Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 7:52 AM, Ryan Lomonacowiki.ral...@gmail.com wrote: The rules did disenfranchise me, for example. It doesn't bother me that I can't vote, but that said, I would've liked to vote if eligible. I am not active on Wikipedia, but I do follow the mailing lists, and have followed the election process. If I really wanted to, I could've racked up 50 edits to get a vote, but that almost seems dirty, I guess, to make edits just to regain eligibility for the election. I think that mailing lists posts should be treated as edits. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Hello, On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 8:40 AM, Milos Rancicmill...@gmail.com wrote: I think that mailing lists posts should be treated as edits. Thank you; this sentence made my day. -- Guillaume Paumier [[m:User:guillom]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Hoi, When we have consensus on that one, someone has to count them.. So what piority do we give it and, what do we bumb down the list ? Alternatively who is volunteering to write the necessary software anyway and how are we going to get it operational ?? PS I like the idea grin Thanks, GerardM 2009/7/31 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 7:52 AM, Ryan Lomonacowiki.ral...@gmail.com wrote: The rules did disenfranchise me, for example. It doesn't bother me that I can't vote, but that said, I would've liked to vote if eligible. I am not active on Wikipedia, but I do follow the mailing lists, and have followed the election process. If I really wanted to, I could've racked up 50 edits to get a vote, but that almost seems dirty, I guess, to make edits just to regain eligibility for the election. I think that mailing lists posts should be treated as edits. ___ 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] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote ru le decided?
Brian brian.min...@... writes: In my view, the only reason to limit voting to editors with a certain number of edits is to limit the effects of ballot stuffing. Not as much ballot stuffing as canvassing. Most of the inactive users do not see the sitenotices and therefore they aren't aware that an election is going on. If you publish this information on channels that reach a certain subgroup of these ex-editors, that can indeed skew the results. (For an example, imagine far-right web portals announcing that there is a far-right candidate running.) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 8:51 AM, Guillaume Paumierguillom@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 8:40 AM, Milos Rancicmill...@gmail.com wrote: I think that mailing lists posts should be treated as edits. Thank you; this sentence made my day. Thank you, too. We share our happiness with each others' sentences. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Hoi, When it is agreed that people can vote based on their mail contributions, the one thing necessary is connecting people to their WMF user. When this information is available on a user, the global user may be made known as a voter. In my opinion you do not want to involve people when there is no need. Automate what can be automated and through a link to a user it can be automated. While I agree that this makes sense, I doubt very much that many people will have a vote as a result of this and even more, I doubt people will cast their vote because they can in this way. Thanks, GerardM 2009/7/31 John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 5:28 PM, Gerard Meijssengerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, When we have consensus on that one, someone has to count them.. So what piority do we give it and, what do we bumb down the list ? Alternatively who is volunteering to write the necessary software anyway and how are we going to get it operational ?? I have been developing a python library that does the mailing list analysis, grouping together posts from the same user that were sent with different email addresses, etc. and doing stats. Those stats can be published monthly onto meta. I think the easiest method of converting this into suffrage is to have a special list where people can be added when they have been granted suffrage for extra-ordinary reasons. At election time we inform people who dont qualify via normal means to check the various extra-ordinary suffrage criteria, such as their mail stats, and notify the election committee if they qualify. The election committee would then add the person to the special list. -- John Vandenberg ___ 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] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 7:52 PM, Gerard Meijssengerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, When it is agreed that people can vote based on their mail contributions, the one thing necessary is connecting people to their WMF user. When this information is available on a user, the global user may be made known as a voter. In my opinion you do not want to involve people when there is no need. Automate what can be automated and through a link to a user it can be automated. While I agree that this makes sense, I doubt very much that many people will have a vote as a result of this and even more, I doubt people will cast their vote because they can in this way. It is for this reason that it would be extra-ordinary. Most people who send email to foundation-l would meet the normal suffrage requirements. All I am saying is that _if_ we do agree that emails should be counted as edits, *I* can count them or publish stats that allow others to more easily count them. We have the technology. Do we have the need? Each year there are people who should have suffrage that do not. If I remember correctly, last year the techies were allowed to vote even if they didnt meet the edit criteria. We should learn from the previous elections, and have a panel that reviews extra-ordinary cases. It is worth the effort. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two editsa week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
And what about the people reading all the mail of all the mailing list, they know Wikimedia damn, they too should be allowed to vote. And the people making donations, they're supporting the projects too, they should get a vote. Or not. I'm not fond of the idea. Contributors to the project elect part of the board. If you don't meet the criteria then you can't vote. You need a solid and strong criteria, I don't think the number of sent mails is one. Cheers, Christophe Envoye depuis mon Blackberry -Original Message- From: John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:07:00 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided? On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 7:52 PM, Gerard Meijssengerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, When it is agreed that people can vote based on their mail contributions, the one thing necessary is connecting people to their WMF user. When this information is available on a user, the global user may be made known as a voter. In my opinion you do not want to involve people when there is no need. Automate what can be automated and through a link to a user it can be automated. While I agree that this makes sense, I doubt very much that many people will have a vote as a result of this and even more, I doubt people will cast their vote because they can in this way. It is for this reason that it would be extra-ordinary. Most people who send email to foundation-l would meet the normal suffrage requirements. All I am saying is that _if_ we do agree that emails should be counted as edits, *I* can count them or publish stats that allow others to more easily count them. We have the technology. Do we have the need? Each year there are people who should have suffrage that do not. If I remember correctly, last year the techies were allowed to vote even if they didnt meet the edit criteria. We should learn from the previous elections, and have a panel that reviews extra-ordinary cases. It is worth the effort. -- John Vandenberg ___ 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] [WikiEN-l] IRC Group Contacts Surgery, August 2009
Hi, On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 19:32, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: A few years ago, I had asked that IRC have a searchable archive of discussions. I was told that there were daily logs and I could get one if I asked. I asked, and was denied. Until IRC commits itself to openness, it should have little to no impact on any facet of our project. Without searchable archives, IRC is not open in the modern sense, regardless of who or how you can join it, or view it. The archives of this mailing list are searchable. On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 11:46, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: Why couldn't the logs be released to the public ? Wikimedia's IRC channels have a (very) long-standing no public logging policy with the argument that IRC is not on-wiki and the extra freedom of no logs encourages people to float ideas that they might not otherwise dare to suggest. There are other arguments too. There are plenty of us that disagree with this policy despite being in the front line in enforcing it, including myself. To me, it's foolish because it's totally unenforceable. The people we don't want to post logs - i.e. the trolls - still do so on their various websites, meaning that little is achieved with the policy other than giving ops a good reason to ban troublesome users. There was however little consensus to change the policy when discussions were held maybe a year ago, so nothing was altered, and we continue to enforce the policy as best we can. S -- Sean Whitton / s...@silentflame.com OpenPGP KeyID: 0x25F4EAB7 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
2009/7/31 Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com: For me, the analogy is simple: just because you get a driver's license once doesn't entitle you to drive for the rest of your life. Unless you actively do something wrong and get disqualified, yes it does. The analogy works for not letting banned editors vote, it doesn't work for not letting lapsed editors vote. (And there is the obvious flaw from the fact that we don't require people to take a test to edit.) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Right on. I detect ageism supplementing the recentism. But seriously folks, if fraud were the issue then confirmed identify would overcome the problem. The number-of-recent-edits criterion has two effects that bother me. 1. It effectively puts the vote firmly in the hands of producers not consumers. 2. It effectively discriminates against those with RSI or who are otherwise impaired The first phenomenon is basic. We know damned lilttle about our users and often seem to care less. Perhaps having a little more representation would tilt toward responsiveness to the user base. As important as editors are, I can see at the project level how their interests just don't seem very responsive to users I have been appalled at some of the displays of attitude toward users (imbeciles etc.) The default set up of our wikis limits the ability of many with content knowledge or enthusiasm to contribute in any satisfying way. To entrench those who have encouraged keeping projects as sandboxes they share with the like-minded seems very pernicious to Wikimedia as a movement. I think the Bolsheviks need to have less influence. On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 8:15 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: 2009/7/31 Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com: For me, the analogy is simple: just because you get a driver's license once doesn't entitle you to drive for the rest of your life. Unless you actively do something wrong and get disqualified, yes it does. The analogy works for not letting banned editors vote, it doesn't work for not letting lapsed editors vote. (And there is the obvious flaw from the fact that we don't require people to take a test to edit.) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Dennis C. During Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinity with the deities of other faiths. - Ambrose Bierce http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cynolatry ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 2:40 AM, Milos Rancicmill...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 7:52 AM, Ryan Lomonacowiki.ral...@gmail.com wrote: The rules did disenfranchise me, for example. It doesn't bother me that I can't vote, but that said, I would've liked to vote if eligible. I am not active on Wikipedia, but I do follow the mailing lists, and have followed the election process. If I really wanted to, I could've racked up 50 edits to get a vote, but that almost seems dirty, I guess, to make edits just to regain eligibility for the election. I think that mailing lists posts should be treated as edits. It wouldn't contradict the argument I made. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The end of donations
2009/7/31 stevertigo stv...@gmail.com: It occurs to me that when people donate money to something, it is to some degree with an expectation that the recipient entity grows to eventually gain a certain kind of financial self-sufficiency. Is this not also the case with Wikimedia and many charitable donations to it? -Steven Nope. Many charities of various sizes rely on year to year donations. Financial self-sufficiency is mostly limited to various internet projects that manage to replace donations with ads and merchandise. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Stevertigo
On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 6:42 PM, Tim Starlingtstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: I'm taking Stevertigo off moderation. He has agreed by private email not to continue the dispute resolution mailing list thread. Stevertigo is a long-serving and trusted (if passionate) member of the community. You forgot funny. Anyway, for the record, the last message I sent to that thread - itself quite obviously (from its content) intended to be my last message on that thread - was never posted. Also for the record, I emailed Austin Hair twice for an explanation of the block, and his one terse reply indicates that he must be overworked and in need of some relief. Note also that anytime someone is blocked/moderated from a public or open list, its a common-sense requirement that the list be given notification of the block/moderation, along with an explanation of why. This is standard practice on wikien-l, and I don't quite understand how or why foundation-l can or should do things any differently. -Stevertigo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The end of donations
genigeni...@gmail.com wrote: Nope. Many charities of various sizes rely on year to year donations. Financial self-sufficiency is mostly limited to various internet projects that manage to replace donations with ads and merchandise. Keep in mind Geni, that Wikipedia is not so much an internet project as it is an encyclopedia - the most important general information resource on the planet - if not yet the most accurate and substantive. The internet is just the recently-developed efficient content delivery system - just as the wiki software is just an interface to manage the databased content. The project transcends both wiki and internet - which are just the tools that make it work. - Stevertigo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Stevertigo
2009/7/31 stevertigo stv...@gmail.com: Note also that anytime someone is blocked/moderated from a public or open list, its a common-sense requirement that the list be given notification of the block/moderation, along with an explanation of why. This is standard practice on wikien-l, and I don't quite understand how or why foundation-l can or should do things any differently. Because they're different lists with different groups of listadmins :-) But it's usually an idea to note when moderating a regular. YMMV etc. Note also that moderation is not blocking. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The end of donations
2009/7/31 stevertigo stv...@gmail.com: My impression is that Wikimedia currently lives year to year on donations, and that reserves are sufficient to pay a skeleton crew of fundraisers. I'm sure its been discussed before though, but yes, it would seem to make sense for Wikimedia - established as its flagship project is - to build an endowment or trust - donation-seeded and transparently managed of course - to cover most yearly costs. My understanding is it was pretty much hand-to-mouth for ages, and that one of Sue Gardner's big projects is making it less so, precisely as you describe - which would be why the WMF has hired quite a few fundraisers in the past year or so. The idea being to build up a reserve and then make that something we might be able to live on. I can't see donations ending, though - and remember that the last one pulled in over its target quite nicely. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Stevertigo
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 11:09 AM, stevertigostv...@gmail.com wrote: Anyway, for the record, the last message I sent to that thread - itself quite obviously (from its content) intended to be my last message on that thread - was never posted. I killfiled the thread, as I noted in two e-mails to the mailing list. The usual process for this involves flagging for moderation all topics with that subject line, and additionally any members I think likely to try to pursue the topic further, for a period of a week or so. Note again that moderation does not mean that you're prevented from posting to the list, only that we look at your posts before sending them on. Had you posted on another topic, your message would have been sent on within a few hours. Also for the record, I emailed Austin Hair twice for an explanation of the block, and his one terse reply indicates that he must be overworked and in need of some relief. I explained my actions in the original thread, but as a courtesy I also replied privately to the only e-mail I received from you reiterating that the thread was killed. I never received a second e-mail. I am generally terse if not succinct, but I don't know what about this suggests that I'm overworked. Note also that anytime someone is blocked/moderated from a public or open list, its a common-sense requirement that the list be given notification of the block/moderation, along with an explanation of why. This is standard practice on wikien-l, and I don't quite understand how or why foundation-l can or should do things any differently. Again, you were not blocked. The only message from you that I held from posting was the one to that thread, and that went for everyone, not just you. And again, I did post in that thread giving notice. Austin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
You know, this comes up every year. And there's always good argument to both sides but there's never consensus to actually change it. There has been an election in one form or another since 2004, and except in 2004 where the requirement was having an account that is at least 3 months old or be a sysop on a project that is less than 3 months old (hey, Wikimedia *was* new after all :D), there has been an edit requirement to vote. Between 2005 to 2007, a voter was required to have had made at least 400 edits to a particular project (by roughly a month before voting) and be at least 3 months old. Last year, the requirement were raised to 600 edits by 3 months prior and 50 edits any time in the previous 6 months with exceptions granted to server administrators, paid staff of at least 3 months old, and current or former trustees. This year the requirement were relaxed slightly such that the 600 edits can be made up to 2 months prior, and with unified accounts combined votes across projects. At the end of the day, what form the suffrage requirements take depends on what group of people we want making that decision. Is it on one extreme the end user of the product, i.e. the readers of Wikipedia, Wikinews, etc...? Is it on the other extreme only people the editing community has decided to entrust with additional privileges, i.e. sysops? Or perhaps only people who have supported the projects in the form of monetary contributions? Or somewhere in between the two extreme, as we have now. Once that has been decided, the technical means of restricting voters to only that group of people can be arrived at, hopefully relatively easily. X number of edits by Y time is just a method of restricting suffrage to the group of people we want. It's a waste of time arguing X should be Z, or edits should include mailing list posting (which mailing list?), MediaWiki commits, Bugzilla bug tickets, ... We could spend all day doing it. Instead of arguing over the method of restriction, define who we want to restrict it to first. KTC -- Experience is a good school but the fees are high. - Heinrich Heine PGP.sig Description: PGP signature ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Kwan Ting Chan k...@ktchan.info wrote: You know, this comes up every year. And there's always good argument to both sides but there's never consensus to actually change it. There has been an election in one form or another since 2004, and except in 2004 where the requirement was having an account that is at least 3 months old or be a sysop on a project that is less than 3 months old (hey, Wikimedia *was* new after all :D), there has been an edit requirement to vote. Between 2005 to 2007, a voter was required to have had made at least 400 edits to a particular project (by roughly a month before voting) and be at least 3 months old. Last year, the requirement were raised to 600 edits by 3 months prior and 50 edits any time in the previous 6 months with exceptions granted to server administrators, paid staff of at least 3 months old, and current or former trustees. This year the requirement were relaxed slightly such that the 600 edits can be made up to 2 months prior, and with unified accounts combined votes across projects. At the end of the day, what form the suffrage requirements take depends on what group of people we want making that decision. Is it on one extreme the end user of the product, i.e. the readers of Wikipedia, Wikinews, etc...? Is it on the other extreme only people the editing community has decided to entrust with additional privileges, i.e. sysops? Or perhaps only people who have supported the projects in the form of monetary contributions? Or somewhere in between the two extreme, as we have now. Once that has been decided, the technical means of restricting voters to only that group of people can be arrived at, hopefully relatively easily. X number of edits by Y time is just a method of restricting suffrage to the group of people we want. It's a waste of time arguing X should be Z, or edits should include mailing list posting (which mailing list?), MediaWiki commits, Bugzilla bug tickets, ... We could spend all day doing it. Instead of arguing over the method of restriction, define who we want to restrict it to first. KTC -- Experience is a good school but the fees are high. - Heinrich Heine Speaking of consensus, where can I find the consensus for severely restricting the number of people who can vote by an arbitrary rule, and where is the consensus for the particular rule? You make it clear that The Powers That Be sit around a coffee table and pick whatever they think is best. In the absence of such a consensus the default would be a more permissive voting system. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Geonotice improvements that could make Wikinews great (among other benefits)
The Strategic Planning wiki is a good place to discuss this idea and how it changed and/or implemented: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals/Geonotice_improvements http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Proposals/Geonotice_improvements -Sage On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 12:56 PM, Sage Rossragesoss+wikipe...@gmail.com wrote: One of the great frustrations of Wikinews for me is that it doesn't have a system for identifying and pointing users toward opportunities to get out into the offline world and do original reporting. A fine-grained cross-project opt-in geonotice system could be a solution. Here's how I imagine it working: there is a new opt-in geonotice (in addition to the current one that reaches everyone in the specified geography). For the opt-in geonotice (which would hopefully be able to reach across projects, since many causal Wikinewsies visit that site only rarely) any trusted user could add new items to let nearby people know about reporting or photography opportunities. For these opt-in notices, we would not need to lock down the ability to add items like we do for the current geonotice system (it's a fully protected page), since people who opt-in will expect a bit a noise. So, for example, I would set a notice that Senator Chris Dodd is holding a public discussion about health care reform on such-and-such date in Hartford, Connecticut. I mark this as a photo opportunity and a reporting opportunity. The system sets a default radius (or better yet, users specify the radius they want to be notified within) and everyone within x kilometers of Hartford who has opted in to the notice gets a watchlist message pointing to more details. I can imagine a wide range of tips and events that could be spread to the right people with such a system. This would do a couple things: it would draw in new users to Wikinews, and given enough participation it could provide a resource that is useful for professional journalists. Journalists are eager to figure out useful ways to tap the knowledge of amateurs, and a widely used geography-based tip-line is something that Wikimedia still has a chance to be the first organization to do well. I think finding a way to play a major part in the ongoing changes in the journalism world ought to be a high priority for the Foundation. -Sage Ross (User:Ragesoss) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Philippe Beaudette wrote: I'm sure that if there is significant response to the edit count requirement, next year's committee will happily (he said confidently, with no intent to volunteer for next year's committee) review it then. LOL, how many have you been on now? :P There's no (planned) election next year, I don't think *anyone* is planning on volunteering for a committee that won't exist. ;-) KTC -- Experience is a good school but the fees are high. - Heinrich Heine PGP.sig Description: PGP signature ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Stevertigo
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Austin Hairadh...@gmail.com wrote: I killfiled the thread, as I noted in two e-mails to the mailing list. The usual process for this involves flagging for moderation all topics with that subject line, and additionally any members I think likely to try to pursue the topic further, for a period of a week or so. It's a little late for this. Besides you didn't killfile the thread (whatever that translates to in grown-up terms) - you moderated/blocked me, and did so without serious or even sufficient public notification. The seven-word private reply you gave me (quoted below somewhere) was substandard, as far as explanations go. Note again that moderation does not mean that you're prevented from posting to the list, only that we look at your posts before sending them on. Had you posted on another topic, your message would have been sent on within a few hours. 1) I did post on another topic. 2) Who is we? You? 3) A few hours later is not acceptable, particularly in contexts where discussion moves quickly. I explained my actions in the original thread, but as a courtesy I also replied privately to the only e-mail I received from you reiterating that the thread was killed. I never received a second e-mail. You said nothing courteous in your message. The point is that if you think a simple see my last post in that thread qualifies as either courteous or informative, then - nothing personal - you just need to be replaced. I am generally terse if not succinct, but I don't know what about this suggests that I'm overworked. Again, you were not blocked. You're playing a little semantic game with yourself, Austin - I said blocked/moderated, not blocked. Now consider for a minute what I actually said - that you as moderator are obligated to give notice of blocking and/or moderation. Do you disagree with me? The only message from you that I held from posting was the one to that thread, Yes, and in that post I indicated I would not continue posting to that thread on this list. Assuming your moderating me was valid in the first place, you evaluated my post incorrectly - the evidence being that its still has not been posted. and that went for everyone, not just you. This doesn't even make sense. What went for everyone? And again, I did post in that thread giving notice. No, you said, in inappropriately teenage sysadmin-speak consider this thread killfiled. Even if I had know you were the moderator, I still could not have regarded the content of your message as anything special. -Stevertigo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Stevertigo
Can you guys air your dirty laundry in private? This is not really an appropriate topic to be sending to all the list subscribers, I'd think. --- Rjd0060 rjd0060.w...@gmail.com On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 2:07 PM, stevertigo stv...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Austin Hairadh...@gmail.com wrote: I killfiled the thread, as I noted in two e-mails to the mailing list. The usual process for this involves flagging for moderation all topics with that subject line, and additionally any members I think likely to try to pursue the topic further, for a period of a week or so. It's a little late for this. Besides you didn't killfile the thread (whatever that translates to in grown-up terms) - you moderated/blocked me, and did so without serious or even sufficient public notification. The seven-word private reply you gave me (quoted below somewhere) was substandard, as far as explanations go. Note again that moderation does not mean that you're prevented from posting to the list, only that we look at your posts before sending them on. Had you posted on another topic, your message would have been sent on within a few hours. 1) I did post on another topic. 2) Who is we? You? 3) A few hours later is not acceptable, particularly in contexts where discussion moves quickly. I explained my actions in the original thread, but as a courtesy I also replied privately to the only e-mail I received from you reiterating that the thread was killed. I never received a second e-mail. You said nothing courteous in your message. The point is that if you think a simple see my last post in that thread qualifies as either courteous or informative, then - nothing personal - you just need to be replaced. I am generally terse if not succinct, but I don't know what about this suggests that I'm overworked. Again, you were not blocked. You're playing a little semantic game with yourself, Austin - I said blocked/moderated, not blocked. Now consider for a minute what I actually said - that you as moderator are obligated to give notice of blocking and/or moderation. Do you disagree with me? The only message from you that I held from posting was the one to that thread, Yes, and in that post I indicated I would not continue posting to that thread on this list. Assuming your moderating me was valid in the first place, you evaluated my post incorrectly - the evidence being that its still has not been posted. and that went for everyone, not just you. This doesn't even make sense. What went for everyone? And again, I did post in that thread giving notice. No, you said, in inappropriately teenage sysadmin-speak consider this thread killfiled. Even if I had know you were the moderator, I still could not have regarded the content of your message as anything special. -Stevertigo ___ 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] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: Allow me, please, to reinforce this, wearing my election committee member hat. This years' rules were mostly carryovers from last years' rules. When we started, we looked around, realized that no significant opposition to last years' rules had been expressed, checked the talk pages to be sure, and modified the rules to cover anything we thought needed to be changed (for instance, this year we were able to use edits from across wikis, using SUL - which was one of the points of opposition that was raised last year, but there was not a technically feasible method to do it at the time). I'm sure that if there is significant response to the edit count requirement, next year's committee will happily (he said confidently, with no intent to volunteer for next year's committee) review it then. Philippe It should be the goal of all those who hold power to convince the populace that they must arrive at a consensus in order to change the status quo. That way those with power can more easily enact laws that appear uncontroversial and have them enter the status quo. Their power is then enhanced by the inherent difficulty in achieving a consensus, especially when the tools available for reaching consensus on general issues are brittle and difficult to use. It is further enhanced by quoting the status quo standard often, discouraging any attempts to enact change by pointing out that it would be extremely difficult to get everyone to agree since you are a mere individual. An alternate system would, by default, put power back in the hands of the community frequently, taking advantage of the fact that technology makes it trivial to sample their voices as often as seems fair. I suppose you will tell me that I can do this - I just have to vote for a candidate for the board that agrees with my views. This is a great idea, except that I am not eligible to vote. The WMF is a far cry from the original vision of it as a membership organization. Also, the board propagates stale laws under the notion of status quo for which the original consensus is no longer remembered. There is further no top down effort to ask the community if they have any good ideas, and then ask the community what they think about the best of those ideas. That, in my view, is a broken system. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Stevertigo
stevertigo wrote: It's a little late for this. Besides you didn't killfile the thread (whatever that translates to in grown-up terms) - you moderated/blocked me, and did so without serious or even sufficient public notification. The seven-word private reply you gave me (quoted below somewhere) was substandard, as far as explanations go. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file Any emails to the mailing list with that subject line get auto deleted. And you can see, no email with that subject line has appeared since. 1) I did post on another topic. 2) Who is we? You? 3) A few hours later is not acceptable, particularly in contexts where discussion moves quickly. 2. I would supect we are the moderators of the mailing list. 3. That's what being under moderation means. Whether any particular person should be under moderation is a different argument. Yes, and in that post I indicated I would not continue posting to that thread on this list. Assuming your moderating me was valid in the first place, you evaluated my post incorrectly - the evidence being that its still has not been posted. See above. A thread that has been kill file'd gets auto deleted. He or any other moderator can't post it even if they want to. KTC -- Experience is a good school but the fees are high. - Heinrich Heine PGP.sig Description: PGP signature ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Year: 2009 Week: 31 Number: 113
** ____ _ __ _ / / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___ \ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ /| | | |/ /| | | | | __/ \/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___| .org Year: 2009 Week: 31 Number: 113 ** An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community // === Technical news === [arwp: New namespace] - the Arabic Wikipedia Community has agreed to create a new namespace called Supplement. It will contain most of date pages (days, months, years, decades, etc.), disambiguation pages and lists to give the exactly number of encyclopedic articles. There are about 6000 pages that will be moved to the new namespace. It may be possible that your community would like to apply the same idea. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19357 -- bug report http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project:Supplement -- guideline of namespace [Commons: Off-site archive] - A off site archive for Commons and the XML snapshots will be added. Thanks are due to eBart consulting and User:Milosh for proving a backup server and storage array at their colocation facility in Europe. This server will store archives of our publicly available data of Wikimedia Commons and the XML snapshots. http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/were-adding-an-off-site-archive-for-commons-and-the-xml-snapshots/ -- techblog post [Passwords plz] - Watchlistr.com was an outside site that asked for Wikimedia passwords in order aggregate user watchlists across all projects for them. Although in this case it did not have a malicious intent, use of external sites asking for passwords place in risk the accounts used. Users are asked not to share their user password with any external site. Not even toolserver tools are allowed to request your password for any service. The site has now been shut down, and further analysis revealed that it had important vulnerabilities. Magnus Manske has created an alternative tool for people to use if they liked this feature. http://www.watchlistr.com/ http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/044238.html -- initial thread http://magnusmanske.de/MetaWatchlist/ -- alternative proposed by Magnus [TS: Multi-maintainer tools] - the toolserver is pushing multi-maintainer tools and will be actively discouraging single maintainer ones. They want to encourage collaboration amongst toolserver users and make tools last even when one of the users disappears. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.toolserver/1515 [SVN account requests] - there's a new process for requesting SVN accounts to the MediaWiki source code. Brion announced that he'll be going through the queue every week, so if you have request throw them up on MediaWiki wiki. ;-) http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/44683 -- mailing list post http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Commit_access_requests -- requests === Proposals === [Geonotice + Wikinews/Commons?] - Sage Ross recently proposed something interesting: using an opt-in geonotice (notice that displays based on the location of your IP) to show local reporting or photographing opportunities. Hopefully this will help with one of the great frustrations that inhibit original reporting. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/044367.html === Foundation === [Board elections: Voting] - the Foundation's Board elections has finally entered into the voting phase (voting is open until August 10) and translation is continuing. Visit the Meta pages for election information (including a Questions page), the Wikipedia Signpost also has interviews with the candidates. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009#voters -- voter requirements http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Translation -- translation page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-07-27/Board_elections#Candidate_interviews -- signpost interviews [More donation buttons] - the second round of donation button designs has been posted, feedback is appreciated to determine which designs we'll end up using! http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Donation_buttons_upgrade [Audit Committee] - the new members of the 2009-2010 Audit Committee have been announced. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/053280.html -- foundation-l post [wm2009: Registration] - Media Registration for Wikimania 2009 has opened. For regular registration, there is a new update: it is also possible to extend your stay past the Wikimania dates, but you need to contact the hotel directly. http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Registration#Accommodations -- extending stay options
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Brian wrote: The WMF is a far cry from the original vision of it as a membership organization. Also, the board propagates stale laws under the notion of status quo for which the original consensus is no longer remembered. There is further no top down effort to ask the community if they have any good ideas, and then ask the community what they think about the best of those ideas. That, in my view, is a broken system. I'm going to take particular issue with the last point here. On 3 June *2008*, right after last year election, Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild), one of last year election committee member, posted on the talk page of either Election 2009 or election 2008 (and subsequently merged with this year) If you have an idea on how to improve the 2008 board elections system for 2009, please post them below under a section name that briefly summarizes the subject. Philippe posted this year rules on this mailing list on 27 May. It has always been the case that election committee will take any feedback or concern expressed and change the rules based on those concern if needed. Example of that happened last year when the recent edit over last 3 months requirement was added and subsequently modified based on feedback to last 6 months. This year, the period of candidate presentation was extended significantly, right up to the start of the election, again based on feedback here on this mailing list. You can't complain that the election committee don't take on board new ideas or feedbacks if you haven't expressed it before the election started. KTC -- Experience is a good school but the fees are high. - Heinrich Heine PGP.sig Description: PGP signature ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Kwan Ting Chan k...@ktchan.info wrote: Brian wrote: I'm going to take particular issue with the last point here. On 3 June *2008*, right after last year election, Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild), one of last year election committee member, posted on the talk page of either Election 2009 or election 2008 (and subsequently merged with this year) If you have an idea on how to improve the 2008 board elections system for 2009, please post them below under a section name that briefly summarizes the subject. I believe I covered this in my post where I mentioned brittle and difficult to use tools that do not actually facilitate consensus building. Also, a single person providing a comment and the board acting is not, in any way, a consensus. If the litmus test for changing a rule is consensus, then why are rules being changed after only one member of the community thinks its a good idea? The answer is that this is not how the system works. Rules only change when those with power think its a good idea. Philippe posted this year rules on this mailing list on 27 May. I am arguing that the rules have always been broken and that the original consensus is no longer remembered. Thus, their merit, in its entirety, should be fully reconsidered. I do not know what conversations the board has amongst itself when considering how much they should restrict the voice of the community. I can say that it is not visionary in the technological sense and that it goes against the original vision for the WMF, as I remember it. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Jul 31, 2009, at 1:13 PM, Brian wrote: There is further no top down effort to ask the community if they have any good ideas, and then ask the community what they think about the best of those ideas. That, in my view, is a broken system. Really? Been to the strategic planning wiki lately? There's a whole big section there asking for proposals from the community. :-) Philippe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Jul 31, 2009, at 1:13 PM, Brian wrote: There is further no top down effort to ask the community if they have any good ideas, and then ask the community what they think about the best of those ideas. That, in my view, is a broken system. Really? Been to the strategic planning wiki lately? There's a whole big section there asking for proposals from the community. :-) Philippe I am definitely in favor of this new effort, particularly with the CentralNotices. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The end of donations
stevertigo schreef: It occurs to me that when people donate money to something, it is to some degree with an expectation that the recipient entity grows to eventually gain a certain kind of financial self-sufficiency. Is this not also the case with Wikimedia and many charitable donations to it? -Steven Wikipedia Co lives on donations (mainly) as a matter of choice. It is the NPOV on the Foundation level. Commercializing Wikipedia to earn an income is nearly a taboo subject. An other way would be that Wikimedia is funded by some international body, like UNESCO. The WMF budget for 2009-2010 is 9,4 million US dollar. That is not a lot on a global scale. I find it very normal that institutions are government funded. Probably because from where I am from, Belgium, that is the way it is. But I know that is not so everywhere. In some places the musea, schools, Churches, hospitals and so need to receive donations to function. So that approach would also not be acceptable for some because the have some problem with using public funds for public services. So donations it will be. -- Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Year: 2009 Week: 31 Number: 113
Addendum to Wikizine 113: Bigipedia episode 1 is not longer available on the BBC website. Episode 2 is available. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lszrc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigipedia -- Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Dear everyone, As a reminder, we also discussed suffrage requirements on this list last year: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-April/042105.html As a response to concerns over the proposed requirement that there be 50 edits between April and June before the election, this period was lengthened to January to June, and now here we are. best, Phoebe, On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Philippe Beaudettepbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: Allow me, please, to reinforce this, wearing my election committee member hat. This years' rules were mostly carryovers from last years' rules. When we started, we looked around, realized that no significant opposition to last years' rules had been expressed, checked the talk pages to be sure, and modified the rules to cover anything we thought needed to be changed (for instance, this year we were able to use edits from across wikis, using SUL - which was one of the points of opposition that was raised last year, but there was not a technically feasible method to do it at the time). I'm sure that if there is significant response to the edit count requirement, next year's committee will happily (he said confidently, with no intent to volunteer for next year's committee) review it then. Philippe On Jul 31, 2009, at 12:31 PM, Kwan Ting Chan wrote: And from experience, I can tell you the reality of establishing the rules work by starting from last year, and updating or modifying based on feedbacks. And that mean, given no strong community consensus to change our present form of requiring some form of edit requirement, having that requirement. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at gmail.com * ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Geonotice improvements that could make Wikinews great (among other benefits)
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Sage Rossragesoss+wikipe...@gmail.com wrote: One of the great frustrations of Wikinews for me is that it doesn't have a system for identifying and pointing users toward opportunities to get out into the offline world and do original reporting. A fine-grained cross-project opt-in geonotice system could be a solution. Here's how I imagine it working: there is a new opt-in geonotice (in addition to the current one that reaches everyone in the specified geography). For the opt-in geonotice (which would hopefully be able to reach across projects, since many causal Wikinewsies visit that site only rarely) any trusted user could add new items to let nearby people know about reporting or photography opportunities. For these opt-in notices, we would not need to lock down the ability to add items like we do for the current geonotice system (it's a fully protected page), since people who opt-in will expect a bit a noise. I think this would be awesome to try out! Geonotices have proved to be wonderful for helping out with local meetups; I can even imagine having two filters, opt-into notifications for local events and opt-into notifications for wikinews stuff. Both pages to set the notifications could be unprotected, and we could just see how it went. That is all :) phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at gmail.com * ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Philippe Beaudettepbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Jul 31, 2009, at 1:13 PM, Brian wrote: There is further no top down effort to ask the community if they have any good ideas, and then ask the community what they think about the best of those ideas. That, in my view, is a broken system. Really? Been to the strategic planning wiki lately? There's a whole big section there asking for proposals from the community. :-) Right. I sympathize with both Brian and Philippe here. There are those who want the Foundation to take a more active role in facilitating discussion, even from those who are apathetic or shy about discussing policy; they also want the Foundation to make decisions based on thorough community input.They feel that the Foundation is acting on the limited input given, and fooling itself that this is a functional way to survey a broad and underrepresented community. There are also those who feel the Foundation is open and encouraging public discourse, but there aren't many community members contributing to the discussion. They want the community to take a more active role in discussions and to start new ones where they don't exist, and to be bold with ideas about change; they also want the Foundation to make bold decisions where none has been proposed, and to make steady progress. They feel the community is not very communal, and needs guidance when a complex topic arises to overcome a tendency towards flame wars - or should be left out of discussions requiring expertise altogether. I am somewhere in-between. On critical complex topics, the Foundation could benefit from more discussion and better planning. Why have we made it so hard to start new Projects? When did we acquire 8 million dollars in annual upkeep? Where are metrics of site popularity, public citation, and reuse (for all projects, not just Wikipedia) in measures of the Foundation's success? These topics are not generally on the table; occasionally we get PR instead of detailed answers; and regularly people say things such as I don't post to foundation-l [because it's not a friendly enough environment / it is full of hot air]. If you ever find yourself saying that about a canonical place for discussion of community-wide issues, you've run into a deep problem that you should address publicly and immediately. On critical planning topics, the community has the ball in its own court -- a healthy foundation, hundreds of thousands of active supporters, worldwide acclaim, and the authority to chart its own course. And so far, many of its good planners are looking elsewhere and saying I think you have the ball. Perhaps local factions and detailed policy-making have won out over larger-scope planning; perhaps even the most active community members don't realize the position they are in to contribute to long-term discussions -- such as how to define membership, suffrage, community engagement. But if you find yourself spending more time writing eloquent challenges to authority than proposing better solutions, you should stop and consider whether you can just fix what needs fixing. Sj ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 4:45 PM, phoebe ayersphoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: Dear everyone, As a reminder, we also discussed suffrage requirements on this list last year: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-April/042105.html As a response to concerns over the proposed requirement that there be 50 edits between April and June before the election, this period was lengthened to January to June, and now here we are. It might help to have a list of tricky subjects worthy of steady discussion and improvement. We don't have much of a general philosophy of suffrage (we already have a number of somewhat arbitrary exceptions, and certainly early wiki contributors would have hated the idea of edit count being used as any measure of dedication), and it's important enough to be worth more than the occasional email thread. I don't take issue with that element of the requirements, but I do think we are excluding smaller projects, where each contribution takes more time and it is rare to have any qualified voters who aren't running bots. (why should bot-runners get special recognition? Is it truly such a valuable task to add batches of stubs?) A future request : It would be handy if the election tool redirected ineligible voters to a place where they can share their priorities and thoughts, at least to the tune of a short paragraph. 'Ineligible to vote' makes people sad, and should not mean 'unqualified to contribute to the future of the projects'. SJ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The end of donations
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 11:06 AM, Walter Vermeirwal...@wikipedia.be wrote: An other way would be that Wikimedia is funded by some international body, like UNESCO. The WMF budget for 2009-2010 is 9,4 million US dollar. That is not a lot on a global scale. I find it very normal that institutions are government funded. Probably because from where I am from, Belgium, that is the way it is. But I know that is not so everywhere. In some places the musea, schools, Churches, hospitals and so need to receive donations to function. So that approach would also not be acceptable for some because the have some problem with using public funds for public services. Interesting points. And yes, accepting government or institutional money would probably come with conditions like improving overall article quality, and maybe even getting rid of our fetish and other destructive-sexuality / pro-depravity articles and images - something our great many pro-freedom dogmatists just don't want to do. -Stevertigo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Stevertigo
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 10:24 AM, Kwan Ting Chank...@ktchan.info wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file Any emails to the mailing list with that subject line get auto deleted. And you can see, no email with that subject line has appeared since. 2. I would supect we are the moderators of the mailing list. 3. That's what being under moderation means. Whether any particular person should be under moderation is a different argument. I understand now that there are technocratic terms being used. Still, the issue of blocking someone is never a technocratic one, and therefore must not be left to the technocrats. Assuming good faith, I infer that the technocrat is not really the decider in such matters, and that such decisions are communicated behind the scenes. Exposing the politburo is one of the first principles of essential openness reform. -Stevertigo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Stevertigo
So you are saying that list administrators are technocrats only, that they just carry out technical tasks and aren't asked to exercise their own judgement and that you believe the order for your moderation was handed down from someone else, someone who you would like to be exposed? Just checking. Mark On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 5:57 PM, stevertigostv...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 10:24 AM, Kwan Ting Chank...@ktchan.info wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file Any emails to the mailing list with that subject line get auto deleted. And you can see, no email with that subject line has appeared since. 2. I would supect we are the moderators of the mailing list. 3. That's what being under moderation means. Whether any particular person should be under moderation is a different argument. I understand now that there are technocratic terms being used. Still, the issue of blocking someone is never a technocratic one, and therefore must not be left to the technocrats. Assuming good faith, I infer that the technocrat is not really the decider in such matters, and that such decisions are communicated behind the scenes. Exposing the politburo is one of the first principles of essential openness reform. -Stevertigo ___ 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] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
2009/7/31 Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com: On critical complex topics, the Foundation could benefit from more discussion and better planning. Why have we made it so hard to start new Projects? I would suggest that we use the strategy call for proposals to re-surface some of the most important project ideas that people would like to bring attention to. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Proposals IMO there's simply a lack of community support for a lot of ideas, either because people feel they are bad ideas, out of scope for our mission, already covered within the scope of existing projects, or hard to make work with the existing software. That said, I think there are definitely many ideas that are worth exploring further. My personal favorites: * a shared repository for structured data, the equivalent to Wikimedia Commons for data (some coherent synthesis of ideas from FreeBase, OmegaWiki, and Semantic MediaWiki); * a wiki for the global community of makers to share designs and prototypes for both functional and entertaining objects, which is becoming increasingly important as fabbing facilities become commonplace; * a wiki for annotated source code examples, similar to LiteratePrograms.org; * a wiki for standardization; * a dedicated public outreach / evangelism wiki. What are yours? -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
2009/8/1 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: * a wiki for the global community of makers to share designs and prototypes for both functional and entertaining objects, which is becoming increasingly important as fabbing facilities become commonplace; Commons could do this tomorrow if the blender file type was allowed. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
2009/7/31 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2009/8/1 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: * a wiki for the global community of makers to share designs and prototypes for both functional and entertaining objects, which is becoming increasingly important as fabbing facilities become commonplace; Commons could do this tomorrow if the blender file type was allowed. Not sure it would be the right space for developing the policies and collaboration spaces around it, but yeah, we need additional filetype support. I think COLLADA is supposed to be the interchange standard for 3D applications, and is supported by Blender; there were some security issues last time we looked at it (as is often the case). -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] What's up with IdeaTorrent
2009/7/31 Mohamed Magdy mohamed@gmail.com: Hi W, What is going on with IdeaTorrent? are we going to have one or not? do we need to have a Meta poll or something? I don't think there's any opposition to implementing one. I think for us to officially set it up we'd want to rig it up with CentralAuth to avoid yet-another-login-database and simplify participation, and it's simply not been justifiable to make the necessary evaluation/customization/setup work a priority for the ops team. If someone wants to start setting it up externally to play with the idea, please don't hesitate to do so. Right now we're looking into deploying Aaron's ReaderFeedback extension to sort through the ideas posted to strategy.wikimedia.org. It's a simple rate this page widget with flexibly defined categories. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Stevertigo
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 5:06 PM, Mark Williamsonnode...@gmail.com wrote: So you are saying that list administrators are technocrats only, that they just carry out technical tasks and aren't asked to exercise their own judgement and that you believe the order for your moderation was handed down from someone else, someone who you would like to be exposed? Well to be fair there were a number of people who expressed a strong dislike for the thread I started. And even though their posts were on their own were mostly insubstantial and rude, I understood that there were enough of them regardless, and so I replied with my last post indicating I would stop further posts here and take it back to wikien-l. The decision to actually do the blocking of the last post - the one in which I conceded the matter - was itself blocked by Austin alone apparently. If the other moderator was involved, he did not take any interest or action, as perhaps he should have. Perhaps there need to be more moderators on this list, like there are on wikien-l - such as to keep each other in check - and to insure that proper notification is posted to the public list, and to communicate intelligently with the blocked/moderated person. I don't know if anything at all is really discussed in private. That's just the way private communications work. What I am saying is that in general we even want our technocrats to be quite forthright about what they think and do, why, and where any orders or suggestions are coming from. To do otherwise would be quite unfair to them. -Stevertigo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Stevertigo
The last post in that thread wasn't blocked because of its content, it was blocked because the thread itself was blocked. I could try to reply to it now with a little paragraph about sunshine and rainbows and it wouldn't go through. Nobody read that message and made the decision not to post it to the ML, at least as far as I can tell. It looks to me like Austin did exactly what he should've so I'm not sure why you're implying he made an incorrect decision. Exactly what did he do wrong in your opinion? Mark skype: node.ue On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 6:35 PM, stevertigostv...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 5:06 PM, Mark Williamsonnode...@gmail.com wrote: So you are saying that list administrators are technocrats only, that they just carry out technical tasks and aren't asked to exercise their own judgement and that you believe the order for your moderation was handed down from someone else, someone who you would like to be exposed? Well to be fair there were a number of people who expressed a strong dislike for the thread I started. And even though their posts were on their own were mostly insubstantial and rude, I understood that there were enough of them regardless, and so I replied with my last post indicating I would stop further posts here and take it back to wikien-l. The decision to actually do the blocking of the last post - the one in which I conceded the matter - was itself blocked by Austin alone apparently. If the other moderator was involved, he did not take any interest or action, as perhaps he should have. Perhaps there need to be more moderators on this list, like there are on wikien-l - such as to keep each other in check - and to insure that proper notification is posted to the public list, and to communicate intelligently with the blocked/moderated person. I don't know if anything at all is really discussed in private. That's just the way private communications work. What I am saying is that in general we even want our technocrats to be quite forthright about what they think and do, why, and where any orders or suggestions are coming from. To do otherwise would be quite unfair to them. -Stevertigo ___ 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] Stevertigo
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 10:04 PM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: The last post in that thread wasn't blocked because of its content, it was blocked because the thread itself was blocked. I could try to reply to it now with a little paragraph about sunshine and rainbows and it wouldn't go through. Nobody read that message and made the decision not to post it to the ML, at least as far as I can tell. It looks to me like Austin did exactly what he should've so I'm not sure why you're implying he made an incorrect decision. Exactly what did he do wrong in your opinion? Mark skype: node.ue Actually, does it matter? List moderation and killfiling happens what, once a year? I see no problem with how it occurred this time, nor any reason to change the process for the future. Stevertigo is more interested in the debate, in my opinion, than any particular outcome. But foundation-l and wikien-l aren't debating clubs; folks cite the tenor of discussion, especially the ego-fueled point-by-point debate, as a common reason for unsubscribing. If you find that people don't take your side even after you have utterly destroyed them, point by point then perhaps you should pick a new approach. Nathan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
