Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund"

[Michael Peel]

Hi Lisa,

OK, so who in the Wikimedia movement is reviewing the funding applications and 
deciding where the money that Tides has been entrusted with gets spent?

Thanks,
Mike

> On 14 Dec 2020, at 21:17, Lisa Gruwell  wrote:
> 
> Hi Mike-
> 
> Thanks for the question.  The review and oversight that we will get from 
> Tides is nothing like the FDC review.  They will be looking at, for example, 
> "Is this grant supporting activity that is legal for a 501c3 to fund?"  It is 
> in no way a replacement for the work that the FDC or the Global Council would 
> do regarding grants.
> 
> Best,
> Lisa
> 
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 12:55 PM Michael Peel  <mailto:em...@mikepeel.net>> wrote:
> Hi Lisa,
> 
> Isn’t this the oversight work that the WMF wanted to be able to do when it 
> changed from Wikimedia affiliates being able to fundraise directly to the FDC 
> process? Why has WMF chosen to outsource this to Tides rather than continuing 
> to do it in-house? And why does Tides now get to approve such grants, rather 
> than a community appointed committee?
> 
> FDC was a process that worked extremely well, and was discontinued for 
> obscure reasons. The Global Council approach that the strategy was heading 
> towards looked like it might be a good replacement. Outsourcing it to Tides 
> seems really bad.
> 
> Boldly creating a new fund for fellow organisations looks nice, but without 
> community involvement it’s a controversy in development.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mike
> 
>> On 14 Dec 2020, at 20:11, Lisa Gruwell > <mailto:lgruw...@wikimedia.org>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Chris-
>> 
>> I am happy to answer your questions about Tides.  No, Tides is not picking 
>> the grantees.  The docket of grantees and the specific of the grants comes 
>> from us.  Tides provides legal and administrative review of the grants,  
>> approves them, and processes the grants(i.e. wires the funding to the 
>> grantees).  It is rare that there is ever a problem, but if Tides were to 
>> see one, we actually appreciate the outside review and would be open to 
>> hearing their reasons.  There is no change for the reporting and 
>> transparency requirements for APG grants. Tides will also not be making 
>> recommendations for the grants for the Knowledge Equity Fund.  They will 
>> play a similar role as I described for the APG grants. Again, I know there 
>> will be more info on the Knowledge Equity Fund in the new year.  I ask your 
>> patience for the folks initiating this and trust that they will share more 
>> soon.
>> 
>> Best,
>> Lisa
>> 
>> On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 10:18 AM Chris Keating > <mailto:chriskeatingw...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> Thanks Lisa. That statement makes a lot of sense, though I do have some 
>> questions still.
>> 
>> Our first priority was to ensure that we had enough funding to support 
>> community grants. We transferred the full amount for Annual Plan Grants 
>> (APG) for FY20-21 over to Tides to ensure that all funding for affiliates 
>> for this year was secured, regardless of how fundraising performed. It also 
>> gives staff at affiliates and the Foundation more time to work together to 
>> make thoughtful grants, instead of an end-of-year rush. All affiliates who 
>> will be receiving funding through Tides were informed of the arrangement 
>> last summer. All other grantmaking (Community Grants, Rapid Grants, Project 
>> Grants) are still being funded through WMF directly, as usual. There is a 
>> round of APG grants set to go out via Tides this week.
>> 
>> Are Tides simply administering these funds at the WMF's direction, or will 
>> Tides start to take over decisions about who gets these grants and what 
>> amount different entities are eligible for? Has there been any change to the 
>> reporting and transparency requirements that go with the APG grants? What is 
>> the intention about how APG grants will work, since the FDC was abolished a 
>> couple of years ago and there is unlikely to be any community-driven 
>> replacement for it until at least a year or two's work has gone into the 
>> implementation of the strategy?
>>  
>> As of now, this is a one-time commitment of approximately $4.5 million. We 
>> are still working on the specific initial objectives of the fund and how it 
>> will operate. As a pilot initiative, we’ll be learning and adapting as we 
>> go. 
>> 
>> Funding knowledge equity sounds like a great idea, but I have not previously 
>> heard of an organisation making an irrecoverable $4.5 million transfer 
>> without knowing what 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund"

[Michael Peel]

Hi Lisa,

Isn’t this the oversight work that the WMF wanted to be able to do when it 
changed from Wikimedia affiliates being able to fundraise directly to the FDC 
process? Why has WMF chosen to outsource this to Tides rather than continuing 
to do it in-house? And why does Tides now get to approve such grants, rather 
than a community appointed committee?

FDC was a process that worked extremely well, and was discontinued for obscure 
reasons. The Global Council approach that the strategy was heading towards 
looked like it might be a good replacement. Outsourcing it to Tides seems 
really bad.

Boldly creating a new fund for fellow organisations looks nice, but without 
community involvement it’s a controversy in development.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 14 Dec 2020, at 20:11, Lisa Gruwell  wrote:
> 
> Hi Chris-
> 
> I am happy to answer your questions about Tides.  No, Tides is not picking 
> the grantees.  The docket of grantees and the specific of the grants comes 
> from us.  Tides provides legal and administrative review of the grants,  
> approves them, and processes the grants(i.e. wires the funding to the 
> grantees).  It is rare that there is ever a problem, but if Tides were to see 
> one, we actually appreciate the outside review and would be open to hearing 
> their reasons.  There is no change for the reporting and transparency 
> requirements for APG grants. Tides will also not be making recommendations 
> for the grants for the Knowledge Equity Fund.  They will play a similar role 
> as I described for the APG grants. Again, I know there will be more info on 
> the Knowledge Equity Fund in the new year.  I ask your patience for the folks 
> initiating this and trust that they will share more soon.
> 
> Best,
> Lisa
> 
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 10:18 AM Chris Keating  > wrote:
> Thanks Lisa. That statement makes a lot of sense, though I do have some 
> questions still.
> 
> Our first priority was to ensure that we had enough funding to support 
> community grants. We transferred the full amount for Annual Plan Grants (APG) 
> for FY20-21 over to Tides to ensure that all funding for affiliates for this 
> year was secured, regardless of how fundraising performed. It also gives 
> staff at affiliates and the Foundation more time to work together to make 
> thoughtful grants, instead of an end-of-year rush. All affiliates who will be 
> receiving funding through Tides were informed of the arrangement last summer. 
> All other grantmaking (Community Grants, Rapid Grants, Project Grants) are 
> still being funded through WMF directly, as usual. There is a round of APG 
> grants set to go out via Tides this week.
> 
> Are Tides simply administering these funds at the WMF's direction, or will 
> Tides start to take over decisions about who gets these grants and what 
> amount different entities are eligible for? Has there been any change to the 
> reporting and transparency requirements that go with the APG grants? What is 
> the intention about how APG grants will work, since the FDC was abolished a 
> couple of years ago and there is unlikely to be any community-driven 
> replacement for it until at least a year or two's work has gone into the 
> implementation of the strategy?
>  
> As of now, this is a one-time commitment of approximately $4.5 million. We 
> are still working on the specific initial objectives of the fund and how it 
> will operate. As a pilot initiative, we’ll be learning and adapting as we go. 
> 
> Funding knowledge equity sounds like a great idea, but I have not previously 
> heard of an organisation making an irrecoverable $4.5 million transfer 
> without knowing what that money will be used to fund. Is there anything more 
> that can be shared apart from "it'll be used to fund knowledge equity 
> somehow"? And as above - is this going to be a WMF-led process (maybe even 
> involving the community), or will Tides be actually making recommendations 
> about who and what is funded? If the latter, how are Tides going to adjust to 
> the Wikimedia community's expectations about transparency?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Chris
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> -- 
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> 
> Lisa Seitz Gruwell 
> Chief Advancement Officer
> Wikimedia Foundation  
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Recognition of Wikimedistas de Uruguay

[Michael Peel]

Hi Mehman,

Could you share a summary of what happened to turn Wikimedia Uruguay into a 
user group, please?

Thanks,
Mike

> On 14 Dec 2020, at 18:49, Mehman Ibragimov  wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone!
> 
> I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized [1] 
> Wikimedistas de Uruguay [2] as a Wikimedia User Group. This is a working 
> group created at the initiative of former members of the official Wikimedia 
> Uruguay  chapter (which 
> stopped working in mid-2020) to which new people also joined. They wish to 
> promote access to content produced in Uruguay and its dissemination in 
> digital environments, rescuing our public domain, and promoting the use of 
> free licenses.
> 
> Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
> 
> Regards,
> Mehman Ibragimov
> Vice-Chair, Affiliations Committee
> 
> [1] 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Recognition_of_Wikimedistas_de_Uruguay
>  
> 
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedistas_de_Uruguay 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund"

[Michael Peel]

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment ?

> On 13 Dec 2020, at 08:33, Yair Rand  wrote:
> 
> According to the recent Independent Auditors' Report of the WMF [1], at some 
> point prior to the end of June 2020, an entity called the "Wikimedia 
> Knowledge Equity Fund" was established, and $8.723 million was transferred to 
> it by the WMF, in the form of an unconditional grant. The Fund is "managed 
> and controlled by Tides Advocacy" (a 501(c)(4) advocacy nonprofit previously 
> led by the WMF's current General Counsel/Board Secretary, who served as CEO, 
> Board Secretary, and Treasurer there). Given that a Google search for 
> "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund" yields zero results prior to the release of 
> the report, it is clear that the WMF kept this significant move completely 
> secret for over five months, perhaps over a year. The Report FAQ additionally 
> emphasizes that the WMF "has no right of return to the grant funds provided, 
> with the exception of unexpended funds."
> 
> The WMF unilaterally and secretly transferred nearly $9 million of movement 
> funds to an outside organization not recognized by the Affiliations 
> Committee. No mention of the grant was made in any Board resolutions or 
> minutes from the relevant time period. The amount was not mentioned in the 
> public annual plan, which set out rather less than this amount for the entire 
> grantmaking budget for the year. No application was made through any of the 
> various Wikimedia grants processes. No further information has been provided 
> on the administration of this new Fund, or on the text of the grant agreement.
> 
> I am appalled.
> 
> -- Yair Rand
> 
> [1] 
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2019-2020_Audit_Report.pdf
>  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustees elections, membership, quorum, and

[Michael Peel]

That the WMF *isn’t* a membership organisation already is rather weird. It may 
be specific to US organisations (in which case, references please), but it 
really isn’t normal on an international basis, nor within the Wikimedia 
movement (most/all affiliates have members).

Having to provide legal names and addresses may be a problem for some, but 
definitely not all Wikimedians. Similar with membership fees, particularly if 
it is set to a nominal value, and if there are ways of waving the fees if 
needed.

Governance issues definitely change - e.g., if you worry about an 
organisational take-over, then it’s no longer the board you have to worry about 
but the membership - but you have larger numbers of membership. However, it 
wouldn’t prevent things like movement-wide elections, they would just have to 
be ratified by a membership rather than the board.

It’s something that is worth thinking more about.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 8 Oct 2020, at 18:55, Risker  wrote:
> 
> Functionaries (checkusers, oversighters, stewards, OTRS members, and people
> with similar advanced permissions) have not been required to provide their
> personal information - name, DOB, address - for years.  They simply sign
> off a type of confidentiality agreement with their username.
> 
> Risker/Anne
> 
> On Thu, 8 Oct 2020 at 13:52, Todd Allen  wrote:
> 
>> Well, you could always do a nominal membership contribution, like a penny,
>> or sponsorships for those who wish to join but don't have the money. Since
>> WMF makes its money primarily from donations, there's really no need for it
>> to actually sustain itself from membership fees.
>> 
>> So far as requiring non-pseudonymous membership, I don't think there's any
>> requirement that such member lists be made public. So it would work a lot
>> like functionaries giving their information for the private access policy;
>> they are required to verify their identity, but that will be held privately
>> and not available to the public. So for all intents and purposes,
>> pseudonymous membership would still be possible.
>> 
>> Todd
>> 
>> On Thu, Oct 8, 2020 at 11:46 AM Risker  wrote:
>> 
>>> Without needing to go into further detail, it is because to be a
>> membership
>>> organization, pseudonyms aren't acceptable; all members must provide
>> their
>>> full legal names and addresses.  I also cannot think of a membership
>>> organization that does not charge a membership fee, although I suppose it
>>> is possible; but anything requiring a financial contribution would limit
>>> the membership to those who have the money to pay to join, which is
>>> antithetical to the movement's philosophy.
>>> 
>>> Risker/Anne
>>> 
>>> On Thu, 8 Oct 2020 at 13:41, Todd Allen  wrote:
>>> 
 Why would we "not want it to be a membership organization"? In fact,
>> many
 of us want exactly that, since the WMF seems to think it can lord it
>> over
 the communities instead of fulfilling its role of serving them.
 
 The new Board rules basically say that the Board itself gets to say how
>>> the
 community-based members are selected, instead of having actual bylaws
>> as
>>> to
 how it happens. I'd like to see it done very simply: Those eight seats
 (forming a majority) on the Board should be elected (not nominated,
 elected) by the community, with the Board having no veto power over the
 results of the election.
 
 Todd
 
 On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 12:45 PM Brad Patrick 
>>> wrote:
 
> This is a very, very old and tired argument. If you do not understand
> United States non-profit corporations, go educate yourself about
>> those
> first. If your perspective is non-US based, you may have a different
 frame
> of mind which is irreconcilable with the way WMF is. Take all the
>> time
 you
> need to see the differences before attacking WMF for (a) what it is
>> and
 (b)
> why it isn't what you want it to be.
> 
> WMF exists legally, and has as its foundation organizational
>> principle,
> authority vested in a Board. WMF is not a membership organization.
>> You
> would not want it to be a membership organization (as a matter of
>> law).
> 
> Please temper your criticism accordingly.
> 
> Brad Patrick
> Former WMF General Counsel
> 
> On 10/7/20, 12:47 PM, "Wikimedia-l on behalf of Paulo Santos
>> Perneta"
>>> <
> wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf of
> paulospern...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>I knew they are theoretically self-appointed, but was under the
> impression
>that at least until now an appearance of democracy and legitimacy
> towards
>the community has been respected, which no longer seems to be the
 case.
>I wonder what would be the legitimacy of a self-appointing body
>> in
 the
> eyes
>of the Wikimedia Movement, and all the communities which are part
>>> of
> it?
> 
>Regards,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Moving the technical infrastructure out of the US

[Michael Peel]

… hence the existence of Wikimedia chapters? I suspect at least WMDE could take 
this on if it becomes necessary, although other chapters aren’t as 
technologically developed as I’d have liked to have seen.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 30 Sep 2020, at 19:35, Steven Walling  wrote:
> 
> SJ hinted at a related problem which is that we'd also need a backup
> organizational structure to run things operationally and legally. If the US
> becomes so politically unstable that hosting Wikimedia data is under threat
> there, just moving the data would not be enough. You'd also have to include
> a contingency plan that foresaw the need to legally operate the Foundation
> (or an equivalent organization anyway) under a different jurisdiction
> with corporate officers not subject to US law or extradition. If the
> servers are hosted in the EU but the legally controlling body and its
> employees are within the US, you could still see them legally forced to
> comply with an order, just like companies are forced to do so in
> other countries with censorious regimes today.
> 
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 8:59 AM Samuel Klein  wrote:
> 
>> We should have technical partners in multiple other jurisdictions that
>> could help in a crisis, and load bearing infrastructure in at least one of
>> them, and a plan for how and when to switch. (The walkthrough of what would
>> be needed for a smooth transfer send most important, and useful for general
>> reliability planning)
>> 
>> We should also fully support and realize Wikimedia-on-ipfs, similar to what
>> the internet archive had been doing. (Santhosh has some excellent ideas
>> there)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed., Sep. 30, 2020, 5:35 a.m. Dan Garry (Deskana), 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Wed, 30 Sep 2020 at 09:49, Erik Moeller  wrote:
>>> 
 I hope that some preliminary contingency plans exist or are being
 developed, and I'm sure that the movement-wide debate will widen if
 the US continues its downward slide into authoritarianism.
 
>>> 
>>> I agree with Erik. Even under the Obama administration, there were
>> threats
>>> to the existence of the movement, such as SOPA [1] which lead to a
>> blackout
>>> [2]. One can extrapolate from current events that these threats could
>> well
>>> get larger and more frequent, rather than smaller and less frequent,
>> should
>>> someone in the US Government decide to focus their attention on attacking
>>> Wikipedia and free knowledge. It would be prudent to create a contingency
>>> plan which includes an exploration of other options for a location of
>>> operation for the Wikimedia Foundation and/or its servers, with their
>>> advantages and disadvantages. I personally wouldn't necessarily advocate
>>> for making the plan public; that would be ideal, but I'd be comforted
>>> merely to know it exists.
>>> 
>>> On Tue, 29 Sep 2020 at 23:36, Joseph Seddon 
>>> wrote:
>>> 
 I believe options are going to be explored for sustainability but right
>>> now
 legally speaking the US is the best jurisdiction for hosting us now and
>>> the
 foreseeable future.
 
>>> 
>>> I agree with this too. For now, the United States remains the best place
>>> for the organisation to operate out of, and a move should not be actively
>>> considered.
>>> 
>>> Dan
>>> 
>>> [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
>>> [2]:
>>> 
>>> 
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA#Wikimedia_community
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Foundation and affiliates disclosing salaries on job ads & the effect of this on workplace equity

[Michael Peel]

This seems to be a restriction against employers asking for someone’s salary 
history, not against including the expected salary range in a job advert. 
Having occasionally looked at WMF job adverts, it’s always seemed odd to me 
that the salary ranges haven’t been mentioned at all (my occasional questions 
about this went unanswered). Personally, I would never apply for a position 
that doesn’t have an advertised salary range, and I can only imagine how this 
would affect those that aren’t white men. It’s probably particularly important 
in the case of San Francisco to figure out if it would even be a practical 
living wage.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 11 Sep 2020, at 12:00, Dan Garry (Deskana)  wrote:
> 
> Asking candidates for their current salary is prohibited in San Francisco
> as of July 2018 [1] which means that, as a San Francisco based
> organisation, the Foundation will undoubtedly not be doing this. To my
> knowledge, this wasn't done by the Foundation before either, but we can
> confidently state that it won't be done now.
> 
> There are some complexities in disclosing salary ranges for the Foundation.
> One practice that can be used for encouraging diversity in candidate
> applications is to specify that a position is open to candidates with a
> wide range of experience and in all locations in the world, in which case
> the salary range posted will be so large that it will basically be
> meaningless. On the other hand, another good practice for encouraging
> diversity is to source internally for senior positions, which opens up more
> junior roles that can be sourced externally, in which case a salary range
> can be more meaningful and helpful. It's hard to figure out what the right
> balance is.
> 
> Regardless, more public transparency in salary banding would be good to see.
> 
> Dan
> 
> [1]:
> https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/state-and-local-updates/pages/san-francisco-bans-salary-history-questions.aspx
> 
> On Fri, 11 Sep 2020 at 10:44, Chris Keating 
> wrote:
> 
>> Good morning everyone!
>> 
>> There's a campaign(1) for nonprofits to disclose the salaries, or at least
>> salary ranges, on job ads.
>> 
>> An increasing body of evidence(2) shows that practices like not disclosing
>> expected pay, and requiring applicants to disclose their current salary, is
>> harmful to equity in the workplace.
>> 
>> Not disclosing salaries affects pay levels within the organisation -
>> because white men are usually relatively confident in negotiating their
>> salaries upwards, so tend to end up with a better deal.
>> 
>> It can also affect the diversity of candidates who apply. Candidates who
>> have stronger networks within the industry they're moving into (again, more
>> commonly white men with privileged social and educational backgrounds) also
>> have clear expectations because they are 'in the know' about industry
>> norms, while people who don't, find the lack of salary information a
>> barrier to application. (After all, why take the time and effort to apply
>> for a job when you have no idea how the likely pay compares to your current
>> employment?)
>> 
>> I know practices vary within the movement - I believe the WMF never
>> mentions salaries on ads, and I don't know whether the range is disclosed
>> to applicants or not - some chapters I know do advertise a salary. However,
>> I'd urge all entities within the movement that hire staff to disclose the
>> expected salary ranges for posts they are advertising, as part of their
>> commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion.
>> 
>> Thanks for reading,
>> 
>> Chris
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> (1): https://showthesalary.com/
>> (2): e.g. at https://showthesalary.com/resources/
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

[Michael Peel]

I remember reading Erik’s blog post a decade or so ago, which convinced me that 
-NC was useless due to its ambiguity - where exactly is the line drawn between 
what is commercial and what is not? I can’t find it now, but perhaps 
http://www.opensourcejahrbuch.de/download/jb2006/chapter_06/osjb2006-06-02-en-moeller.pdf
 is similar. Pete’s new essay seems to agree with that.

Is there any way we could convince CC to deprecate the useless -NC licenses?

Thanks,
Mike

> On 11 Jul 2020, at 22:59, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> Pete Forsyth wrote a new essay on the ambiguities of the NonCommercial
> ("non-commercial use only") provision in Creative Commons licenses,
> which I wanted to share in case it's helpful for folks making the case
> against using NC to cultural institutions or others (or in the
> occasionally resurgent debate to permit NC within Wikimedia):
> 
> https://freedomdefined.org/The_non-commercial_provision_obfuscates_intent
> 
> It argues that NC is so ambiguous in its defining restriction that it
> almost defeats the point of attaching a CC license at all. I feel this
> complements the longer (dated!) essay at
> https://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC nicely.
> 
> Warmly,
> 
> Erik
> 
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[Wikimedia-l] 3,000,000 Wikidata Infoboxes in Commons categories

[Michael Peel]

Hi all,

We’ve just reached a milestone with the deployment of Wikidata Infoboxes in 
Wikimedia Commons categories: there are now over 3 million uses! [1] These 
infoboxes are completely multilingual, and they automatically expand as more 
information is added to Wikidata.

(I think enwp has around 3.4 million infoboxes [2], which we’re getting close 
to - does any other Wikipedia have more?)

Thanks,
Mike

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Uses_of_Wikidata_Infobox
[2] 
https://templatecount.toolforge.org/index.php?lang=en=10=Infobox
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Giving Commons a bigger public

[Michael Peel]

Hi Gerard,

I mostly agree with you. However, I disagree with this:

> This proof of concept is largely based on existing WMF functionality so it
> takes very little for the Wikimedia Foundation to adopt the code, do it
> properly particularly for the Internationalisation.

Turning prototype code into production code is never trivial. When you’re 
writing a prototype, you get to skip all performance and edge case concerns, 
and you don’t need to integrate it into existing code, you’re just interested 
in getting something working. I hope (and expect) that the WMF will make 
improvements to Commons’ multilingual search in the future, but it’s definitely 
not a “very little” amount of work that needs doing, it’s a year or more worth 
of developer time.

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Giving Commons a bigger public

[Michael Peel]

Hi all,

It’s worth remembering that this functionality is built in to Commons, it’s 
just not as user-friendly. From the example below, if you put 
"haswbstatement:P180=Q191931” into the Commons searchbox, you will get the same 
results. Thanks to the structured data on commons project+team!

Also, around half of the Commons categories now have multilingual labels 
embedded in them through the Wikidata Infobox, which means that if you do an 
ordinary search for a phrase in a different language, you should find the 
correct commons category if it exists. E.g., try searching for “Telescopio 
Lovell”, or "洛弗尔望远镜". The infobox also has a link at the bottom of it that you 
can click on to search depicts statements for that category’s topic without 
having to look up the QID first.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 24 May 2020, at 10:30, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:
> 
> Hoi,
> Two more localisations became available, one for German and one for
> Swedish. I have asked Alolita if she would help us with a localisation in
> an Indian language. Anthere, would you be so kind and reach out so that we
> have a localisation in an African language as well.. (French would also be
> good to have :) )
> 
> In the mean time I have linked pictures of the kakapoa to its Wikidata
> item, you can search for it in Maori.
> 
> For me the point of this proof of concept is that we already can expose
> material in any of our languages. We can make this available and promote
> the addition of "depicts" statements in Commons and labels in Wikidata. In
> a true Wiki way it brings additional functionality to any and all of our
> users.. It will improve over time.
> 
> When we are to know the extend of its usefulness, we need continuous
> statistics (we have them for Reasonator as well, just as an example).
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
> 
> On Sun, 24 May 2020 at 07:33, Gerard Meijssen 
> wrote:
> 
>> Hoi,
>> Florence I totally agree that proper internatonalisation, localisation is
>> key. What is key for me is that this already provides an easy and obvious
>> search function for mediafiles that have a link to a Wikidata item. Just to
>> stress the point, this is a wiki, we do not need a fully functional search
>> engine (for all the Commons files); that is what we aspire to that is what
>> we work towards.. That will take years. But with a proper search tool, a
>> tool that makes it EASY to use Commons, it may fool me into using Commons
>> for my blog.
>> 
>> To show you that it works, I just looked for "baisikeli
>> " and made a screenshot
>> [1]. The screenshot is with other files showing the evolution of this tool
>> in a Commons category [2]
>> 
>> Important to notice is that the tool DOES invite you to localise the
>> labels to French, Swahili et al for best results!!
>> 
>> A minor observation, there are all kinds of things that could change in
>> the user interface. Key is that this is a prototype. It is showing us how
>> we can make Commons work for us.
>> Thanks,
>>   GerardM
>> 
>> [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Appelmoes3.png
>> [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Hay%27s_SDSEARCH
>> 
>> On Sun, 24 May 2020 at 01:21, Florence Devouard 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> Le 24/05/2020 à 00:23, Erik Moeller a écrit :
 On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 10:10 AM Gerard Meijssen
  wrote:
 
> Hay Kranen created a proof of concept where Commons is searched for
> pictures that (per standard) use a "depicts" statement.
 This is a beautiful proof of concept; thank you for sharing it,
 Gerard, and thank you, Hay, for developing it. It really illustrates
 the power and importance of the Structured Data efforts.
 
 To pick a different example, imagine that you want to illustrate an
 article about the importance of wheelchair accessibility at your
 university. You might try a major search engine like Google Images.
 Try replacing the word "wheelchair" with translations in other
 languages. Note how the result sets are different, and how you may get
 a much smaller set of results in languages with a smaller Internet
 presence.
 
 https://www.google.com/search?q=wheelchair=isch (English)
 https://www.google.com/search?q=kitimaguru=isch (Swahili, far less
 relevant and smaller set)
 
 In contrast, the use of Wikidata items means that, as long as a label
 exists for a given language, you can search in _any_ language and get
 the same images:
 
 https://tools.wmflabs.org/hay/sdsearch/#q=haswbstatement:P180=Q191931
 
 The fact that the UI of this tool is currently English is an
 implementation detail; even with Hay's implementation, you can type in
 "kitimaguru" and get the same results as in English.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Sorry Erik, but I do not follow you here...
>>> 
>>> For some reasons, it is true for "kitimaguru", but if I search for
>>> "lamp" (EN) versus "lampe" (FR), or "key" (English) 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF political activism

[Michael Peel]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day is not the same as 
https://www.earthdaylive2020.org/ - but the link was to the latter.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 24 Apr 2020, at 21:26, Robert Fernandez  wrote:
> 
> FFS who is against Earth Day?   Every organization and company
> probably mentions it or observes it in some way.  Get over yourselves.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] คุณมีความสุขกับอะไรในสัปดาห์นี้? / What's making you happy this week? (Week of 19 April 2020)

[Michael Peel]

> On 23 Apr 2020, at 20:21, Pine W  wrote:
> 
> What’s making you happy this week? You are welcome to write in any
> language. You are also welcome to start a WMYHTW thread next week.

A few years ago, I took some photos of some abandoned and heavily-decayed 
trains in Paranapiacaba, an old railway town in southern Brazil, and uploaded 
them to Commons. This week, User:Sorocabano_32 came along and identified 
several of them!

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Siemens-Schuckert_B-B_(RFFSA)
These seem to be the only photos we have of this locomotive class, as it’s the 
last of its kind.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:TUE_S%C3%A9rie_100_(EFCB)
It turns out these were built in the UK!

(There are still many more still to be identified in 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Vila_Ferrovi%C3%A1ria_de_Paranapiacaba
 !)

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Brand Project: Who are we as a movement?

[Michael Peel]

I think it’s important to realise that there *is* a big issue here. How we want 
to be perceived and how we are actually perceived are *not* the same.

We can argue about WMF vs. community as much as we want, but that won’t change 
reality.

Please can we focus on how we solve the problem instead of internal bickering? 
(This applies equally to the community and the brand project.)

Thanks,
Mike

> On 15 Apr 2020, at 20:05, Pine W  wrote:
> 
> Hmm. As Deskana has pointed out in the past, painting everyone at WMF
> with the same brush is problematic. It can demoralize people who do
> good work.
> 
> At the same time, it's difficult to escape the conclusion that the
> same problems occur at WMF year after year. As the saying goes, "The
> more things change, the more they stay the same." I think that the WMF
> Board is a part of the problem. In the meantime, the best that the
> rest of us can do is to continue to make our opinions known and try to
> be productive.
> 
> I'm reluctant to call for changes of individually identifiable staff
> without knowing more about the facts of this situation. I simply don't
> have enough information.
> 
> I'm not aware of any large organization which doesn't have recurring
> problems. WMF is not unique in this regard. That's not an excuse, but
> I think that it's also important to be realistic.
> 
> Pine
> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WikiProject COVID-19 (English Wikipedia) is started

[Michael Peel]

There was discussion at 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category_talk:2019%E2%80%9320_COVID-19_pandemic_by_country_and_territory
 

 - I’m not sure where it was on enwp. It does seem important to make it clear 
that this is a COVID-19 pandemic, not one due to another variant of coronavirus.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 15 Mar 2020, at 21:58, Andy Mabbett  wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 15 Mar 2020 at 20:56, Paulo Santos Perneta
>  wrote:
> 
>> Even worst, it's contaminating other projects, like Wikidata and Wikimedia
>> Commons, with teams of wiki.en editors going there to revert anyone that
>> dares to move the disease to its proper name.
> 
> Diffs, please.
> 
> -- 
> Andy Mabbett
> @pigsonthewing
> http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Brand Project: Who are we as a movement?

[Michael Peel]

Hi all,

I’m on the other side of things - I think it would be good to simplify our 
branding, and ‘Wikipedia’ is the obvious brand to go with. I’d love to see us 
talking about ‘Wikipedia Data’, and ‘Wikipedia Media, etc. (maybe with obvious 
cross-wiki tabs at the top of the projects!), without the confusion of 
‘Wikileaks’, ‘Wikia’, etc. I don’t think that a yes/no Meta RfC on this project 
right now would help, as there would be an obvious knee-jerk reaction.

I also don’t think that the ‘brandingwikipedia’ website helps, though. If you 
want to ask the general public about Wikipedia branding, it makes sense - you 
can just click ‘like’ to the suggested tags and maybe leave a comment, and 
that’s it. However, that’s not how the Wikimedia community works, and that’s 
the population that you need to convince.

If you want this to work, then I think there’s two ways to go: start 
discussions on-wiki about the pros and cons, provide data in response to 
questions and emotional responses, and help the community reach a consensus 
with you about the way forward; or just go ahead and make the change, weather 
the reactions, and see what happens. I suspect only one of those approaches 
would work in the long-run, but either would be better than having off-wiki 
processes and then claiming that they have consensus. Of course, you can try an 
approach with one Wikimedia project at a time, and see how it goes.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 13 Mar 2020, at 18:12, Pine W  wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> First, a disclaimer that these comments aren't directed personally at
> you, Essie.
> 
> Even if money was unlimited, I thought that Snøhetta deserved the
> community's trust, and I felt that WMF was a good steward of resources
> (all of which are questionable), I don't think that this project is a
> good idea. Wikidata is an increasingly important component of the
> Wikiverse, and there are a some problems with WMF rebranding itself as
> the Wikipedia Foundation including the risk to the communities and
> affiliates from WMF's political adventures, governance problems, and
> occasional high profile clashes with the community. I don't think that
> the costs or the risks here make sense, I wouldn't involve Snøhetta
> given its apparent block evasion on English Wikipedia, and I've been
> unimpressed with WMF's handling of this process during the past few
> months.
> 
> I am fine with discussions about branding, but not with this program
> in its current form.
> 
> Given the choice, I would freeze this project and spending associated
> with it pending a Meta RfC regarding the community's view on whether
> this project should continue. If the community wants a branding
> project to continue, I would let the community decide on the project's
> parameters and budget, and what if any consultant should be involved.
> 
> Pine
> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Status of APG and FDC?

[Michael Peel]

As I understand it, the FDC was basically suspended at the start of the 
movement strategy discussions, and hasn’t met since. The funding for affiliates 
was apparently maintained at a constant level during the suspension, and the 
future of the program depends on whatever the movement strategy outcomes are. 
As a former FDC member, it’s a sad situation to see, as the committee was doing 
valuable work that’s been lost due to uncertainty.

Hopefully the current FDC members / WMF staff / WMF board can provide more info 
on this soon...

Thanks,
Mike

> On 10 Mar 2020, at 10:13, Dan Garry (Deskana)  wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Does anyone know what the status of the APG process and the FDC is? The
> documentation on-wiki seems to be out of date:
> 
>   - The APG info page [1] says new applications are not being accepted,
>   and there's a bunch of errors in the table.
>   - The APG page [2] doesn't make reference to the above statement about
>   new applications not being accepted.
>   - The FDC page [3] says the terms of all of the members expired in
>   either 2018 or 2019, and doesn't make any reference to the above either.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Dan
> 
> [1]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Information
> [2]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG
> [3]:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Launch of Wikimedia Affiliates Data Portal

[Michael Peel]

Hi Dumi,

This looks interesting, but I’m worried that the WMF is still trying to exclude 
itself from reporting its metrics. Will this new tool also make it easier for 
the WMF to post its reports?

Thanks,
Mike

> On 6 Mar 2020, at 17:51, Dumisani Ndubane  wrote:
> 
> TL;DR: Launch of Wikimedia Affiliates Data Portal
> 
> We are launching a new form-based annual reporting system for Wikimedia
> affiliates [1], as well as a basic Affiliates data query system. We would
> love your feedback.
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> 
> Hello, Affiliate Leaders & Community Members,
> 
> Tired of the affiliate reports [2] wiki table of death? SO are we!
> 
> The Learning & Evaluation team is pleased to announce the launch of the
> Wikimedia Affiliates Data (WAD) Portal [1]. This portal will serve three
> purposes as follows:
> 
>   1. It introduces a new Object-Oriented User Interface (OOUI) [3]
>   form-based report submission interface for annual activity and financial
>   reports. This replaces the wiki mark-up based submission via the
>   [[Reports]] page on meta.
>   2. It introduces the ability for Organizations to update their
>   information using OOUI forms on the fly.
>   3. It introduces a new simple data query form that allows anyone
>   logged-in to their public wiki accounts to run a query and view results on
>   available Affiliates data. The query tool will be improved in the coming
>   financial year, as we work to code data in Affiliate reports into
>   structured data, to allow for richer analysis.
> 
> 
> The [[Reports]] page on meta will continue to be visible on meta until the
> end of June 2020, after which it will be protected and archived. All
> organizations that are due to submit annual reports at the end of March are
> encouraged to use the new report submission forms. If you do use the new
> forms, please share any feedback you have about this new process on the
> Portal’s talk page
> 
> We will hold training seminars for those who wish to be onboarded to the
> submission forms and the Query system during the months of March and April
> 2020 (Dates will be communicated soon).
> 
> We have taken time to pre-populate the system with basic information about
> each recognized Wikimedia affiliate, however, should you find any incorrect
> or outdated information about your group, please use the organization
> information page[4] to provide updated information.
> 
> We trust that you will enjoy the new portal and that you will find it
> useful. Should you have any problems or encounter bugs in the new forms,
> please use the Portal talk page [5] to log these, or to simply ask
> questions. We will collect similar questions to create an FAQ page in due
> time.
> 
> Kindest regards
> 
> *Dumisani Ndubane* - Lead Designer
> *Derick Alangi* - Software Developer
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> *Learning & Evaluation team*
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 
> *Links:*
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Affiliates_Data_Portal
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
> [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/OOUI
> [4]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Affiliates_Data_Portal/Organizations_Information
> [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Affiliates_Data_Portal
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] SEEKING A WIKIPEDIAN IN RESIDENCE! (U.S.)

[Michael Peel]

> This position can only be based
> remotely from the following states: CA, OR, OH, NV, NC, WA, WI, CO, MA, PA,
> NY, HI, or MT.
> 
> PLEASE APPLY!

You might have a slight mismatch between the audience that reads this mailing 
list, and your rather arbitrary geographic location requirement. Perhaps 
consider changing one of them?

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Next steps on Wikimedia Space

[Michael Peel]

> On 18 Feb 2020, at 19:53, Pharos  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 8:49 AM Samuel Klein  wrote:
> 
>> Phase V confirmed! -- I hope this means related features (a calendar +
>> forum :) are getting included in mediawiki propre...
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> Indeed, it has been a mistake to keep spinning off new discussion
> platforms, in the hope that the next one will be different and controllable
> and totally replace everything else. This has been an anti-pattern for a
> decade. Far better to make a real investment (including both a social and a
> technical investment) in the actual community platforms based on MediaWiki,
> where many of the ideas that were developed for Space could be rather more
> fruitfully applied, and the existing eforts by good people not be put to
> waste.

I completely agree - investing in the core platform the way to go. See you all 
on-wiki with everyone else?

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fram en.wp office yearlock block

[Michael Peel]

Hi all,

I'm torn on this issue.

I'm not a fan of Fram. Having been attacked by them in the past, I'm somewhat 
relieved to hear that they have been banned from enwp. I’m also dismayed by the 
poor response from the enwp community about this issue, particularly the 
inflammatory remarks and proposals that are intended to make the situation 
worse, rather than to work towards a solution.

Fundamentally, though, I think the WMF has missed something very important in 
the process that has taken place here: community representation. If an outside 
group makes a decision that impacts a community, without involving that 
community in the decision, then of course the community will be upset, even if 
the decision ultimately improves the community.

The WMF does a good job with involving the community in some of its processes - 
particularly in grantmaking, where elected community members are directly 
involved in the decision-making processes. In other cases, it uses ombudsmen 
quite effectively to investigate complaints, and to course-correct as 
necessary. In this case, though, the community has been deliberately excluded, 
and that’s not OK. And even worse, there is explicitly no appeals process, 
which is crazy.

The next step here really needs to involve the community. Enwp’s ArbCom would 
be the obvious community-elected group to involve here if at all possible,* but 
there are other groups available if needed (e.g., Bureaucrats, Stewards, 
Ombudsman commission). That doesn’t scale across all languages, or for all 
complaints, but it might work for this situation, providing that there is a 
commitment from the WMF to developing something better in the future (at least 
a community-elected ombudsman for this process!).

Thanks,
Mike

* Regardless of Fram’s opinions about ArbCom, which seem to have led to this 
block, it’s still enwp’s community-elected group that handles serious disputes.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Suspensions of affiliates

[Michael Peel]

Hi all,

As a daft question, why doesn’t affcom say to the affiliates something like "we 
won’t publish this, but if you want to, then please go ahead and do so 
yourself”? That way, it’s up to the affiliate to work out what works best in 
their culture/country/community and to go with that, rather than a 
one-size-fits-all approach.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 19 Sep 2018, at 18:27, effe iets anders  wrote:
> 
> As always, it is complicated. While there are benefits to extreme
> transparency, there are also very real downsides. Depending on the culture
> in the country, being overly public in the 'warning phase' can have the
> result that partners will pull out of agreements, donations will be held
> back and volunteers good name get damaged (and withdraw from the
> organization). Publishing such warnings could very well in effect kill off
> the affiliate, and make the warning moot. Another side effect of going
> public with such warnings is that people get real defensive. This is
> already sensitive when you involve all members, but this gets even worse
> when you involve the whole world.
> 
> Efforts of AffCom should not focus (imho) on sanctions or punishing, but
> rather on adjusting the processes and practices of the organization to
> align with movement values and directions. Diplomacy often requires some
> silence - and as long as AffCom still sees hope that the organization can
> adjust and repair - I'm all for it that they use silent backchannels.
> Admitting to the problem is required to start fixing it - and such
> admission is usually easier achieved in private.
> 
> A community that tried to get maximum effective affiliates needs to find a
> healthy balance between transparency and diplomacy. Where exactly that
> balance is to be found, it a complicated question though.
> 
> Lodewijk
> 
> On Wed, Sep 19, 2018 at 9:15 AM Isarra Yos  wrote:
> 
>> Also apt to be useful information for other affiliates - oh, they did or
>> didn't do blah and it added up to serious problems; we've been heading
>> in that sort of direction too and should probably stop, or similar -
>> often it's things we can all learn from, so if presented as such and
>> handled consistently, there need not be shame in it.
>> 
>> On 19/09/2018 02:49, Pine W wrote:
>>> I have several thoughts regarding this and related issues, but my main
>>> feeling is that we should not hide news that would be in the public
>>> interest to communicate, such as the suspension of an affiliate or an
>>> investigation into an affiliate's use of trademarks, simply because it is
>>> bad news or embarrassing news.
>>> 
>>> There are good reasons to keep certain information private, such as
>>> preparations for pending litigation or personally identifying information
>>> that has not been made public. The potential for negative publicity if
>>> information is published, such as the suspension of an affiliate, isn't
>>> sufficient justification for keeping information private.
>>> 
>>> Good governance is difficult to do if relevant information is kept
>> private.
>>> One of the benefits of having news regarding official actions be public
>> is
>>> that the public can evaluate the performance of the officials (in this
>>> case, Affcom). Transparency is a useful deterrent against favoritism,
>>> negligence, and other problems in public service organizations in
>> general.
>>> I generally want transparency regarding both the official actions of
>>> affiliates and the official actions of Affcom. I would like Affcom to set
>>> an example of being transparent by default, whether news is good or bad.
>>> 
>>> Pine
>>> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New Wikimedia Foundation website has soft launched!

[Michael Peel]

Huh? it’s already been live at https://wikimediafoundation.org/ for the last 
week or so - that’s not a “soft launch”, that’s a full launch (maybe without 
the trimmings).

Should I repost the comments/bug reports I sent to wmfcc-l last week more 
publicly?

Thanks,
Mike

> On 10 Aug 2018, at 22:34, Gregory Varnum  wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Thank you to everyone that has sent in productive feedback and bug reports! 
> In the interest of having this conversation more transparently and 
> succinctly, we have answered a number of questions on the talk page of the 
> Meta-Wiki page for this site:  
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_website
> 
> We will continue to monitor feedback, address bugs during soft launch, and 
> let you know when the translations are in place and we are ready for the full 
> launch of the site.
> 
> Again, thank you all for your patience during the soft launch of this site.
> 
> -greg
> 
> ---
> Gregory Varnum
> Communications Strategist
> Wikimedia Foundation 
> gvar...@wikimedia.org
> Pronouns: He/Him/His
> 
>> On Aug 8, 2018, at 8:28 AM, attolippip  wrote:
>> 
>> It also does not seem to work correctly on mobile (android):
>> 
>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMFnewsiteonandroidmobile.png
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> antanana
>> 
>> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018, 17:47 Andy Mabbett  wrote:
>> 
>>> On 8 August 2018 at 15:23, Shabab Mustafa 
>>> wrote:
>>> 
 I had to turn off my anti-tracking extension to see this site properly.
>>> 
>>> This is how it appears for me, in Firefox (current version) with
>>> AdBlockPlus enabled:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Screenshot_-_2018-08-08_-_Wikimedia_Foundation_blog.png
>>> 
>>> AdBlockPlus is reportedly active on 100 million devices.
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Andy Mabbett
>>> @pigsonthewing
>>> http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
>>> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimédia France Governance review

[Michael Peel]

Nominally, the WMF is going to be the next Wikimedia organisation to do a 
governance review, as per:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_recommendations/2015-2016_round_2#Wikimedia_Foundation
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2017-11-17,18,19#Governance_Review

Thanks,
Mike

> On 11 Jul 2018, at 02:36, Balázs Viczián  wrote:
> 
> This report is pretty useful in terms of comparing my chapter's policies to
> this. Probably some fine tuning will follow. Thank you for sharing!
> 
> Note the pattern: UK, Germany, France, all 'big' chapters. My guess is that
> the next one will very likely to be another 'large' chapter (100+ members,
> multiple employees, many paralel projects etc)
> 
> As the report says very few has at least some experience in running
> organizations (true worldwide) so no suprise such events happen every few
> years, not to say those that stay 'local'.
> 
> Just having 50-100-150k edits is not enough to be a 'boss'
> 
> Would love to see people management skills workshops, and organizational
> skills (logistics) workshops...but I attend an event only every 2-3 years
> (or less), so this is just an almost silent suggestion :)
> 
> Balazs
> 
> 2018. júl. 10. 7:44 ezt írta ("Alphos OGame" ):
> 
> Forgive my (usual ?) bluntness, but I don't think congratulations are in
> order for undertaking the governance review ;-)
> 
> As a member and unwilling observer, I can tell you it was dearly needed, be
> it by internal or external auditors, and mandated by the WMF.
> 
> However, as a long time member of the community and of Wikimedia France, I
> do salute the effort of publishing the results of the review, as the
> previous board of directors probably wouldn't have wanted to publish
> anything critical of their method of governance ; and the review covers
> both old and more recent times.
> That indeed deserves credit, so thank you Nadine !
> 
> @ Cornelius : smart thinking on your part, collecting them in one place. I
> hope there won't be any more crisis requiring a governance review in one of
> our chapters, but in any case it will be interesting for all chapters to
> know what to avoid in the future, and where to look for it, so thank you as
> well.
> 
> Roger / Alphos
> 
> 
> 
>> Le 9 juil. 2018 à 13:44, Chris Keating  a
> écrit :
>> 
>> Congratulations to Wikimedia France for undertaking this review and
>> publishing the results.
>> 
>> I believe all of the 3 governance reviews are important reading for
>> anyone involved with the WMF or any of the affiliates, and all have
>> important lessons for the movement. It's interesting to note that this
>> is the first one that touches on the WMF-affiliate relationship in
>> much detail.
>> 
>> Also - while so far governance reviews have only happened as a result
>> of a crisis, this doesn't have to be the case! I would urge Wikimedia
>> affiliates to take external advice on their governance, the
>> suggestions offered by governance experts who know the laws, norms and
>> cutlure in which you operate will be very helpful for you.
>> 
>> Chris
>> (who was Chair of Wikimedia UK at the point we had a governance review...)
>>> On Sun, Jul 8, 2018 at 10:43 PM Nadine Le Lirzin 
> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi all,
>>> 
>>> As announced last month on this list[1], the Governance Assessment Report
>>> by external auditors "Associés en gouvernance" has been published, and we
>>> want to share it with you.
>>> 
>>> The auditors did a great work, first in their rather good understanding
> of
>>> our movement complexity, and then in the numerous improvement suggestions
>>> they delivered.
>>> 
>>> The consultation of our members – to fully associate them to the
> rebuilding
>>> – is still in progress. Main changes will be submitted to a vote at next
>>> General Assembly, by the end of the year.
>>> 
>>> The document has been translated in English and is now available on
>>> Commons[2].
>>> 
>>> May these suggestions be useful not only for Wikimédia France, but also
> for
>>> any other chapter or affiliate that would be in need of governance advice
>>> or ideas.
>>> 
>>> Best regards,
>>> 
>>> Nadine Le Lirzin
>>> *Wikimedia France Board Secretary*
>>> 
>>> 
>>> [1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2018-
> June/090413.html
>>> [2]
>>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_France_-_
> Governance_Assessment_Report_-_2018.pdf
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The fact-checked encyclopedia

[Michael Peel]

Maybe it’s by an affiliate (WMAU?). Presumably it has to be someone with 
permission to use the trademark, otherwise a request to google to turn it off 
should be made?

Thanks,
Mike

> On 25 Apr 2018, at 05:54, Anthony Cole  wrote:
> 
> Thanks Joseph. How weird.
> 
> On Wed, 25 Apr 2018 at 3:01 pm, Joseph Seddon  wrote:
> 
>> Hey Anthony,
>> 
>> Apologies for the delay on this.
>> 
>> To the best of our knowledge, this ad isn't being run by the Wikimedia
>> Foundation nor any vendor of the Wikimedia Foundation.
>> 
>> Regards
>> Seddon
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Apr 25, 2018 at 7:12 AM, Anthony Cole  wrote:
>> 
>>> That Google ad (describing Wikipedia as the fact-checked encyclopedia) is
>>> still the top result when I search for “wikipedia” in Australia.
>>> 
>>> On Wed, 18 Apr 2018 at 8:57 pm, Isaac Olatunde >> 
>>> wrote:
>>> 
 Leigh, I disagree that all projects are hostile to outsiders. When
>>> someone
 edit in a language they do not speak and use machine to translate
>>> contents
 for example  and refused to stop after multiple warnings, a block in
>> such
 case may not be considered an "hostile" response. That being said, I
 completely agree with Rob that fact-checked encyclopedia is more
 appropriate considering the hostility in some language Wikipedia,
>> notably
 the English Wikipedia. How do you describe a Wikipedia where someone
>>> create
 their first article and got deleted and when the  page creator
>> approached
 the deleting admin on why their article got deleted and the response
>> they
 received is "Kindly have the decency to create a decent article ",
>> "count
 yourself lucky, I don't talk to IP address "?
 
 Regards,
 
 Isaac.
 
 
 On Apr 15, 2018 3:21 PM, "Leigh Thelmadatter" 
 wrote:
 
> Not just English Wikipedia. All of the projects are hostile to
 "outsiders"
> Those not in English might even be worse for several reasons
> 
> Enviado desde mi LG de Telcel
> 
> -- Original message--
> From: Robert Fernandez
> Date: Sun, Apr 15, 2018 9:17 AM
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List;
> Cc:
> Subject:Re: [Wikimedia-l] The fact-checked encyclopedia
> 
> Considering the barriers to entry, growing thicket of policies,
> organized group harassment, and open hostility on the English
> Wikipedia, I'm not sure we can even call it "the encyclopedia anyone
> can edit" anymore.  So I'd say fact-checked is a more accurate and
> relevant claim these days.
> 
> On Sun, Apr 15, 2018 at 8:53 AM, Anthony Cole 
 wrote:
>> I just googled “wikipedia” and the first result was a Google ad
>>> linking
> to
>> wikipedia.org.[1] It calls Wikipedia the fact-checked encyclopedia.
>>> We
> used
>> to call it the encyclopedia anyone can edit. The latter seems more
 honest
>> than this new formulation which to me implies a degree of
>> reliability
 and
>> oversight I'm not sure we can ethically assert. I missed the
>>> discussion
>> about this new self-description. Did it happen on meta? Is anyone
>>> else
>> uncomfortabe with this?
>> --
>> Anthony Cole
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] BabelNet is remixing Wikimedia content without following CC-By-SA terms

[Michael Peel]

They also appear to be using photos from Wikimedia Commons without paying 
attention to the license. I can find photos of mine that are CC-BY-SA-4.0 
licensed that are being used without any metadata at all, let alone attribution 
and the correct CC license info…

The same is also true for Everipedia, BTW.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 10 Apr 2018, at 14:43, Rob Speer  wrote:
> 
> BabelNet (http://babelnet.org) is a multilingual knowledge resource that
> defines words and phrases in many languages. I've noticed that it copies
> large amounts of content from Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia,
> Wiktionary, and Wikiquote, while violating Wikimedia's CC-By-SA license by
> placing the content under an incompatible CC-By-NC-SA license.
> 
> As one example, I can search BabelNet for "Timsort", a Wikipedia article
> whose first sentence is one I wrote:
> http://live.babelnet.org/synset?word=Timsort=EN=1=Timsort
> 
> The sentence I wrote appears at the top of the page (with credit to
> Wikipedia). The rest of the page is also content remixed from Wikipedia,
> including a gallery of images that are presented without credit. A scrolly
> box in the footer of the page says the content is under the CC-By-NC-SA 3.0
> license. Other pages, such as http://babelnet.org/synset?word=bn:00852566n,
> combine data from multiple different resources.
> 
> The BabelNet creators are aware of the CC-By-SA licenses of the resources
> they use (see http://babelnet.org/licenses/). In addition to the
> non-commercial license they offer, their company, Babelscape (
> http://babelscape.com/), sells commercial licenses to BabelNet.
> 
> I reached out to Roberto Navigli, who runs BabelNet and Babelscape, over
> e-mail on March 23. I asked if the non-commercial license clause was simply
> a mistake. In his reply, Navigli stated that BabelNet is not a derived
> work, but is a CC-By-NC-SA-licensed collection made of several different
> works. I responded that BabelNet doesn't meet the Creative Commons
> definition of a "Collective Work", which would be necessary for it to not
> be a derived work. Navigli responded:
> 
> "actually it is a collection of derivative work of several resources with
> heretogeneous licenses, each of which clearly separated with separate
> licenses and bundles. By transitivity derivative work is work with a
> certain license, so it is work. Therefore, it is a collection of works with
> different licenses and it can keep a separate license."
> 
> I believe this is nonsense on multiple levels. BabelNet is a derived work,
> and if someone could disregard their obligation to share-alike their
> derived work simply because they derived it from multiple resources, there
> would be no point to putting ShareAlike clauses on data resources at all.
> 
> As a Wikipedia contributor (and a lapsed admin), I am sad to see BabelNet
> appropriating the hard work of Wikimedians and others, placing a more
> restrictive license on it, and selling it. This is also relevant for me
> because I run ConceptNet (http://www.conceptnet.io/), a similar knowledge
> resource, and I have made sure to follow Creative Commons license
> requirements and to release all its data as CC-By-SA.
> 
> In a way I see BabelNet as a competitor, but ConceptNet is an open data
> project and this space shouldn't have "competitors". If the Creative
> Commons license were being used appropriately, then all of us working with
> this kind of data would be collaborators in the world of Linked Open Data.
> My preferred outcome would be to get BabelNet to change the copyright
> notices and Creative Commons links on their site to remove the
> "non-commercial" requirement, and to be able to download and use their data
> under the CC-By-SA license that it should be under.
> 
> I'm sure Wikimedia has dealt with similar situations to this. What would be
> the most effective next step to ensure that BabelNet follows the CC-By-SA
> license?
> 
> -- Rob Speer
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The Wikimedia Foundation's FY18-19 Annual Plan is on Meta-wiki

[Michael Peel]

Hi,

This seems to be an increase of $15 million USD in the WMF’s budget, with a 
$0.2 USD million increase in the international Wikimedia budget (through grants 
to chapters and other affiliates).

That goes against the movement direction of "As a social movement, we will 
focus our efforts on the knowledge and communities that have been left out by 
structures of power and privilege”. Why aren’t we increasing our spending in 
the global south (through local affiliates) at the same rate that we are 
increasing it in the US?

Thanks,
Mike

> On 29 Mar 2018, at 17:42, Katherine Maher  wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I'm delighted to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation's Annual Plan for
> FY18-19 is now on Meta[1].
> 
> This year, we have organized our efforts around three goals that focus on
> making critical improvements to our systems and structures to ensure that
> we’re better positioned for our coming work against the strategic
> direction[2]. The Foundation’s goals for this year should not only move us
> closer to knowledge equity and service, but will prepare us to execute
> against the 3- to 5-year strategic plan which we intend to develop this
> year in order to guide the Foundation’s work into the future.
> 
> As you’ll see, we’ve made some changes to the structure of this year’s
> annual plan. This year’s plan is organized around three goals for the
> Foundation’s work in the year to come. By restructuring the Annual Plan, we
> have written a plan for the whole Foundation,  rather than an aggregation
> of plans from all of our departments and teams. In this sense, we’re
> seeking to become a better-integrated institution, rather than a collection
> of teams and departments with disparate goals.
> 
> We’ve also reduced the overall length of the published Annual Plan. We
> wanted to make sure that the focus and goals of our work don’t get lost in
> the details. Of course, we know that many community members enjoy reading
> the particulars of our planned work, so you can still access the details of
> departmental programs through links to their descriptions on Meta or
> MediaWiki.org. These links will provide interested readers with detailed
> departmental programs, which describe the specific and detailed program
> goals, impact and outcomes. This change does not sacrifice the depth and
> rigor of our planning process, but rather, it is meant to keep the Annual
> Plan lean and focused while allowing interested readers to dive deep into
> the details.
> 
> Finally, we’ve expanded the planning framework we instituted last year for
> cross-departmental programs to all of our programs across the Foundation.
> This allows us to clearly link a program’s resources to outcomes and
> measures. As such, we’ve presented the Annual Plan budget in terms of our
> investments in the three defined goals rather than in terms of our internal
> organizational structure.
> 
> Thank you all for your support over the past year. I'm really looking
> forward to your feedback on this year's proposed plan during the open
> comment period -- a reminder it runs through May 15th.
> 
> Thanks!
> Katherine
> 
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_
> Annual_Plan/2018-2019/Draft
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017
> 
> -- 
> Katherine Maher
> 
> Executive Director
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 
> 1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600
> San Francisco, CA 94104
> 
> +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635 <(415)%20839-6885>
> +1 (415) 712 4873 <(415)%20712-4873>
> kma...@wikimedia.org
> https://annual.wikimedia.org
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Notification about problem identified with a recent CentralNotice banner

[Michael Peel]

Hi Gregory,

Thank you and the WMF for sharing this information so quickly after the event. 
It’s regrettable that this happened, but openness is the best way forward here. 
The WMF is being exceptional both with spotting this kind of issue so quickly 
and being publicly open about the fact that it happened.

Is there a phabricator ticket that is tracking this issue and/or a wiki page 
that documents the issue and the steps that will be taken to avoid it happening 
again in the future?

Thanks,
Mike

> On 16 Mar 2018, at 22:57, Gregory Varnum  wrote:
> 
> On 14 March and 15 March 2018, a CentralNotice banner appeared to some 
> logged-out users viewing English Wikipedia pages. The banner contained 
> JavaScript hosted by Facebook, which allowed Facebook to collect traffic data 
> from those who visited a page with a banner. The banner was prepared by the 
> Wikimedia Foundation. The Foundation turned the banner off as soon as we 
> learned how the script was running, and its potential scope. We have also 
> removed all references to the code in question from CentralNotice on 
> Meta-Wiki.
> 
> The code utilized in this banner was based on an unused prototype created by 
> an outside vendor. Because the prototype was never enabled, the vendor’s 
> prototype code was not subjected to our standard quality assurance process. 
> However, we made the mistake of reusing the code for a different purpose, and 
> implementing it based on recommendations in documentation from Twitter and 
> Facebook to improve the appearance of shared links. At the time, our 
> understanding was that the platforms would only receive traffic data if the 
> user clicked on the link. Although this was true for Twitter, the Facebook 
> code operated differently.
> 
> We discovered the problematic link configurations during our ongoing 
> monitoring of live banners. The recommended code enhanced not only the 
> appearance of links, it also enhanced Facebook's ability to collect 
> information on people visiting non-Facebook sites. As soon as we realized 
> these banners were sharing information without even having to click the link, 
> we disabled them and began an investigation. Staff in multiple departments 
> are collaboratively reviewing the incident as well as procedural and 
> technical improvements to prevent future incidents.
> 
> While this sort of tracking is commonplace today across most of the internet, 
> it is not consistent with our policies. We are disappointed that this type of 
> hidden data collection is routinely recommended by major platforms, without 
> clearer disclosure.
> 
> These practices are why we all must regularly take routine steps to maintain 
> a secure computer and account. As the Wikimedia Foundation continues to 
> explore ways we can do that within Wikimedia's platform, we encourage you to 
> consider tools which block unwanted third-party scripts like the one provided 
> by Facebook.
> 
> We apologize for sending this late on a Friday (San Francisco time). However, 
> we wanted to provide this information as quickly as possible.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Appointment of Esra’a Al Shafei to Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

[Michael Peel]

Thank you, Esra’a, for volunteering!

However, I’m very concerned by this:

"P.S. Due to the nature of Esra’a’s work, sharing photos or videos of Esra’a 
may endanger her safety or the safety of others. To help ensure the privacy and 
safety of Esra’a and her colleagues, we are not sharing any photographs or 
videos of Esra'a. We ask that you please join us in supporting this important 
safety consideration.”

This is security by obscurity (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q133735) - which 
is at best a temporary measure that won’t last, particularly in a high-profile 
position like this. Aside from the potential media coverage, Wikimedia events 
are very well photographed by Wikimedians who want to illustrate a rather 
well-read encyclopaedia… This leads to an awkward situation where someone’s 
safety and Wikimedia’s openness are conflicting, which is not OK.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 1 Dec 2017, at 19:59, Katherine Maher  wrote:
> 
> Thank you, Christophe, for sharing this excellent news.
> 
> Those of you who were at Wikimania or watching on the livestream had the
> chance to get acquainted with Esra'a through her keynote. I'm certain that,
> if you were part of that audience, you'll join me in agreeing that she is
> an exceptional and accomplished individual who brings a whole host of
> talents to our movement. I'm personally delighted that she will be lending
> her perspective and wisdom to our movement and to the governance of the
> Wikimedia Foundation. There is so much we can learn from her, and I hope
> she finds her tenure on the Board to be rewarding.
> 
> Esra'a, thank you so very much for joining our Board and engaging even more
> with our movement! It is an honor to have this opportunity to work with you.
> 
> Yours,
> Katherine
> 
> On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 1:31 PM, Liam Wyatt  wrote:
> 
>> Fantastic Wikimania keynote, fascinating addition to the board, fabulous
>> addition to our community.
>> 
>> Welcome.
>> 
>> 
>> On Fri, 1 Dec 2017 at 22:28, Anna Stillwell 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Welcome, Esra'a. Thank you for taking the time to serve. I look forward
>> to
>>> your contribution.
>>> /a
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 12:59 PM, Christophe Henner <
>> chen...@wikimedia.org>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
 Hi everyone,
 
 With the appointment of Raju to the Board of Trustees a couple of
>> months
 ago, we were left with a remaining open vacancy to fill. I am thrilled
>> to
 share that after several months of searching and discussions, we have
>>> made
 another important appointment. At our November Board Retreat, the Board
 appointed and welcomed Esra’a Al Shafei to fill our vacant expert seat.
 
 Esra'a is a prominent international human rights activist and social
 entrepreneur. She founded and directs Majal, a nonprofit which utilizes
 digital media to amplify under-reported and marginalized voices
>>> throughout
 the Middle East and North Africa. For those of you that heard her
>> keynote
 presentation at this year's Wikimania, I think you will agree she will
>>> make
 a very valuable addition to the Board and brings an important
>> perspective
 and skillset to the Board's efforts.
 
 Below (and on the Wikimedia Blog) you will find the official
>> announcement
 about Esra’a Al Shafei. Please join me in warmly welcoming her to the
 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees and to the Wikimedia movement!
 
 Christophe
 Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
 
 P.S. Due to the nature of Esra’a’s work, sharing photos or videos of
>>> Esra’a
 may endanger her safety or the safety of others. To help ensure the
>>> privacy
 and safety of Esra’a and her colleagues, we are not sharing any
>>> photographs
 or videos of Esra'a. We ask that you please join us in supporting this
 important safety consideration.
 
 
 Press release
 
 Header: Esra'a Al Shafei joins Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
 
 Subheader: Bahraini human rights activist and social entrepreneur
>> brings
>>> to
 the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees more than a decade of
>>> experience
 in applying creative solutions to challenges faced by underserved and
 underrepresented communities.
 
 Image: https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Esraa.png[a]
 
 [b]
 
 [c]
 
 [d]
 
 
 San Francisco, California, 1 December 2017 — The Wikimedia Foundation
>>> today

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Day 1 Update - Fundraising

[Michael Peel]

Thank you to everyone that is working on this year’s fundraiser! Can I ask, 
which other Wikimedia organisations aside from the WMF are involved this year? 
Presumably WMDE and WMCH, but who else?

Thanks,
Mike

> On 28 Nov 2017, at 22:27, Megan Hernandez  wrote:
> 
> I want to add a big thank you to everyone who contributes to make Wikipedia
> great in anyway. People donate because they use and love Wikipedia.  Thank
> you for making it a resource people value.
> I'd also like to thank our Communications teammates for all their hard work
> on the campaign this year with blog posts, social media plans, and these
> fun videos.  Stay tuned for more!
> 
> And, of course, thank you to everyone who has donated so far.
> 
> More updates to come!
> 
> On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 12:56 AM, Joseph Seddon 
> wrote:
> 
>> Hey all! Just a very brief update!
>> 
>> ***We are live!***
>> 
>> Banners went up at 1600UTC. It's been 7ish hours and so far things are
>> ticking over nicely!
>> 
>> ***A blog!***
>> 
>> Lisa Gruwell and Megan Hernandez have written a blog post announcing the
>> launch of the campaign and why every donation to Wikipedia is important (
>> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/11/28/donation-free-knowledge/)
>> 
>> ***Supporting the fundraiser on social media!***
>> 
>> There are a number of ways you can support the fundraiser on social media:
>> 
>> [1] Twitter: Share why you love Wikipedia and free knowledge using the
>> hashtag #ILoveWikipedia.
>> 
>> [2] Facebook: Put our I Love Wikipedia Facebook frame to your profile pic.
>> You can add it for a few hours, a day, or forever. We made these frames to
>> give our supporters another way to show how important Wikipedia is to them.
>> Over 26,000 Facebook users added the frames during last year’s fundraiser,
>> with over 500,000 views in the first 24 hours. That’s one huge party, and
>> you’re invited. :) (https://www.facebook.com/profilepicframes)
>> 
>> [3] Anywhere: Please share something you love about the Wikimedia movement
>> with the donation link (https://donate.wikimedia.org) and the hashtag
>> #ILoveWikipedia. Ask your friends to do it, too! I’m sure teachers, college
>> students, journalists or librarians in your circle might have something to
>> add…
>> 
>> [4] Amplify or share our videos, which will be going up on social media
>> over the coming days. The first one is a play on the "cup of coffee"
>> message in our fundraising banner. You can help by sharing on Facebook,
>> Twitter, or Instagram. Whichever floats your boat!
>> 
>> ***Sharing videos!***
>> 
>> We're trying something interactive this year on social media. Jimmy Wales
>> has recorded a series of extremely short and playful videos that will
>> explain the importance of Wikipedia, ask our readers to respond to
>> questions in their own words, and/or play on some of our most common
>> elements. There are a number of videos that will go out over social over
>> the coming weeks, including some that are funny and some that are simply
>> informative. We plan to measure how these videos resonate and what effect
>> they have on donations.
>> 
>> You can see the first video (about 'the cost of a cup of coffee') on
>> Facebook [1] Twitter [2] Commons [3] YouTube [4] and Vimeo [5]
>> 
>> [1] https://www.facebook.com/wikipedia/videos/10155753105638346/
>> 
>> [2] https://twitter.com/Wikipedia/status/935556395398709249
>> 
>> [3]
>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:If_everyone_reading_
>> Wikipedia_right_now_donated_the_cost_of_a_cup_of_coffee.webm
>> 
>> [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydrpWcsaECg
>> 
>> [5] https://vimeo.com/244658321
>> 
>> ***That’s all for now! Thank you everyone for your support! I’ll update you
>> again later in the week!***
>> 
>> Regards
>> 
>> --
>> Seddon
>> 
>> *Community and Audience Engagement Associate*
>> *Advancement (Fundraising, Wikimedia Foundation*
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Megan Hernandez
> 
> Director of Online Fundraising
> Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Requiring the interlinking of accounts involved with paid editing

[Michael Peel]

Everything being discussed here seems to have already been publicly posted by 
the relevant users? No private information seems to be being shared...

Thanks,
Mike

> On 13 Sep 2017, at 22:43, John Erling Blad <jeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> If I go to somebody's employer and make wild claims about a person, like he
> does something irregular or illegal, then it is pretty much identical to
> this.
> 
> I seriously doubt WMF will be willing to share user account details with
> Upwork or any other, and I seriously doubt Upwork (or any other) will start
> blocking accounts on this terms.
> 
> Feel free to believe otherwise.
> 
> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 3:21 AM, Michael Peel <em...@mikepeel.net> wrote:
> 
>> 
>>> On 13 Sep 2017, at 22:19, John Erling Blad <jeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Sorry, but this is a horribly bad idea, and anyone that try to do what
>> you
>>> propose runs a serious legal risk.
>> 
>> {{citation needed}}
>> 
>>> I guess you will have a few support, but I really hope this will newer be
>>> implemented.
>> 
>> Why?
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Mike
>> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Requiring the interlinking of accounts involved with paid editing

[Michael Peel]

> On 13 Sep 2017, at 22:19, John Erling Blad  wrote:
> 
> Sorry, but this is a horribly bad idea, and anyone that try to do what you
> propose runs a serious legal risk.

{{citation needed}}

> I guess you will have a few support, but I really hope this will newer be
> implemented.

Why?

Thanks,
Mike

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[Wikimedia-l] How can we fix the two-stage page loading problem?

[Michael Peel]

This is possibly the most annoying feature of the Wikimedia projects at the 
moment. You access a page. Then you start reading or editing it. And then 
suddenly the page jumps when a fundraising banner / central notice / gadget / 
beta feature loads. So you have to start reading the page again, or you have to 
find where you were editing again, or you have to undo the change you just made 
since you made it in the wrong part of the page.

I understand that this isn't intentional. Presumably there is a phabricator 
ticket about this. But how can we fix this - does this need more developer 
time, is this an external problem that we need someone else to fix, or is this 
a WONTFIX?

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New style banner - A heads up

[Michael Peel]

> On 23 Aug 2017, at 13:36, Shlomi Fish  wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> On Wed, 23 Aug 2017 11:51:02 -0400
> "Brad Jorsch (Anomie)" > 
> wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 11:01 AM, Joseph Seddon 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> New Native feel:
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein?banner=B1718_
>>> 0823_en6C_dsk_p1_lg_dsn_native=1=US=QA
>>> 
>> 
>> Personally, I really dislike banners that try to pretend to be content.
>> This one makes it look like the page is an article titled "To all our
>> readers in the U.S." rather than a page with a banner on it.
>> 
> 
> to me the new banner looks more attractive, less intrusive and cleaner, but I
> agree with Brad's sentiment that it looks too much like the main page's
> content. Just my 20 agoroth.

+1. At the least it needs some sort of a border around it to separate it from 
the article text, so it doesn't look like an article section at first glance.

Thanks,
Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What's making you happy this week? (Week of 28 May 2017)

[Michael Peel]

> On 31 May 2017, at 17:16, Pine W  wrote:
> 
> What's making you happy this week?

11 candidates are standing for 5 seats on the Funds Dissemination Committee:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2017/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Candidates
Q is ongoing (add your own questions!) at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2017/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Questions/Submitted/1

(I'm particularly happy to see so many good candidates running this time as I'm 
not one of them this time around!)

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"

[Michael Peel]

Why should that feature in the WMF's annual report, though?

I also agree that this has been over-politicised, whether intentionally or not. 
:-(

Thanks,
Mike

> On 1 Mar 2017, at 21:13, Dan Rosenthal  wrote:
> 
> Florence -- Trump's executive orders also involved the revocation of
> non-immigrant visas. I don't think the choice of picture is inappropriate
> at all.  In fact, I think it highlights just how poorly planned and
> executed the executive order was in the first place.
> 
> Whether the sitenotice is a good idea in the first place, separate
> question.
> 
> 
> Dan Rosenthal
> 
> On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 3:54 PM, Nathan  wrote:
> 
>> It's an unambiguously political statement. Not political in the sense of
>> "everything we do is political" - but in the sense of opposing the policies
>> of a single national government as promulgated by a head of state and
>> supported by one political party in a deeply polarized and contentious
>> political environment. I expect that any WMF official responsible for this
>> report will acknowledge this is true, as there appears to be no way to
>> honestly claim otherwise. In that case I hope they can provide a well
>> reasoned and passionate defense of this decision and why the WMF should
>> continue in this vein.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF advanced permissions for employees

[Michael Peel]

Hi all,

I've written a short Python script that fetches the spreadsheet using the CSV 
link (as John suggested), and now updates the page at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Advanced_Permissions 


The code is at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mike_Peel/WMF_permissions_script 


Hope that helps!

Thanks,
Mike

> On 16 Feb 2017, at 05:58, John Mark Vandenberg  wrote:
> 
> Hi James,
> 
> I agree these types of breakages, if unintentional and not regular,
> should be raised elsewhere first.
> 
> Given Fae's reluctance to use private correspondence,...
> 
> Is there a public wiki page which can be used to alert the relevant
> team to any future breakages, in the first instance?
> 
> Or can this be managed through Phabricator? an existing tag?
> 
> Fae, you said you have your own scripts, which you are no longer
> maintaining due to changes by Google.
> Is your code in a public repository somewhere?
> We do not need to use the Google apis for accessing this data.
> Google allows spreadsheets to be exported as csv.
> here is the CSV link for the Advanced Permissions data.
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DruVc7T9ZqTcfGwFAlxQrBMR4QBSD_DtjpDtGqMAAi0/pub?output=csv
> 
> With a small script, we could re-publish this dataset as csv into a
> git repository, and then another script could read the csv and
> re-publish the data as wikitext onto a Wikimedia site.
> 
> On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 6:44 AM, James Alexander
>  wrote:
>> On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 11:53 AM Fæ  wrote:
>> 
>> Usecases are appearing, thanks to whomever is intervening, though in a
>> narrow column so hard to read.
>> 
>> Now I can read it, I see that it is out of date. As a test sample, I
>> JethroBT (WMF) was granted m:admin rights in June, these expired by
>> August 2016 and were eventually removed by a volunteer steward in
>> October 2016. Though I JethroBT is an admin on meta right now, this
>> was via a separate use case dated "42676", which I presume is
>> November. Could the spreadsheet be properly reviewed and updated
>> please, including reformatting the date field so it's easy to
>> understand?
>> 
>> Pine - yes this process of "WMF Advanced Permissions" includes admin
>> rights for any WMF website and so by-passes the community procedures.
>> 
>> Fae
>> 
>> 
>> Hi Fae,
>> 
>> As I’ve mentioned on previous occasions when you’ve brought up this
>> spreadsheet on the mailing list, it occasionally breaks. That was the case
>> here. If you send me a quick note if you see the issues, we can fix it, as
>> we did today with the use case query (including make sure that it’s
>> multiple columns again.) Pointing that out so it can be quickly fixed is
>> much better done via a private poke that we'll see quickly rather than a
>> public mailing list post that we may not see until after hours or until
>> somebody lets us know about it. Obviously if we ignore your emails or
>> refuse to fix it, then the math changes, and a post to this list makes more
>> sense. I do not, however, think breakage (or overlooking notes about
>> breakage) has been a frequent problem over the past couple years (though we
>> have certainly had a couple breakages).
>> 
>> The public sheet is up to date to the internal version of the data (which
>> is done automatically). However, the automated data collection is better at
>> “adding new” than “removing old.” A member of the team does annual audits
>> of the data to ensure that defunct entries are removed and that everything
>> else matches reality. The time for the next one is coming up.
>> 
>> James
>> 
>> *James Alexander*
>> Manager, Trust & Safety
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>> 
>> PS: I also fixed the weird date thing you were seeing on some of them...
>> not sure what caused that (was just a format display thing).
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> John Vandenberg
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Niels Christian Nielsen appointed to Wikimedia Endowment Advisory Board

[Michael Peel]

I tend to think that we stay away from writing about Wikipedia topics in 
Wikipedia too much, but I agree with the notability concerns - hence why I've 
started the page in user space rather than article space. If notability is 
proven (which isn't just a factor of how much money the endowment has), then 
perhaps it can be moved to article space. It's still an interesting/useful way 
of summarising the available info about the endowment, I think (at least for 
myself).

Thanks,
Mike
P.S. to be clear, I'm not a paid editor!

> On 14 Feb 2017, at 01:18, Risker <risker...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> What Vito said.  The Wikimedia Foundation Endowment is *not* notable, and
> in fact if a similar article had been written about a similar non-Wikimedia
> related endowment, I'd be busy trying to figure out who the paid editor was
> who was creating such an article.  Because, yes, that draft is precisely
> what I'd expect to see from a paid editor.   That it's being written by an
> experienced and well-respected Wikimedian doesn't mean it's a notable
> endowment.  Once it gets to USD 100 million, then we can start talking
> about whether or not it deserves an article.
> 
> This entire thread is a serious symptom of the self-referencing and
> parochialism that many outsiders see within our community.  The circular
> argument that, since someone has something to do with a "board" of
> Wikimedia, they must by definition be notable is pretty seriously
> problematic. *We* think Wikimedia is important, but really there are very,
> very few past or present Wikimedia board members who are notable outside of
> a very small circle. We're really not that big or important of a charity.
> And there isn't a person participating in this thread who is unaware of the
> real harms that have come as a result of the publishing of biographical
> information of notable-only-on-Wikipedia people. Please stop doing this.
> 
> Risker/Anne
> 
> 
> 
> On 13 February 2017 at 19:43, Vi to <vituzzu.w...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I find all of these to be deeply non relevant. Though they might be
>> relevant according to standard en.wiki practice, I wonder whatever someone
>> would had written a line about a to-be-created relatively small endowment
>> of a website(s) or people managing it, unless it was "our" website(s).
>> 
>> Also I disagree with Wikipedia doing something similar to investigative
>> journalism (above all for "internal" usage) rather than being a "simple"
>> encyclopedia.
>> 
>> Vito
>> 
>> 2017-02-14 1:31 GMT+01:00 Michael Peel <em...@mikepeel.net>:
>> 
>>> Not quite what you were after, Fæ, but I've started a draft of an enwp
>>> article on the endowment at:
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mike_Peel/Wikimedia_Endowment <
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mike_Peel/Wikimedia_Endowment>
>>> If anyone else wants to help write this, then please edit away!
>>> 
>>> I'm concerned that Nielsen is being referred to as a 'permanent member'
>> of
>>> the board - doesn't the advisory board have terms? Also, will we be
>> seeing
>>> community members being appointed (or elected) to this board at some
>> point?
>>> 
>>> BTW, the Wikimedia blog doesn't provide much information to the autofill
>>> references function on enwp! Also, we only seem to have freely-licensed
>>> images of Jimmy, and none of the rest of the advisory board - can
>> something
>>> be done about that?
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> Mike
>>> 
>>>> On 13 Feb 2017, at 18:57, Anna Stillwell <astillw...@wikimedia.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> The second link you offered, Fae, is the wrong Niels Christian Nielsen.
>>>> /a
>>>> 
>>>> On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 12:11 PM, Fæ <fae...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> +1 on the request for links to all the past meeting agendas and
>>>>> publicly published minutes. I will be very interested to read any
>>>>> declarations of conflicts of interest. The board is intended to
>>>>> eventually control $100,000,000, so should be seen to be applying
>>>>> absolutely the most transparent and well governed processes.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I am surprised to discover that anyone that has served as the chairman
>>>>> of 12 companies and "has advised governments in Scandinavia, Spain,
>>>>> Portugal, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, and Turkey"
>>>>> does not have a Wikipedia article, at 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Niels Christian Nielsen appointed to Wikimedia Endowment Advisory Board

[Michael Peel]

Not quite what you were after, Fæ, but I've started a draft of an enwp article 
on the endowment at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mike_Peel/Wikimedia_Endowment 

If anyone else wants to help write this, then please edit away!

I'm concerned that Nielsen is being referred to as a 'permanent member' of the 
board - doesn't the advisory board have terms? Also, will we be seeing 
community members being appointed (or elected) to this board at some point?

BTW, the Wikimedia blog doesn't provide much information to the autofill 
references function on enwp! Also, we only seem to have freely-licensed images 
of Jimmy, and none of the rest of the advisory board - can something be done 
about that?

Thanks,
Mike

> On 13 Feb 2017, at 18:57, Anna Stillwell  wrote:
> 
> The second link you offered, Fae, is the wrong Niels Christian Nielsen.
> /a
> 
> On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 12:11 PM, Fæ  wrote:
> 
>> +1 on the request for links to all the past meeting agendas and
>> publicly published minutes. I will be very interested to read any
>> declarations of conflicts of interest. The board is intended to
>> eventually control $100,000,000, so should be seen to be applying
>> absolutely the most transparent and well governed processes.
>> 
>> I am surprised to discover that anyone that has served as the chairman
>> of 12 companies and "has advised governments in Scandinavia, Spain,
>> Portugal, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, and Turkey"
>> does not have a Wikipedia article, at least I have yet to find one.
>> 
>> Could someone work on creating one please? It would be great to read a
>> profile that has all the nuts & bolts, rather than written with PR in
>> mind. No doubt the blog post [1] and staff profiles at the University
>> of California Berkeley and the Copenhagen Business School [2] should
>> be reliable enough starting point for Wikipedia.
>> 
>> Links:
>> 1. https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/02/13/niels-christian-
>> nielsen-endowment-board
>> 2. http://www.cbs.dk/en/research/departments-and-centres/
>> department-of-finance/staff/ncnfi
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Fae
>> 
>> On 13 February 2017 at 19:54, James Salsman  wrote:
>>> Regarding
>>> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/02/13/niels-christian-
>> nielsen-endowment-board/
>>> 
>>> What have the funds of the organizations Nielsen manages returned? Have
>>> they matched the returns of commercial endowment-grade mutual funds? I
>>> refer to my comments here:
>>> 
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-
>> December/085694.html
>>> 
>>> Has the Endowment Advisory Board met yet? If so, where are its minutes?
>> If
>>> not, when will it meet and where will the agenda and minutes be
>> published?
>>> 
>> 
>> --
>> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it." - Margaret
> Fuller
> 
> Anna Stillwell
> Chargée d’Affaires / VP
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 415.806.1536
> *www.wikimediafoundation.org *
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Moderation notice

[Michael Peel]

> On 11 Feb 2017, at 19:08, rupert THURNER  wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 7:49 PM, Asaf Bartov  wrote:
>> Hello, everyone.
>> 
>> I share the opinion that moderation actions should be transparent. So:
>> 
>> I have now placed Gerard Meijssen on moderation.  He has been posting very
>> frequently to the list, far exceeding the requested "soft limit" of 30
>> posts per month, and has exhibited disrespectful discourse.
>> 
>> I encourage Gerard to revise his approach to communicating on this list.
>> He will be unmoderated next month.
> 
> asaf, you are one of the most respected dinosaurs in this universe,
> and you need to use moderation instead of a private word? i have a
> hard time believing my eyes.

Which species of dinosaur?

This seems like a standard moderator action, based on the long-term notices 
that have been sent around to the list over the last few years. I like the 
extra on-list transparency here (please keep it up!), and would like to thank 
Asaf for taking on this extra duty.

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] De-Recognition of Affiliates with Long-standing Non-Compliance

[Michael Peel]

Hi Maor/Kirill/AffCom,

Which organisations are we talking about here? From the crosses on the reports 
page on Meta, it looks like it is:
- Wikimedia Chile
- Wikimedia Hong Kong
- Wikimedia India
- Wikimedia Macedonia
- Wikimedia Macau
- Wikimedia Mexico
- Wikimedia Philippines
- Wikimedia Uruguay
- New England Wikimedians
- PhilWiki Community
- Wikimedia Community User Group Pakistan
- Wikimedia Digitization User Group
- Wikimedians of Iceland User Group
- Wikimedians of Nepal
- Wikimedians of Uzbekistan Community

Is it all of those or a subset of them? Some of these seem to be active and/or 
have representatives going to the Wikimedia Conference.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 5 Feb 2017, at 10:13, Kirill Lokshin  wrote:
> 
> Hi Nathan,
> 
> To expand a bit on Maor's reply: the Affiliations Committee and the
> Wikimedia Foundation continue to view affiliate de-recognition as a last
> resort for cases where an affiliate is not only in violation of affiliate
> requirements or agreements with the WMF, but is also unwilling or unable to
> fix the problem when asked to do so.
> 
> The underlying issue that causes an affiliate to be "non-compliant" will
> usually be publicly visible (such as a lack of required reporting, for
> example). The affiliate's inability or unwillingness to address it will
> usually not be, as it's reflected in the affiliate's communications with
> AffCom and the WMF (or lack thereof).
> 
> Regards,
> Kirill Lokshin
> Vice-Chair, Affiliations Committee
> 
> On Sun, Feb 5, 2017 at 6:33 AM Nathan  wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, Feb 5, 2017 at 4:22 AM, Gerard Meijssen >> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hoi,
>>> I fail to see who you are targeting and on what basis. My impression is
>>> that it only has to do with money.. I understand this. For other parts
>> like
>>> the language committee there are no reports except for the activity on
>> its
>>> mailing list. I fail to see why it has to report to anyone. It is not the
>>> task the committee seeks and it does its activity on behalf of the
>>> Wikimedia board.
>>> Thanks,
>>>  GerardM
>> 
>> 
>> You misread - evidently both the original message and my reply. I answer
>> your question in my prior post, and hopefully subsequent posts by others
>> have cleared up any other confusion.
>> 
>> Maor - thank you for your explanation. Would it be fair to say that the
>> criteria for considering denying renewal are informal, and that some
>> factors (including communication with AffCom) may not be publicly available
>> for review?
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] guidance from Foundation leadership as to where to draw the line on policy requests?

[Michael Peel]

Have you seen Katherine's statement at:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/01/30/knowledge-knows-no-boundaries/ 

?

I know gmail has an option to hide email threads, but it's not a standard email 
application feature, and it's not a good excuse for sending these repeated 
emails.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 1 Feb 2017, at 22:56, James Salsman  wrote:
> 
> I can not in good conscience refrain from asking the Foundation management
> and Board to please take an exceptional, public, very visible stand in
> response to these extraordinarily exceptional circumstances.
> 
> 
> Top officials from the US and China say war between the nations is "no
> doubt" a "reality."
> 
> 
> http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/29/us-china-war-increasingly-a-reality-chinese-army-official-says.html
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/02/01/trumps-chief-strategist-steve-bannon-no-doubt-the-us-will-be/21704928/
> 
> 
> If those of you who find my requests uncomfortable do not know how to
> program your email clients to hide them from you, I will gladly help you
> off-list.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board approval of FDC recommendation 2016-2017- Round 1

[Michael Peel]

The missing links:

[1] 
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Board_approval_of_FDC_recommendation_(2016-17,_Round_1)
 

[2] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_recommendations/2016-2017_round_1
 

[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Multi-year_funding 


Thanks,
Mike

> On 19 Dec 2016, at 17:28, Dariusz Jemielniak  wrote:
> 
> Dear members of the Wikimedia community,
> 
> On behalf of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, I write to
> share the news that we have approved [1] the full slate of the FDC’s Round
> 1 2016-2017 recommendations [2] for the Annual Plan Grants. In this round,
> 11 organizations will be receiving a total of
> roughly US$3,210,000. Grants are made in local currency, so the USD figure
> is approximate.
> 
> We want to thank the Funds Dissemination Committee members and staff for
> the time and effort they have put into this process, as well as all members
> of the community who have participated in this round of analysis and
> deliberations.
> This year introduced the possibility for some organizations to apply for
> multi-year funding [3] (a 2-year program) for the first time. We are glad
> to see that this was taken into consideration by the FDC and are looking
> forward to learn from this pilot how the Wikimedia organizations can better
> support long-term programs.
> 
> Thank you to all the organizations involved in this round, and for the work
> that the volunteers and staff of these organizations have put in to further
> our mission.
> 
> We are glad to witness that our movement’s efforts to foster thoughtful
> planning show in the annual plans of the participating organizations and
> are looking forward to the next round of applications in April 2017.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Dariusz, on behalf of the WMF Board of Trustees
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] English Fundraiser Update

[Michael Peel]

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for the update - it's great to hear that the target has been achieved so 
quickly!

Continuing the English fundraiser as part of reaching the global fundraising 
target makes sense to me. Continuing the fundraiser after the global target has 
been reached is rather more concerning - except where the funds are being 
raised specifically for the endowment.

The extra uses of additional funds sound great, but they should really go 
through an annual planning process to make sure that they will be effective 
uses of those donations, particularly if they might be funded by grants rather 
than needing donor money. Perhaps those donations would be more effectively 
spent by other Wikimedia organisations, rather than the Wikimedia Foundation.

If the English fundraiser continues, then I'd encourage you to either focus 
specifically on the endowment (ensuring the long-term survival of Wikipedia is 
surely a winning appeal!), or to avoid promising to donors that money will be 
spent on a specific project (and please don't say that the fundraiser will now 
finish if only people donate a few more dollars for an extra cup of coffee!).

Thanks,
Mike

> On 16 Dec 2016, at 16:05, Lisa Gruwell  wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> As most of you know, we run our English-language online fundraiser on
> Wikipedia every year in December. It’s our biggest fundraiser of the year.
> During this time we raise the bulk of funds to support our operating budget
> to support the projects, fund community efforts around the world, and run
> the Wikimedia Foundation.
> 
> This year, we are happy to report we’ve reached our goal of US$25 million
> in record time. This is a testament to the importance of Wikimedia and how
> much support we have from people all over the world.
> 
> Given this momentum, we believe that it would be wise and worthwhile to
> continue to fundraise more in the month of December, for the following
> reasons:
> 
> 1. While we have reached our goal for the December campaign, we have not
> yet reached our fundraising goal for Fiscal Year 2016-17 (July 2016 - July
> 2017).
> 
> Continuing the English fundraiser gives us security and flexibility through
> the end of the fiscal year. It allows us to have a less aggressive banner
> schedule in coming months, which gives us time for more research and better
> localization.
> 
> 2. We have clear programmatic uses for additional funds.
> 
> We have some important projects that could use additional funds and are
> ready to proceed. We plan to direct additional funds to the following work:
> 
> 
>   1.
> 
>   The buildout of an additional caching center, to improve site
>   performance for users across Asia and Oceania [1].
>   2.
> 
>   Investment in additional support for structured data on Wikimedia
>   Commons and improved integration with the Wikidata roadmap [2].
>   3.
> 
>   Support for community health initiatives, including additional support
>   for the Community Engagement team [3].
>   4.
> 
>   Support for an inclusive and truly global movement strategy process [4].
>   5.
> 
>   Growing the endowment in order to secure our future [5].
> 
> 
> You can find more information about each of these areas of work below.
> 
> 
> 
> We have chosen these projects because they directly support our mission and
> respond to the needs of Wikimedia communities and users. We also believe
> these investments are investments in our future: support for a diverse
> global community, increased resourcing for sister projects, a healthier
> community culture, a shared direction for the future of the movement, and
> security for our mission in perpetuity.
> 
> Here is what we will do: We intend to continue with the banners for a few
> more days. We would then take them down over the Christmas holiday, before
> making an end-of-year push in the final couple days of the year. (Many
> people choose to give at the very end of the year, and they are expecting
> to hear from us as usual -- so it is an opportunity to give people who plan
> to give the easiest means to participate).
> 
> We’ve been following the conversations on this list about the fundraiser
> and the target. On Wednesday, we sent this recommendation to our Board of
> Trustees, who were broadly supportive of this course of action. Today, we
> are sending it to you. We believe we can make good use of the funds in the
> coming year, without additional unsustainable commitments into coming
> fiscal years. It is fiscally responsible and programmatically sound. The
> additional work strengthens our movement, and the additional funds make
> these efforts possible.
> 
> We welcome your questions and feedback.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Lisa Seitz Gruwell and Jaime Villagomez
> 
> 
> More information about the projects:
> 
> [1] An additional caching center to improve performance in Asia and Oceania
> 
> Our current caching centers in have provided significant value to users,
> and the Wikimedia 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New functionality: cross-wiki search results

[Michael Peel]

> On 7 Sep 2016, at 20:24, geni  wrote:
> 
> On 7 September 2016 at 18:51, Gerard Meijssen  
> wrote:
>> Hoi,
>> It is a pity because Wikidata has so much more to offer in missing
>> information in any language.
> 
> Fixed the citation issue yet?

Nope, we're still trying to improve the citations on all of the Wikimedia 
projects. It's a never-ending task.

(Please don't play one Wikimedia project against another - we're all trying to 
achieve the same goals here, so let's tackle the issues together.)

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Affiliates] Changes to current chapter and thematic organisation criteria

[Michael Peel]

> On 23 Aug 2016, at 11:48, Asaf Bartov  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 12:01 AM, Chris Keating  >
> wrote:
> 
>>> Does the Affiliations Committee have a list of existing chapters which do
>>> not meet the proposed criteria? I think we should at least get a sense
>> for
>>> that, and those chapters should be notified and be put on the path to
>>> meeting standards or losing their status.
>>> 
>> 
>> Hi Ben,
>> 
>> The closest is this table for eligibility for the Wikimedia Conference:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_
>> 2016/Eligibility_Criteria
>> 
>> That did not apply the same criteria as AffCom are using, but you can see
>> that there were 2 chapters which appeared to be entirely inactive, and a
>> further 3 that had some kind of activity but were not reporting activity in
>> the terms required by their chapter agreements or grants.
>> 
>> In general, I think that it is sensible to have a method of inactive
>> chapters to be de-recognised - just as it is also useful for User Groups
>> working towards chapter status to know what they are meant to be working
>> towards.
>> 
> 
> As of this year, a process does exist, and is reflected here:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_movement_affiliates/Protocol_for_noncompliant_Wikimedia_movement_affiliates
>  
> 

This process seems to be very harsh as written. For example, it says:
"an organization’s recognition may be terminated immediately according 
to the group's agreement (without Board review or appeal)"
There's no mention of any sort of ombudsperson, or appeal process in this 
document. Presumably this is delegated to the individual group agreements, but 
it would be good to see that explicitly mentioned in this process document. 
There are other examples elsewhere in the process that I won't go into here. 
But I think this process needs rewriting to make it fairer to all parties.

> This process is being followed, right now, to review the status of inactive
> and non-compliant chapters, at long last.

That's good news.

Thanks,
Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An example where search could be improved

[Michael Peel]

> On 28 Jul 2016, at 17:17, Jimmy Wales  wrote:
> 
> On 7/28/16 9:04 AM, Andy Mabbett wrote:
>> I've made the former a disambiguation page (not a redirect) linking to:
>> * The [[History of Wells Fargo]]
>> * The [[Wells Fargo History Museum]]
>> 
>> You could have done that, too!
> 
> :-)  Sure, but the point is that there will always be cases like this
> unless we invest in improving search more generally.

I'd have approached this search question by looking for the 'Wells Fargo' 
article and looking for the history section in that article - and finding a 
specific article on the history of the company would be a bonus.

So partly, this is reflecting the fact that if you just search for 'Wells 
Fargo' on most search engines, you will be taken to a homepage for the 
organisation that doesn't cover the history, so you need to add 'history' on 
the end of the search query in order to be given a link to a history page on 
the corporate website. Whereas Wikipedia provides at least a summary of the 
history in the article about the organisation, making it easier to find - you 
end up on the page that contains the info you're after without having to add 
the extra key word.

Our search engine can definitely be significantly improved - in this case, 
either to find the specific article, or to point towards the history section of 
the main article. But search can endlessly be improved (as demonstrated by how 
much work Google's put into its search engine over the last decade). Plus we 
also have to work against some of the habits that have been ingrained in users 
by the way that other parts of the web work, where things can be a bit easier 
to find on Wikipedia than users might expect.

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on WMF Governance reviews

[Michael Peel]

Hi Gnangarra, (and a reply to one of Anders' points below)

> On 3 Jun 2016, at 01:34, Gnangarra  wrote:
> 
> I have a couple of concerns, a review has the potential to stagnate the WMF
> as indicated from WMConf in Berlin thats already a problem and its
> impacting regular activities that take longer to organise.  Traditionally
> WLE offers a trip to Wikimania that fine this year as its offering Montreal
> but what happens for WLE 2017 the organisors(WM Ukraine) need to decide and
> submit a budget to FDC this year to cover the cost of that prize but there
> is no plan.

I think you're mixing two different issues there. Wikimania plans are quite 
distinct from the capacity of the WMF board/senior leadership - the WMF is big 
enough that those are done by different people, unlike in smaller organisations 
where a governance review can have a much bigger impact on the amount of 
programmatic work that the organisation is capable of doing.

> Another problem is the FDC process timeline will cripple the WMF as that
> doesnt look beyond the immediate 12 months, I have no issue with funding
> and activity transparency but the WMF has to be looking further advanced
> then the current processes dictate.

Longer term strategic plans are very important for FDC applications, but they 
are distinct from annual plans. As I understand it, going through the FDC 
process meant that WMF had to start their annual planning earlier, which is 
good. Thinking longer term would definitely be better, but that's a step 
further along than where things currently are. I don't think that any Wikimedia 
organisation could set detailed plans on 3-year timescales yet, which is more 
the norm in universities.

> Also note that this money already donated to the WMF any process should
> take care to ensure its not just process for process sake nor should it be
> run just to give a vocal group of low-non contributory complainants  power
> over the WMF.

Definitely - but an investment in the process now to ensure better governance 
is much better than extra costs due to poor governance further down the line.

> On 3 June 2016 at 03:19, Anders Wennersten  wrote:
>> 
>> 3.The composition of the Board, mandates given to members of the Board and
>> by whom, formal relation between the Board and the stakeholders of our
>> movement, is a complete mess. And an audit would only be able to state
>> this, not how it ought to be resolved.

I would hope that a review would be a review, not an audit, i.e. it would look 
at options for improving matters, not just saying what the current situation 
is. This was the case for WMUK, and was done by looking at external best 
practices, and by interviewing other stakeholders in the organisation.

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [WikimediaMobile] "Among mobile sites, Wikipedia reigns in terms of popularity"

[Michael Peel]

> On 11 May 2016, at 22:07, James Forrester <jforres...@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> 
> On 11 May 2016 at 12:50, Michael Peel <em...@mikepeel.net> wrote:
> 
>> Isn't it time to start moving to responsive mediawiki templates (
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design), rather than having
>> a separate mobile interface/URL?
> 
> 
>> For a practical example, see the BBC News website (
>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news), which is the same website on all devices, it
>> just rescales the content/navigation/layout to suit the device. (Try
>> resizing your web browser on your computer to the size of a mobile web
>> browser to see what I mean.)
>> 
> 
> ​Hey Mike,
> 
> I think you're confusing two things – a single skin with responsive design
> for all users on all devices, which is a long-term ambition, but for the
> Reading department to talk about :-) – and responsive templates for
> content, which we're working on in terms of scoped styling for templates
> through TemplateStyles (
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:TemplateStyles, though by "we" I
> mostly mean Coren as a volunteer developer). This second one is going
> through security review right now, but once that's complete we'll enable it
> for testing and gradual roll-out.
> 
> Scoped styling of templates will let template authors make their templates
> work on any sized device, which will massively improve the terrible
> experience from templates like infoboxes, navboxes, amboxes, and especially
> one-off templates like those used by the Signpost. However, it'll need a
> concerted effort from all of us to re-write and improve all the thousands
> of templates across our hundreds of wikis to make this a reality. It
> requires judgement, æsthetics and expertise, and so isn't something that
> can be done automatically by software. It's a big effort, but it's going to
> be worth it. :-)

When I said templates here I meant skins - sorry for using confusing/outdated 
terminology (back when I was last developing website skins, they were called 
templates!). It's great to hear that they're being worked on - mediawiki 
template styles are definitely something that need improving in the near future 
(hopefully along with table styles, since they are currently horribly displayed 
on mobiles). I'm hoping that having a responsive skin for the webpages isn't 
too far off, though?

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [WikimediaMobile] "Among mobile sites, Wikipedia reigns in terms of popularity"

[Michael Peel]

Isn't it time to start moving to responsive mediawiki templates 
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design), rather than having a 
separate mobile interface/URL?

For a practical example, see the BBC News website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news), 
which is the same website on all devices, it just rescales the 
content/navigation/layout to suit the device. (Try resizing your web browser on 
your computer to the size of a mobile web browser to see what I mean.)

Thanks,
Mike

> On 11 May 2016, at 20:36, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:
> 
> Hoi,
> It is wonderful to see how we have evolved.. Does anyone remember the good
> old days when it was an application totally and utterly outside of
> MediaWiki?
> Thanks,
> GerardM
> 
> On 11 May 2016 at 20:33, Pine W  wrote:
> 
>> Forwarding since this may be of general interest regarding Wikipedia
>> readership.
>> 
>> Thanks Tilman!
>> 
>> Pine
>> 
>> -- Forwarded message --
>> From: Tilman Bayer 
>> Date: Wed, May 11, 2016 at 10:23 AM
>> Subject: [WikimediaMobile] "Among mobile sites, Wikipedia reigns in terms
>> of popularity"
>> To: mobile-l 
>> Cc: Wikimedia developers , Analytics Team
>> -
>> Internal 
>> 
>> 
>> New study (US only) by the Knight Foundation:
>> https://medium.com/mobile-first-news-how-people-use-smartphones-to ,
>> summarized here:
>> 
>> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/05/people-love-wikipedia/482268/
>> 
>> "People spent more time on Wikipedia’s mobile site than any other news
>> or information site in Knight’s analysis, about 13 minutes per month
>> for the average visitor. CNN wasn’t too far behind, at 9 minutes 45
>> seconds per month. BuzzFeed clocked in third at 9 minutes 21 seconds
>> per month. (BuzzFeed, however, slays both CNN and Wikipedia in time
>> spent with the sites’ apps, compared with mobile websites. BuzzFeed
>> users devote more than 2 hours per month to its apps, compared with
>> about 46 minutes among CNN app users and 31 minutes among Wikipedia
>> app loyalists.)
>> 
>> Another way to look at Wikipedia’s influence: Wikipedia reaches almost
>> one-third of the total mobile population each month, according to
>> Knight’s analysis, which used data from the audience-tracking firm
>> Nielsen."
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Tilman Bayer
>> Senior Analyst
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>> IRC (Freenode): HaeB
>> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising Testing Update (Friday 6th May) - Hopefully the first of Many

[Michael Peel]

> On 9 May 2016, at 18:36, Béria Lima  wrote:
> 
> My 2 cents :D
> 
> 1. I can't see the banner (not using the link posted or going by
> CentralNotice) Could someone who can see it take a print please? :D

Here's a screenshot as it appears on my computer:
http://www.mikepeel.net/temp/wmf_fundraiser_got.pdf

The part of it that sounds odd to me is that it still includes the statement 
"If everyone reading this right now gave $3, our fundraiser would be done 
within an hour." - is that still true for more narrowly-focused/seen banners, 
and for year-round fundraising? Plus, the expensive cup of coffee's still 
mentioned. ;-)

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disabe Media Viewer for non-logged-in users and logged-in users on Wikimedia Commons

[Michael Peel]

That's a good point. I've started a discussion on Commons' VP about this at:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#2014_RfC_for_the_Media_Viewer

Thanks,
Mike

> On 14 Mar 2016, at 17:03, Anthony Cole  wrote:
> 
> That RFC is 20 months old. That media viewer is not today's media viewer.
> 
> Anthony Cole
> 
> 
> On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 11:12 PM, Marc A. Pelletier 
> wrote:
> 
>> On 16-03-14 10:59 AM, Nathan wrote:
>>> the non-participation of
>>> non-participants can't render all decisions invalid.
>> 
>> It rarely becomes a problem in practice; the vast majority of decisions
>> made on projects are editorial or internal management.
>> 
>> In this particular case, there is a tiny segment of the editing
>> community making a sweeping UI decision that - by definition - doesn't
>> even affect *them*.
>> 
>> That can't possibly be right.
>> 
>> -- Marc
>> 
>> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open and recorded WMF Board meetings

[Michael Peel]

They were doing this regularly until January:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_board_meetings/2016-01-30
and see:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_meetings
I suspect this dropped a bit in priority since then, for obvious reasons, but 
hopefully only temporarily.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 5 Mar 2016, at 17:11, Lodewijk  wrote:
> 
> Hm, for quite a while, the board agenda's were published before the
> meetings took place. At least, for the well in advance-scheduled meetings
> (the regular ones). I didn't see any recently though. I think it would
> indeed be good to put on the list of 'possible transparency topics' to
> discuss...
> 
> Lodewijk
> 
> On Sat, Mar 5, 2016 at 9:25 AM, Ariel Glenn WMF  wrote:
> 
>> I'd like to see more complete minutes that get published more frequently; I
>> suspect the members of the Board would love it if they could make it happen
>> by waving a wand and have it be so.
>> 
>> I was once a public observer taking notes for a Board meeting for a
>> different organization, and there was no way to get notes out the door with
>> universal agreement except to redact large parts.  A lot of it involved "I
>> did not say that" or "I did not mean that" or "That's out of context".
>> Controversial topic discussions will be even harder to cover fairly without
>> being content-free.
>> 
>> And, as others have said on this list, recording meetings often has the
>> side effect of moving real discussions out of the limelight back into the
>> shadows.  If you don't believe me, check out your respective legislative
>> bodies ;-)
>> 
>> So, given that, as Risker and others point out, "it's complicated", perhaps
>> we could start with a smaller step: get the agenda published within 5 days
>> after any meeting.  This would mean publishing: the items brought into the
>> meeting for discussion, marking those that were actually discussed, and
>> those that were dropped or alternatively held over for a future meeting.
>> 
>> Even this document will not be controversy free and will need to be vetted
>> before being released, but a 5 day period (let's say) seems manageable.
>> 
>> Once we have that going smoothly we can take what's been learned from it
>> and apply it to summaries with a bit more detail, etc.
>> 
>> Ariel
>> 
>> On Fri, Mar 4, 2016 at 1:19 AM, Craig Franklin 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> This sounds like an excellent strategy if you're looking to have the
>> board
>>> meetings turn into a rubber stamp for issues that have been discussed and
>>> decided elsewhere.
>>> 
>>> Rather than solving the transparency problem through gimmicks like
>> wheeling
>>> a video camera into the board room, we should look at reasons why the
>> Board
>>> of Trustees might not feel comfortable being transparent.  The only real
>>> solution will involve cultural change, not just on the WMF side, but also
>>> from the community.  What can *we* as community members do to assist the
>>> WMF in being transparent?
>>> 
>>> Although, I most certainly agree that the official minutes of meetings
>>> could do with a little more detail.  If brevity is wit, then the existing
>>> minutes are positively Wildean.
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> Craig
>>> 
>>> On 3 March 2016 at 16:31, Pine W  wrote:
>>> 
 Having WMF Board meetings be open and recorded by default would be
 a wonderful step in aligning the Board with the value of transparency.
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Can we see the Knight grant application and grant offer?

[Michael Peel]

> On 16 Feb 2016, at 00:26, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
> 
> Here is another such example. Jimmy Wales has tonight told[1] a volunteer
> 
> ---o0o---
> 
> First the idea that Wikidata could be used to "construct articles" with "no
> need for editors to edit actual article content" is pretty absurd from a
> technological point of view. Major breakthroughs in AI would be
> necessary. That isn't what is intended at all, obviously.

That seems logical. Wikidata can in principle provide basic articles that can 
then be improved by editors, but at the moment it's just getting up to the 
standard where it can provide infobox contents. Or do you think that Wikidata 
can provide FA-quality articles already?

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Can we see the Knight grant application and grant offer?

[Michael Peel]

> On 15 Feb 2016, at 17:10, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:
> 
> Hoi,
> The notion that WMF should out google Google is stupid, certainly at that
> kind of money.

I'm still confused about what kind of 'search engine' is actually being 
proposed here. Is it:
1) Wikimedia specific: index all of Wikimedia's content and make that easier 
for users of the sites to find
2) Wikimedia + selected others: like (1), but also allow some other like-minded 
sources into the mix
3) Google-scale: index everything (duckduckgo-like)
... or somewhere on the scale between those points?

A lot of people seem to be assuming (3), others are liking the idea of (1), but 
(2) (or maybe (1) leading to (2)) might be closer to the reality?

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Elsevier?

[Michael Peel]

> On 15 Feb 2016, at 19:08, Leinonen Teemu  wrote:
> 
>> On 15.2.2016, at 18.07, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
>> Apart from brand affiliation, what do you see as a potential benefit from
>> partnering with PLoS?
> 
> I think brand affiliation would be a good start and could help PLoS, that is 
> not so well known as the Wikipedia. 
> 
> I wouldn’t be agains giving PLoS some financially supported, too, because 
> they are like-minded non-profit organization with very similar mission as we 
> have (and I am saying this without knowing anything about their financial 
> situation). 

PLoS's 2014 income was $48.5 million:
https://www.plos.org/about/financials/
I'm not sure that they're short of financial support...

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Meta is apparently down

[Michael Peel]

Also Commons, and anything else at *.wikimedia.org. Apparently, "Bad 
deployment, being reverted currently."

Thanks,
Mike

> On 26 Jan 2016, at 18:44, Pharos  wrote:
> 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> 
> Thanks,
> Pharos
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Meta is apparently down

[Michael Peel]

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T124804 
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T124804>

> On 26 Jan 2016, at 18:45, Michael Peel <em...@mikepeel.net> wrote:
> 
> Also Commons, and anything else at *.wikimedia.org. Apparently, "Bad 
> deployment, being reverted currently."
> 
> Thanks,
> Mike
> 
>> On 26 Jan 2016, at 18:44, Pharos <pharosofalexand...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Pharos
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Message from Arnnon Geshuri to the Wikimedia Community

[Michael Peel]

RIP AGF.

(https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assume_good_faith 
 needs work!)

Mike

> On 26 Jan 2016, at 21:11, Lilburne  wrote:
> 
> On 26/01/2016 20:27, Pine W wrote:
>> 
>> While I realize that staying on may be your personal preference, I believe
>> that for the good of WMF and for our collective movement, you should resign.
>> 
>> 
> 
> A quote from history would have been more succinct:
> http://quotationsbook.com/quote/29200/
> 
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Michael Peel]

> On 18 Jan 2016, at 22:35, Magnus Manske  wrote:
> 
> As one can be overly conservative, one can also be overly enthusiastic. I
> would hope the Foundation by now understands better how to handle new
> software releases. Apple here shows the way: Basic functionality, but
> working smoothly first.

But at a huge cost premium? I'm not sure that's a good example to make here. :-/

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

[Michael Peel]

> On 16 Jan 2016, at 18:39, Alex Monk  wrote:
> 
> On 16 January 2016 at 10:08, Yury Bulka 
> wrote:
> 
>> MZMcBride  writes:
>>> A few years ago, the Wikimedia Foundation switched over to the Google
>> Apps
>>> platform, which means that most e-mail sent on the wikimedia.org domain
>> is
>>> now hosted by Google.
>> Are you sure? It doesn't look like wikimedia.org's MX point to google's
>> servers:
>> https://starttls.info/check/wikimedia.org
> 
> 
> It's true that individual inboxes for staff/contractors/board/etc. are
> hosted in Google Apps. WMF Operations controls the mail routing (hence the
> MX record) and directs mail sent to different addresses to different places
> - including rules for allowing Office IT (via foundation corporate LDAP) to
> route addresses to Google:
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/OPUP/browse/production/templates/exim/exim4.conf.mx.erb;51327368b853ffabcc93ea336c7e9e603354a077$261-292

Open source email options apparently aren't up to the job. As demonstrated by 
the number of times that the gmail-only 'mute thread' functionality has been 
mentioned on this list of late...

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Introducing Jaime Villagomez as our Chief Financial Officer

[Michael Peel]

> Sharing this from our internal WMF list for your visibility...

Thank you, Lila, for sharing this here - this type of announcement has always 
been publicly posted on wikimedia-l in the past, so hopefully this level of 
transparency will continue in the future. :-)

> I'd like to introduce Jamie Villagomez, our incoming Chief Financial
> Officer. He brings more than 20 years of experience leading finance in
> small startups and large companies, and supporting non-profits as a
> volunteer and an advisor. Jaime will be joining us February 1st, overseeing
> our Finance, Administration, and OIT teams.

Welcome Jamie/Jaime!

> I would like to thank everyone involved in this search, especially Amy
> Elder and Boryana , who managed the recruiting process through a new, open
> approach.

Could you elaborate on the 'new, open approach', please - who did this involve, 
and where is the process documented?

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How To Recover From Having Made A Mistake [a reminder]

[Michael Peel]

> On 11 Jan 2016, at 18:47, Yaroslav M. Blanter  wrote:
> 
> On 2016-01-11 19:37, Asaf Bartov wrote:
>> Hello, everyone.
>> It occurs to me this might be a good time to recycle this piece of advice I
>> have had some past occasions to offer some newcomers to the movement:
> 
> <...>
> 
>> Q: Are you suggesting this applies to current goings-on?
>> A: I suggest it applies to every situation involving humans.
>> Cheers,
>>A.
> 
> That was absolutely fabulous, thanks Asaf.

+1, that's a great post, Asaf! All very sensible advice. Can I suggest that you 
put a copy on Meta somewhere, so it doesn't get (too) lost over time / for easy 
future reference?

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Strategic plan

[Michael Peel]

> On 6 Jan 2016, at 21:36, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
> 
> My final question above still stands, though, and I do feel that an answer
> from the ED or the Board is in order. In November, Lila claimed
> (inaccurately, IMO) that the 2010 process was "outsourced" and
> insufficiently transparent, and that this process would be more
> transparent.

{{citation needed}} please? Although I don't disagree with everything else you 
say, I'm puzzled by this remark, and I haven't seen that claim before.

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

[Michael Peel]

From what I understand, the community elections don't directly elect/appoint 
WMF board members, but essentially provide a recommendation that the WMF board 
then approves. Have a look at the text of:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:James_Heilman_appointment_2015 

and the phrasing at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015#Process 

specifically, "The candidates with the highest percentage of support will be 
recommended to the Board of Trustees for appointment."

So the "class" here would be the WMF board, not the community.

But, of course, IANAL.

BTW, it's more "community selected" than "community representative". There's an 
important distinction there.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 29 Dec 2015, at 13:19, Todd Allen  wrote:
> 
> It's more complex if they've acted illegally, certainly. Under the law
> they're citing, it looks like they have. Since community directors are
> elected by a "class" (editors meeting the eligibility requirements), the
> law states removal would be possible only by that class, one would presume
> by referendum in this case.
> 
> I think we need to know if the Board considered this requirement.
> On Dec 29, 2015 5:33 AM, "Gerard Meijssen" 
> wrote:
> 
>> Hoi,
>>  it is a great shitstorm Do remember that a community chosen
>> representative voted the other community chosen representative out. It is
>> not a case of he must be good, the others are bad. It is more complicated.
>> Thanks,
>>  GerardM
>> 
>> On 29 December 2015 at 13:19, Gnangarra  wrote:
>> 
>>> there are bigger questions than why like;
>>> 
>>>   - how can this take place
>>>   - how can the community ensure its representatives independence in the
>>>   future,
>>>   - what effect will this have on other elected representatives on the
>>>   board
>>> 
>>> The Florida statute(
>>> https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2011/617.0808 ) referred
>>> to earlier says that If a director is elected by a class, chapter, or
>> other
>>> organizational unit, or by region or other geographic grouping, the
>>> director may be removed only by the members of that class, chapter, unit,
>>> or grouping.  Do they even have ability to remove the person in the first
>>> place given the action of the board why are they also determining the
>> next
>>> steps in the replacing our representative.
>>> 
>>> Gn.
>>> 
>>> On 29 December 2015 at 19:53, Thomas Goldammer  wrote:
>>> 
 2015-12-29 10:15 GMT+01:00 Isarra Yos :
 
 
> It says a lot, but just what that is depends entirely on the context.
>>> And
> for community members who voted for him, that context could mean we
 should
> also no longer have confidence in him elsewhere in the projects, or
>> in
 the
> board, or have no bearing on either thing whatsoever. Not knowing
>> just
> means there's no indication what to trust.
 
 
 I'd rather lose the trust and confidence in those 8 Board members than
>> in
 him without knowing what was the cause for his disbarment. ;)
 
 Maybe the Board by-laws have to be changed, too. Throwing out a
 community-elected member like this, without providing a reason, is no
>> way
 to deal with the community who elected this member. It should be
>>> mandatory
 that the Board provides reasons together with the announcement to avoid
 exactly this kind of discussions and speculations, not a day (or more)
 later.
 
 And as for no-cause disbarments for community-elected members in a
 community-driven environment - uhm... I don't need to delve into that,
 everyone can see the problem. The Board should just not be allowed to
 disbar community-elected members without a cause, as that undermines
>> the
 authority of the community over those seats on the Board.
 
 Th.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] (no subject)

[Michael Peel]

Try when logged out - the links worked fine for me after logging out.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 4 Dec 2015, at 15:54, Peter Southwood  wrote:
> 
> Lisa, when you give us links to look at new versions of banners, please try 
> to use links that actually display the banners.
> Cheers,
> Peter
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf 
> Of Lisa Gruwell
> Sent: Thursday, 03 December 2015 9:30 PM
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] (no subject)
> 
> We agree with you that WMF fundraising should not use stock photography.
> This was a mistake by a designer.  We specify in our contracts with outside 
> designers that the images used should be custom artwork that WMF owns (and 
> can then share) or freely licensed images.  We pulled that banner yesterday 
> and asked our designers for a new custom image that we can freely license.
> We are running another banner with a custom light bulb image at 100% now.
> This artwork will be added to Commons.   We also have a few new banners
> featuring some beautiful Commons images that are under development:   Stars
> 
> , Penguin
> 
> Thank
> you for pointing this out to us.
> 
> 
> 
> Best,
> 
> Lisa
> 
>> On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 10:58 AM, Rob  wrote:
>> 
>> I don't think this rises to the level of outrage, but it's a little 
>> important.  The goal of the WMF should be to promote free and open 
>> content, and this adds to the perception that the WMF is disconnected 
>> from those goals and the community.  I don't care if they use a stock 
>> photo if they need to, but when they have smart, capable, and creative 
>> people like Victor Grigas on staff, they can certainly manage to 
>> photograph a cup of coffee and release it as a CC photo to set a good 
>> example for the community and movement.
>> 
>> On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 4:41 AM, Gerard Meijssen 
>>  wrote:
>>> Hoi,
>>> It is that time of year where money is asked from the people. 
>>> Arguably we would do more when the Wikimedia foundation was not so 
>>> FF-ing Wikipedia centred.The arguments for not giving Wikisource 
>>> have passed their sell by date and usability for exposing its 
>>> wonderful work is imho a
>> disfigurement
>>> on the resume of the WMF (among others). This is a cheap one to fix. 
>>> It makes sense to fix it as I understand sources are part of 
>>> "Wikimedia
>> Zero"
>>> and it would make a world of a difference when the sources can 
>>> actually
>> be
>>> found.
>>> 
>>> Unicef among others has fundraising campaigns for education because 
>>> it is not its most important priority. As long as kids die because 
>>> of lack of food, safe water, preventable disease and temperature it is 
>>> obvious why.
>>> Such an excuse the WMF does not have. It could ask for additional 
>>> funding for Wikisource, for Wikidata for ... and it would have a solid 
>>> argument.
>>> Thanks,
>>>  GerardM
>>> 
 On 3 December 2015 at 10:25, Andrea Zanni 
>>> wrote:
>>> 
> On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 10:09 AM, Pine W  wrote:
> 
> Under the redesigned grants scheme, WMF Project grants might be 
> able
>> to
> help with this kind of software development work for Commons 
> and/or Wikisource. I happen to know a developer here in Cascadia 
> who might be interested, either as an individual or in 
> association with a Wikimedia affiliate, in doing this kind of work on a 
> grant or contract basis.
> 
> Pinging Kacie for comment about possible grant funding. (:
 
 
 Hi Pine, thanks for the comment.
 I understand what you mean, and I do believe there is space to work 
 on Wikisource via grants, BUT.
 
 But I already did a Individual Engagement Grant in 2013 (with David
>> Cuenca)
 regarding Wikisource.
 It was great, but IEGs don't give you staff time. So me and David 
 used Google Summer of Code, and we mentored 4 projects: if I'm not 
 mistaken, only one was really finished, meaning it produced 
 concrete results on Wikisource. Others stopped before (for example, 
 two dedicated mediawiki extensions were not put in production). 
 Within the IEG, we made a big survey among Wikisource communities, 
 to develop a wishlist and a roadmap for WS communities. We set up a 
 Wikisource Community User Group. We
>> talked
 and talked. Bugs were and are reported, from years. Two weeks ago, 
 we convened the very first internationl Wikisource conference, in 
 Vienna, hosted by Wikimedia Austria (3 members from WMF were there, 
 and we had a great and productive time, reports will follow).
 
 I've personally been involved in all of these efforts, so I've 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [GLAM] Video: "Wikipedia, an introduction - Erasmus Prize 2015"

[Michael Peel]

The on-wiki version is at:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia,_an_introduction_-_Erasmus_Prize_2015.webm
 


Thanks,
Mike

> On 26 Nov 2015, at 01:35, Arne Wossink  wrote:
> 
> Just saw that it already has such a license.
> 
> 
> Arne Wossink
> 
> Projectleider / Project Lead Wikimedia Nederland
> 
> Tel. +31 (0)6 11000505
> 
> *Postadres*: * Bezoekadres:*
> Postbus 167Mariaplaats 3
> 3500 AD  Utrecht Utrecht
> 
> Op 26 november 2015 09:30 schreef Arne Wossink :
> 
>> Is this going to be released under a CC license? Would be awesome to have
>> it on Commons.
>> 
>> 
>> Arne Wossink
>> 
>> Projectleider / Project Lead Wikimedia Nederland
>> 
>> Tel. +31 (0)6 11000505
>> 
>> *Postadres*:
>> * Bezoekadres:*
>> Postbus 167Mariaplaats 3
>> 3500 AD  Utrecht Utrecht
>> 
>> 2015-11-26 8:21 GMT+01:00 Pine W :
>> 
>>> Beautiful video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p8wFdnPfVw
>>> 
>>> Pine
>>> 
>>> ___
>>> GLAM mailing list
>>> g...@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/glam
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] FDC recommendations for 2015-2016 Round 1 APG grant requests

[Michael Peel]

Hoi Gerard,

I'm sorry that they came across to you as weasel words - they weren't meant to 
be, they were meant to be an explanation of how the FDC operates. It wasn't a 
refusal to accept responsibility - the FDC is responsible for its 
recommendations, but the WMF board then decides on whether to approve the 
recommendations or not. That's particularly relevant in the case of 
recommendations related to the WMF, which is what MzMcBride was asking about.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 26 Nov 2015, at 04:33, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijs...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hoi,
> Some explanations simply read as weasel words. Nothing was lost in
> translation. You either have an opinion and you accept that people consider
> responsibility part of the parcel or you do not and that is in my opinion
> worse. It is not so bad to be wrong, it happens. It is worse to refuse to
> accept responsibility.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
> 
> On 26 November 2015 at 12:23, Fæ <fae...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> No, this was a simple explanation of the facts of the limited authority of
>> the FDC, not an attempt to weasel.
>> 
>> Perhaps something was lost in translation?
>> 
>> Fae
>> On 26 Nov 2015 10:58, "Gerard Meijssen" <gerard.meijs...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hoi,
>>> Sorry but "The FDC provides recommendations to the WMF Board, who then
>>> decide on them. The FDC doesn't handle funds directly, so in no case does
>>> it withhold, or spend, funds, instead it recommends doing so to the WMF
>>> Board." qualify as weasel words. You make proposals and hope, expect that
>>> they will be accepted. Not taking responsibility for your actions and
>>> blaming them is the same as saying "we are only saying and they were not
>>> thinking themselves."
>>> 
>>> Not good, not appreciated.
>>> Thanks,
>>>  GerardM
>>> 
>>> On 25 November 2015 at 15:56, Michael Peel <em...@mikepeel.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi MZMcBride,
>>>> 
>>>>> The Wikimedia Foundation has a section under "Organisation-specific
>>>>> remarks", but isn't included in the "Funding recommendations" chart
>> and
>>>>> there's no amount requested, amount allocated, or proposal listed for
>>> the
>>>>> Wikimedia Foundation. Why is that?
>>>> 
>>>> They are organisation-specific remarks. :-) The WMF did not apply to
>> the
>>>> FDC this round, hence why there are no amounts requested/allocated, or
>> a
>>>> proposal to link to. The FDC felt it necessary to include
>> recommendations
>>>> about the WMF anyway.
>>>> 
>>>>> If Wikimedia Deutschland is required to separate out costs for
>>> Wikidata,
>>>>> does that mean that the Wikimedia Foundation is required to split out
>>>>> costs for Wikipedia and its other projects? I'd be quite curious to
>>> know
>>>>> how much money is being spent by the Wikimedia Foundation on
>> Wiktionary
>>>> or
>>>>> Wikinews or Wikiversity.
>>>> 
>>>> It's worth noting that there are two meanings to the word 'project'
>> here
>>> -
>>>> there are the Wikimedia projects, and then there are projects run by
>> the
>>>> Wikimedia organisations (think of, e.g., GLAM or education projects).
>>> It's
>>>> particularly the latter case that is most relevant to the FDC's work,
>> and
>>>> in this case Wikidata falls under both meanings.
>>>> 
>>>>> The report includes this note:
>>>>>> The FDC is appalled by the closed way that the WMF has undertaken
>> both
>>>>>> strategic and annual planning, and the WMF’s approach to budget
>>>>>> transparency (or lack thereof).
>>>>> 
>>>>> Sort of inline with the first question, but perhaps more direct: what
>>>>> power does the Funds Dissemination Committee have over the amount of
>>>> donor
>>>>> money allocated toward the Wikimedia Foundation? Can the FDC only
>>>> admonish
>>>>> the organization, but not actually withhold funds?
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> The FDC provides recommendations to the WMF Board, who then decide on
>>>> them. The FDC doesn't handle funds directly, so in no case does it
>>>> withhold, or spend, funds, instead it recommends doing so to the WMF
>>> Board.
>>>>

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] FDC recommendations for 2015-2016 Round 1 APG grant requests

[Michael Peel]

Hi MZMcBride,

> The Wikimedia Foundation has a section under "Organisation-specific
> remarks", but isn't included in the "Funding recommendations" chart and
> there's no amount requested, amount allocated, or proposal listed for the
> Wikimedia Foundation. Why is that?

They are organisation-specific remarks. :-) The WMF did not apply to the FDC 
this round, hence why there are no amounts requested/allocated, or a proposal 
to link to. The FDC felt it necessary to include recommendations about the WMF 
anyway.

> If Wikimedia Deutschland is required to separate out costs for Wikidata,
> does that mean that the Wikimedia Foundation is required to split out
> costs for Wikipedia and its other projects? I'd be quite curious to know
> how much money is being spent by the Wikimedia Foundation on Wiktionary or
> Wikinews or Wikiversity.

It's worth noting that there are two meanings to the word 'project' here - 
there are the Wikimedia projects, and then there are projects run by the 
Wikimedia organisations (think of, e.g., GLAM or education projects). It's 
particularly the latter case that is most relevant to the FDC's work, and in 
this case Wikidata falls under both meanings.

> The report includes this note:
>> The FDC is appalled by the closed way that the WMF has undertaken both
>> strategic and annual planning, and the WMF’s approach to budget
>> transparency (or lack thereof).
> 
> Sort of inline with the first question, but perhaps more direct: what
> power does the Funds Dissemination Committee have over the amount of donor
> money allocated toward the Wikimedia Foundation? Can the FDC only admonish
> the organization, but not actually withhold funds?


The FDC provides recommendations to the WMF Board, who then decide on them. The 
FDC doesn't handle funds directly, so in no case does it withhold, or spend, 
funds, instead it recommends doing so to the WMF Board.

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WLM Brasil 2015 - Winners / Numbers

[Michael Peel]

> On 31 Oct 2015, at 18:34, Rodrigo Padula  
> wrote:
> 
> A lot of contests in Brasil pay prizes around R$10.000-R$60.000, the value of 
> the prizes that we gave in Brasil are considered low by many participants and 
> professionals in that field.

Isn't that something like 5-30 times the monthly average wage in Brazil, with 
the R$2.000 1st prize for WLM being around the average monthly wage?
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/brazil/wages 


Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikinobel 2015 tomorrow

[Michael Peel]

Hi Jon,

Is this just for the Peace Prize, or will the editathon also work on articles 
on the winners of the other nobel prizes? I've been doing some wikignoming on 
the enwp articles on the physics prize winners [1] [2], but they still need 
more work on the content - although there are now quite a few versions in other 
languages now that weren't there a few days ago!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takaaki_Kajita - a new article created on the 
day of the announcement. Could really do with a picture.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_B._McDonald - the article already 
existed, so this hasn't seen as much change as the other one.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 8 Oct 2015, at 15:47, Mardetanha  wrote:
> 
> Very good news,
> Hopefully we might be able to do same in fawiki
> 
> 
> Mardetanha
> 
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 6:12 PM, Jon Harald Søby  wrote:
> 
>> Hi everybody,
>> 
>> You may have seen the blog post
>>  already, but
>> I'd like to remind you that the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced
>> tomorrow, and like last year, Wikimedia Norge and the Nobel Peace Center
>> are hosting an editathon as the prize is announced, aiming to update
>> Wikipedias in various languages as soon as possible, and provide sources
>> about the winner(s).
>> 
>> We will meet in the Nobel Peace Center at 10:00 local time (09:00 UTC), and
>> the prize will be announced one hour later. Like last year, we will use the
>> IRC channel #wikinobel (webchat link ), and
>> will also tweet from the event using the hashtag #wikinobel
>>  (also on Instagram at #wikinobel
>> ).
>> 
>> Please join us, and feel free to spread this message to your local
>> community.
>> 
>> --
>> mvh
>> Jon Harald Søby 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Departure

[Michael Peel]

Hi Garfield,

I'm very sad to hear this news. You've made a big impact on the Wikimedia 
organisations (not just the WMF!) over the last few years, and I'm sure that 
many community members will be using the phrase 'narrative' for years to come! 
I particularly appreciate the work that you've done to review the financial 
systems that the various Wikimedia organisations use, and your work helping the 
FDC assess the financial aspects of proposals.

I wish you all the best with your new job!

Thanks,
Mike

> On 10 Sep 2015, at 22:53, Garfield Byrd  wrote:
> 
> All,
> 
> For the last four years, I’ve led the Wikimedia Foundation’s finance,
> administration, and office IT teams. I've had the opportunity to work
> closely with many of you through collaboration with the Wikimedia
> affiliates. They have been remarkable experiences, and I am grateful for
> all I’ve learned from you during my time here. Therefore it is with some
> sadness that today I am letting you know that I’ve decided to take a new
> opportunity outside the WMF, at a California-based foundation focused on
> public education.
> 
> It has been a privilege to work with so many exceptional people over the
> years. I’ve watched the WMF mature and take on many new challenges, and our
> community grow and diversify. Our commitment to our free knowledge mission
> is as strong as ever, and now shared by even more people. While I’ll no
> longer be on staff, I plan to find ways to stay involved in the Wikimedia
> community. I look forward to seeing the movement continue to do its
> important work.
> 
> My last day will be September 30. I look forward to staying in touch and
> continuing to support our mission.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Garfield
> 
> -- 
> Garfield Byrd
> Chief of Finance and Administration
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 415.839.6885 ext 6787
> 415.882.0495 (fax)
> www.wikimediafoundation.org
> 
> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
> the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
> 
> *https://donate.wikimedia.org *
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wiki Loves Monuments] Wiki Loves Monuments in Italy largely blocked by WMF fundraising

[Michael Peel]

From my perspective, this strikes me as part of the reason why national 
organisations are well suited to running the Wikimedia fundraising campaigns 
rather than a global organisation: if WMIT was organising both WLM and the 
national fundraising campaign, then this conflict wouldn't have arisen / could 
have been resolved locally.

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Unsolicieted email from wikimedia research

[Michael Peel]

 So as part of
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Increasing_article_coverage
 , it appears that unsolicited emails have been sent out encouraging
 people to translated articles into needed languages.
 
 I am all for improving article coverage, etc, but I'm concerned about
 the use of user account emails to send unsolicited mail that the user
 has not opted into. I think use of user email addresses for purposes
 other than the user has agreed to, is not ok.
 
 I'm not really fazed by the fact that emails were unsolicited, but by the
 fact that I got it in French. I don't know whether that was a glitch or a
 conscious decision, but my knowledge of French is somewhere around fr-0.1,
 and it made no sense to me why I got it in a language other than English. :)

I also received an email in French about this. I presume that this is because I 
have made some edits to the French Wikipedia (mostly just adding photos to 
articles): hopefully it didn't get sent to everyone who's edited Wikipedia!

It's good to see an email appeal sent to editors to translate articles, 
although a direct email appeal to generally add information to the relevant 
Wikipedia might be better (we don't just want translators, we also want new 
content!).

 Really, RCom has morphed slowly into the Research Team at the WMF + a few
 interested volunteers that we can manage to pull in to help us with review
 work (shout out to Daniel Mietchen, Nemo, Yaroslav  BluRasberry).

I'm sad to hear this. I thought it used to be a volunteer committee (but 
perhaps I'm remembering this wrong?), and turning a volunteer committee into a 
staff team really isn't scalable. I'm sure that there are many knowledgeable 
academic researchers out there that this structure will exclude. Defining it as 
WMF staff members and some pre-existing volunteers sounds like it's become 
more, rather than less, hierarchical.

Thanks,
Mike
P.S. I like the idea of random academics. The world could do with more of 
these. :-)


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thousands of images on Wikipedia and Commons in danger, action needed

[Michael Peel]

Under this new law, would images already uploaded to Commons under FOP actually 
have to be deleted? Surely the new law wouldn't apply retrospectively, but 
would just affect future uploads of photos?

Personally, I view this as a much more direct threat to our content than SOPA 
was. I found it difficult to explain why SOPA was bad, and why we blacked out 
Wikipedia articles in protest, but it would be very easy to explain why this 
directly affects us. The 'non-commercial' aspect of Michael's arguments is the 
most difficult one to address, but that has always been true (thanks to the 
existence of the CC-NC license). I'm opposed to us restricting access to 
knowledge to make a point, but there is a very good case for a large site 
banner informing users about this issue, and how they can oppose it.

Thanks,
Mike

 On 22 Jun 2015, at 20:02, Michael Maggs mich...@maggs.name wrote:
 
 This has been mentioned before by Dimi, but bears repeating.
 
 While we may all think it's *outrageous* that tens of thousands of images may 
 have to be deleted from Commons, we do have to make sure we have messages 
 that will resonate with those who don't agree with us or who don't care.  If 
 our only message is that open content will be harmed, we have no answer to 
 those who reply 'so what?'
 
 In countries such as France and Belgium, that currently have no Freedom of 
 Panorama, we need to address arguments like these:
 
 1. Why should people be allowed to make money by using an architect's 
 intellectual property without permission?
 2. Why does Wikipedia, a hobbyist website, think it's OK to steal other 
 people's rights?
 3. Non-commercial use won't be affected, so this is not an issue of freedom 
 at all.  It just stops people making money from someone else's creative work.
 4. If Wikipedia holds itself out as non-commercial, it can and should accept 
 non-commercial licences. The argument that 'images will have to be deleted' 
 is based on your private internal rule which could easily be changed.
 
 Remember that in some countries there is a long history of supporting rights 
 holders, that millions of people don't know what 'open' means, don't care, 
 and won't be persuadable by any sort of argument based on freedom to view.  
 To them, freedom of panorama is just a way of illicitly taking away an 
 artist's right to protect his or her own creative work.
 
 Probably most of us reading this will say that these arguments hold no water, 
 but we need to tackle them head-on.
 
 Michael
 
 
 Jane Darnell mailto:jane...@gmail.com
 22 June 2015 08:21
 Actually, considering how effective the blackout was for SOPA, I think
 another action based on the most prominent images we stand to lose would be
 in order. So the take on the London Eye and maybe some popular buildings,
 art and bridges in Euro-FoP countries? I don't know if you could rig a java
 script to flag these with a red lightbox that links to the Commons page,
 but that would probably be more effective than any other lobbying efforts
 
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 Sam Klein mailto:sjkl...@hcs.harvard.edu
 21 June 2015 23:39
 
 The WMF could lobby or support lobbying on such an issue. It is eligible
 to spend up to $1M per year tax-free on lobbying. But I don't believe it
 has directly engaged in anything of the sort, since the SOPA action.
 
 Sam
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 Pine W mailto:wiki.p...@gmail.com
 21 June 2015 16:47
 Are WMF and the European affiliates allowed to lobby regarding this issue?
 If so, what are they doing?
 
 Thanks,
 
 Pine
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 Romaine Wiki mailto:romaine.w...@gmail.com
 21 June 2015 14:02
 Hi all,
 
 This concerns all the editors and readers in the European Union and those
 in other European countries as well (copying is possible).
 
 *Subject*
 Copyrights reform in Europe going in the wrong direction, damaging
 Wikipedia.
 
 *What is going on?*
 In the European Parliament currently a proposal (amendment) is submitted
 that will restrict Freedom of Panorama in Europe.
 This means: you will be no longer allowed to upload images from 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Printed Wikipedia is go!

[Michael Peel]

 On 17 Jun 2015, at 20:00, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/books/moving-wikipedia-from-computer-to-many-many-bookshelves.html?_r=1
 
 7,600 volumes, to be available on Lulu. He's printing 106 of them for
 the exhibition.

Why?
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What's cool?

[Michael Peel]

 1) This gives you the data that is in the item, but what does it give you
 when there is no data in the item?

Ideally, all of the data would be in the wikidata item, and if there's no data 
then there's nothing to display. ;-) But in practice, you can pass parameter 
information to the template in the usual way, which will then be shown in the 
infobox regardless of whether there is information on wikidata about that 
parameter or not. This infobox template is still in use in other articles in 
the usual fashion, and it only reverts to wikidata information for empty 
parameters.

 2) I am missing a discrete [edit] somewhere indicating where I go to add
 the data for the fields that are missing from the template

This could probably be handled by an [edit] link in the infobox that points 
users towards wikidata. However, there's currently no way to show blank fields 
on wikidata for empty entries that are used in the template, you have to know 
the right property number or name in order to add it.

This is definitely something that needs more technical development, but that 
doesn't stop it from being cool. ;-)

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What's cool?

[Michael Peel]

Thanks to Wikidata and Module:Wikidata [1], it is now possible [2] to include a 
basic infobox in an article using a single line, rather than the usual lengthy 
piece of wikicode (which new users could find off-putting). For a live example, 
see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pole_Telescope 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pole_Telescope

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module:Wikidata 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module:Wikidata
[2] for an example of how to enable this for your favourite infobox, see the 
source code of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_telescope 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_telescope

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] While Election committee counts the votes...

[Michael Peel]

That's great! I'm not complaining about the list of voters being made public (I 
actually support this!). I'm just pointing out that this wasn't made clear when 
votes were being cast. Something to improve next time around?

Thanks,
Mike

 On 3 Jun 2015, at 23:31, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 There's been a publicly viewable list of voters for every SecurePoll based
 election or vote since the time of its creation.  Until 2013, BoT voter
 lists were usually available for several months after the election, until
 the external host cleared them off (usually just before the next
 election).  The voter lists for English Wikipedia's arbitration committee
 elections going back to 2009 are still available.  The 2013 WMF elections
 (BoT, FDC, FDC ombud on a single ballot) continue to be publicly viewable
 on votewiki.  There may have been other project-specific uses of which I'm
 not aware.
 
 Risker/Anne
 
 
 
 On 3 June 2015 at 18:14, Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net wrote:
 
 
 At the link, you can find
 List votes: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections 2015
 https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/512
 
 I personally don't mind it being made public that I voted in this
 election, but this really is something that voters should be clearly
 informed about when they place their votes!
 
 Thanks,
 Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] While Election committee counts the votes...

[Michael Peel]

 On 3 Jun 2015, at 23:48, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 On 3 June 2015 at 18:42, Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net wrote:
 
 
 By the way, my understanding is that the practice of generating a public
 list of voters who cast ballots, while keeping the nature of their votes
 private, is relatively common in election processes in general. In the
 United States, political parties use this information for their get out
 the vote campaigns so that they know which of their likely supporters
 have
 yet to vote.
 
 In UK political elections I think that would be illegal...{{citation
 needed}}
 
 They certainly exist in Canada, and I'm quite certain they exist in the UK
 as well, because that's how the official poll watchers (or scrutineers, as
 we call them in Canada) know who to get out when getting out the
 vote.  They don't get published online, but there is a right to examine
 the list of individuals who can vote at the office of the local senior
 election official for a few weeks afterward, and then at the national
 election office once any challenges have been completed.  Of course in
 places where voting is mandatory, the failure to vote is going to be public.

Wow. I'm very far from being an expert on the UK voting system, but my 
understanding is that although the list of who can vote may be made public 
(where voters have agreed to this), who has not yet voted (or, after the fact, 
who has not voted) would never be made public. In the UK, election scrutineers 
would only be involved in reviewing votes that had been cast, not who had not 
voted.

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] While Election committee counts the votes...

[Michael Peel]

 By the way, my understanding is that the practice of generating a public
 list of voters who cast ballots, while keeping the nature of their votes
 private, is relatively common in election processes in general. In the
 United States, political parties use this information for their get out
 the vote campaigns so that they know which of their likely supporters have
 yet to vote.

In UK political elections I think that would be illegal...{{citation needed}}

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Cc-by-sa 4.0, Wikimedia logos

[Michael Peel]

According to the footer at:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
CC-BY-SA 4.0 is currently available in 34 languages/language variants: 
Castellano http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.es Castellano 
(España) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.es_ES Català 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.ca Dansk 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.da Deutsch 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.de English 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en Esperanto 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.eo français 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.frGalego 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.gl hrvatski 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.hr Indonesia 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.id Italiano 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.it Latviski 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.lv Lietuvių 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.lt Magyar 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.hu Melayu 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.ms Nederlands 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.nl Norsk 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.no polski 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.pl Português 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.pt Português (BR) 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.pt_BR Suomeksi 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.fi svenska 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.sv Türkçe 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.tr íslenska 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.isčesky 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.cs Ελληνικά 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.el русский 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.ru українська 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.uk العربية 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.ar پارسی 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.fa 日本語 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.ja 華語 (台灣) 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.zh_TW 한국어 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.ko .

Thanks,
Mike

 On 12 Feb 2015, at 20:26, Luis Villa lvi...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 
 CC 4 is still only in two (three?) languages (Kat may want to weigh in?) so
 it is premature for us to move, I think. But I'm optimistic we'll see
 traction in that area soon, and then we can have a movement discussion.
 Sorry that we can't force that to happen faster :)
 
 [To be clear, as I've said on Commons, CC 4.0 is clearly already
 *acceptable* for imported images - obviously free, etc. We just shouldn't
 be encouraging it as the *default* anywhere until there are more languages
 and a movement-wide discussion.]
 
 Luis
 
 On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 1:13 AM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com 
 mailto:wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Hi,
 
 Can we get an update on the transition plan to 4.0? I am seeing increasing
 amounts of content with 4.0 licensing across the the web, and would like us
 to move sooner rather than later to 4.0 in order to maintain continuity
 with new content where possible.
 
 I am not a licensing expert and I sometimes get headaches trying to
 deconflict licenses.
 
 Thanks,
 Pine
 On Oct 28, 2014 3:00 PM, Luis Villa lvi...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 
 Hi, Rupert-
 
 I think the movement as a whole should try to move consistently to 4.0 at
 roughly the same time. It is confusing to re-users to have to juggle
 different terms for different pieces of Wikimedia content.[1] So
 Foundation
 content will generally remain 3.0 until we make 4.0 the default license
 across the projects. (I'm aware that some projects have taken this jump on
 the own, but where I've seen this, I've made similar points - for example
 
 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Declaration_of_consent_for_all_enquiriesdiff=prevoldid=622093759
 
 .)
 
 WMF Legal plans to launch a movement-wide 4.0 discussion when CC has
 issued
 a solid number of translations, ideally in our largest languages. I
 understand the first few translations will be published in the next few
 weeks, and there is a schedule of upcoming translations on CC's wiki
 https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Legal_Tools_Translation#4.0[2].
 
 Realistically,
 given the holidays, and the lag for large projects, this likely means that
 discussion will happen early in 2015.
 
 Hope that helps-
 Luis
 
 [1] I'm well aware we already have a huge problem with this, but I don't
 want it to get worse. :)
 [2] These are updated by the translation teams, not CC itself, so they may
 not be up-to-date/accurate.
 
 On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 2:00 PM, rupert THURNER rupert.thur...@gmail.com
 
 wrote:
 
 Hi yana, would you be so kind to explain why wmf did not opt for the
 newest
 commons license, cc-by-sa 4.0?
 
 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WHO interested in evidence on the impact of CC licensing

[Michael Peel]

 On 2 Dec 2014, at 21:54, James Heilman jmh...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 And just to clarify currently WHO is green open access, free to view but
 not free to reuse.
 
 The request is for them to go gold open access free to view and free to
 reuse.
 

Those definitions are wrong: green is self-archiving by the author (e.g. by 
posting a copy on arxiv), while gold is open access via the journal's site. 
Neither 'gold' or 'green' means that the content can be reused, although 
articles may also be released under a free license. Have a read of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_journal 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_journal
(and note that no-where does that article use the word reuse, or even 
licence).

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] FDC funds allocation recommendation is up

[Michael Peel]

 That is why there is a whole process now to correct the mistakes that
 arise from this non-professional system, including a dedicated
 ombudsperson for the case(s).

It’s worth noting that the ombudsperson role has existed since the start of the 
FDC - the role is there to receive, investigate and document complaints about 
the FDC process, see:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Ombudsperson_role,_expectations,_and_selection_process
 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Ombudsperson_role,_expectations,_and_selection_process
for details. The appeals to the board process has also existed from the start. 
Neither are new processes that have been started since the creation of the FDC, 
as your comment implies.

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] ED response to the recommendations by the FDC Advisory Group on the APG program

[Michael Peel]

Hi Lila,

I’m afraid that your footnote links didn’t make it through to the list…

Will you also be replying to the FDC’s comments about the WMF’s budget proposal 
earlier this year?

Thanks,
Mike

 On 31 Oct 2014, at 22:23, Lila Tretikov l...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 
 Dear all,
 
 As you know, over the last few months I’ve been learning about the work of
 the organizations we fund through the many grantmaking programs here at
 WMF. I’ve been particularly focusing on the impact evaluations that have
 been done on WMF grants with the first round of Impact Reports. [1] I
 expect I will learn more from you all in the coming months, and I will be
 creating opportunities to do so.
 
 The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) Advisory Group met this past May to
 review the first years of the FDC’s grantmaking through the Annual Plan
 Grants program. I want to thank them for their thoughtful recommendations. [2]
 
 
 With the Board of Trustees, I’ve carefully reviewed the Advisory Group
 recommendations, in order to understand our successes and our challenges.
 I would like to outline my current view of our capabilities and our
 opportunities, and I am now publishing my response to these recommendations
 on Meta. [3]  Please post questions and comments on the Talk page of that
 document. [4]
 
 I would like to offer some time for any feedback  or questions you may have
 on my response. To that end, I’ll be holding a virtual meeting on Monday
 Nov 3 at 17:00 UTC, and I invite you to watch the streaming video and join
 the conversation. [5]  You can ask questions via IRC on #wikimedia-office
 directly or message FDC support staff, Katy Love (kl...@wikimedia.org or on
 IRC at Katy.Love) with questions or comments; she will voice them in the
 Hangout.
 
 I look forward to speaking with you soon.
 
 Lila Tretikov
 
 Executive Director, WMF
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Re-licensing Wikimedia logos on Commons to CC BY-SA 3.0

[Michael Peel]

Hi Yana,

 I'm happy to announce that we are re-licensing the Wikimedia logos on
 Commons to CC BY-SA 3.0:
 https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/10/24/wikimedia-logos-have-been-freed/ 
 https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/10/24/wikimedia-logos-have-been-freed/

This is great news - well done. :-)

 I would really appreciate your help with replacing the {{Copyright by
 Wikimedia}}
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Copyright_by_Wikimedia[1]
 templates on the logos with the {{Wikimedia trademark}}
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikimedia_trademark[2] and
 {{cc-by-sa-3.0}} https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Cc-by-sa-3.0[3]
 templates.

It might be simplest to change the {{Copyright by Wikimedia}} template so that 
it just transcludes the trademark template and the CC-BY-SA-3.0 template, e.g. 
by replacing its code with that at:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mike_Peel/WMF
A better approach, though, would be to update {{Wikimedia trademark}} to make 
it clear that the Wikimedia logos are CC-BY-SA, but that the rest of the file 
still needs to have an appropriate free license, and then to simply redirect 
the copyright template to the trademark template.

Thanks,
Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia DC Annual Plan for 2014-15

[Michael Peel]

Hi Kirill and WMDC,

I’m really impressed both by how well you’ve quantified your aims, and how 
you’ve set them out in this document. This is a great plan! I would suggest 
that you expand on your aims for your conferences, though (it’s not clear what 
quantitative outcomes you are aiming for from the conferences). The biggest 
worry I have is that you don’t match your activities against a budget - it’s 
not clear if you have sufficient funding to achieve your aims, and whether the 
outcomes are going to be worth the financial expenditure, although I’m sure 
that they will be when you work through the numbers.

Thanks,
Mike

 On 12 Oct 2014, at 20:28, Kirill Lokshin kirill.loks...@wikimediadc.org 
 wrote:
 
 Hi everyone,
 
 Wikimedia DC's Annual Plan for 2014-15 has now been published at
 http://wikimediadc.org/wiki/Annual_plan_(2014–2015).
 
 As always, we welcome any comments or suggestions!
 
 Regards,
 Kirill
 
 --
 Kirill Lokshin
 Secretary, Wikimedia District of Columbia
 http://wikimediadc.org
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monument for Wikipedia in Poland

[Michael Peel]

This is very, very cool. :-) I don’t suppose the monument is freely licensed? 
Can Creative Commons licenses even be applied to monuments?

Thanks,
Mike

On 9 Oct 2014, at 19:49, Tar Lócesilion tar.locesil...@gmail.com wrote:

 Yes, it will.
 
 2014-10-09 20:31 GMT+02:00 Ivan Martínez gala...@gmail.com:
 
 Really amazing! So, the monument will have freedom of panorama? ;)
 
 2014-10-09 13:29 GMT-05:00 Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com:
 
 ;-) Actually just one monument :-) By the way our woman wikipedians
 complan that only men are holding the globe in this statue :-) So, we
 have at least sent a woman - Magalia, to represent our community and
 fill a little bit gender gap :-)
 
 
 
 
 2014-10-09 19:52 GMT+02:00 Mathias Schindler 
 mathias.schind...@gmail.com
 :
 In Poland, Monument loves Wikipedia
 
 On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 7:51 PM, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com
 wrote:
 I saw something appear in the media:
 
 
 
 http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_26694189/poland-honor-wikipedia-monument
 
 
 Romaine
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 --
 Tomek Polimerek Ganicz
 http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
 http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
 http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29title=tomasz-ganicz
 
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 --
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 *Atentamente:Iván MartínezPresidenteWikimedia México A.C.wikimedia.mx
 http://wikimedia.mxImagina un mundo en donde cada persona del planeta
 pueda tener acceso libre a la suma total del conocimiento humano. Eso es lo
 que estamos haciendo http://es.wikipedia.org. *
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimania-l] Wikimania 2016 - Jury Announcement and Start of Bidding

[Michael Peel]

That seems rather unfair. Fæ is raising some valid points about how this 
process has taken place this year, which are worth addressing. Dismissing 
concerns unless there is a comprehensive proposal for reform seems like a 
reduction to bureaucracy…

Thanks,
Mike

On 10 Oct 2014, at 18:26, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm sure I'm not the only one waiting with interest to see Fae's 
 comprehensive proposal for reforming the process. Once that proposal has been 
 offered, anyone interested can comment on whether it is an improvement to the 
 current process. If the consensus is that it is, great! If not, then we can 
 move on. If no proposal for change is offered, then there isn't much to 
 discuss. 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monument for Wikipedia in Poland

[Michael Peel]

On 10 Oct 2014, at 19:54, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru wrote:

 On 10.10.2014 20:33, Michael Peel wrote:
 This is very, very cool. :-) I don’t suppose the monument is freely
 licensed? Can Creative Commons licenses even be applied to monuments?
 Thanks,
 Mike
 
 
 First, yes it can. A sculptor can give a permission, which would mean that 
 every photo of a monument can be licensed under CC-BY-SA if the photographer 
 wishes. I am sure we had such examples on Commons (they are sent via OTRS).

Cool. :-) It would be great to hear about examples where monuments have been 
CC-licensed!

 Second, as it was noticed already, Poland has freedom of panorama for 
 monuments, and therefore a permission from the sculptor is not even needed.

That’s true, but it’s relying on a copyright exception for a specific country, 
rather than an internationally valid copyright license, which can be an 
important distinction e.g., when photographers cross borders between taking and 
uploading photos. The latter is much better than the former where possible.

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] First Wikipedia Article has been Formally Peer Reviewed and Published

[Michael Peel]

Wikipedia articles are passively peer reviewed every time someone with 
knowledge of the topic reads the article. Ideally, this would be the equal of 
scientific peer review. In reality, most such people don’t bother giving 
feedback, or are unable to figure out how to give feedback. Hopefully we can 
get better at encouraging and supporting such feedback in the future.

I’ve systematically reviewed Wikipedia articles in the past, and I’ve also 
persuaded others to do the same. However, systematic review isn’t the same as a 
formal review through a journal.

It’s great to see that this article has been formally reviewed, although it is 
disappointing to see how short the author list for the formal article is here, 
given how many people have actually contributed to the article over the years.

Thanks,
Mike

On 3 Oct 2014, at 21:58, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:

 Umm, no, they aren't - at least not in the way the term is used in
 scientific subjects.
 
 Many articles are never reviewed in any systematic manner; in fact, that is
 the overwhelming majority of our articles.  Those that are formally
 reviewed are reviewed in the context of meeting *Wikipedia* standards:
 formatting, manual of style, reliable sources as references (as opposed to,
 say, blogs).   It doesn't contain most of the elements of peer review seen
 for scientific papers.
 
 Risker/Anne
 
 
 
 
 
 On 3 October 2014 15:56, Erlend Bjørtvedt erl...@wikimedia.no wrote:
 
 But remember: all Wikipedia articles are peer reviewed..
 
 Erlend Bjørtvedt
 
 
 
 
 Den fredag 3. oktober 2014 skrev Vishnu visdav...@gmail.com følgende:
 
 Congratulations!
 
 A great model that could be emulated by many of us across other
 disciplines too.
 
 Cheers,
 Vishnu
 
 
 On Friday 03 October 2014 04:54 AM, James Heilman wrote:
 
 Article published by the journal Open Medicine
 http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/viewFile/562/564
 
 Will soon be pubmed indexed. Editorial regarding the efforts are here
 http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/652/565
 
 Hope these sorts of efforts will improve the reputation of Wikipedia and
 the number of contributors. I guess we will see.
 
 
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Invitation to beta-test HHVM

[Michael Peel]

Sadly, uploading images to Commons is as slow as ever, even with HHVM. :-( I 
often find that it takes a couple of minutes to upload a single photo, most of 
which is server-side delays rather than file upload time. I’m guessing that 
it’s something other than the PHP processor that’s causing this slow-down, 
though.

Thanks,
Mike

On 22 Sep 2014, at 10:39, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote:

 Samuel Klein, 22/09/2014 01:05:
 Ori and all: this is really fantastic.  Thank you.
 I'm seeing 2+ second speedups (on 6+s loads :/ )  on longish pages such as
 
 And saving a null edit to 
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Cbrown1023/Logos went from 90+ seconds 
 to ~30 for me I think? :p
 
 
 
 Rand, seconding some of your ideas: I would welcome a brief status
 table showing development-stage and one-line status for each activity,
 with a link to details.
 
 For the detail pages: The status-history that most activities have is
 handy.  A roadmap + timeline are great where they exist, but can fall
 out of date when updated manually.  Perhaps this could be transcluded
 from an overall roadmap that is defined as the most up-to-date plan of
 record.
 
 An overall priority list  'what is needed next' would also help
 readers  contributors  testers understand what to prepare for and
 how to help.
 
 Also related: 
 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Thread:Talk:Quality_Assurance/new_tools_(moztrap%3F)
 
 Nemo
 
 For instance with SUL finalization and other activities
 that involve a lot of coordination and communication and cleanup.
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog network?

[Michael Peel]

I think there’s two options:
- http://en.planet.wikimedia.org/ (which Richard mentioned) is for more for 
individual wikimedians
- http://chaptersplanet.org is more for all of the Wikimedia organisations.

Thanks,
Mike

On 12 Sep 2014, at 13:43, David Cuenca dacu...@gmail.com wrote:

 It looks like a great homage to GeoCities :)  But if that's the place, then
 it should be linked from all official blogs.
 
 Thanks,
 Micru
 
 On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 2:34 PM, Richard Symonds 
 richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
 
 I think they use http://en.planet.wikimedia.org/ for that purpose.
 
 It's, ahh,  not ideal.
 
 Richard Symonds
 Wikimedia UK
 0207 065 0992
 
 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
 Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered
 Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT.
 United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia
 movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who
 operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
 
 *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control
 over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.*
 
 On 12 September 2014 13:00, David Cuenca dacu...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Hi,
 
 It is nice that there are several official blogs. However it is hard to
 navigate from blog to blog to discover what is going on at each chapter.
 
 Would it make sense to link to all official blogs from
 http://blog.wikimedia.org/ ?
 
 Cheers,
 Micru
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow

[Michael Peel]

On 8 Sep 2014, at 08:22, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 8 September 2014 05:46, John Mark Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 If it is good
 software, the projects will *ask* for it to be deployed, like they did
 with LiquidThreads, and users will want to use it on their user talk
 even if the wider community isnt ready to migrate.
 
 
 This is the key point.
 
 Those of us who presently use talk pages to get the work done. What is
 going to make us *love* Flow, for all its imperfections, and demand to
 have it for ourselves? What's Flow's killer feature for us?

This really is the critical point.

If the WMF is developing new software that the community gets behind and 
explicitly asks to be deployed, then it’s doing the right thing.

If it’s having to force new software on the community against its objections, 
then it’s shooting itself in the foot.

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] AffCom - Call for candidates 2015 [UPDATE]

[Michael Peel]

Another option would be an open process on-wiki, along the same lines as the 
FDC board-selected seat nominations. Is there a need to keep applications 
confidential here?

Thanks,
Mike

On 4 Sep 2014, at 20:51, Ad Huikeshoven a...@wikimedia.nl wrote:

 One option to consider is establishing an OTRS queue for AffCom.
 
 How many vacancies are there to be filled?
 
 Greetings,
 
 Ad
 
 
 2014-09-04 21:45 GMT+02:00 Risker risker...@gmail.com:
 
 Committees can have more than one mailing list, Bence.
 
 I suggest that Affcom rethink its approach: there's no good reason to
 assume that the order of candidacy has anything to do with selection,
 particularly if it goes to a second list, and your nominating
 subcommittee all has access.  It is always a bad idea for only one person
 to manage anything that results in formal appointments.  Accountability is
 important here.  I don't think it will harm your process whatsoever to get
 a mailing list set up by the weekend, since self-nominations do not close
 until September 30. Indeed, I'm not entirely clear why this isn't happening
 onwiki, but I suppose there may be a reason for that which doesn't come
 through in the original email.
 
 Risker/Anne
 
 
 
 
 On 4 September 2014 15:34, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Thank you for the suggestion, Anne!
 
 As some background, the reason the private e-mail address is used instead
 of the AffCom mailing list is that  it allows the incoming applications
 to
 be looked at all at the same time - thus not giving anyone an advantage
 or
 disadvantage based on the time they apply  especially if there are any
 outgoing AffCom members who are reapplying for another term (which may
 not
 be relevant this time around, I am not sure, but we tend to rely on
 existing processes and improve on them iteratively where we can based on
 suggestions like yours).
 
 Having a @wikimedia.org address would be cool, but they are not
 allocated
 to individual volunteers - we did ask a while ago. AffCom itself does
 have
 a mailing list on a wikimedia server, which we are not using for this
 purpose.Setting up a separate mailing list for the purpose might be
 something to consider next year.
 
 Hope this helps.
 
 Best regards,
 Bence
 (A member of AffCom, with some experience on how this process runs, but
 this is my personal view)
 
 
 On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 8:50 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 A gmail address?
 
 I am sure if you ask nicely the committee can be granted a
 wikimedia.org
 email address through Mailman that will allow more than one person to
 handle applications. It could probably be done pretty quickly.
 
 Risker/Anne
 
 
 On 4 September 2014 14:35, Carlos M. Colina ma...@wikimedia.org.ve
 wrote:
 
 Dear all,
 
 Please note that, due a technical issue, direct your emails to
 salvador1...@gmail.com instead.
 
 Kindly apologize for the inconvenience.
 
 Regards,
 Carlos
 
 
 Sent from Samsung Mobile
 
  Original message 
 From: Carlos M. Colina ma...@wikimedia.org.ve
 Date: 03/09/2014  19:58  (GMT+02:00)
 To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org,Wikimedia Chapters general
 discussions chapt...@wikimedia.ch
 Subject: [Wikimedia-l] AffCom - Call for candidates 2015
 
 (in the case you received it already, sorry for re-sending it, my
 Thunderbird crashed just as I clicked the send button :-( )
 
 Dear all, The Affiliations Committee [1], the committee that is
 responsible for guiding volunteers in establishing Chapters, User
 Groups
 and Thematic Organizations and approving them when they are ready is
 looking for new members.
 
 The main focus of the AffCom is to guide groups of volunteers in
 forming
 affiliates. We make sure that the groups are large enough to be
 viable
 (and
 advise them on how to get bigger), review bylaws for compliance
 with the requirements and best practices, and advise the Board of the
 Wikimedia Foundation on issues connected to Chapters, Thematic
 Organizations and User Groups.
 
 This requires communication with volunteers all over the World,
 negotiating skills and cultural sensitivity and the ability to
 understand
 legal texts. We try to get a healthy mix of different skill sets in
 our
 members.
 
 The key skills/experience that we are looking for in candidate
 members,
 are typically the following:
 
  * Excitement by the challenge of helping to empower groups of
volunteers worldwide
  * Willingness to process applications through a set, perhaps
bureaucratic process
  * Readiness to participate in (movement roles) political
 discussions
on the role and future of affiliates, models of affiliations, and
similar questions
  * 5 hours per week availability [2], and the time to participate
 in a
monthly ~2 hour voice/video meeting
  * International orientation
  * Very good communication skills in English
  * Ability to work and communicate with other languages and cultures
  * Strong understanding of the structure and work of affiliates and
 the

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wrong attribution in PDF output of Wikipedia atricles

[Michael Peel]

Hmm, that file seems to be released under a non-commercial Creative Commons 
license, in addition to the GFDL. The bug here seems to be bad licensing, 
rather than bad attribution (since when did we start accepting -NC licenses?!).

Thanks,
Mike

On 24 Aug 2014, at 18:03, Jeevan Jose jkadav...@gmail.com wrote:

 Try to download as PDF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheetah
 
 Check Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors.
 
 It attributes File:Cheetah Feb09 02.jpg Source:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Cheetah_Feb09_02.jpg
 License: unknown Contributors: Fir0002, Peteforsyth
 
 This is very wrong as license is not fetched  and photographer is only Fir;
 not all people edited that file page.
 
 I raised this complaint earlier (in Commons). This is mentioned at EN too
 by Stefan:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Copying_within_Wikipedia#For_legal_team_review
 
 I think this is a serious violation and need immediate attention.
 
 Regards,
 Jee
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wrong attribution in PDF output of Wikipedia atricles

[Michael Peel]

I've swapped it for a CC-licensed file that does allow for commercial reuse. 
Problem solved?

Thanks,
Mike

On 24 Aug 2014, at 19:55, Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net wrote:

 Hmm, that file seems to be released under a non-commercial Creative Commons 
 license, in addition to the GFDL. The bug here seems to be bad licensing, 
 rather than bad attribution (since when did we start accepting -NC 
 licenses?!).
 
 Thanks,
 Mike
 
 On 24 Aug 2014, at 18:03, Jeevan Jose jkadav...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Try to download as PDF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheetah
 
 Check Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors.
 
 It attributes File:Cheetah Feb09 02.jpg Source:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Cheetah_Feb09_02.jpg
 License: unknown Contributors: Fir0002, Peteforsyth
 
 This is very wrong as license is not fetched  and photographer is only Fir;
 not all people edited that file page.
 
 I raised this complaint earlier (in Commons). This is mentioned at EN too
 by Stefan:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Copying_within_Wikipedia#For_legal_team_review
 
 I think this is a serious violation and need immediate attention.
 
 Regards,
 Jee
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wrong attribution in PDF output of Wikipedia atricles

[Michael Peel]

Hey Pete,

Thanks for pointing me towards that discussion - I hadn't spotted it, and I've 
replied (and apologised for not noticing it) accordingly.

This is definitely a loop worth closing, as it's a right pain to deal with when 
working with derivative images of Wikipedia page screenshots. For a practical 
example, see:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_in_Category:Multimedia_Project_-_Wikimedia_Foundation

I can kinda understand why the software doesn't deal with messed-up situations 
like this - it shouldn't need to do so in the first place. I hope that we as a 
community can fix this by sensible licensing choices, rather than blaming the 
software.

Thanks,
Mike

On 24 Aug 2014, at 20:21, Pete Forsyth petefors...@gmail.com wrote:

 Mike --
 
 Did you see the recent discussion about this at [[Talk:Cheetah]]?
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cheetah#Lead_photo_license
 
 Although Erik Moeller recommended in 2008 (with the move to Creative
 Commons licenses) that we stop permitting new uploads of files on the basis
 of a GFDL license, as far as I can tell, that recommendation was never
 adopted in any policy, so it's still possible to upload GFDL files. (The
 fact that this file happens to also have a CC B
 Y-NC-SA license is not the basis of any WM decision -- it just happens the
 photographer also permits that license.) I've confirmed by private email
 correspondence that this photographer is clear about the licenses he does
 and doesn't want to use.
 
 Seems like a loophole worth closing.
 Pete
 [[User:Peteforsyth]]
 
 
 On Sun, Aug 24, 2014 at 12:05 PM, Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net wrote:
 
 I've swapped it for a CC-licensed file that does allow for commercial
 reuse. Problem solved?
 
 Thanks,
 Mike
 
 On 24 Aug 2014, at 19:55, Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net wrote:
 
 Hmm, that file seems to be released under a non-commercial Creative
 Commons license, in addition to the GFDL. The bug here seems to be bad
 licensing, rather than bad attribution (since when did we start accepting
 -NC licenses?!).
 
 Thanks,
 Mike
 
 On 24 Aug 2014, at 18:03, Jeevan Jose jkadav...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Try to download as PDF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheetah
 
 Check Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors.
 
 It attributes File:Cheetah Feb09 02.jpg Source:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Cheetah_Feb09_02.jpg
 License: unknown Contributors: Fir0002, Peteforsyth
 
 This is very wrong as license is not fetched  and photographer is only
 Fir;
 not all people edited that file page.
 
 I raised this complaint earlier (in Commons). This is mentioned at EN
 too
 by Stefan:
 
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Copying_within_Wikipedia#For_legal_team_review
 
 I think this is a serious violation and need immediate attention.
 
 Regards,
 Jee
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The reader, who doesn't exist

[Michael Peel]

On 21 Aug 2014, at 13:03, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:

 On 21 August 2014 10:31, Strainu strain...@gmail.com wrote:
 the mobile
 website arbitrarily skips some elements visible on desktop, such as
 navboxes
 
 I've noticed this; and other deficiencies (such as no did you know
 on main page, not even as a link to a subpage).

I thought this was set in the source code for the main page, see:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MobileFrontend#Configuring_the_main_page
which would mean that this could easily be fixed if there was consensus. 
However, that documentation may be out of date, since I can't spot any mf- ID's 
in the enwp main page?

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Superprotect user right, Comming to a wiki near you

[Michael Peel]

On 13 Aug 2014, at 21:12, Pete Forsyth petefors...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 12:57 PM, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org
 wrote:
 
 There is no such thing as the community; we have a huge collection of
 communities joined loosely over a number of ambigously shared principles
 that often - but not always - move in more or less the same direction.
 
 Anyone who claims to speak for the community is - put simply - full of
 shit.
 
 
 So very true! All of the arguments that claim knowledge of what the
 community wants, or what the readers want, need to be regarded with a
 strong dose of skepticism, or put aside entirely.

{{citation needed}}

There are some community members who spend a lot of time thinking about what 
the community and the readers may want, who actually have a good 
understanding of what is needed to support those stakeholders. There are others 
that say that their views represent the community/readers when they don't. A 
distinction needs to be made there - don't confuse the former with the latter.

Additionally: there is no guarantee that what has worked well in the past will 
continue to work well in the future. The internet is always changing and 
improving, and a lot of organisations that dominated a decade ago now only 
exist in historical record. Wikimedia really needs to match the current state 
of the art, otherwise it will likely also cease to exist. I'd like to see the 
Wikimedia community leading the way with the internet's development, but right 
now it feels like it's lagging by about a decade, and the WMF is having to play 
a leading role to keep it relevant. If the Wikimedia community can catch up 
with the current state of the internet, that would be great, but if it can't 
then supporting the WMF while it does so would make a lot of sense.

Thanks,
Mike
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