ):

-Five community-elected seats. Truly community-elected, not
"community-suggested"; the Board cannot refuse to seat them or throw them
off, but can call a referendum to the community in the event a for-cause
removal is thought to be necessary. No not-for-cause involuntary removals,
though of course a Board member may voluntarily resign at any time and for
any or no reason.

-One chapter/org seat, appointed by the chapters as done today.

-Four appointed/"specialty" seats, appointed for specialty expertise or
outside perspective as would befit the current strategy.

And yes, there is a madness to my method, or something like that. Five
community seats (I don't consider the chapter seat a community seat) would
mean that while those five individuals could not act unilaterally, they
could, if unanimously opposed, block any actions by the unelected Board
members. (I presume tie votes are considered to fail, as is common
practice.) Similarly, the non-community members could, if unanimous, block
something brought forth by only the community board members. All business
that goes through would, by necessity, involve at least one person
supporting it from both "sides".

So, five community elected seats, five filled by other means. No Founder
seat. If Jimmy wants to serve, he's of course welcome to run for a
community-elected seat, or seek appointment to one of the appointed seats.

Like I said, not my call, but I'd be interested to know your thoughts on a
scheme like that.

Todd
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 4:12 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak 
wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 11:02 AM, Andreas Kolbe 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> (1) The most compelling arguments in favour of having appointees as
>> voting board members (as opposed to having them as advisory board members),
>>
>
> I'm not sure what you're asking. I think that both external experts and
> the community-elected and chapter-appointed Board members should be voting
> members, if they are to be on the board. If you're asking whether it is
> useful to have external appointees on the Board at all, I think the answer
> is quite obvious - we need the level of engagement and expertise, that will
> not be available if we ask them to be on the advisory board, and I don't
> think it is likely it would be if they were to no non-decisive board
> members. Proportions between solely board-appointed and community-nominated
> people is a different story.
>


Thanks Dariusz. It's more or less what I was thinking too; a seat on an
advisory board is perhaps not attractive enough to really care.



> I am glad to hear you are working on a proposal to increase the number of
>> community/chapter seats on the board (though I personally tend to think
>> that at 2 vs. 3, the chapters are already slightly over-represented,
>> compared to the general community).
>>
>
>>
> Sadly, humans count in full numbers only, so it could be either 1 or 2 in
> the current system, and 1 is not that many neither :)
>


Well, you might add a community-selected board member. That would make 2
seats for the chapters, and 4 for the community in general. That seems a
healthier proportion.

Moreover, if you increase the community-selected board members to 4, this
would ensure that the majority of members (6 out of 11) can trace their
presence on the board to the results of a democratic process.

Hey, you could just re-add James, leaving María in place. :) I think the
community might welcome that, as a signal of reconciliation.

Andreas
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Shared list

[Oliver Keyes]

Thanks Anthony; it's really appreciated. I want to make clear that I'm
not saying "don't disagree!" - of course people can disagree. Hell,
we're Wikipedians. Even if nobody was disagreeing we'd disagree with
ourselves ;).

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:54 AM, Anthony Cole  wrote:
> I'm listening to this, and thank you all. I'll try to be less ... whatever
> that is I'm being. I do know what you mean, and I'll tone it down. Oliver,
> I had/have no intention of minimising the hurt felt by those involved. I
> apologise if I gave that impression. But some of those hurt people have
> been dishing out - en masse - a world of pain, themselves. I understand the
> dynamic at play here.
>
> In my defence - though I know it's no justification - I'm deeply affronted
> by what's been happening here and, especially, on WW. I see its provenance
> - the almost inevitability of it, given a hands-off (read that as slow,
> ineffectual, irresponsible, mostly stupid and arrogant) board. But still,
> this has been just awful to watch, and the behaviour of some here and
> elsewhere has been truly, truly trashy.
>
> I shall try to improve my game.
>
> PS:
>
> That's the first time I've ever made public a private email. Literally.
> Ever. I assume it will be the last. That kind of thing, bullying people
> into silence, quietly, off-list, is IMNSHO, poor behaviour, billinghurst.
>
> Anthony Cole
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 3:09 PM, Benjamin Lees  wrote:
>
>> Someone complained to you off-list about the amount you're posting to
>> the list.  You immediately forwarded his email to the list.  Is this
>> the best approach?
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 12:13 AM, Anthony Cole 
>> wrote:
>> > I thought I was bringing a sorely under-represented perspective to the ED
>> > discussion on this list and wasn't aware I'd said or done anything
>> > inappropriate here.
>>
>> Well, Oliver Keyes said, 3 days ago:
>>
>> > Speaking as both a volunteer and staff, Anthony, I have found your
>> > attitude in this conversation and others on the subject to be deeply
>> > unproductive. It would be good if you spent more time asking questions
>> > and less time dismissing people's concerns.
>>
>>
>> For my part, I think it's inappropriate to, for example, take
>> someone's statement: "I restrained from expressing publicly any issues
>> I might have with your own performance; I would love you to not spread
>> covert allegations on my performace and professional attitude" and
>> proceed to "it is used as proof she's "literally Hitler"."  My
>> guidance would be to think carefully about the way you're responding
>> to others and whether you would like to be responded to in that way.
>>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Shared list

[Oliver Keyes]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 3:54 AM, Theo10011  wrote:
> I am totally with Benjamin on this.
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016, Oliver Keyes  wrote:
>
>> "sorely under-represented perspective" or not, that kind of attitude
>> is of course going to piss people off. And it may be that denying the
>> value of peoples' experiences or dismissing their misery is not, in
>> fact, what you mean to be communicating. But it is how it's coming
>> out. For me, at least, that's why I find your emails frustrating.
>>
>
> That is an odd way to dismiss any counter-argument - it is going to piss
> you or others off? You are the only staff member so far objecting to any
> dissenting view, existentially. I'm sure you would prefer no dissent should
> exist at all because you are having a miserable time, just 100 people
> piling on one?
>
> I see the conversation heavily leaning in one direction - against Lila. She
> is overwhelmingly being blamed, accused and rebutted by just about every
> member on this list - in unofficial and official channels. This includes
> the staff, community members and even past board members. Anything short of
> calling her literally the worst or comparison her to lady hitler will not
> be moving things any further than they are.
>
> A few staff members like Brion, expressed dissent to Lila's assertion, but
> wonderfully well. They offered counter-arguments, and provided context we
> all needed. Dissent is necessary, it moves the conversation along. You are
> in essence doing what your senior management was accused of, silencing
> criticism internally because you are having a rough time. I'm sure it
> doesn't feel nice.

Well, no. They're entirely different things. I'm happy to turn that
into a longer discussion if you're genuinely interested in what I see
as the difference, but I appreciate that may not be the case.

>
> Regards
> Theo
>
> PS Anthony, you shouldn't have sent a private email to the list.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 11:02 AM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

>
> (1) The most compelling arguments in favour of having appointees as voting
> board members (as opposed to having them as advisory board members),
>

I'm not sure what you're asking. I think that both external experts and the
community-elected and chapter-appointed Board members should be voting
members, if they are to be on the board. If you're asking whether it is
useful to have external appointees on the Board at all, I think the answer
is quite obvious - we need the level of engagement and expertise, that will
not be available if we ask them to be on the advisory board, and I don't
think it is likely it would be if they were to no non-decisive board
members. Proportions between solely board-appointed and community-nominated
people is a different story.


>
> (2) If you are comfortable doing so, the most important risks or downsides
> attached to the present arrangement?
>


well, there are several, just from the top of my head: community/chapter
elected members do not always have any prior experience of working on an
NGO board or in any similar body; the current system disfavors diversity,
externally-appointed experts have trouble understanding open collaboration
organizations in general, and Wikipedia ecosystem in particular... I could
go on, but at the time I can't really sit down to it methodically.



>
> I am glad to hear you are working on a proposal to increase the number of
> community/chapter seats on the board (though I personally tend to think
> that at 2 vs. 3, the chapters are already slightly over-represented,
> compared to the general community).
>
>
Sadly, humans count in full numbers only, so it could be either 1 or 2 in
the current system, and 1 is not that many neither :)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timeline of recent events at the Wikimedia Foundation

[Peter Coombe]

Thank you so much for working on this timeline Molly. A beautiful
presentation of an ugly situation!

Peter

On 23 February 2016 at 07:06, GorillaWarfare <
gorillawarfarewikipe...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:03 AM, Theo10011  wrote:
>
> > Please consider (for later) either linking or making a wiki version for
> > Meta. Thanks for making this effort.
> >
>
> I intend to make a Mediawiki-friendly version once real life is out of the
> way.
>
> – Molly (GorillaWarfare)
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>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

I think it is an important conversation to have. I am a bit skeptical about
creating a parliament-like body, and I am a bit worried that it would
advance the disengagement of the board from the community.

I am working on a proposal for some reform (in short: I want to increase
the number of community/chapter seats, increase the level of professional
expertise, increase diversity, and all that without changing the overall
number of seats ;), but I need time to present it in a coherent way. I hope
to do so in March, but of course this dialogue will hopefully bring results
meanwhile, too.

dj

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Thyge  wrote:

> Lane Rasberry,
>
> I'm aware of the ongoing election - but in all respect, that has nothing to
> do with a house of representavtives as I envision it, i.e. being "above"
> the board.
>
> The present structure allows the existing board to decline access to the
> persons being elected.
>
> Regards,
> Thyge
>
>
> 2016-02-23 16:05 GMT+01:00 Lane Rasberry :
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > Could I remind you all that there is a board election in progress right
> now
> > for 2 of the 10 seats? Please see details for the 2016 Affiliate-selected
> > board seats election at
> > 
> >
> > Amir, you said that you wanted representation from "India, China, Russia,
> > Iran, Brazil, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Arab countries and
> > finally, all of Africa". If you like, you may encourage anyone from those
> > countries to seek a nomination. Also, it would be very helpful if you
> could
> > encourage the Wikimedia chapters in those countries to participate in the
> > election in any way that they could, especially by planning to vote
> during
> > the upcoming voting period.
> >
> > Thyge - we do have a sort of house of representatives and it has a board
> > election happening right now.
> >
> > Nominations for the board are open till March 8! Election starts March
> 24!
> > Please share the message.
> >
> > Thanks - if anyone has questions post on the election page.
> >
> > yours,
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > On 2016-02-23 14:54, Thyge wrote:
> > >
> > >> We should not have direct elections to the board. We should have a
> > "house
> > >> of representatives" with X members from each part of the world and
> > charged
> > >> with electing the board and decide major issues like location of the
> > WMF,
> > >> changed of bylaws etc.
> > >>
> > >> Regards,
> > >> Thyge
> > >>
> > >>
> > > I do not think it could solve the diversity issue.
> > >
> > > To appoint the number of individuals with a set of skills and needed
> > > diversity, one needs candidates which will have needed skills and
> desired
> > > diversity to start with.
> > >
> > > Our experience as a movement (and also of people in other organizations
> > in
> > > different contexts) that these people do not always queue at the doors
> of
> > > the WMF office to wait for being elected. They need to be scouted,
> > > negotiated with, and convinced to be willing to sit at the board. This
> is
> > > what currently various companies are paid to do, and this seems to be a
> > > reasonable arrangement to me.
> > >
> > > As far as the candidates are there, I do not see much of a difference
> > > whether the community, a selected group (like house of
> representatives),
> > or
> > > the Board votes for them. And as soon as there is no difference there
> is
> > > also no need to make the structure more complicated. I thus conclude
> that
> > > this House of representatives is not needed for the Board elections.
> > >
> > > (It might be needed for other things, which are outside the scope of
> this
> > > discussion).
> > >
> > >
> > > Cheers
> > > Yaroslav
> > >
> > > ___
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> > > 
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Lane Rasberry
> > user:bluerasberry on Wikipedia
> > 206.801.0814
> > l...@bluerasberry.com
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> >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Strategy and its subtypes

[Mardetanha]

it would be great if someone could give us tl;dr version of this mail

Mardetanha

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 5:21 PM, James Hare  wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> Of the many issues, real or perceived, currently under discussion, one of
> them is the matter of strategy: of the Wikimedia Foundation and of the
> movement in general. I’ve been editing Wikipedia since November of 2004 and
> have noticed that the general points of tension have revolved around who
> has authority or responsibility to do what. I will explain what I mean by
> that.
>
> There is no one “strategy.” Or rather, strategy has different components
> to it, and it is important to note and understand these different
> components because they have their own histories and associated arguments.
> There is no possible way I can capture every nuance of this, but when we
> say “strategy” we should think of at least three things: content strategy,
> program strategy, and product strategy.
>
> Content has, almost exclusively, been a prerogative of the communities of
> the various Wikimedia projects, and not that of the Foundation. [1] English
> Wikipedia, for example, argues bitterly over what is notable, what is not
> notable, and what should and shouldn’t be deleted on a given day, but the
> Wikimedia Foundation is not involved in that. While the Wikimedia
> Foundation does fund content creation initiatives from time to time, it
> does not decide, for instance, which monuments are worthy of Wiki Loves
> Monuments, or which artists should be the focus of Art+Feminism. I’m not
> pointing this out because it’s remotely interesting, but because it’s so
> widely agreed upon that the WMF has no editorial authority that we don’t
> even need to talk about it.
>
> There are other areas that we do need to talk about; not necessarily to
> devise a master plan, or to draw lines in the sand, but to at least
> understand who thinks what and where our opinions diverge. This brings me
> to my second point: programs. I am referring to initiatives to get more
> people involved in the Wikimedia projects, to build bridges with other
> organizations, to make Wikimedia as much a part of the offline world as the
> online world. The Wikimedia Foundation did some of the original programs in
> the late 2000s, with mixed success. Chapters came along and also came up
> with programs; GLAM, for instance, was developed outside of the Wikimedia
> Foundation. Over time, the Foundation decided that it was not so interested
> in running programs directly as much as they were interested in funding
> others to carry them out and serving as a sort of central hub for best
> practices. As far as I can tell, as someone who has served on the board of
> a Wikimedia chapter for almost five years, there seems to be a general
> consensus that this is how programs are done. This operating consensus was
> arrived at through a combination of the Wikimedia Foundation’s “narrowing
> focus” and by the enthusiasm of chapters, groups, and mission-aligned
> organizations to carry on outreach work.
>
> Then there is the product strategy, which is the most contentious of them
> all. By “product” I am referring to the subset of technology that readers
> and editors interact with on a day-to-day basis. The sacred workflow. (Much
> of the arguments about technology are out of my depth so I won’t be
> commenting on them; they also include rather arcane infrastructural stuff
> that I don’t think most Wikimedia users or contributors care about.) All of
> our arguments, from the usability initiative to the present day, have
> focused on: who is in charge of the user experience? I have heard different
> things; one perspective holds that “the community” (usually not further
> specified) gets to make the final decision, while I have also heard from
> some that technological matters are purely the prerogative of the Wikimedia
> Foundation. [2] I am not sure what the present-day company line is but I
> suspect it’s somewhere in the middle.
>
> I do not know what the “true” answer is, either. There is a lot to be said
> for treating the user experience as products to be professionally managed:
> there has been tremendous study in the area of how to design user
> experiences, and Wikipedia is notorious for being difficult to edit as a
> newcomer. With this in mind, the Wikimedia Foundation did the best it
> could, with limited resources, and despite some successes managed to create
> some ham-fisted products that did not address the needs of the users and—at
> worst—threatened disruption. This has gotten better in time; the visual
> editor, for example, has made tremendous progress on this front. But not
> every issue is settled. What about the products that need substantially
> more improvement before they can be used at large? What about things that
> we should be working on, but aren’t, or are doing so at a glacial pace
> because we are being stretched too thin? And now that WMF grantees can

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Powerful on-wiki art visualization

[Victor Grigas]

I'm planning to make a short promotional video to share on the Wikipedia
social media channels about graphs, once more of them are embedded into
Wikipedia pages (so that I can get real screenshots). Right now, there are
only a few articles that use this new feature:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:PagesWithProp/graph_specs=500=0

I'd like to have actual examples of each one of these to show:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph/Demo

So if anyone creates new graphs, please feel free to email me (
vgri...@wikimedia.org) and I'll try adding your work to the video.

I was excited when I saw this too! Great Job Yuri, Jane
[[user:Jhoffswell]], the VegaJS team, and [[user:Primaler]]!


On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 10:03 AM, Yuri Astrakhan 
wrote:

> Sam, I would recommend starting from the interactive graph tutorial
>
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph/Interactive_Graph_Tutorial
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 10:16 AM, Sam Klein 
> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 10:25 PM, Dan Andreescu <
> dandree...@wikimedia.org>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I have this funny feeling that we're about to see like a million of
> these
> > > happen.  I wonder if this is how people felt around 2005 : )
> > >
> >
> > Based on how long it took me to make this one (following the theme), it
> may
> > be closer to what happened when easyTimeline extension came out.  But if
> a
> > few simple templates get a more streamlined UI for entering data, or a
> way
> > to enter a range of wikidata items, who knows...
> >
> >
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_books#Interactive_graph
> >
> >
> >
> > >
> > > On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 10:23 PM, Risker  wrote:
> > >
> > > > This is really cool, Yuri!  Thank you for sharing this.
> > > >
> > > > Risker
> > > >
> > > > On 22 February 2016 at 22:15, Yuri Astrakhan <
> yastrak...@wikimedia.org
> > >
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > First complex interactive graph in Wikipedia explores the most
> > > expensive
> > > > > paintings in history. Move the mouse around to view images, click
> the
> > > > > period or artist to highlight their work.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_paintings#Interactive_graph
> > > > >
> > > > > Thank you Jane [[user:Jhoffswell]], the VegaJS team, and
> > > > [[user:Primaler]]
> > > > > who designed the original graph!
> > > > >
> > > > > P.S. See graph demo page for examples and tutorial links
> > > > > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph/Demo
> > > > >
> > > > > P.P.S. The "click to open a page" feature is still missing in
> Graphs
> > > > > extension, but is on my todo list.
> > > > > ___
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> 4266
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Content Producer
Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

[Thyge]

Lane Rasberry,

I'm aware of the ongoing election - but in all respect, that has nothing to
do with a house of representavtives as I envision it, i.e. being "above"
the board.

The present structure allows the existing board to decline access to the
persons being elected.

Regards,
Thyge


2016-02-23 16:05 GMT+01:00 Lane Rasberry :

> Hello,
>
> Could I remind you all that there is a board election in progress right now
> for 2 of the 10 seats? Please see details for the 2016 Affiliate-selected
> board seats election at
> 
>
> Amir, you said that you wanted representation from "India, China, Russia,
> Iran, Brazil, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Arab countries and
> finally, all of Africa". If you like, you may encourage anyone from those
> countries to seek a nomination. Also, it would be very helpful if you could
> encourage the Wikimedia chapters in those countries to participate in the
> election in any way that they could, especially by planning to vote during
> the upcoming voting period.
>
> Thyge - we do have a sort of house of representatives and it has a board
> election happening right now.
>
> Nominations for the board are open till March 8! Election starts March 24!
> Please share the message.
>
> Thanks - if anyone has questions post on the election page.
>
> yours,
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter 
> wrote:
>
> > On 2016-02-23 14:54, Thyge wrote:
> >
> >> We should not have direct elections to the board. We should have a
> "house
> >> of representatives" with X members from each part of the world and
> charged
> >> with electing the board and decide major issues like location of the
> WMF,
> >> changed of bylaws etc.
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >> Thyge
> >>
> >>
> > I do not think it could solve the diversity issue.
> >
> > To appoint the number of individuals with a set of skills and needed
> > diversity, one needs candidates which will have needed skills and desired
> > diversity to start with.
> >
> > Our experience as a movement (and also of people in other organizations
> in
> > different contexts) that these people do not always queue at the doors of
> > the WMF office to wait for being elected. They need to be scouted,
> > negotiated with, and convinced to be willing to sit at the board. This is
> > what currently various companies are paid to do, and this seems to be a
> > reasonable arrangement to me.
> >
> > As far as the candidates are there, I do not see much of a difference
> > whether the community, a selected group (like house of representatives),
> or
> > the Board votes for them. And as soon as there is no difference there is
> > also no need to make the structure more complicated. I thus conclude that
> > this House of representatives is not needed for the Board elections.
> >
> > (It might be needed for other things, which are outside the scope of this
> > discussion).
> >
> >
> > Cheers
> > Yaroslav
> >
> > ___
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> > 
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Lane Rasberry
> user:bluerasberry on Wikipedia
> 206.801.0814
> l...@bluerasberry.com
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

[Thyge]

I agree - few complicated problems can be solved once and for all - but it
is possible to move in a better direction. "Better" in this context means
to improve the existing lack of diversity and WWV (world wide view) of
things.

I´m fine with outsourcing the search for candidates for the board to ensure
that it holds the knowledge and talent required.  But the decision should
rest with the house of representatives - which then could be also take care
of those other things needed.

Regards,
Thyge

2016-02-23 15:47 GMT+01:00 Yaroslav M. Blanter :

> On 2016-02-23 14:54, Thyge wrote:
>
>> We should not have direct elections to the board. We should have a "house
>> of representatives" with X members from each part of the world and charged
>> with electing the board and decide major issues like location of the WMF,
>> changed of bylaws etc.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Thyge
>>
>>
> I do not think it could solve the diversity issue.
>
> To appoint the number of individuals with a set of skills and needed
> diversity, one needs candidates which will have needed skills and desired
> diversity to start with.
>
> Our experience as a movement (and also of people in other organizations in
> different contexts) that these people do not always queue at the doors of
> the WMF office to wait for being elected. They need to be scouted,
> negotiated with, and convinced to be willing to sit at the board. This is
> what currently various companies are paid to do, and this seems to be a
> reasonable arrangement to me.
>
> As far as the candidates are there, I do not see much of a difference
> whether the community, a selected group (like house of representatives), or
> the Board votes for them. And as soon as there is no difference there is
> also no need to make the structure more complicated. I thus conclude that
> this House of representatives is not needed for the Board elections.
>
> (It might be needed for other things, which are outside the scope of this
> discussion).
>
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

[Lane Rasberry]

Hello,

Could I remind you all that there is a board election in progress right now
for 2 of the 10 seats? Please see details for the 2016 Affiliate-selected
board seats election at


Amir, you said that you wanted representation from "India, China, Russia,
Iran, Brazil, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Arab countries and
finally, all of Africa". If you like, you may encourage anyone from those
countries to seek a nomination. Also, it would be very helpful if you could
encourage the Wikimedia chapters in those countries to participate in the
election in any way that they could, especially by planning to vote during
the upcoming voting period.

Thyge - we do have a sort of house of representatives and it has a board
election happening right now.

Nominations for the board are open till March 8! Election starts March 24!
Please share the message.

Thanks - if anyone has questions post on the election page.

yours,



On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter 
wrote:

> On 2016-02-23 14:54, Thyge wrote:
>
>> We should not have direct elections to the board. We should have a "house
>> of representatives" with X members from each part of the world and charged
>> with electing the board and decide major issues like location of the WMF,
>> changed of bylaws etc.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Thyge
>>
>>
> I do not think it could solve the diversity issue.
>
> To appoint the number of individuals with a set of skills and needed
> diversity, one needs candidates which will have needed skills and desired
> diversity to start with.
>
> Our experience as a movement (and also of people in other organizations in
> different contexts) that these people do not always queue at the doors of
> the WMF office to wait for being elected. They need to be scouted,
> negotiated with, and convinced to be willing to sit at the board. This is
> what currently various companies are paid to do, and this seems to be a
> reasonable arrangement to me.
>
> As far as the candidates are there, I do not see much of a difference
> whether the community, a selected group (like house of representatives), or
> the Board votes for them. And as soon as there is no difference there is
> also no need to make the structure more complicated. I thus conclude that
> this House of representatives is not needed for the Board elections.
>
> (It might be needed for other things, which are outside the scope of this
> discussion).
>
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>



-- 
Lane Rasberry
user:bluerasberry on Wikipedia
206.801.0814
l...@bluerasberry.com
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Facebook as a discussion mediam

[Alex Monk]

On 23 February 2016 at 12:17, Andrew Lih  wrote:
>
> > The main disadvantage is the lack of good archiving - it is pretty hard
> to
> > find something on fb after say - half a year.
>
>
> Compare that to IRC which disallows logging altogether. It’s not just hard
> to find discussions, it’s impossible.
>

IRC does not disallow logging. Certain channels try to prevent people from
publicly logging.
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[Wikimedia-l] Context around the KE

[James Heilman]

The project formally know as the Knowledge Engine was frequently referred
to as a "moon shot" in November 2015 by a number of my fellow board
members. This terminology I believe accurately highlighted the size,
expense, and risk that this proposal was.

How we have described the KE to our movement has been significantly
different. All efforts appear to be to minimize what was proposed. And
efforts to explain it at all have only occurred after greater community
understanding became inevitable.

I find it disappointing to see the ED and some board members try to deny
and downplay the plans that previously existed. While the ED has recently
apologized for the lack of transparency, this was brought to her attention
many times before, and thus I am not convinced her apology will result in a
change in her approach.

-- 
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian

The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Powerful on-wiki art visualization

[Magnus Manske]

I just saw! Exciting!!!

(I guess un-cached interactive graphs would make the "largest disasters"
list ;-)

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 1:50 PM Yuri Astrakhan 
wrote:

> Who said you cannot already use Wikidata Query service? ))
>
> https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph/Demo/Sparql/Largest_disasters
>
> Limitation at the moment - not enabled for interactive graphs yet until we
> make better caching.
> On Feb 23, 2016 16:17, "Magnus Manske" 
> wrote:
>
> > Especially once it supports the Wikidata query engine.
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 1:12 PM  wrote:
> >
> > > Amazing stuff! This is going to change the face of Wikipedia.
> > >
> > > Best!
> > > Subhashish Panigrahi
> > > Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge
> > > Centre for Internet and Society
> > > @subhapa / https://cis-india.org
> > >
> > > - Original Message -
> > > From: "Edward Saperia" 
> > > To: "UK Wikimedia mailing list" 
> > > Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 6:38:53 PM
> > > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Powerful on-wiki art visualization
> > >
> > > This... is... amazing!! The idea of commonly seeing these on Wikipedia
> > > pages fills me with immense joy!
> > >
> > > It seems to me like we might be able to kick off a big project to
> create
> > > and promote useful templates and guides for creating these. The dataviz
> > > movement is very popular among designers and journalists, and they're
> > > always looking for tools, lessons and data to practise on. Are there
> any
> > > existing efforts to popularise this, or would anyone like to help me do
> > so?
> > >
> > > *Edward Saperia*
> > > Founder Newspeak House 
> > > Conference Director Wikimania 2014  >
> > > email  • facebook <
> > http://www.facebook.com/edsaperia>
> > > •
> > >  twitter  • 07796955572
> > > 133-135 Bethnal Green Road, E2 7DG
> > >
> > > On 23 February 2016 at 03:15, Yuri Astrakhan  >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > First complex interactive graph in Wikipedia explores the most
> > expensive
> > > > paintings in history. Move the mouse around to view images, click the
> > > > period or artist to highlight their work.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_paintings#Interactive_graph
> > > >
> > > > Thank you Jane [[user:Jhoffswell]], the VegaJS team, and
> > > [[user:Primaler]]
> > > > who designed the original graph!
> > > >
> > > > P.S. See graph demo page for examples and tutorial links
> > > > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph/Demo
> > > >
> > > > P.P.S. The "click to open a page" feature is still missing in Graphs
> > > > extension, but is on my todo list.
> > > > ___
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> > > > Unsubscribe:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > > 
> > > ___
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> > > 
> > >
> > > ___
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> > > 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

[Thyge]

We should not have direct elections to the board. We should have a "house
of representatives" with X members from each part of the world and charged
with electing the board and decide major issues like location of the WMF,
changed of bylaws etc.

Regards,
Thyge

2016-02-23 14:38 GMT+01:00 Yaroslav M. Blanter :

> On 2016-02-23 14:30, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
>
>> Well, since someone brought that up, I'd risk asking:
>> Does it make any sense to make the board in some of its future
>> incarnations
>> more representative?
>> More representative of the editors?
>> More representative of the world's lands and languages?
>> More representative of the world's different economic regions?
>> More representative of some relevant professional fields that are relevant
>> for being in the Board of a massively-international-and-multilingual
>> transparent web-oriented education-oriented non-profit?
>>
>>
> Hi Amir,
>
> in my personal opinion, the current composition of the Board (elected vs
> nominated by affiliates vs appointed seats) is in principle fine. It can be
> fine-tuned by moving may be one seat here and there, but this is a big deal
> and it is not clear for me how it is needed.
>
> A big question which was there from the very beginning is how to ensure
> the diversity. This is related to the composition of the board. We know if
> we make all seats directly elected we do not necessarily have the desired
> diversity and needed skills. If we make all of them appointed we can in
> principle have diversity and skills (though recent events shown this can
> have some problematic side issues) but then the community has no voice.
>
> I do not know how this can be currently solved. Or, to be precise, how one
> can solve it without compromising on bigger issues.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
>
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[Wikimedia-l] Strategy and its subtypes

[James Hare]

Hello everyone,  

Of the many issues, real or perceived, currently under discussion, one of them 
is the matter of strategy: of the Wikimedia Foundation and of the movement in 
general. I’ve been editing Wikipedia since November of 2004 and have noticed 
that the general points of tension have revolved around who has authority or 
responsibility to do what. I will explain what I mean by that.

There is no one “strategy.” Or rather, strategy has different components to it, 
and it is important to note and understand these different components because 
they have their own histories and associated arguments. There is no possible 
way I can capture every nuance of this, but when we say “strategy” we should 
think of at least three things: content strategy, program strategy, and product 
strategy.

Content has, almost exclusively, been a prerogative of the communities of the 
various Wikimedia projects, and not that of the Foundation. [1] English 
Wikipedia, for example, argues bitterly over what is notable, what is not 
notable, and what should and shouldn’t be deleted on a given day, but the 
Wikimedia Foundation is not involved in that. While the Wikimedia Foundation 
does fund content creation initiatives from time to time, it does not decide, 
for instance, which monuments are worthy of Wiki Loves Monuments, or which 
artists should be the focus of Art+Feminism. I’m not pointing this out because 
it’s remotely interesting, but because it’s so widely agreed upon that the WMF 
has no editorial authority that we don’t even need to talk about it.

There are other areas that we do need to talk about; not necessarily to devise 
a master plan, or to draw lines in the sand, but to at least understand who 
thinks what and where our opinions diverge. This brings me to my second point: 
programs. I am referring to initiatives to get more people involved in the 
Wikimedia projects, to build bridges with other organizations, to make 
Wikimedia as much a part of the offline world as the online world. The 
Wikimedia Foundation did some of the original programs in the late 2000s, with 
mixed success. Chapters came along and also came up with programs; GLAM, for 
instance, was developed outside of the Wikimedia Foundation. Over time, the 
Foundation decided that it was not so interested in running programs directly 
as much as they were interested in funding others to carry them out and serving 
as a sort of central hub for best practices. As far as I can tell, as someone 
who has served on the board of a Wikimedia chapter for almost five years, there 
seems to be a general consensus that this is how programs are done. This 
operating consensus was arrived at through a combination of the Wikimedia 
Foundation’s “narrowing focus” and by the enthusiasm of chapters, groups, and 
mission-aligned organizations to carry on outreach work.

Then there is the product strategy, which is the most contentious of them all. 
By “product” I am referring to the subset of technology that readers and 
editors interact with on a day-to-day basis. The sacred workflow. (Much of the 
arguments about technology are out of my depth so I won’t be commenting on 
them; they also include rather arcane infrastructural stuff that I don’t think 
most Wikimedia users or contributors care about.) All of our arguments, from 
the usability initiative to the present day, have focused on: who is in charge 
of the user experience? I have heard different things; one perspective holds 
that “the community” (usually not further specified) gets to make the final 
decision, while I have also heard from some that technological matters are 
purely the prerogative of the Wikimedia Foundation. [2] I am not sure what the 
present-day company line is but I suspect it’s somewhere in the middle.

I do not know what the “true” answer is, either. There is a lot to be said for 
treating the user experience as products to be professionally managed: there 
has been tremendous study in the area of how to design user experiences, and 
Wikipedia is notorious for being difficult to edit as a newcomer. With this in 
mind, the Wikimedia Foundation did the best it could, with limited resources, 
and despite some successes managed to create some ham-fisted products that did 
not address the needs of the users and—at worst—threatened disruption. This has 
gotten better in time; the visual editor, for example, has made tremendous 
progress on this front. But not every issue is settled. What about the products 
that need substantially more improvement before they can be used at large? What 
about things that we should be working on, but aren’t, or are doing so at a 
glacial pace because we are being stretched too thin? And now that WMF grantees 
can develop code for deployment in production (such as MediaWiki extensions), 
what is the relationship between these projects and the overall product 
strategy of the Wikimedia Foundation? On the Reading half of the equation, who 
gets to 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Powerful on-wiki art visualization

[Yuri Astrakhan]

Who said you cannot already use Wikidata Query service? ))

https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph/Demo/Sparql/Largest_disasters

Limitation at the moment - not enabled for interactive graphs yet until we
make better caching.
On Feb 23, 2016 16:17, "Magnus Manske"  wrote:

> Especially once it supports the Wikidata query engine.
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 1:12 PM  wrote:
>
> > Amazing stuff! This is going to change the face of Wikipedia.
> >
> > Best!
> > Subhashish Panigrahi
> > Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge
> > Centre for Internet and Society
> > @subhapa / https://cis-india.org
> >
> > - Original Message -
> > From: "Edward Saperia" 
> > To: "UK Wikimedia mailing list" 
> > Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 6:38:53 PM
> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Powerful on-wiki art visualization
> >
> > This... is... amazing!! The idea of commonly seeing these on Wikipedia
> > pages fills me with immense joy!
> >
> > It seems to me like we might be able to kick off a big project to create
> > and promote useful templates and guides for creating these. The dataviz
> > movement is very popular among designers and journalists, and they're
> > always looking for tools, lessons and data to practise on. Are there any
> > existing efforts to popularise this, or would anyone like to help me do
> so?
> >
> > *Edward Saperia*
> > Founder Newspeak House 
> > Conference Director Wikimania 2014 
> > email  • facebook <
> http://www.facebook.com/edsaperia>
> > •
> >  twitter  • 07796955572
> > 133-135 Bethnal Green Road, E2 7DG
> >
> > On 23 February 2016 at 03:15, Yuri Astrakhan 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > First complex interactive graph in Wikipedia explores the most
> expensive
> > > paintings in history. Move the mouse around to view images, click the
> > > period or artist to highlight their work.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_paintings#Interactive_graph
> > >
> > > Thank you Jane [[user:Jhoffswell]], the VegaJS team, and
> > [[user:Primaler]]
> > > who designed the original graph!
> > >
> > > P.S. See graph demo page for examples and tutorial links
> > > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph/Demo
> > >
> > > P.P.S. The "click to open a page" feature is still missing in Graphs
> > > extension, but is on my todo list.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

[Amir E. Aharoni]

Well, since someone brought that up, I'd risk asking:
Does it make any sense to make the board in some of its future incarnations
more representative?
More representative of the editors?
More representative of the world's lands and languages?
More representative of the world's different economic regions?
More representative of some relevant professional fields that are relevant
for being in the Board of a massively-international-and-multilingual
transparent web-oriented education-oriented non-profit?

A thing that always bothered me strongly is that there were very little or
zero representation for these countries in the Board, ever: India, China,
Russia, Iran, Brazil, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Arab
countries and finally, all of Africa. (I picked these countries by
population and roughly, the representation in the list of the world's top
spoken languages.)

I'll possibly be sorry for bringing this up, but there were no black people
on the board, ever.

Also, it bothers me somewhat that there were fewer women than men in the
board, if you count the whole history at all times. There were 29 board
members ever, and 9 of them were women. Not a huge gap, but a gap
nevertheless. (I'm very bad with numbers, please slap me if I'm not
counting correctly.) Women are 4 out of 9 in the current board, which is
nearly a half and maybe it's not a concern any longer, but I wonder whether
it's intentional or just a coincidence. I am not saying that it must be
intentionally a half, but it's a thing to consider.

Finally, why is the board's composition as it is now? I refer to the total
number of people on it, and the number of elected and  appointed members,
and the quasi-permanent founder seat. I'm sorry if these things are obvious
to people who learned something about non-profit management; I did not, but
I care about this movement and I am curious, and possibly many other people
are curious as well. I can find the resolutions about expansion, but they
don't do much to explain the rationale behind the numbers.

PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE, correct me if any of my facts are wrong.


--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

2016-02-23 14:58 GMT+02:00 WereSpielChequers :

> Sydney and Risker make a good point that much of the current board is
> already fairly new and simply appointing a whole new board is unlikely to
> be the solution we now need.
>
> Whether any individual board members feel sufficiently responsible for
> recent events that they should resign few but they can say. But the
> movement is in a serious mess and it is their duty to ensure we get out of
> it.
>
> In the short term the current board vacancy is an opportunity for the
> board. Reappointing Doc James would  bring back a much respected board
> member who already has several months recent WMF board experience. It would
> also be a clear signal that the board wanted to start steering the movement
> out of the current quagmire. Conversely, not reappointing Doc James risks
> leaving the impression that this particular onion has a few more layers yet
> to go.
>
> In the medium term the board could reform it's constitution so that over
> the next couple of years we move to an all elected board and a membership
> system open to all who volunteer time to the project. There are some
> discussions about this here:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_membership_controversy#Time_to_move_to_a_membership_system
>
> I appreciate there are a lot of threads running on the current kerfuffle,
> but I think board reform is worth a new thread.
>
> WereSpielChequers
>
>
>
> > Message-ID:
> > 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Powerful on-wiki art visualization

[Magnus Manske]

Especially once it supports the Wikidata query engine.

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 1:12 PM  wrote:

> Amazing stuff! This is going to change the face of Wikipedia.
>
> Best!
> Subhashish Panigrahi
> Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge
> Centre for Internet and Society
> @subhapa / https://cis-india.org
>
> - Original Message -
> From: "Edward Saperia" 
> To: "UK Wikimedia mailing list" 
> Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 6:38:53 PM
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Powerful on-wiki art visualization
>
> This... is... amazing!! The idea of commonly seeing these on Wikipedia
> pages fills me with immense joy!
>
> It seems to me like we might be able to kick off a big project to create
> and promote useful templates and guides for creating these. The dataviz
> movement is very popular among designers and journalists, and they're
> always looking for tools, lessons and data to practise on. Are there any
> existing efforts to popularise this, or would anyone like to help me do so?
>
> *Edward Saperia*
> Founder Newspeak House 
> Conference Director Wikimania 2014 
> email  • facebook 
> •
>  twitter  • 07796955572
> 133-135 Bethnal Green Road, E2 7DG
>
> On 23 February 2016 at 03:15, Yuri Astrakhan 
> wrote:
>
> > First complex interactive graph in Wikipedia explores the most expensive
> > paintings in history. Move the mouse around to view images, click the
> > period or artist to highlight their work.
> >
> >
> >
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_paintings#Interactive_graph
> >
> > Thank you Jane [[user:Jhoffswell]], the VegaJS team, and
> [[user:Primaler]]
> > who designed the original graph!
> >
> > P.S. See graph demo page for examples and tutorial links
> > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph/Demo
> >
> > P.P.S. The "click to open a page" feature is still missing in Graphs
> > extension, but is on my todo list.
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Facebook as a discussion mediam

[Yury Bulka]

For instant messaging (faster communication) there's IRC if a group
discussion that's meant to be open for anyone is considered. Of course,
IRC is a bit archaic, but it doesn't force one to agree to Facebook's
TOS.

IRC is still quite popular in the wikimedia and free software universe.

Of course, if the only people you want to talk to are already on
Facebook, it's one thing. But if you wants to create a discussion that
anyone could join, Facebook is not an ideal choice.

Best,
Yury Bulka
board member
Wikimedia Ukraine

Nikola Kalchev  writes:

> For my part I can say that I've moved some discussions to Facebook, because
> there the communication flow is faster. In a group chat there are no edit
> conflicts and, since Wikipedians tend to write fast, the conversation goes
> almost with the speed of talking.
>
> Another usage of Facebook is for communication in a hidden group. We use a
> hidden group for discussing our social media posts and blog posts which we
> do not want to discuss publicly, in order to not spoil the surprise in
> them.
>
> For some documents like grant proposals or reports I, among others, have
> tended to use Google Docs as a platform for the creation of a draft of a
> certain document, which was then discussed by a core team before it went
> public on meta or elsewhere.
>
> So, the two reasons for moving discussions out of the wikiverse are *faster
> communication* and the *possibility to discuss stuff in a private
> environment*. I would be really glad if there were a good chat function in
> the wikiverse or if we started using namespaces, which are already part of
> MediaWiki, but are not being used as a place for private discussions, at
> least in my environment.
>
> Best regards,
> Nikola (User:Лорд Бъмбъри)
> Wikimedians of Bulgaria
>
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:35 AM, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
>
>> I think the discussion about post-mortems is vitally important, so I'm
>> adding a new subject line for the discussion about the venue. I was one of
>> the people involved in the discussion of post-mortems, and I'll add my
>> comments to the original thread (and summarize what others have said) in a
>> moment.
>> -Pete
>> [[User:Peteforsyth]]
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 4:26 PM, Risker  wrote:
>>
>> > I can agree with what you're saying, Craig.  I can also understand what
>> > Brandon is saying - that some people prefer that interface.
>> >
>> > Unlike many Facebook pages, though, this one is not public and cannot be
>> > viewed by anyone who does not have a FB account.  It's the one venue that
>> > many interested parties cannot even read, let alone participate in,
>> unless
>> > they're willing to give up some fairly significant privacy.  I am
>> > disappointed, but I do not hold it against anyone for preferring to
>> discuss
>> > issues in a venue not associated with Wikimedia.
>> >
>> > Risker/Anne
>> >
>> > On 21 February 2016 at 19:01, Craig Franklin 
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > > People will have discussions at a location that is personally
>> convenient
>> > > for them.  Unless you're going to reprogram human nature, I don't see
>> > that
>> > > there's anything to be done about the resulting balkanisation of the
>> > > discussion.
>> > >
>> > > Cheers,
>> > > Craig
>> > >
>> > > On 22 February 2016 at 09:54, Thyge  wrote:
>> > >
>> > > > I really wonder why wikimedia discussions have migrated to FB. Are we
>> > > > applying for a grant?
>> > > >
>> > > > Thyge
>> > > >
>> > > > 2016-02-22 0:51 GMT+01:00 Newyorkbrad :
>> > > >
>> > > > > I too am one of those people who is not to be found on Facebook.  I
>> > > > > only have room in my life for one online timesink ... and I already
>> > > > > have Wikipedia :)
>> > > > >
>> > > > > Newyorkbrad
>> > > > >
>> > > > > On 2/21/16, Risker  wrote:
>> > > > > > As has already been explained on this list, many people do not
>> have
>> > > > > access
>> > > > > > to Facebook.  If this is something germane and useful to a lot of
>> > > > people
>> > > > > on
>> > > > > > this list, perhaps it would be appropriate to ask Jonathan to
>> post
>> > it
>> > > > > here.
>> > > > > >
>> > > > > > Risker/Anne
>> > > > > >
>> > > > > > On 21 February 2016 at 18:34, Anthony Cole 
>> > > > wrote:
>> > > > > >
>> > > > > >> For those not following, I recommend the discussion in response
>> to
>> > > > > >> Jonathan
>> > > > > >> Cardy's comment here:
>> > > > > >>
>> > > > > >>
>> > > > >
>> > > >
>> > >
>> >
>> https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/permalink/960989863948845/
>> > > > > >>
>> > > > > >> Anthony Cole
>> > > > > >> ___
>> > > > > >> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
>> > > > > >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
>> > > > > >> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Loves Africa 2015 results

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 9:09 PM, Florence Devouard  wrote:
> Good evening everyone
>
> Another day... another announcement :)
>
> We closed yesterday the last vote session for winning pictures of Wiki Loves
> Africa 2015.
>
> We are happy to announce our winners
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2015/Winners
>

These are really beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing, and for
continuing to work on supporting this contest!
Phoebe

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership

[Florence Devouard]

Le 23/02/16 04:00, Sydney Poore a écrit :

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 2:08 PM, Pine W  wrote:



I also hope that the current Board members will thoughtfully consider
whether it's in the best interests of the Wikimedia Foundation and the
larger Wikimedia movement for them to continue as Board members.


The instability that would result from large scale resignations of
Board members would be devastating to WMF.

That aside, under the best of circumstances, the volunteer BoT of WMF
are faced with an extremely demanding and challenging work load. And,
no volunteer board has the skill set to manage the problems that have
come up over the last few months and have escalated out of control.

I strongly encourage giving the BoT time to react to the most recent
comments, and develop a responsible plan of action.

Sydney
User:FloNight



+1.

Most of the board is actually rather new. Plus two members will possibly 
(probably) change next summer. So asking for resignation is absolutely 
not the right thing to do at the moment. We need the current members to 
stick here. We need stability.


I will openly say that I am completely disappointed by the lack of 
(official) communication from the board in the past couple of weeks (or 
months). I thank Dariusz very much for maintaining a line of contact here.


But otherwise... I'd say we need to let the board do its job.

And we should rather reflect on how we can HELP them do that.

I think it is helpful for the board that the community AND the staff 
give their frank opinion about what is going on so as to help them see 
clear.


I think Molly timeline might be helpful for the board to get a better 
grip of the important keypoints and opinions.


I think providing private insights to the board if relevant might be 
helpful.


I think dropping them a private email to ask them if they are ok and 
giving them a bit of wikilove might be helpful.


And probably other things.

Anthere


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership

[Thyge]

It is in cases like this that an advisory board could/should be an asset. I
hope the board could reach out to one or more participants in that
group for additional help and advice.

Regards,
Thyge


2016-02-23 5:41 GMT+01:00 Risker :

> On 22 February 2016 at 22:00, Sydney Poore  wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 2:08 PM, Pine W  wrote:
> > >>
> > > I also hope that the current Board members will thoughtfully consider
> > > whether it's in the best interests of the Wikimedia Foundation and the
> > > larger Wikimedia movement for them to continue as Board members.
> >
> > The instability that would result from large scale resignations of
> > Board members would be devastating to WMF.
> >
> > That aside, under the best of circumstances, the volunteer BoT of WMF
> > are faced with an extremely demanding and challenging work load. And,
> > no volunteer board has the skill set to manage the problems that have
> > come up over the last few months and have escalated out of control.
> >
> > I strongly encourage giving the BoT time to react to the most recent
> > comments, and develop a responsible plan of action.
> >
> >
>
> I also agree with Sydney, and will point out that in the past year, we have
> had brand new board members in 3 board-selected seats (one of whom only
> participated for a few weeks), and 3 community seats (two of whom remain in
> place, the third being replaced by a former board member.  That is at least
> five new members in a single year, no matter how one cuts it - and it
> doesn't even take into consideration the ongoing process for
> chapter-selected seats.
>
> This past year has already seen the largest turnover in board membership
> that the Foundation has ever experienced; it was unusual to have more than
> two seats change incumbents in all the past years. We have already seen
> very significant change in the make-up of the Board, and half the board is
> still learning the ropes and responsibilities. This level of change is
> likely to be at least partly responsible for some of the unfortunate
> situations we have seen in the last several months. But those who are
> seeking a new board...well, you already have one.
>
> Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Facebook as a discussion mediam (was: Post mortems)

[Nikola Kalchev]

For my part I can say that I've moved some discussions to Facebook, because
there the communication flow is faster. In a group chat there are no edit
conflicts and, since Wikipedians tend to write fast, the conversation goes
almost with the speed of talking.

Another usage of Facebook is for communication in a hidden group. We use a
hidden group for discussing our social media posts and blog posts which we
do not want to discuss publicly, in order to not spoil the surprise in
them.

For some documents like grant proposals or reports I, among others, have
tended to use Google Docs as a platform for the creation of a draft of a
certain document, which was then discussed by a core team before it went
public on meta or elsewhere.

So, the two reasons for moving discussions out of the wikiverse are *faster
communication* and the *possibility to discuss stuff in a private
environment*. I would be really glad if there were a good chat function in
the wikiverse or if we started using namespaces, which are already part of
MediaWiki, but are not being used as a place for private discussions, at
least in my environment.

Best regards,
Nikola (User:Лорд Бъмбъри)
Wikimedians of Bulgaria

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 1:35 AM, Pete Forsyth  wrote:

> I think the discussion about post-mortems is vitally important, so I'm
> adding a new subject line for the discussion about the venue. I was one of
> the people involved in the discussion of post-mortems, and I'll add my
> comments to the original thread (and summarize what others have said) in a
> moment.
> -Pete
> [[User:Peteforsyth]]
>
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 4:26 PM, Risker  wrote:
>
> > I can agree with what you're saying, Craig.  I can also understand what
> > Brandon is saying - that some people prefer that interface.
> >
> > Unlike many Facebook pages, though, this one is not public and cannot be
> > viewed by anyone who does not have a FB account.  It's the one venue that
> > many interested parties cannot even read, let alone participate in,
> unless
> > they're willing to give up some fairly significant privacy.  I am
> > disappointed, but I do not hold it against anyone for preferring to
> discuss
> > issues in a venue not associated with Wikimedia.
> >
> > Risker/Anne
> >
> > On 21 February 2016 at 19:01, Craig Franklin 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > People will have discussions at a location that is personally
> convenient
> > > for them.  Unless you're going to reprogram human nature, I don't see
> > that
> > > there's anything to be done about the resulting balkanisation of the
> > > discussion.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > Craig
> > >
> > > On 22 February 2016 at 09:54, Thyge  wrote:
> > >
> > > > I really wonder why wikimedia discussions have migrated to FB. Are we
> > > > applying for a grant?
> > > >
> > > > Thyge
> > > >
> > > > 2016-02-22 0:51 GMT+01:00 Newyorkbrad :
> > > >
> > > > > I too am one of those people who is not to be found on Facebook.  I
> > > > > only have room in my life for one online timesink ... and I already
> > > > > have Wikipedia :)
> > > > >
> > > > > Newyorkbrad
> > > > >
> > > > > On 2/21/16, Risker  wrote:
> > > > > > As has already been explained on this list, many people do not
> have
> > > > > access
> > > > > > to Facebook.  If this is something germane and useful to a lot of
> > > > people
> > > > > on
> > > > > > this list, perhaps it would be appropriate to ask Jonathan to
> post
> > it
> > > > > here.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Risker/Anne
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On 21 February 2016 at 18:34, Anthony Cole 
> > > > wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > >> For those not following, I recommend the discussion in response
> to
> > > > > >> Jonathan
> > > > > >> Cardy's comment here:
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >>
> > > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/permalink/960989863948845/
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> Anthony Cole
> > > > > >> ___
> > > > > >> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > > > >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > > > > >> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > > >> Unsubscribe:
> > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> > > > ,
> > > > > >>  > > ?subject=unsubscribe>
> > > > > > ___
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> > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > > > >  > ?subject=unsubscribe>
> > > > >
> > > > > ___
> > > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Shared list

[Anthony Cole]

Theo wrote: "PS Anthony, you shouldn't have sent a private email to the
list."

Yep. It won't happen again. It was an over-reaction to exactly what you're
calling out in your post: people having the temerity to tell others to shut
up, based mainly on their discomfort with the view being put. I despise it
on Wikipedia - where it happens a very great deal, and I'm disappointed to
see it happening here - especially in secret emails. When I pressed "send"
I was thinking billinghurst didn't deserve the courtesy of that convention,
if that's how he uses it. I was wrong.

(Sorry about calling the board names in my last post. Habit. I'll reign it
in, a bit.)

Anthony Cole


On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 4:54 PM, Theo10011  wrote:

> I am totally with Benjamin on this.
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016, Oliver Keyes  wrote:
>
> > "sorely under-represented perspective" or not, that kind of attitude
> > is of course going to piss people off. And it may be that denying the
> > value of peoples' experiences or dismissing their misery is not, in
> > fact, what you mean to be communicating. But it is how it's coming
> > out. For me, at least, that's why I find your emails frustrating.
> >
>
> That is an odd way to dismiss any counter-argument - it is going to piss
> you or others off? You are the only staff member so far objecting to any
> dissenting view, existentially. I'm sure you would prefer no dissent should
> exist at all because you are having a miserable time, just 100 people
> piling on one?
>
> I see the conversation heavily leaning in one direction - against Lila. She
> is overwhelmingly being blamed, accused and rebutted by just about every
> member on this list - in unofficial and official channels. This includes
> the staff, community members and even past board members. Anything short of
> calling her literally the worst or comparison her to lady hitler will not
> be moving things any further than they are.
>
> A few staff members like Brion, expressed dissent to Lila's assertion, but
> wonderfully well. They offered counter-arguments, and provided context we
> all needed. Dissent is necessary, it moves the conversation along. You are
> in essence doing what your senior management was accused of, silencing
> criticism internally because you are having a rough time. I'm sure it
> doesn't feel nice.
>
> Regards
> Theo
>
> PS Anthony, you shouldn't have sent a private email to the list.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Shared list

[Theo10011]

I am totally with Benjamin on this.

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016, Oliver Keyes  wrote:

> "sorely under-represented perspective" or not, that kind of attitude
> is of course going to piss people off. And it may be that denying the
> value of peoples' experiences or dismissing their misery is not, in
> fact, what you mean to be communicating. But it is how it's coming
> out. For me, at least, that's why I find your emails frustrating.
>

That is an odd way to dismiss any counter-argument - it is going to piss
you or others off? You are the only staff member so far objecting to any
dissenting view, existentially. I'm sure you would prefer no dissent should
exist at all because you are having a miserable time, just 100 people
piling on one?

I see the conversation heavily leaning in one direction - against Lila. She
is overwhelmingly being blamed, accused and rebutted by just about every
member on this list - in unofficial and official channels. This includes
the staff, community members and even past board members. Anything short of
calling her literally the worst or comparison her to lady hitler will not
be moving things any further than they are.

A few staff members like Brion, expressed dissent to Lila's assertion, but
wonderfully well. They offered counter-arguments, and provided context we
all needed. Dissent is necessary, it moves the conversation along. You are
in essence doing what your senior management was accused of, silencing
criticism internally because you are having a rough time. I'm sure it
doesn't feel nice.

Regards
Theo

PS Anthony, you shouldn't have sent a private email to the list.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Shared list

[Austin Hair]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 9:37 AM, Andrea Zanni  wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 6:31 AM, Gerard Meijssen 
> wrote:
>
>> You are not the only one who is told that dissent is not appreciated. It is
>> ironic that when openness and shared values are considered, these same
>> values are swept under the rug when people are not in line with "common"
>> thought.
>>
>> Apparently thoughts are not so common and certainly not universally shared.
>> When community degenerates in universal enforced thought, are we still a
>> community?
>>
>
>
> Gerard, you're only one, to my knowledge, always fulfilling the soft quota
> of 30 emails per month, +1 or 2 message. In February you're already at 31
> [1].
>

For the record, Gerard absolutely understands the 30-post limit, is
always very careful to keep it +/- 2 messages, and yes, I could still
see a little more restraint on his part. We do have a sort of detente,
and yes, he's already been warned privately this month.

This said, he does contribute positively to the list, and I even
consider him a friend. But even friends need a little nudging from
time to time, it's true.

Austin

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Shared list

[Andrea Zanni]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 6:31 AM, Gerard Meijssen 
wrote:

> You are not the only one who is told that dissent is not appreciated. It is
> ironic that when openness and shared values are considered, these same
> values are swept under the rug when people are not in line with "common"
> thought.
>
> Apparently thoughts are not so common and certainly not universally shared.
> When community degenerates in universal enforced thought, are we still a
> community?
>


Gerard, you're only one, to my knowledge, always fulfilling the soft quota
of 30 emails per month, +1 or 2 message. In February you're already at 31
[1].

Openness and shared values, IMHO, should include also "empathy":
which means care, attention, proactive listening to others. It means say
something when you need to and carefully craft the message for others to
understand.
This both keeps a good signal/noise ratio and also it's good for a
multicultural, diverse community as we are.
It also means leaving others the space (in this case, silence) to express
themselves. I personally don't have problems with your opinions, just with
the tone and frequency of those.

Again, IMHO, the assumption that fierce, logic but aggressive debate is
welcome at anytime and anywhere is probably the biggest fallacy in the
whole Wikimedia movement (just because we're white nerdy males, and we just
roll like that).

Sorry all for the OT.

Aubrey

[1]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/author.html
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Neil P. Quinn]

As an employee of the WMF and a long-time Wikimedian, I strongly agree with
Brion.

Lila, I find your message completely deaf to the real concerns that staff
have been raising for many months. It seems to imply that the turmoil and
heartache we're suffering are not products of poor leadership, but instead
minor side effects of a carefully designed plan. Let me be clear: I am no
part of any silent majority which supports such a plan.

*Neil P. Quinn*
+1 (202) 656 3457

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 12:16 PM, Ilario Valdelli 
wrote:

> Hi Kat
> This is good.
>
> But why not to look for a CTO?
>
> Designing a CTO's profile and putting it in a CEO's profile is a big
> challenge. This can happen but means also to have a big change of the
> vision of WMF.
>
> Kind regards
> Il 22/Feb/2016 19:12, "Kat Walsh"  ha scritto:
>
> > On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 2:03 AM, George Herbert
> >  wrote:
> >
> > > One phrase I see used quite often is "sometimes we need to break a few
> > eggs."  For those who are not native american english speakers, this is
> > referring to the need to move beyond shifting things around into breaking
> > things apart, letting people go who may not fit in the new plan, stopping
> > things outright, etc.  The eggs - people, projects, structures, policies,
> > assumptions - need to partly go away - be broken - in order to reform.
> > >
> > > Lila's vision here clearly calls the change campaign out as having
> > explicitly intended to break eggs.
> > >
> > > It further suggests strongly that this was the Board of Trustees'
> > intention in hiring her, and that they agreed with breaking those eggs.
> >
> > I left the board during the search process, but remained on the search
> > committee. So while I cannot know what the board was thinking after
> > her tenure began, I can say that the search committee was not looking
> > for a "turnaround CEO"--at least to my understanding we were looking
> > for someone who would be able to execute better on some of the areas
> > (particularly engineering) where we wanted to make more improvements
> > but hadn't.
> >
> > (Which would naturally involve some change--but sweeping reforms were
> > not envisioned; part of why Sue stepped down when she did was that she
> > felt the organization was basically stable and could be smoothly
> > handed off. It is certainly possible for someone to come in and decide
> > that was a wrong assessment, but it wasn't what the committee had been
> > looking for.)
> >
> > -Kat
> >
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