[Wikimedia-l] Jointly they edit
Greetings, everybody This PLoS One paper about Wikipedia community had been cited by the traditional press: Jessica J. Neff, David Laniado, Karolin E. Kappler, Yana Volkovich, Pablo Aragón, Andreas Kaltenbrunner *Jointly They Edit: Examining the Impact of Community Identification on Political Interaction in Wikipedia* Our results indicate that users who proclaim their political affiliation within the community tend to proclaim their identity as a ‘Wikipedian’ even more loudly. It seems that the shared identity of ‘being Wikipedian’ may be strong enough to triumph over other potentially divisive facets of personal identity, such as political affiliation. Regards Victoria ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian internet censorship
There was an attempt to curtail access to Wikipedia in School N22 in Orel in October - an assistant prosecutor put some Russian swear words into a search engine on one of the schools' computers and - o dear! - discovered that the Russian Wikipedia has an article about swear words citing them. The provider got a demand to block access to the page. But AFAIK this is as far as this particular story went; Wikipedia is too high profile to start a war with it. There is a Russian saying: However strict Russia's laws may be, their full power is reduced due to a lack of regular enforcement. Victoria On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 1:10 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ruwrote: On Tue, 12 Feb 2013 05:43:25 -0600, Samuel Klein wrote: Russia seems to be experimenting with Internet blacklist and whitelist programs. Is ru:wp likely to be affected by this? http://globalvoicesonline.org/**2013/02/03/russian-internet-** censorship-imitates-satire/http://globalvoicesonline.org/2013/02/03/russian-internet-censorship-imitates-satire/ https://www.accessnow.org/**blog/2013/02/08/russia-** blacklists-site-hosting-blogs-**of-prominent-journalistshttps://www.accessnow.org/blog/2013/02/08/russia-blacklists-site-hosting-blogs-of-prominent-journalists SJ __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l To my understanding, this is unpredictable. The laws in the form they passed the parliament make, in principle, some content in Wikipedia and on Commons illegal. On the other hand, the laws are not reasonable, and will be implemented occasionally. Whether Wikipedia is going to be affected is probably determined by whether some zealous investigator will decide to pursue the case. So far, they first warned websites and then blacklisted them if no reaction was forthcoming, but this practice can change anytime. Cheers Yaroslav __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus
Great news - I propose a heading for the Signpost Board unanimously agreed to the Executive Director proposal that Wikimedia movement fends for itself. Victoria On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 7:46 AM, Bishakha Datta bishakhada...@gmail.comwrote: Dear all, At its in-person meeting on 26 October, the board unanimously agreed to accept the recommendation to narrow focus as presented by the Executive Director. This vote has been published at: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus Best Bishakha ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] The new narrowed focus by WMF (cleaner version), apology
Well, I am a former Fellow e.g. there is no chance that I'll get another Fellowship and I have no connection to the research but wholehartedly agree with thses programmes continuation. And your theory of give us, [insert you definiton here] more money completely breaks down on the Global South support - they don't participate in this discussion, because they have more important thing to do such as earning a living in very harsh conditions. Regards Victoria On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Denny Vrandečić denny.vrande...@wikimedia.de wrote: Just a comment on the discussion: I would find it refreshing if people were not defending funds that apply mostly to themselves. I saw, in discussions of the essay, arguments by researchers saying that more money should go to researchers, by fellows and want-to-be fellows that the fellowship program should not be cut, by chapter associated that funding for supporting the chapters should not be cut, and by people who have been to Wikimania that the money for supporting Wikimania should not be cut. If we remove all arguments of I am an X, and money supporting X should not be cut this discussion would become rather short as of now. One of my favorite 20th century philosophers, a specialist on justice and fairness, has described an interesting concept, and I would very strongly recommend to adopt it during policy and strategic discussions like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance Cheers, Denny 2012/10/26 David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com: I owe a number of good people an apology. I have worked for several self-protecting bureaucracies myself, and it is possible, though not easy, , for individuals to do good work there. I never intended to imply that everyone there is incompetent, though it is certainly my opinion that some of the people assigned to some of the programs I have been involved in have been. I admit that my anger is an inappropriate reflection of my frustration at my inability to work with those in one particular program. On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 8:54 PM, David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com wrote: One obvious possibility for support is the chapters and the thematic organizations; even if the WMF continues these fellowships as it should, the other bodies in the movement should supplement them--it is good to have more than one source of funds and more than one body deciding on requests. But whether their work can be actually implemented at those levels is another matter. The proposal at meta says the Wikimedia Foundation was never able to resource the fellowships to the point where they could achieve significant impact: I don't think the resource at issue is primarily money, considering that in all recent years we have had not only surpluses, but greater than expected surpluses. The resource which is lacking is sufficient qualified people at the Foundation to work with the fellows and help implement their projects. Rather than get such people--which admittedly would require a change in WMF culture--the WMF staff finds the easiest thing is to not even attempt to make the improvements; it is too troublesome to deal with the good ideas of the community, so the reaction is what one expects of self-protecting incompetent bureaucracies: diminish the flow of good ideas. On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 7:57 PM, Steven Zhang cro0...@gmail.com wrote: In my opinion, the value of fellowships in my opinion is huge, and I feel that ceasing to support projects like the Teahouse would be a real shame. That said, I do feel there are other ways that individual editors could get the support they need to work on critical projects. As long as this remains in some capacity, then I think that could work too. Regards, Steve Zhang Sent from my iPhone On 22/10/2012, at 10:25 AM, Jacob Orlowitz wikioca...@yahoo.com wrote: A letter in support of the Community Fellowship program from past, current, and prospective Fellows, The WMF has expanded profoundly over the past decade, and especially in the last few years. Recently initiatives to streamline and focus the WMF have been undertaken; while these efforts are worthy in spirit and necessary at some level, one useful if not vital program has been caught in that process: The Community Fellowship program. We would like to express our strong support of this valuable and important program. The Fellowship program is first and foremost a community-based program. It selects editors to work on projects -- those which are novel and have yet to be tried, those that have been tried but have not been rigorously developed or tested, and those otherwise that need financial, technical and institutional backing to succeed. It represents a direct line of support from the WMF to community-organized, community-driven, and community-maintained projects. We strongly believe that the
Re: [Wikimedia-l] The new narrowed focus by WMF
This proposal reminds me of management buyout, which Wikipedia defines as form of acquisition where a company's existing managers acquire a large part or all of the company from either the parent company or from the private owners. There always been ambiguity to the roles of WMF - does it have right to interfere with Community decisions, especially highly controversial ones? In what form it should communicate with highly dispersed, varied community. I cannot say that I completely agreed with 5 year plan, but at least it have given a clear directions and even (some, not all) achievable goals: attraction of new editors, including women, helping the Global South to access free knowledge. Of course, not all initiatives were working, but at least the was movement in the right direction. I understand that it wasn't easy for the WMF employees, but we all hope that working for a non-profit organisation is not just a day, 9 to 5 job (which are disappearing fast anyway). And now the management found how to end all this - curtail awkward, highly demanding activities on the ground in less civilised world and concentrate on relatively easy, structured work, which can be done in sunny San Francisco - engineering and grant making. I cannot say anything against engineering, this is a cornerstone, although I cannot see how management, Legal etc. engagement with people on the ground have interfered with programmers work and how refocusing will help to create Visual Editor. My worry is about grant making, forgive me, I am not a native speaker, so I can just guess that this means grant distributing. When the chapters started appearing, I thought they will be local WMF, which will build bridges between WMF and local communities. This is not what happened. I don't want to go into details as to why, but Fir WMF had already withdrawn support for the Chapter fundraising through the banner, and now if I understand correctly the Chapters re supposed to fend for themselves completely - they want to do it anyway, but this is a different story. So WMF will collect the money and then will distribute it by the means unknown. As a former member of the Grant Committee I can say that the current process is not very efficient and there is no alternative proposed. And if WMF focus on distributing grants instead of helping directly, it will become incredibly difficult for people with no experience in a highly specific task of grant-writing (=community members) to get their initiatives off the ground, and the money will go to third parties. During the restructuring time WMF will stop supporting really working things such as Wikimania, leaving it to fend for itself, just like chapters. I wonder at what point European Chapters, lead by highly efficient German , will realise that they don't need WMF, buy servers and fork. I can only hope that the Board will not agree with this proposal and WMF will find some other way to reduce work-related stress. Victoria ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike
Milos, BTW, 292:22 doesn't look like a lack of participation nor as a lack of consensus. And the actions which affect the real world have their right time, unlike building the knowledge. Did you count how many of thsee 292 votes, especially among the last couple of hundred, have a right for RFA vote and how many among 22 (mainly opinions, not votes) are admins? The poll was formulated in such a way (against censorhip), that it begged for Support and the short time didn't allow a lot of people to express their opinion - an opinion have to be formulated, written down, even edited, unlike vote. What we have is a flasmob, which is very dangerous thing to approve. This time we were lucky that the poll was in general vein of the WM movement strategy, but knowing the situation in Russia we can (very soon) have, for example, a Russian Wikipedia for Russians banner on the main page after 300 editors voted for it. Regards Russian-speaking British/Belarusian citizen Victoria ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
