Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 22:57, James Forresterja...@jdforrester.org wrote: Oh, and someone told me to do this, but unfortunately I'm not allowed to say who instructed me so to do. Must've been The Voices. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
...still, I have to acknowledge that money is the root of Evil, and it's getting harder and harder as these dollar bills start to pile up where do they go and why... ...the reports get more and more vague, the report items get more and more broad, and at the end we start to see hundreds of those bills go out for consultancy, administration and travel expenses titled items... But I don't necessarily talk about ourselves but successful NGOs in general. Pitiable world we live in. grin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why can't we have $12.5 million for Wikispecies?
I would really like WikiSpecies to improve their visibility in the community. Sadly enough, the interwiki-links from Wikispecies to other projects are already insufficient. Given that we have all those tax-box-templates I always think that it should be an easy task to write bots to make links between the projects. I would also like to see folks from WikiSpecies to present their projects on SignPost and Wikimania. Ting Steven Walling wrote: Very good question. I'd say two major factors: 1. Support from scientists. Founded by one of the best-known scientists alive, the EOL automatically gained support from the biological sciences in academia. Support from the scientific/academic community is the only reason their largely single-author system has flourished in my opinion. 2. They have way more photos because they accept non-commercial licenses. That alone garners way more possible submissions, since the vast majority of CC work on Flickr is doesn't allow commercial use. (At least that's the way it was the last time I looked at a breakdown.) Steven Walling On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 8:11 PM, Nemo_bis nemow...@gmail.com wrote: See http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/aug/21/encyclopedia-life-species Where's the problem with Wikispecies? Moreover, EOL received 33.000 images from individual contributors (http://www.flickr.com/groups/encyclopedia_of_life), Wikispecies didn't. So, why is EOL succeeding, and Wikispecies seemingly doesn't? Is it useful to have two overlapping projects like these? Nemo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ting Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why can't we have $12.5 million for Wikispecies?
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Steven Wallingsteven.wall...@gmail.com wrote: Very good question. I'd say two major factors: 1. Support from scientists. Founded by one of the best-known scientists alive, the EOL automatically gained support from the biological sciences in academia. Support from the scientific/academic community is the only reason their largely single-author system has flourished in my opinion. Why cant we have this? It would be nice to see board seats going to professional/academic leaders in the fields for each of our smaller projects. This would bring expertise, connections, focus, and funding. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why can't we have $12.5 million for Wikispecies?
John Vandenberg, 26/08/2009 12:07: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Steven Wallingsteven.wall...@gmail.com wrote: Very good question. I'd say two major factors: 1. Support from scientists. Founded by one of the best-known scientists alive, the EOL automatically gained support from the biological sciences in academia. Support from the scientific/academic community is the only reason their largely single-author system has flourished in my opinion. Why cant we have this? I think that at this point we can't hope to do better than EOL, so «If you can't beat them join them»: we should evaluate if and how much Wikispecies (and Commons, which has great pictures of many species) can contribute to EOL content (the main problem here can be that they're mainly CC-BY while we are CC-BY-SA, but their licenses are very flexible – even too much, indeed). Wikispecies could benefit of a jump on the bandwagon effect. Nemo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 5:09 AM, Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com wrote: ...still, I have to acknowledge that money is the root of Evil Feel free to send all yours to me. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why can't we have $12.5 million for Wikispecies?
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 8:23 PM, Nemo_bisnemow...@gmail.com wrote: John Vandenberg, 26/08/2009 12:07: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Steven Wallingsteven.wall...@gmail.com wrote: Very good question. I'd say two major factors: 1. Support from scientists. Founded by one of the best-known scientists alive, the EOL automatically gained support from the biological sciences in academia. Support from the scientific/academic community is the only reason their largely single-author system has flourished in my opinion. Why cant we have this? I think that at this point we can't hope to do better than EOL, so «If you can't beat them join them»: we should evaluate if and how much Wikispecies (and Commons, which has great pictures of many species) can contribute to EOL content (the main problem here can be that they're mainly CC-BY while we are CC-BY-SA, but their licenses are very flexible – even too much, indeed). Wikispecies could benefit of a jump on the bandwagon effect. I agree; EOL has eclipsed WikiSpecies in many respects. They have nearly caught up on the number of taxonomic entries, but their experience is far better, primarily because they have links to pagescans on [[Biodiversity Heritage Library]]. However most of the information in EOL is just facts, and there in the public domain, and we should be able to syncronise the two sets of data. As a result, the wiki will gradually become as complete as the others, and time will tell whether a community will continue to find the wiki useful. I doubt that there is much that WikiSpecies can give to EOL, but it would be good to hear from WikiSpecies people as there may be some parts of the project which are especially detailed. (I couldnt quickly find any featured content on WikiSpecies.) As you say, Commons can provide current images, and Wikisource can organise proofread transcriptions of the bibliographies. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
2009/8/26 Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com: ...still, I have to acknowledge that money is the root of Evil Sure, if world peace is evil. By the way, you might want to read up on Wikipedia on that phrase, where it will undoubtedly tell you that it is the *lust* for money that is the root of all evil. Not money itself. It's like democracy. Democracy is an empty shell you put political ideas into. Similar with money; they have no spirit or faith in themselves, it is what we make of them; if it is evil, then so be it, if it is good, well, we can do that too. Unless - of course - you really do think that money is evil, then I will acknowledge Anthony's comment, and send the remainder my way. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
Hey, I've read most of the topic on my blackberry so might have missed some point but I'm surprised of the reactions. In my opinion there's only two questions Is OM an organisation close to WMF and supporting other NPO sharing some of WMF goals ? the answer is yes. So I don't see the problem in receiving a 3m$ donation from another NPO sharing some goals with the WMF. Second question, is Does Matt Halprin brings interesting skills to the current board ? and yes it does. So we have a really huge donation made by a friendly organisation and an interesting new board member and then we still have people moaning... Anyway, I, for one, am really happy with receiving 1/3 of last year budget in one donation, in-kind donations and a great new board member. All the best, Christophe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
Hoi, hear hear !! Thanks, Gerard 2009/8/26 Christophe Henner christophe.hen...@gmail.com Hey, I've read most of the topic on my blackberry so might have missed some point but I'm surprised of the reactions. In my opinion there's only two questions Is OM an organisation close to WMF and supporting other NPO sharing some of WMF goals ? the answer is yes. So I don't see the problem in receiving a 3m$ donation from another NPO sharing some goals with the WMF. Second question, is Does Matt Halprin brings interesting skills to the current board ? and yes it does. So we have a really huge donation made by a friendly organisation and an interesting new board member and then we still have people moaning... Anyway, I, for one, am really happy with receiving 1/3 of last year budget in one donation, in-kind donations and a great new board member. All the best, Christophe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why can't we have $12.5 million for Wikispecies?
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:37 PM, Tisza Gergőgti...@gmail.com wrote: Nemo_bis nemow...@... writes: See http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/aug/21/encyclopedia-life-species Where's the problem with Wikispecies? Moreover, EOL received 33.000 images from individual contributors (http://www.flickr.com/groups/encyclopedia_of_life), Wikispecies didn't. So, why is EOL succeeding, and Wikispecies seemingly doesn't? EOL is an encyclopedia, Wikispecies is just a raw taxonomy, which is totally useless to the average reader. It is also useless to most readers interested in taxonomies, because it lacks the software features to extract that. It is in a similar position to Wiktionary: a project about relations between things that totally lacks the concept of relations on the software level. That is like publishing text in the form of JPG files. If you are one of the few people specifically interested in taxonomies, you will probably use something that allows you to query and extract the relational data. While the wiki software layer is very basic, we have many complex tools on our toolserver. Here is a small sample of the projects which run on the toolserver. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Toolserver/Projects If you can specify what queries you are most interested in, the technical group may be able to write a tool to do this. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why can't we have $12.5 million for Wikispecies?
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 8:23 PM, Nemo_bisnemow...@gmail.com wrote: John Vandenberg, 26/08/2009 12:07: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Steven Wallingsteven.wall...@gmail.com wrote: Very good question. I'd say two major factors: 1. Support from scientists. Founded by one of the best-known scientists alive, the EOL automatically gained support from the biological sciences in academia. Support from the scientific/academic community is the only reason their largely single-author system has flourished in my opinion. Why cant we have this? I think that at this point we can't hope to do better than EOL, so «If you can't beat them join them»: we should evaluate if and how much Wikispecies (and Commons, which has great pictures of many species) can contribute to EOL content (the main problem here can be that they're mainly CC-BY while we are CC-BY-SA, but their licenses are very flexible – even too much, indeed). Wikispecies could benefit of a jump on the bandwagon effect. Wikispecies has recently built a partnership with the open access academic journal ZooKeys, which has a partnership with EOL and GBIF. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/ZooKeys https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/species/wiki/Wikispecies:Collaboration_with_ZooKeys http://pensoftonline.net/zookeys/index.php/journal/announcement/view/6 http://www.gbif.org/News/NEWS1243931673 The partnership with ZooKeys results in images of new discoveries being uploaded by the journal to Commons! http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_ZooKeys This is _very_cool_. Sadly there are no reliable sources picking up this story, and I can't see any blogging about it either. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why can't we have $12.5 million for Wikispecies?
2009/8/26 John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:37 PM, Tisza Gergőgti...@gmail.com wrote: EOL is an encyclopedia, Wikispecies is just a raw taxonomy, which is totally useless to the average reader. It is also useless to most readers interested in taxonomies, because it lacks the software features to extract that. It is in a similar position to Wiktionary: a project about relations between things that totally lacks the concept of relations on the software level. That is like publishing text in the form of JPG files. If you are one of the few people specifically interested in taxonomies, you will probably use something that allows you to query and extract the relational data. While the wiki software layer is very basic, we have many complex tools on our toolserver. Here is a small sample of the projects which run on the toolserver. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Toolserver/Projects If you can specify what queries you are most interested in, the technical group may be able to write a tool to do this. I think the point is that the fundamental design of MediaWiki - around a single block of unstructured information - is not useful for a semantic project like WSp; there are much better ways of doing it. Toolserver projects cannot add functionality to the core in a proper way. Extensions like Semantic MediaWiki try, but in the end we are trying to 'fix' it, I'm afraid. J. -- James D. Forrester jdforres...@wikimedia.org | jdforres...@gmail.com [[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikispecies
Dear Klaus, You refer to http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gnom/Wikispecies, which refers to Wikispecies:Village pump/Archive 24092005, a page which has been deleted. The discussion on http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:L%C3%B6schkandidaten/11._September_2006#Wikispecies_.28gel.C3.B6scht.29refers to a page on the german wiki, not to wikispecies. So I doubt you have a point with 4 old references. From your references I also dont see a permanent boycot of wikispecis by the german community, though Personally i would not shed a tear when wikispecies is shredded, its information is usually outdated - if present. And then I am not speaking about the support of multiple taxonomies. Commons does (see for example http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cyclamen). Imho wikispecies has a number of problems: * It is text based, not db-structure based. * Allthough often references are given at the bottom of a page, it is not clear what is coming from what. See for example http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Aspidytidae. * Some species even have no reference at all, for example http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ateles_paniscus * Some referenced sources are not scientific publications. * The target audience is not clear: scientific researcher? student? interested laymen? * Allthough I feel high respect for the people working at species, information is soon outdated in this field. I feel sincere doubts about ever being able to maintain a project like this by a limited number of volunteers without substantial support from the scientific community. For these reasons I would support a closure vote at meta. kind regards, teun spaans On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Klaus Graf klausg...@googlemail.comwrote: I cannot understand why WMF is unable to terminate Wikispecies which is a zero quality project. See http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gnom/Wikispecies (also in English) Klaus Graf ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why can't we have $12.5 million for Wikispecies?
On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 12:41 AM, James Forresterja...@jdforrester.org wrote: 2009/8/26 John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:37 PM, Tisza Gergőgti...@gmail.com wrote: EOL is an encyclopedia, Wikispecies is just a raw taxonomy, which is totally useless to the average reader. It is also useless to most readers interested in taxonomies, because it lacks the software features to extract that. It is in a similar position to Wiktionary: a project about relations between things that totally lacks the concept of relations on the software level. That is like publishing text in the form of JPG files. If you are one of the few people specifically interested in taxonomies, you will probably use something that allows you to query and extract the relational data. While the wiki software layer is very basic, we have many complex tools on our toolserver. Here is a small sample of the projects which run on the toolserver. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Toolserver/Projects If you can specify what queries you are most interested in, the technical group may be able to write a tool to do this. I think the point is that the fundamental design of MediaWiki - around a single block of unstructured information - is not useful for a semantic project like WSp; there are much better ways of doing it. Toolserver projects cannot add functionality to the core in a proper way. Extensions like Semantic MediaWiki try, but in the end we are trying to 'fix' it, I'm afraid. Wikis are not unstructured. The structure is not defined, but it is added as needed. Here is a tool that relies on the added structure of the Wikisource bibles. http://toolserver.org/~Magnus/biblebay.php?bookname=Genesisbooknumber=1range=1 And here is the code for that tool: https://fisheye.toolserver.org/browse/Magnus/biblebay.php?r=1 The more structure provided by the wiki, the better the tools can query it. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why can't we have $12.5 million for Wikispecies?
2009/8/26 John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com: On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 12:41 AM, James Forresterja...@jdforrester.org wrote: I think the point is that the fundamental design of MediaWiki - around a single block of unstructured information - is not useful for a semantic project like WSp; there are much better ways of doing it. Toolserver projects cannot add functionality to the core in a proper way. Extensions like Semantic MediaWiki try, but in the end we are trying to 'fix' it, I'm afraid. Wikis are not unstructured. Wikis aren't in general; MediaWiki is. Writing into an unstructured wiki in a structured, regulated way is a lot of work, and punishes the humans for our failure to provide the right tools. The structure is not defined, but it is added as needed. Here is a tool that relies on the added structure of the Wikisource bibles. http://toolserver.org/~Magnus/biblebay.php?bookname=Genesisbooknumber=1range=1 And here is the code for that tool: https://fisheye.toolserver.org/browse/Magnus/biblebay.php?r=1 The more structure provided by the wiki, the better the tools can query it. Asking users to expend a huge level of effort to make their changes proper when a proper system would do it for them is not respectful and (as shown) not effective. It's impressive that people can edit in such a well-regulated way that we can programmatically extract semantic information, but it's not a stable, easy-to-use way of doing it. It's also fundamentally anti-wiki, as new users will often make mistakes that make things worse, not better; biting the newbies built into the very code. J. -- James D. Forrester jdforres...@wikimedia.org | jdforres...@gmail.com [[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Tim Starlingtstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: Let me say for the record that I'm not at all happy with this data being released, since it allows vote-buying. Even if the numbers given Although I was trying to avoid advertising it in public this was something I'm aware of and had pointed out to the election committee, but something I don't consider to be a risk we can meaningfully address by not releasing ballots. Quoting myself from a private email: I think the bigger risk is vote watermarking leading to vote buying: I.e. You could register with my site and tell me you want to vote for M,ABFO,CDEGHIJKLN I then tell you I'll give you $10 if someone votes for G,M,ABFO,CJ,LN,DEGHIK. I make sure not to give out the same modified ballot twice, and I pay people if the ballots end up in the report. To fight against this I recommended that the WMF delay ballot disclosures for a few months and announce that they'd be doing so. People will be less inclined to wait for their $10. ;) I don't think stronger protection is justified because people could just load some toolbar that votes for them like subvertandprofit uses. http://subvertandprofit.com/content/prices is a good cluestick for people who think you can solve quality challenges with voting. :) So, basically, my position is that the risk of buying due to vote marking isn't much greater than the risk of buying based on the puppet voter intentionally using a buyer controlled web-browser to vote... and that we can equalize the risk by simply delaying the ballot release a little bit, but not so much as to degrade the value of the ballots as evidence that the election was conducted fairly. by voters are reduced to the smallest values which still give the same rankings, with 18 candidates there are 18 factorial possible orderings. That number is sufficiently higher than the number of voters that a party wishing to buy votes can specify a voter-specific [snip] Nitpicking, but the number of possible unique ballots is much greater than the factorial because of equality, and equality must be preserved in order produce the election calculations. The formula mostly easily represented is a messy multipart recursive formula, which I'll spare you (in part because I don't know that I have all the boundary conditions right). It's less than X!*2^(X-1). ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
Here's a simple series of questions: (1) On which boards of directors (either for-profit or non-profit) has Matt Halprin been newly seated, since 2006? (2) To which of those organizations has the Omidyar Network made a significant financial contribution or investment? (3) What is the result of the count of organizations in # 2 divided by the count of organizations in # 1? (4) At which percentage in # 3 would we begin to postulate that, since 2006, Matt Halprin typically serves on boards of directors where his employer's money is at work (or at stake)? Am I correct that Halprin draws a measurable income from Omidyar Network, or that Omidyar Network would be considered his primary means of income? With my experience having founded the enterprise that led to Wikipedia altering its Vanity guideline to become a more comprehensive Conflict of Interest guideline, one might say I'm somewhat street wise on Conflict of Interest issues. I'm perfectly able to see how COI would come into play here, regardless of the inability of others here to see (or even to imagine) that. I look forward to the answers to my above questions. Or, sweep them under the rug, if that is your inclination. -- Gregory Kohs ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.orgwrote: Let me say for the record that I'm not at all happy with this data being released, since it allows vote-buying. What's wrong with vote-buying? It's no worse than seat-buying. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
2009/8/26 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.orgwrote: Let me say for the record that I'm not at all happy with this data being released, since it allows vote-buying. What's wrong with vote-buying? It's no worse than seat-buying. I am not sure I understand the logic in this comment. If something is bad; then it doesn't matter if something else is equally bad? And we shouldn't bother fighting either one unless we can fight both? Makes little sense to me. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
Greg Maxwell states: You could register with my site and tell me you want to vote for M,ABFO,CDEGHIJKLN I then tell you I'll give you $10 if someone votes for G,M,ABFO,CJ,LN,DEGHIK. +++ Wow, and I thought *I* was the one with the crack-pot, hare-brained, wild-eyed conspiracy theories. How's this -- I'll give $100 to anyone who produces incontrovertible evidence of a successfully-fulfilled vote-buy transaction in any past WMF board election. I'm that confident that nobody would have been stupid enough to waste money that way. Unless it was a publicity stunt of some sort, for WP:POINT's sake. Hmm... that gives me an idea... -- Gregory Kohs ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 05:20:39PM +0200, Svip wrote: 2009/8/26 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.orgwrote: Let me say for the record that I'm not at all happy with this data being released, since it allows vote-buying. What's wrong with vote-buying? It's no worse than seat-buying. I am not sure I understand the logic in this comment. If something is bad; then it doesn't matter if something else is equally bad? And we shouldn't bother fighting either one unless we can fight both? Makes little sense to me. I think we may all have fallen foul of the fact that sarcasm-over-IP doesn't work very well. Tim's comment reads as probably sarcastic to me, at any rate. J -- Jonathan G Hall jonat...@sinewave42.com OpenPGP KeyID: 0xB3D66A8C signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 11:20 AM, Svip svi...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/26 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: Let me say for the record that I'm not at all happy with this data being released, since it allows vote-buying. What's wrong with vote-buying? It's no worse than seat-buying. I am not sure I understand the logic in this comment. If something is bad; then it doesn't matter if something else is equally bad? And we shouldn't bother fighting either one unless we can fight both? Makes little sense to me. You're adding in a therefore which I never intended. I don't have a problem with seat-buying, so long as the current board approves of the candidate, anyway. And in the case of a WMF election the current board has the final say in whether or not to seat the candidate. So you'll have to start by showing why seat-buying is bad. And then you'll probably have to find a new foundation to support. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 03:31:21PM +, Jonathan G Hall wrote: I think we may all have fallen foul of the fact that sarcasm-over-IP doesn't work very well. Tim's comment reads as probably sarcastic to me, at any rate. I meant Anthony's comment there, and it doesn't appear to have been sarcastic given his response. Sorry. J -- Jonathan G Hall jonat...@sinewave42.com OpenPGP KeyID: 0xB3D66A8C signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 11:09 AM, Gregory Maxwellgmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: Nitpicking, but the number of possible unique ballots is much greater than the factorial because of equality, and equality must be preserved in order produce the election calculations. The formula mostly easily represented is a messy multipart recursive formula, which I'll spare you (in part because I don't know that I have all the boundary conditions right). It's less than X!*2^(X-1). I think it's the sum from k = 1 to n of S(n, k)*k!, where S(n, k) is a Stirling number of the second kind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_numbers_of_the_second_kind S(n, k) is the number of ways to divide an n-element set into k partitions. So there are S(n, k) ways to obtain k distinct levels of candidates after tying, and then there are k! different ways to order the levels against each other. Maxima gives the following results: (%i3) sum(stirling2(18,k)*(k!), k, 1, 18); (%o3) 3385534663256845323 (%i4) 18!; (%o4) 6402373705728000 So it's about 529 times more than 18!. Admittedly, determining this was a completely pointless exercise, but it was kind of fun. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
2009/8/26 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: 2009/8/25 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: How can you have a QA on a topic like this that doesn't even address the matter than you have sold a seat on the board? Has the WMF completely lost touch with the community? It should be obvious that this is going to be a highly controversial decision and yet you can't even get the basic announcement right and don't even try and answer the obvious question the community is going to ask. (begin quote) Why did the Wikimedia Foundation invite Matt Halprin to join its Board? Matt's background and skills are a great fit for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, which has had two expertise (non-community) seats vacant since last April. Matt is a Board member of several other non-profit organizations, which means he will bring general non-profit governance and oversight experience to Wikimedia. His background at eBay gives him a good understanding of issues related to online community, trust, reputation, privacy and content quality: all key issues for the Wikimedia Foundation. Matt also has a background in strategy development, which will be useful for the Wikimedia Foundation as it embarks on its collaborative strategy development project. The Wikimedia Foundation believes Matt will be a terrific addition to Wikimedia's Board of Trustees. Is Matt Halprin's Board seat an individual seat, or an Omidyar Network seat? Like all Wikimedia Board members, Matt will be a member as an individual, not as a representative of any particular organization or constituency. All Wikimedia Foundation Board members have an obligation to put the best interests of the Wikimedia Foundation first, and to do their best to support and guide the organization, to help it achieve its mission and goals. The Wikimedia Foundation looks forward to Matt's participation on the Board. (end quote) Those answers don't address the fact that you've just given a seat on the board to someone that has just given you a big pile of cash. I am open to being convinced that this is a good thing, but you haven't even tried to convince me. I am not arguing that Matt isn't a good choice for the board, I am arguing that the circumstances of his appointment are inappropriate. Had you discussed the general principle of selling board seats with the community you might have got a positive response, but you didn't ask. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
2009/8/26 Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org: Let me say for the record that I'm not at all happy with this data being released, since it allows vote-buying. I'm inclined to agree. I just don't see any sufficient benefit to releasing the data to make it worth the risk. Why do people want this information? Is it just because they don't trust the vote count? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
Hi Thomas, On Aug 26, 2009, at 2:20 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Those answers don't address the fact that you've just given a seat on the board to someone that has just given you a big pile of cash. I am open to being convinced that this is a good thing, but you haven't even tried to convince me. I am not arguing that Matt isn't a good choice for the board, I am arguing that the circumstances of his appointment are inappropriate. Had you discussed the general principle of selling board seats with the community you might have got a positive response, but you didn't ask. This may be a heretic question but I'd like to pose it anyway: why should it be necessary or appropriate for the Foundation to discuss this subject with the project communities? How does this appointment have any impact on the activities within the projects? Best regards, Sebastian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 8:12 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.orgwrote: Let me say for the record that I'm not at all happy with this data being released, since it allows vote-buying. Even if the numbers given by voters are reduced to the smallest values which still give the same rankings, with 18 candidates there are 18 factorial possible orderings. That number is sufficiently higher than the number of voters that a party wishing to buy votes can specify a voter-specific ticket with some random rankings, and be reasonably assured that if that ticket appears in the final unencrypted dump, then the contract was fulfilled and money can be transferred to the voter. In 2008 the unencrypted votes were rapidly released, but I was not involved in that decision. This year, I don't think I have been asked directly to provide this data, but it seems that the Board and election committee is in favour of it being released, and nobody else has offerred to produce the data. So I just wrote the relevant script, and am now testing it, so the results will be available to the committee and the Board shortly. -- Tim Starling This kind of fear mongering attitude is why we can't allow more members of the community to vote. You'd rather spread FUD about vote buying than design a system that allows the largest number of community members to vote. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
this subject with the project communities? How does this appointment have any impact on the activities within the projects? This question is equivalent to the question: How does any appointment to the board have any impact on the activities within the projects? isn't it? ... or even How does the board have any impact on the activities within the projects? right? So what is/was the reason to 'elect' community representatives to the board? On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 8:34 PM, Sebastian Moleskiseb...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Thomas, On Aug 26, 2009, at 2:20 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Those answers don't address the fact that you've just given a seat on the board to someone that has just given you a big pile of cash. I am open to being convinced that this is a good thing, but you haven't even tried to convince me. I am not arguing that Matt isn't a good choice for the board, I am arguing that the circumstances of his appointment are inappropriate. Had you discussed the general principle of selling board seats with the community you might have got a positive response, but you didn't ask. This may be a heretic question but I'd like to pose it anyway: why should it be necessary or appropriate for the Foundation to discuss this subject with the project communities? How does this appointment have any impact on the activities within the projects? Best regards, Sebastian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
Full disclaimer: I contribute in Wikispecies. First, calling a project as zero quality project, whether it belongs to WMF or Wikia or somewhere else, is downright assuming bad faith. Second, all of the discussion links in your boycott section took place in 2005 and 2006, clearly unable to recognize that consensus can change (and probably had changed since those are aged discussion). Third, we have accommodated multi-lingual requests by including vernacular names section. But you have to recognize the fact that the entire scientific community describing new species all communicate in English and use Linnaean taxonomy. Even if the paper is in foreign language, the abstract would at least have an English version. This norm has been set since 1735 (the year which Linnaeus first published Systema Naturae). We often get compared between Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), so I grabbed a correspondence with someone who shares data to both EOL and Wikispecies (permission already granted beforehand by these 2 individuals on quoting this email). The Zookeys, a peer-reviewed scientific journal on species, publisher Dr. Lyubomir Penev said this to a Wikispecies editor: Today I was amazed to see that your latest edit of the Haplodesmidae page (with my Agathodesmus revision and Sergei Golovatch's Eutrichodesmus paper) was dated 19 June, *one day* after ZooKeys published it. You may even have beaten ZooBank, which links to ZooKeys. Furthermore, Dr. Penev said Encyclopedia of Life still hasn't got any details from ZooKeys, and the Catalogue of Life is years behind. Keep in mind that ZooKeys and EOL are partners, yet EOL has not used any data even from the first issue of ZooKeys, which is published in July 2008. Also, keep in mind that most images from EOL are licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA, which is unsuitable for reuse in Commons or WMF projects. Finally, to dismiss any claims that Wikispecies is a zero quality project, we have an agreed collaboration with ZooKeys, which will see hundreds of new species images continuously being uploaded to Commons. We are already planning another collaboration with Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae which will grant us permission to upload their otherwise-copyrighted images to Commons under CC-BY-SA 3.0 to illustrate articles in WMF. We also granted special access to their pdf papers without a 2-year delay. Has any WMF projects successfully worked out collaborations to get large quantities of new species images in high quality and accuracy? Andrew Fill the world with children who care and things start looking up. On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Klaus Graf klausgraf at googlemail.comwrote: I cannot understand why WMF is unable to terminate Wikispecies which is a zero quality project. See http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gnom/Wikispecies (also in English) Klaus Graf Propose it be closed at Meta then. -- Alex (User:Majorly) _ Stay on top of things, check email from other accounts! http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9671355 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
Just few questions to make my opinion. Has Matt Halprin been designated to the Board by the Nominating Commitee (NOMCOM) ? This is explicity required if I read correctly this page : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announcement_Q%26A If he has, when ? Before or after the 2M$ grant negociation ? Does he fulfill the Nomitanig Commitee selection criterion : Membership in the Wikimedia community ? http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee/Selection_criteria#General_needed_traits Where is the list of the other candidates designated by the NOMCOM ? Could we see the discussions and the recommandations of the nominating commitee ? Is it possible to know which member of the Board of Trustees agree this appointment ? Or at least juste the repartition support/against in the Board ? Thanks, Kropotkine_113 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikispecies
Opps, used wrong subject line. So here's what I said about Wikispecies. From: andrewcle...@hotmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:49:36 -0400 Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots Full disclaimer: I contribute in Wikispecies. First, calling a project as zero quality project, whether it belongs to WMF or Wikia or somewhere else, is downright assuming bad faith. Second, all of the discussion links in your boycott section took place in 2005 and 2006, clearly unable to recognize that consensus can change (and probably had changed since those are aged discussion). Third, we have accommodated multi-lingual requests by including vernacular names section. But you have to recognize the fact that the entire scientific community describing new species all communicate in English and use Linnaean taxonomy. Even if the paper is in foreign language, the abstract would at least have an English version. This norm has been set since 1735 (the year which Linnaeus first published Systema Naturae). We often get compared between Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), so I grabbed a correspondence with someone who shares data to both EOL and Wikispecies (permission already granted beforehand by these 2 individuals on quoting this email). The Zookeys, a peer-reviewed scientific journal on species, publisher Dr. Lyubomir Penev said this to a Wikispecies editor: Today I was amazed to see that your latest edit of the Haplodesmidae page (with my Agathodesmus revision and Sergei Golovatch's Eutrichodesmus paper) was dated 19 June, *one day* after ZooKeys published it. You may even have beaten ZooBank, which links to ZooKeys. Furthermore, Dr. Penev said Encyclopedia of Life still hasn't got any details from ZooKeys, and the Catalogue of Life is years behind. Keep in mind that ZooKeys and EOL are partners, yet EOL has not used any data even from the first issue of ZooKeys, which is published in July 2008. Also, keep in mind that most images from EOL are licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA, which is unsuitable for reuse in Commons or WMF projects. Finally, to dismiss any claims that Wikispecies is a zero quality project, we have an agreed collaboration with ZooKeys, which will see hundreds of new species images continuously being uploaded to Commons. We are already planning another collaboration with Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae which will grant us permission to upload their otherwise-copyrighted images to Commons under CC-BY-SA 3.0 to illustrate articles in WMF. We also granted special access to their pdf papers without a 2-year delay. Has any WMF projects successfully worked out collaborations to get large quantities of new species images in high quality and accuracy? Andrew Fill the world with children who care and things start looking up. On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Klaus Graf klausgraf at googlemail.comwrote: I cannot understand why WMF is unable to terminate Wikispecies which is a zero quality project. See http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gnom/Wikispecies (also in English) Klaus Graf Propose it be closed at Meta then. -- Alex (User:Majorly) _ Stay on top of things, check email from other accounts! http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9671355 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l _ Send and receive email from all of your webmail accounts. http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9671356 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:51 PM, Kropotkine_113 kropotkine...@free.frwrote: Just few questions to make my opinion. Has Matt Halprin been designated to the Board by the Nominating Commitee (NOMCOM) ? This is explicity required if I read correctly this page : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announcement_Q%26A If he has, when ? Before or after the 2M$ grant negociation ? Does he fulfill the Nomitanig Commitee selection criterion : Membership in the Wikimedia community ? http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee/Selection_criteria#General_needed_traits Where is the list of the other candidates designated by the NOMCOM ? Could we see the discussions and the recommandations of the nominating commitee ? Is it possible to know which member of the Board of Trustees agree this appointment ? Or at least juste the repartition support/against in the Board ? Thanks, Kropotkine_113 You're misunderstanding the role of the nominating committee and the selection criteria page. The criteria page, as it notes, is for brainstorming the type of candidate characteristics the Board needs. The nominating committee is a group of folks whose role is to help the board locate promising candidates. Authority to appoint Board members (elected or otherwise) rests with the Board. The agita over Halprin's appointment is a little overwrought. Allusions to community upset or hints at conflicts of interest won't be taken seriously unless some evidence of an actual problem can be presented. In what situations precisely will a conflict of interest occur? What evidence is there that the wider community has any problem with this at all, or is likely to, aside from a few high-volume Foundation-l posters? I'm amazed that it hasn't ever hit some people that a confrontational and self-righteous approach is quite rarely effective at getting results when your voice is your only power. Nathan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
Hi Thomas, On Aug 26, 2009, at 2:48 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Wikimedia is a community driven movement, big decisions should be made by the community. Those are undoubtedly interesting assertions. Assuming the second one is the case (big decisions should be made by the community), it raises even more the question of why it is necessary or appropiate for the selection of Foundation board seats to be discussed with the project communities, doesn't it? That would really only make sense if you expect the Foundation to make decisions that significantly impact activities within the projects, something you just ruled out. So why? Best regards, Sebastian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
Sebastian Moleski hett schreven: This may be a heretic question but I'd like to pose it anyway: why should it be necessary or appropriate for the Foundation to discuss this subject with the project communities? How does this appointment have any impact on the activities within the projects? Best regards, Sebastian The foundation is nothing. The foundation has no meaning by itself. It's just a real-world manifestation of the spirit that is our community. This manifestation is necessary, cause the community as a diffuse object cannot do things like buying servers, signing treaties etc. The foundation is an avatar. This is the sole reason why a foundation exists. To enable the community to act outside cyperspace. Therefore ideally there should be no decision without knowledge and acceptance of the community. Marcus Buck User:Slomox ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:37 PM, Brianbrian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: This kind of fear mongering attitude is why we can't allow more members of the community to vote. You'd rather spread FUD about vote buying than design a system that allows the largest number of community members to vote. What on earth are you talking about? Tim is concerned about legitimate risk. I don't share Tim's opinion on the matter but I certainly don't consider it fear mongering. Like anything else it's a decision where benefits must be weighed vs costs. Fortunately the decision to disclose ballots isn't one that interacts heavily with making the voting system open to many people. On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/26 Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org: Let me say for the record that I'm not at all happy with this data being released, since it allows vote-buying. I'm inclined to agree. I just don't see any sufficient benefit to releasing the data to make it worth the risk. Why do people want this information? Is it just because they don't trust the vote count? Benefit: Increased resistance to tampering by the vote operators Benefit: Increased community confidence in the process (because of the above) Benefit: Increased information available to voting system researchers (I think we're the only source of real ranked preferential ballots) Benefit: Increased information to inform future campaigns (knowing that ~10% of the voters last year only ranked Ting is very useful information, for candidates and for everyone contributing to the election process) Cost: Increased risk of compromising voter confidentiality (leaking information through ballot ordering) Cost: Increased risk of external manipulation (via vote buying) Cost: The actual effort required to post the data Thomas, can you tell me the names of the *people* who could have completely rigged the election in the absence of ballot disclosures? (Here is a hint: It's not the election committee) How can you trust these people absolutely when you can't even name them? Can anyone here not employed by the foundation or on the election committee do so? Even if you can trust them to be honest, can you trust them not to make mistakes? Why? They have made mistakes in the past. I have no reason to believe anyone trusted would screw with the election results intentionally. But why trust when we can verify? Vote buying is a real risk but there are many ways to catch it and the secrecy of vote buying is likely to be inversely proportional to its effects, moreover, preventing ballot disclosure only stops one form of vote buying. It would be more effective, but more development costly, to buy votes by paying people to either run some browser extension that fills out and submits the ballot for them, or give them your authentication-cookies and act as a proxy for them to open the HTTPS connection to the back-end server and vote as you. In the latter case the voter couldn't even fake out the payer. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
I just ask few questions. I did not mention conflict of interest nor community upset in my post. I'm not a high-volume Foundation-l poster (maybe 1 or 2 posts in three years), but an intensive reader. About the nominating commitee, in this QA page : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announcement_Q%26A I read : Q : How will the Board appoint the specific experts seats? A : Beginning in January 2009, four Trustees will be appointed by the Board from a list of candidates selected by nominating commitee. Which is slighty different than the nomitaning commitee help the board to locate promising candidates. Sorry to disturb your foundation-l but I just want to have some explanations that I didn't find in this thread. Is this possible ? If not, no problem, I'll go back to other activities. Kropotkine_113 Le mercredi 26 août 2009 à 14:01 -0400, Nathan a écrit : On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:51 PM, Kropotkine_113 kropotkine...@free.frwrote: Just few questions to make my opinion. Has Matt Halprin been designated to the Board by the Nominating Commitee (NOMCOM) ? This is explicity required if I read correctly this page : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announcement_Q%26A If he has, when ? Before or after the 2M$ grant negociation ? Does he fulfill the Nomitanig Commitee selection criterion : Membership in the Wikimedia community ? http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee/Selection_criteria#General_needed_traits Where is the list of the other candidates designated by the NOMCOM ? Could we see the discussions and the recommandations of the nominating commitee ? Is it possible to know which member of the Board of Trustees agree this appointment ? Or at least juste the repartition support/against in the Board ? Thanks, Kropotkine_113 You're misunderstanding the role of the nominating committee and the selection criteria page. The criteria page, as it notes, is for brainstorming the type of candidate characteristics the Board needs. The nominating committee is a group of folks whose role is to help the board locate promising candidates. Authority to appoint Board members (elected or otherwise) rests with the Board. The agita over Halprin's appointment is a little overwrought. Allusions to community upset or hints at conflicts of interest won't be taken seriously unless some evidence of an actual problem can be presented. In what situations precisely will a conflict of interest occur? What evidence is there that the wider community has any problem with this at all, or is likely to, aside from a few high-volume Foundation-l posters? I'm amazed that it hasn't ever hit some people that a confrontational and self-righteous approach is quite rarely effective at getting results when your voice is your only power. Nathan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 2:13 PM, Brianbrian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: The reason we let such a tiny fraction of the community vote is because of an irrational and inflated fear of fraudulent votes. The risk has been blown entirely out of proportion and absolutely no technical measures have been been pursued. The Board and those who they coordinate with technically sit around and drum up the scariest possible situations they can think of and then develop a policy which prevents it from happening without even considering technologies that would allow more people to vote. You say its a legitimate risk, but you do not quantify how risky you believe it is. The answer is that it is almost zero. You've conflated issues. Regardless how how eligibility works the decision to release ballots or not has implications. It's a separate issue. I'm not sure how to make it more clear that were not discussing voter eligibility here. So instead lets discuss eligibility some: Can you provide the eligibility criteria you'd like to apply? Please be precise and actionable, i.e. make sure that I could write a program using the publicly available data to determine eligibility. I think this would be most enlightening. (Oh, and in the future please provide citations when you make claims like 'the board is drumming up scary situations', because as far as I know it's not correct and you're just ranting.) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 12:08 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.comwrote: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:37 PM, Brianbrian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: This kind of fear mongering attitude is why we can't allow more members of the community to vote. You'd rather spread FUD about vote buying than design a system that allows the largest number of community members to vote. What on earth are you talking about? Tim is concerned about legitimate risk. I don't share Tim's opinion on the matter but I certainly don't consider it fear mongering. Like anything else it's a decision where benefits must be weighed vs costs. Fortunately the decision to disclose ballots isn't one that interacts heavily with making the voting system open to many people. The reason we let such a tiny fraction of the community vote is because of an irrational and inflated fear of fraudulent votes. The risk has been blown entirely out of proportion and absolutely no technical measures have been been pursued. The Board and those who they coordinate with technically sit around and drum up the scariest possible situations they can think of and then develop a policy which prevents it from happening without even considering technologies that would allow more people to vote. You say its a legitimate risk, but you do not quantify how risky you believe it is. The answer is that it is almost zero. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
2009/8/26 Sebastian Moleski seb...@gmail.com: Hi Thomas, On Aug 26, 2009, at 2:48 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Wikimedia is a community driven movement, big decisions should be made by the community. Those are undoubtedly interesting assertions. Assuming the second one is the case (big decisions should be made by the community), it raises even more the question of why it is necessary or appropiate for the selection of Foundation board seats to be discussed with the project communities, doesn't it? That would really only make sense if you expect the Foundation to make decisions that significantly impact activities within the projects, something you just ruled out. So why? I consider big to be a stronger term than significant. There are significant decisions that aren't big enough to need community consultation. What individuals to appoint to expert seats falls under that category, for example. I'm not suggesting the community should be making the actual decisions on who to appoint, but we should be the ones deciding on basic values, etc. Whether or not it is appropriate to sell seats on the board is something so basic that I think it should be decided by the community (or, at least, decided after consulting the community, it probably doesn't need an actual vote). ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
Hello [I didn't read the whole thread, apologies if this point has already been made.] On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Those answers don't address the fact that you've just given a seat on the board to someone that has just given you a big pile of cash. It is very common for members of the board of a non-profit organisation to donate money to support this organisation. Actually, it's even a recommended fundraising practice: it's a sign of their commitment. When Board members go discuss with potential donors and ask them to support their cause, one of the first thing that the prospect will ask is: « What about you? What do you do to support this organisation? How much did you donate? ». It won't help to answer: « Hey, dude, I'm already devoting my time to this cause, I don't need to donate money ». You're asking someone to donate money to your cause because you think it's a worthy cause. Why should the prospect donate to a cause that you don't judge worthy enough of your own money? A board member (or volunteer, or anyone who goes around and asks someone to donate money to a cause) has some leverage if they can answer: « I donated $2 million because I think this cause is worthy. How much will you donate? » -- Guillaume Paumier [[m:User:guillom]] http://www.gpaumier.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Guillaume Paumierguillom@gmail.com wrote: [snip] It is very common for members of the board of a non-profit organisation to donate money to support this organisation. It was my understanding that the appointment was of Matt Halprin, not the Omidyar Network. On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Robert Rohderaro...@gmail.com wrote: However, in this case, even if we assume the seat was outright bought for $2M, I don't think there are I'm not sure why people are behaving as though there is any ambiguity on this point. The Omidyar Network agreed to make a donation to the Wikimedia Foundation with the understood condition that their representative would receive a seat on the board. There is no need for speculation, it is what it is, like it or dislike it. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
Guillame said: A board member (or volunteer, or anyone who goes around and asks someone to donate money to a cause) has some leverage if they can answer: « I donated $2 million because I think this cause is worthy. How much will you donate? » +++ How unfortunate for Matt Halprin. As far as I know, it was his employer, Omidyar Network, that made the big donation, not Halprin himself personally. It is amazing to me how shallow is the general comprehension level on this list. I am still awaiting answers for the very simple questions I asked earlier today, about Halprin's history of board memberships. Is anyone working on them, or will I have to do it myself? -- Gregory Kohs ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 12:26 PM, Gregory Maxwellgmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Robert Rohderaro...@gmail.com wrote: However, in this case, even if we assume the seat was outright bought for $2M, I don't think there are I'm not sure why people are behaving as though there is any ambiguity on this point. The Omidyar Network agreed to make a donation to the Wikimedia Foundation with the understood condition that their representative would receive a seat on the board. There is no need for speculation, it is what it is, like it or dislike it. I hedged my language because I don't believe it is that simple. I do believe the money and the seat are linked, but I don't believe just anyone could buy a seat for $2M. For example, I doubt Mr. Kohs would be seated even if he had $2M to offer. Describing the seat as being bought ignores the fact that Mr. Halprin does bring valuable skills, associations, and what appears to be a compatible philosophy. Would he have been appointed without the financial backing? Probably not. But I don't believe it was the only factor under consideration. (Or at least I want to believe that the existing Board is capable of walking away from piles of money if it came with too many strings and conflicts attached.) -Robert Rohde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
Hoi, Gregory, at Wikimania people are REALLY busy with the business of our organisation and your notion that there might be people that are their answer you in what you consider a timely fashion is at odds with reality. Realistically if you get a message in the first place, do not expect anything within a weak ... Alternatively hold your breath ... and maybe this will make a difference ... Thanks. GerardM 2009/8/26 Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com Guillame said: A board member (or volunteer, or anyone who goes around and asks someone to donate money to a cause) has some leverage if they can answer: « I donated $2 million because I think this cause is worthy. How much will you donate? » +++ How unfortunate for Matt Halprin. As far as I know, it was his employer, Omidyar Network, that made the big donation, not Halprin himself personally. It is amazing to me how shallow is the general comprehension level on this list. I am still awaiting answers for the very simple questions I asked earlier today, about Halprin's history of board memberships. Is anyone working on them, or will I have to do it myself? -- Gregory Kohs ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 3:36 PM, Robert Rohderaro...@gmail.com wrote: I hedged my language because I don't believe it is that simple. I do believe the money and the seat are linked, but I don't believe just Thats quite fair, however: anyone could buy a seat for $2M. For example, I doubt Mr. Kohs would be seated even if he had $2M to offer Should we not refer to elected candidates as elected when exactly the same provision applies? [snip] (Or at least I want to believe that the existing Board is capable of walking away from piles of money if it came with too many strings and conflicts attached.) There is absolutely no reason to doubt that. None at all. It happens every single day that the Wikimedia sites do not run advertising. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Gregory Kohsthekoh...@gmail.com wrote: Guillame said: I know my name is unpronounceable to anyone who doesn't speak French, but I would assume copy/pasting isn't that difficult. A board member (or volunteer, or anyone who goes around and asks someone to donate money to a cause) has some leverage if they can answer: « I donated $2 million because I think this cause is worthy. How much will you donate? » How unfortunate for Matt Halprin. As far as I know, it was his employer, Omidyar Network, that made the big donation, not Halprin himself personally. Simply replace my conclusion by « I had my company donate $2 million because I managed to convince them that this cause is worthy. How much will you or your company donate? » -- Guillaume Paumier [[m:User:guillom]] http://www.gpaumier.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
2009/8/26 Robert Rohde raro...@gmail.com: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 12:26 PM, Gregory Maxwellgmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Robert Rohderaro...@gmail.com wrote: However, in this case, even if we assume the seat was outright bought for $2M, I don't think there are I'm not sure why people are behaving as though there is any ambiguity on this point. The Omidyar Network agreed to make a donation to the Wikimedia Foundation with the understood condition that their representative would receive a seat on the board. There is no need for speculation, it is what it is, like it or dislike it. I hedged my language because I don't believe it is that simple. I do believe the money and the seat are linked, but I don't believe just anyone could buy a seat for $2M. For example, I doubt Mr. Kohs would be seated even if he had $2M to offer. Describing the seat as being bought ignores the fact that Mr. Halprin does bring valuable skills, associations, and what appears to be a compatible philosophy. Would he have been appointed without the financial backing? Probably not. But I don't believe it was the only factor under consideration. (Or at least I want to believe that the existing Board is capable of walking away from piles of money if it came with too many strings and conflicts attached.) Now we're arguing about semantics. I'm sure the board wouldn't appoint someone they didn't think would be good for the job regardless of the money offered, but I also don't think they would have appointed Matt without the money. I think that fits the definition of sell, others may disagree but it is semantics and is unimportant. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
2009/8/26 Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Guillaume Paumierguillom@gmail.com wrote: [snip] It is very common for members of the board of a non-profit organisation to donate money to support this organisation. It was my understanding that the appointment was of Matt Halprin, not the Omidyar Network. Yes, and that makes a difference legally. It doesn't make much difference in reality, though. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 3:48 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: I think that fits the definition of sell, others may disagree but it is semantics and is unimportant. Is it unimportant? We're discussing how this action is perceived as having bought a seat, so I'd say that that semantics and interpretations definitely are important here. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 3:52 PM, Casey Brownli...@caseybrown.org wrote: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 3:48 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: I think that fits the definition of sell, others may disagree but it is semantics and is unimportant. Is it unimportant? We're discussing how this action is perceived as having bought a seat, so I'd say that that semantics and interpretations definitely are important here. Is any of it? It doesn't appear that anyone outside of troll-l^wfoundation-l cares. Even over at Wikipedia review the response has been more along the lines of Wow, they suckered Omidyar!. Much of the discussion here seems to be a concern that someone platonic community member will be outraged, not that the participants themselves are more than mildly disappointed. When ENWP changes their site notice to direct readers to a wikinews smear piece about the board selling a seat— then we can worry. Until then, this seems like a lot of pointless lip-flapping. Cheers. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
My two cents - The Board telegraphed this ahead of time, not the particulars (who/when) but the generalities. The process is not unusual for other charitable organizations. There are more community members (active or ex) on the Board than any other category. There still will be even if all the potential / authorized expert slots are filled. While there is always a theoretical potential for some sort of un-core-principles like covert coup from within, there is whether one invites external board members in or not and whether or not we accept money from people with strings. I see no sign that any of the staff or board are interested in any such thing. They seem to be doing a lot of Make the charity a serious, self-sustaining organization, in addition to just keeping the lights on for the servers. But that's the purpose of the Foundation. A pure volunteer pure individual donations organization can't accomplish the stability and help expand open access to information in the way we all would like to see. We (the community) wanted this growth and maturity. We hired people who can do this growth and mature the organization, and are moving down the track in the direction we asked them to go. The strings here are probably to our advantage - more competent people with wider experience and sharing our core values on the Board is a good thing, not a bad one. Bravo to the Board and Staff for this. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
Hello Kropotkine_113, since I am on the NomCom I will answer your questions. Kropotkine_113 wrote: Has Matt Halprin been designated to the Board by the Nominating Commitee (NOMCOM) ? This is explicity required if I read correctly this page : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announcement_Q%26A This is not correct. Essentially the NomCom should nominate the board members, and should do this at the end of last year. But it didn't worked out. There are multiple reasons for that. Basically that was the first time that we worked how it can work and how not. We are simply lack of experience. So, it didn't work out last winter. We should have four nominated candidates appointed to the board by the begin of 2009 but we had only two by that time. According to the bylaw of the Foundation IV 6 the board can appoint trustees because of vacancy, this is the case. So Matt was not on the NomCom list. But we had informed the NomCom though about this process. After Wikimania the NomCom would resume its work and make suggestions for next year. So Matt would be included by NomCom in its list that it would suggest to the board by December or would drop out. Does he fulfill the Nomitanig Commitee selection criterion : Membership in the Wikimedia community ? http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee/Selection_criteria#General_needed_traits Where is the list of the other candidates designated by the NOMCOM ? The list of NomCom is not published because of privacy. It is a very simple thing. If someone is suggested on the list and he is not selected or he declined, in either cases can it can both be embarassing for the person as well as for the Foundation. So the NomCom had decided on its first meeting that the list would not be published and should be kept confidential. This would also be the case for the coming years. Could we see the discussions and the recommandations of the nominating commitee ? Because of the nature of the confidenciality of the NomCom the discussion are kept internal. But there are meeting minutes and the mailing list is archived. The NomCom published a status report which is published here: [1] Is it possible to know which member of the Board of Trustees agree this appointment ? Or at least juste the repartition support/against in the Board ? The discussion about this assignment and the voting about it would be published as one of the topics of the August board meeting. I want to respect the secratory offices role here and don't make any announcements prior of Kat's publication of the minutes. What I can say at this point is that I voted for Matt for the following reasons: First of all Jimmy and Michael interviewed and talked with Matt. Both of them had recommended him as a valuable plus for the board. The board had interviewed Matt in Buenos Aires, had discussed all the problems that may be raised or values that may be added. According of all these evaluations I feel no problem as voting for him. We worked with Matt in Buenos Aires during our strategic planning session and I feel that our positive evaluation was confirmed as Matt had inputted a lot of insights out of his experiences about procedures and measurements of success. Ting [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_committee ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
Le mercredi 26 août 2009 à 22:44 +0200, Ting Chen a écrit : Hello Kropotkine_113, Hello Ting, since I am on the NomCom I will answer your questions. Kropotkine_113 wrote: Has Matt Halprin been designated to the Board by the Nominating Commitee (NOMCOM) ? This is explicity required if I read correctly this page : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announcement_Q%26A This is not correct. Essentially the NomCom should nominate the board members, and should do this at the end of last year. But it didn't worked out. There are multiple reasons for that. Basically that was the first time that we worked how it can work and how not. We are simply lack of experience. So, it didn't work out last winter. We should have four nominated candidates appointed to the board by the begin of 2009 but we had only two by that time. According to the bylaw of the Foundation IV 6 the board can appoint trustees because of vacancy, this is the case. So Matt was not on the NomCom list. But we had informed the NomCom though about this process. After Wikimania the NomCom would resume its work and make suggestions for next year. So Matt would be included by NomCom in its list that it would suggest to the board by December or would drop out. Ok. It would be interesting to explain that more explicitely somewhere (on meta or on wikimediafoundation's wiki) because It was not so obvious (or I didn't understain...) when I read the QA page I mentionned. Does he fulfill the Nomitanig Commitee selection criterion : Membership in the Wikimedia community ? http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee/Selection_criteria#General_needed_traits Where is the list of the other candidates designated by the NOMCOM ? The list of NomCom is not published because of privacy. It is a very simple thing. If someone is suggested on the list and he is not selected or he declined, in either cases can it can both be embarassing for the person as well as for the Foundation. So the NomCom had decided on its first meeting that the list would not be published and should be kept confidential. This would also be the case for the coming years. Ok. Could we see the discussions and the recommandations of the nominating commitee ? Because of the nature of the confidenciality of the NomCom the discussion are kept internal. But there are meeting minutes and the mailing list is archived. The NomCom published a status report which is published here: [1] Ok. Is it possible to know which member of the Board of Trustees agree this appointment ? Or at least juste the repartition support/against in the Board ? The discussion about this assignment and the voting about it would be published as one of the topics of the August board meeting. I want to respect the secratory offices role here and don't make any announcements prior of Kat's publication of the minutes. What I can say at this point is that I voted for Matt for the following reasons: First of all Jimmy and Michael interviewed and talked with Matt. Both of them had recommended him as a valuable plus for the board. The board had interviewed Matt in Buenos Aires, had discussed all the problems that may be raised or values that may be added. According of all these evaluations I feel no problem as voting for him. We worked with Matt in Buenos Aires during our strategic planning session and I feel that our positive evaluation was confirmed as Matt had inputted a lot of insights out of his experiences about procedures and measurements of success. Thank you for all these explanations and for wasting your time to answer. Ting Kropotkine_113 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 21:26, Gregory Maxwellgmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Guillaume Paumierguillom@gmail.com wrote: [snip] It is very common for members of the board of a non-profit organisation to donate money to support this organisation. It was my understanding that the appointment was of Matt Halprin, not the Omidyar Network. On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Robert Rohderaro...@gmail.com wrote: However, in this case, even if we assume the seat was outright bought for $2M, I don't think there are I'm not sure why people are behaving as though there is any ambiguity on this point. The Omidyar Network agreed to make a donation to the Wikimedia Foundation with the understood condition that their representative would receive a seat on the board. If you're going to be consistent with your first comment (above: appointment is of Matt Halprin, not ON), then the word representative is probably not the right one. (not denying any connection or anything, just pointing out semantics) Delphine -- ~notafish NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails will get lost. Intercultural musings: Ceci n'est pas une endive - http://blog.notanendive.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
Kropotkine_113 wrote: Ok. It would be interesting to explain that more explicitely somewhere (on meta or on wikimediafoundation's wiki) because It was not so obvious (or I didn't understain...) when I read the QA page I mentionned. I agree, we will improve that. Thank you for all these explanations and for wasting your time to answer. This by no mean a waste of time. It is my duty to answer your questions. -- Ting Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
I will confirm Ting's explanation here regarding NomCom. There was no list for 2009 appointments. So it is true that Matt was not on the 2009 list. No one was. Matt was interviewed by Micheal and Sue, who as members of Nomcom, were aware of our decision to focus on finding expertise in both fundraising and 501(c)(3) organizations for the vacant seats. I find Matt to be a great fit for WMF with the sort of experience we have been most anxious for. Personally I wish that Nomcom could have located Matt a year ago and presented him as part of a Oct 15 2008 list and that he would have been able to share is experience with WMF throughout this year instead of just this short interm. This of course did not happen, but it should not seen a fault of Matt's that it was not the case. Birgitte SB --- On Wed, 8/26/09, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: From: Ting Chen wing..phil...@gmx.de Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, August 26, 2009, 3:44 PM Hello Kropotkine_113, since I am on the NomCom I will answer your questions. Kropotkine_113 wrote: Has Matt Halprin been designated to the Board by the Nominating Commitee (NOMCOM) ? This is explicity required if I read correctly this page : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announcement_Q%26A This is not correct. Essentially the NomCom should nominate the board members, and should do this at the end of last year. But it didn't worked out. There are multiple reasons for that. Basically that was the first time that we worked how it can work and how not. We are simply lack of experience. So, it didn't work out last winter. We should have four nominated candidates appointed to the board by the begin of 2009 but we had only two by that time. According to the bylaw of the Foundation IV 6 the board can appoint trustees because of vacancy, this is the case. So Matt was not on the NomCom list. But we had informed the NomCom though about this process. After Wikimania the NomCom would resume its work and make suggestions for next year. So Matt would be included by NomCom in its list that it would suggest to the board by December or would drop out. Does he fulfill the Nomitanig Commitee selection criterion : Membership in the Wikimedia community ? http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee/Selection_criteria#General_needed_traits Where is the list of the other candidates designated by the NOMCOM ? The list of NomCom is not published because of privacy. It is a very simple thing. If someone is suggested on the list and he is not selected or he declined, in either cases can it can both be embarassing for the person as well as for the Foundation. So the NomCom had decided on its first meeting that the list would not be published and should be kept confidential. This would also be the case for the coming years. Could we see the discussions and the recommandations of the nominating commitee ? Because of the nature of the confidenciality of the NomCom the discussion are kept internal. But there are meeting minutes and the mailing list is archived. The NomCom published a status report which is published here: [1] Is it possible to know which member of the Board of Trustees agree this appointment ? Or at least juste the repartition support/against in the Board ? The discussion about this assignment and the voting about it would be published as one of the topics of the August board meeting. I want to respect the secratory offices role here and don't make any announcements prior of Kat's publication of the minutes. What I can say at this point is that I voted for Matt for the following reasons: First of all Jimmy and Michael interviewed and talked with Matt. Both of them had recommended him as a valuable plus for the board. The board had interviewed Matt in Buenos Aires, had discussed all the problems that may be raised or values that may be added. According of all these evaluations I feel no problem as voting for him. We worked with Matt in Buenos Aires during our strategic planning session and I feel that our positive evaluation was confirmed as Matt had inputted a lot of insights out of his experiences about procedures and measurements of success. Ting [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_committee ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why can't we have $12.5 million for Wikispecies?
On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 1:01 AM, James Forresterja...@jdforrester.org wrote: 2009/8/26 John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com: On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 12:41 AM, James Forresterja...@jdforrester.org wrote: I think the point is that the fundamental design of MediaWiki - around a single block of unstructured information - is not useful for a semantic project like WSp; there are much better ways of doing it. Toolserver projects cannot add functionality to the core in a proper way. Extensions like Semantic MediaWiki try, but in the end we are trying to 'fix' it, I'm afraid. Wikis are not unstructured. Wikis aren't in general; MediaWiki is. Writing into an unstructured wiki in a structured, regulated way is a lot of work, and punishes the humans for our failure to provide the right tools. And yet ... this is what every successful wiki does. Wikipedia is extremely structured. The writers are not always expected to know the structure; gnomes do the tidying up. I would love to see the mediawiki software improved, especially merging in semantic functionality, but the ability to add semantics is available. The structure is not defined, but it is added as needed. Here is a tool that relies on the added structure of the Wikisource bibles. http://toolserver.org/~Magnus/biblebay.php?bookname=Genesisbooknumber=1range=1 And here is the code for that tool: https://fisheye.toolserver.org/browse/Magnus/biblebay.php?r=1 The more structure provided by the wiki, the better the tools can query it. Asking users to expend a huge level of effort to make their changes proper when a proper system would do it for them is not respectful and (as shown) not effective. It's impressive that people can edit in such a well-regulated way that we can programmatically extract semantic information, but it's not a stable, easy-to-use way of doing it. It's also fundamentally anti-wiki, as new users will often make mistakes that make things worse, not better; biting the newbies built into the very code. The Wikisource Bible projects were structured this way by the users. Magnus surprised us by creating a tool which used the structure which we had already put in place. Likewise the templates on Wikispecies are great time savers. The existing structure is quite good. They just need tools to mine it. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why can't we have $12.5 million for Wikispecies?
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 9:30 PM, John Vandenbergjay...@gmail.com wrote: And yet ... this is what every successful wiki does. Wikipedia is extremely structured. The writers are not always expected to know the structure; gnomes do the tidying up. You must have an enormously different idea of extremely structured than I do. I once created software to extract lat/long from Wikitext on enwp and gave up when I got to the 100th or so distinct template invocation which did almost but not quite exactly the same thing. Go search the archives for some of my example bat-shit category linkage maps. It's extremely structures compared to complete anarchy, or perhaps extremely structured compared to the human body. It's not structured compared to normal sources of data. Not at all. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why can't we have $12.5 million for Wikispecies?
On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Gregory Maxwellgmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 9:30 PM, John Vandenbergjay...@gmail.com wrote: And yet ... this is what every successful wiki does. Wikipedia is extremely structured. The writers are not always expected to know the structure; gnomes do the tidying up. You must have an enormously different idea of extremely structured than I do. I once created software to extract lat/long from Wikitext on enwp and gave up when I got to the 100th or so distinct template invocation which did almost but not quite exactly the same thing. Go search the archives for some of my example bat-shit category linkage maps. It's extremely structures compared to complete anarchy, or perhaps extremely structured compared to the human body. It's not structured compared to normal sources of data. Not at all. English Wikipedia is not well structured for many data mining tasks. The problem domain is much larger and the content more dynamic, but there are also too many cooks and partially implemented ideas, and not enough concern about consistency and re-use. The Creator Author namespace on Commons Wikisource respectively are a better example of structured information that can be mined. Wikispecies pages have a limited amount of information on them, and it is quite sensibly structured. And I'd bet that the Wikispecies community is also going to be more accommodating of any proposals to increase standardisation of the content in order to allow mining. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 8:10 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Experts should sit on the advisory board where they can advise members of the community who sit on the board of trustees. I think this is one of the main and very good points the board should consider in the long run. (Very fitting for now with our Strategic Planning project!) The Advisory Board hasn't really been used that well, at least not to my knowledge. There should probably be more effort placed on taking advantage of that expertise there, but also keeping in mind the community-related expertise (ie. this mailing list). It's all a balancing act that we'll need to get the hang of. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why can't we have $12.5 million for Wikispecies?
I don't mind repeating again. EOL boasts to have large amount of images, but do you know that according to some of EOL's partner projects, EOL has not handled any data submitted by its partners for over a year ago? Yes, they do have lots and lots of images but many are simply sitting in a hard drive waiting for the page to be created so the images can be incorporated. We're an active community, making progress and edging towards 200,000 articles very soon. What we need is not a proposal for deleting this project, but more publicity and contributors. P.S. We're constantly looking for bot owners to retrieve data from various databases and create articles automatically (e.g. http://species.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributionsdir=prevtarget=MonoBot) Andrew Fill the world with children who care and things start looking up. From: brian.min...@colorado.edu Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:48:45 -0600 To: nemow...@gmail.com; foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Why can't we have $12.5 million for Wikispecies? On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 9:11 PM, Nemo_bis nemow...@gmail.com wrote: See http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/aug/21/encyclopedia-life-species Where's the problem with Wikispecies? Moreover, EOL received 33.000 images from individual contributors (http://www.flickr.com/groups/encyclopedia_of_life), Wikispecies didn't. So, why is EOL succeeding, and Wikispecies seemingly doesn't? Is it useful to have two overlapping projects like these? Nemo Encyclopedia of life has a much larger vision that WikiSpecies. They envision a day when autonomous robots scour the earth, collecting and documenting specimens, including full genome scans, for all creatures that remain, uploading the data to the encyclopedia automatically. And they plan to be part of making that happen. Having such an inspiring vision guiding your project is essential for success over competing projects. Additionally, EOL has entered the public consciousness, its most recent jumpstart being a Ted wish. That wish means that some of the worlds leading thinkers are aware of EOL, and some of the worlds biggest funders as well. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l _ Send and receive email from all of your webmail accounts. http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9671356 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
2009/8/27 Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org: The Advisory Board hasn't really been used that well, at least not to my knowledge. There should probably be more effort placed on taking advantage of that expertise there, but also keeping in mind the community-related expertise (ie. this mailing list). It's all a balancing act that we'll need to get the hang of. I think part of the problem is that there were some odd ideas about how the Advisory Board would work. For example, it has a chair. I can't work out why. Why would the advisory board ever meet as a group? Being an expert is only of use if you are an expert in the subject being discussed. Individual members of the advisory board should be approached as and when their expertise is needed. That doesn't seem to be how the group was originally envisaged, which explains why it was never used - as designed, it was pretty useless. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:24 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: I think part of the problem is that there were some odd ideas about how the Advisory Board would work. For example, it has a chair. I can't work out why. Why would the advisory board ever meet as a group? Being an expert is only of use if you are an expert in the subject being discussed. Individual members of the advisory board should be [snip] Presumably a chair can track membership and expertise and handle routing messages to the relevant parties, participate with recruiting, and otherwise act as an impedance match between the board proper and the advisory board. I'm not sure if that was what was envisioned, or if chair is the best name for it, but I think that it's a reasonable alternative to the sort of flat structure that you're describing. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
For some background reference, * original resolution creating the Advisory Board: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Advisory_board * current Advisory Board with biographies: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_Board On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:24 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: I think part of the problem is that there were some odd ideas about how the Advisory Board would work. For example, it has a chair. I can't work out why. Why would the advisory board ever meet as a group? Well, it actually has had two meetings: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Advisory_Board On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 8:10 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: To summarise, my suggestion is to abolish all the expert seats on the WMF board of trustees Going along with this, based on another thread about the Nomination Committee, if this was done NOMCOM could instead be tasked with looking to expand the Advisory Board with necessary characteristics. (Basically the same goals/tasks, but directed in a different place.) -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
Wait, wait, wait. I thought we had all formed consensus that the appointment of Matt Halprin and his $2 million briefcase full of money was an ideal (or, at least nearly ideal) measure of progress and success for the Wikimedia Foundation. I was about to announce a call for a standing ovation, with a sporadic Huzzah! or two to punctuate our support! Now you've got this wild idea, Thomas, to totally revamp the Board structure? What are you, some kind of troll who won't toe the party line? Actually, I think your idea is a step backwards, Thomas. Without the full immersion of at least four outside experts directly on the Board, how will the outside world ever come face-to-face with exactly how amazing is this Foundation, that it not only can't recognize conflict of interest and self-dealing snafus -- it actually actively seeks them out?! Just like they tried to rocket a few school teachers up into space, so that they can come back and recount to students first-hand what it's like to be in orbit, we need to have outsiders on the WMF Board, so that after their one- or two-year ordeal, they can come back to the mainstream of reality and tell us about how the WMF does its Jedi mind trick. -- Gregory Kohs ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
Kropotkine_113 wrote: Does he fulfill the Nomitanig Commitee selection criterion : Membership in the Wikimedia community ? http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee/Selection_criteria#General_needed_traits Ting already answered the rest of these questions, but I will elaborate on this one. The page is perhaps not completely clear, but the Nominating Committee used it as a workspace to brainstorm and prioritize possible criteria. Thus, it was not decided that we should make membership in the Wikimedia community a criterion for the appointed seats, as most of us did not think this was a priority. I think this is quite understandable, since these seats are designed to allow us to find outside expertise for areas not already covered by the board members selected by the community. Neither Matt nor anyone else pretends that he was a member of the Wikimedia community before he was appointed to the board. I know that he was looking forward to getting to know people from the community at Wikimania, though. --Michael Snow ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikispecies
On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 3:52 AM, Andrew Leungandrewcle...@hotmail.com wrote: .. We often get compared between Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), so I grabbed a correspondence with someone who shares data to both EOL and Wikispecies (permission already granted beforehand by these 2 individuals on quoting this email). The Zookeys, a peer-reviewed scientific journal on species, publisher Dr. Lyubomir Penev said this to a Wikispecies editor: Today I was amazed to see that your latest edit of the Haplodesmidae page (with my Agathodesmus revision and Sergei Golovatch's Eutrichodesmus paper) was dated 19 June, *one day* after ZooKeys published it. You may even have beaten ZooBank, which links to ZooKeys. :-) Wikispecies will have a niche if it can prove to be regularly on the leading edge. Has there been any discussions about putting newly described species onto the front page? If the information is made accessible, Wikinews editors could write up stories about new discoveries. Finally, to dismiss any claims that Wikispecies is a zero quality project, we have an agreed collaboration with ZooKeys, which will see hundreds of new species images continuously being uploaded to Commons. We are already planning another collaboration with Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae which will grant us permission to upload their otherwise-copyrighted images to Commons under CC-BY-SA 3.0 to illustrate articles in WMF. We also granted special access to their pdf papers without a 2-year delay. Has any WMF projects successfully worked out collaborations to get large quantities of new species images in high quality and accuracy? What is the 2-year delay ? I have looked at the AEMNP website, and all of their articles appear to be availabl on their website. What is their open access policy? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Acta_Entomologica_Musei_Nationalis_Pragae -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
