Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Stopping the presses:, Britannica to stop printing books
For English, and other languages also: What I suggest is a '''Wikipedia Two'' - an encyclopedia supplement where the standard of notability is much relaxed, but which will be different from Wikia by still requiring Verifiability and NPOV. It would include the lower levels of barely notable articles in Wikipedia, and a good deal of what we do not let in. It would for example include both high schools and elementary schools. It would include college athletes. It would include political candidates. It would include neighborhood businesses, and fire departments. It would include individual asteroids. It would include streets--and also villages. It would include ever ball game in a season. It would include anyone who had a credited role in a film, or any named character in one--both the ones we currently leave out, and the ones we put in. This should satisfy both the inclusionists and the deletionists. The deletionists would have this material out of Wikipedia, the inclusionists would have it not rejected. Newcomers would have an open and accepting place for a initial experience. But it would be interesting to see the results of a search option: Do you want to see everything (WP+WP2), or only the really notable (WP)? Anyone care to guess which people would choose? On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 4:07 AM, geni wrote: > On 14 March 2012 16:34, Robin McCain wrote: David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Subject: Re: The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia, (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions
t; is not productive. > We need a *two tiered* editorial process at work to become more efficient. > If there are not enough subject matter experts - more need to be recruited. > /Otherwise the trust level of the publication will suffer./ Presumably the > various portals are organized enough that they can serve as a funnel for > value judgements - but the general editorial volunteers have to learn to > refer the value judgements to the specialists in these portals and confine > themselves to error correction. This also means that we can then attract > more subject matter specialists as they do not have to deal with the error > correction task and their decisions will have more prestiege. (It should be > a BIG plus for a professor to be able to say that (s)he has been a subject > matter expert editor on the xxx portal of Wikipedia for yyy years on their > CV) > > On 2/22/2012 5:08 AM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: >> >> Well actually, we use newspaper sources very frequently, as well as >> non-scholarly (and therefore non-peer-reviewed) books, so in fact, we >> rely on*printing* (or to put it more kindly, publishing) as a signal >> for peer-review, not peer-review itself. In my opinion, this is a poor >> signal. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions
The one thing experts in a field are not good at, is predicting the success of innovative material. If it were of predictable value, it wouldn't be revisionist. Experts can tell is something fits into the accepted paradigms; they can tell if something is so wrong with respect to soundly known facts that is is very unlikely to be true, they can even tell if they individually agree with a new proposal--but they cannot tell what is outside the current boundaries but the field as a whole will accept, or how many years or decades it will take for such acceptance, or how long the acceptance will last until the next reversal. To the extent experts can judge the new work, we do not need them to tell us on Wikipedia directly, overturning the principle that all editors are equal; a new work of any importance will have reviews and commentaries on it, and that's where the experts will have their say, and where any editor can find and cite them, as is the established practice. We do need to cover such reviews more than we currently do; if experts come to a talk page and indicate these to us, we can include them. Unfortunately, in the humanities such reviews can take several years to arrive--though sometimes there will be an immediate discussion in academic magazines,whether specialist ones or general sources such as the (UK) Times Higher Education or the (US) Chronicle of Higher Education. Perhaps we should even consider the use of some of the most accepted blogs for the purpose also. But we should at least give some mention to peer-reviewed materials published by a major academic publisher--so at least the readers can know of it and examine it for themselves. On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 11:32 AM, Delirium wrote: > On 2/20/12 10:39 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote: >> >> As Mark has said, some subjects are highly vulnerable to recentism, but >> one shouldn't expect that with a historical article about events from 1886. > > > I agree it's more of a problem in some areas than others, but I think it > also often applies as a heuristic to history as well: many revisionist > proposals never succeed in revising the mainstream historical narrative. The > fact that they're published in a journal simply means that several peers > thought it was a legitimate proposal worth publishing, not necessarily that > it's going to become the new majority view. > > I even ran into a recent example in classics while editing on Wikipedia. A > paper was published in 1985 challenging the standard account of a Roman > fellow's death, [[en:Marcus Marius Gratidianus]], which I dug up and > suggested we use it to revise our (older) traditional narrative. But then > some more searching dug up late-1980s and early-1990s papers that defended > the traditional narrative, and from what I can tell that 1985 paper is now > considered an intriguing suggestion but unlikely to be correct, or partially > correct at best. > > But what if the year were 1985 and those responses hadn't come out yet? How > do we determine if that paper's new findings are the new mainstream > narrative, or just an interesting proposal, worth mentioning as a minority > view, but ultimately unpersuasive? In hindsight, updating the article in > 1985 to anoint this as the new scholarly view would've been premature, > because it never did get accepted by the rest of the field. The only real > answer seems to be "wait a few years and let it percolate through the > literature", and my only guess at a faster alternative is to have experts in > the field who can make some kind of educated guess as to which revisionist > proposals are likely to ultimately succeed. I think it's a hard problem in > general. > > -Mark > > > > _______ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions
iness of >> weighing claims, just reporting what reliable sources write." > > There are lots of places on Wikipedia where misconceptions have been > summarily dealt with, respectable sources criticised and facts brought > to light. Unfortunately, most academics don't have time for the edit > wars, lengthy talk page discussions and RFCs that are sometimes > required to overcome inertia. > > The text of Messer-Kruse's article doesn't show much understanding of > this aspect of Wikipedia. But publishing it could be seen as canny. It > should be effective at recruiting new editors and bringing more > attention to the primary sources in question. The article is being > actively edited along those lines. > > -- Tim Starling > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Research assistance
Experimentation that relies on the availability of Pending changes would be better carried out of those language Wikipedias that have adopted the system, such as the German Wikipedia. The English WP decide not to use Pending Changes; I cannot for certain predict what would happen if the request to revive it on a basis such as you propose were to go to the English WP community, but I think most of the interested people there would be extremely reluctant to revisit the issue, after having debated in so extensively for so long. This would I think apply even to experimental use: the initial implementation was proposed as an experiment, and was continued without authorization for a while even after the experiment was supposed to end, before community protest put an end to it. I don't think the editors in any one subject area would consider themselves to have the authority to reverse this overall decision for their area, and I doubt the community as a whole would be prepared to grant such authority. There is no evidence that the medical sections of Wikipedia have a particularly high incidence of problems; indeed, recent reviews from various sources found the precise opposite. Another audit of the editing would certainly be useful, of course and, as Fred points out, the interface is designed to facilitate such audits. On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 9:28 AM, Fred Bauder wrote: >> I am applying for a summer student to do a Wikipedia Medicine research >> project through my department at UBC. One potentially project I am >> looking >> it is having them review all the edits made to Wikiproject Medicine >> articles. The student will go through each edit and a) determine if the >> edit is okay and revert it/fix it if it is not b) determine which edits >> are >> made from IP/new users verses long term edits c) calculate the percentage >> of positive/negative edits from each group d) they will be going over >> edits >> from more than one day old thus we will be able to determine how good >> Wikipedia is at repairing itself. I am thinking of collecting a weeks >> worth >> of edits. >> >> While we have a list here >> http://toolserver.org/~tim1357/cgi-bin/wikiproject_watchlist.py?template=WikiProject%20Medicine&order=desc&limit=200&t=0&m=1&b=0&user=&off=0&cat=0&hip=0&q=1 >> if multiple edits >> are made to the same page in a single day it only shows the last one. Is >> it >> possible to get a list of all edits? If should be possible to work with >> this list if another is not available. > > For the first topic on that list click on "hist" and you'll get the > editing history for the article: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Psychopathy&action=history > > You can take that back, usually, to the first edit which created the > article. > > This is a wonderful project. There is a study that 50% of doctors > sometimes consult Wikipedia and that 5% edit, probably the largest > percentage of any professional group; and you can't say they're not busy. > > I suspect that ips in this area are more often responsible editors than > is usual, simply doctors who do not have an account. > > Fred > >> >> If I am able to get approval and funding from UBC I am hoping to run a >> second round collecting the same data but with "pending changes" turned >> on >> for a week on all medical articles. This students would be required to >> handing all pending changes to all medical articles and will be >> collecting >> the same data as before. This will allow us to determine 1) if pending >> changes affects the numbers of IPs editing 2) if and to what degree >> pending >> changes reduces the visibility of poor quality content. The proposed >> student will be either between first and second year or second and third >> year medicine and will be working 40 hours per week for 6-8 weeks during >> the summer. If of course the last part of the project does not get >> approval >> I will still try to go ahead with the first part and will have the >> student >> join me on the "Medical Translation Project" as discussed here >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MED/Translation_project >> >> -- >> James Heilman >> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian >> ___ >> 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 -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists
Assuming an individual wanted filters, all methods such as this require them to be aware of whatever they consider to be the disturbing image(s) before deciding to apply the filter. In those methods which filter on an image by image basis, this requirement rather defeats the purpose. The only way it is applicable is when someone else blocks the images first--presumably a parent, who thus has the need to identify and read every potentially disturbing page before their child happens upon it. It is more likely to be conducive to outsiders providing their prebuilt lists. They have the right to use what ever we provide, but do we want to provide tools that decrease actual individual choice and encourage the more heavy-handed methods of censorship? This suggestion has one advantage over previous: it goes page by page, not image by image. In some cases, this might be realistic, but in others the user, especially the inexperienced user, will not realize from the page title what sort of images are likely to be found on it. On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 9:59 AM, Tobias Oelgarte wrote: > Am 24.11.2011 15:09, schrieb MZMcBride: >> Andreas K. wrote: >>> The way this would work is that each project page would have an "Enable >>> image filtering" entry in the side bar. Clicking on this would add a "Hide" >>> button to each image displayed on the page. Clicking on "Hide" would then >>> grey the image, and automatically add it to the user's personal filter list. >> I think this sounds pretty good. Is there any indication how German >> Wikipedians generally view an implementation like this? I can't imagine >> English Wikipedians caring about an additional sidebar link/opt-in feature >> like this. >> >>> Apart from enabling users to hide images and add them to their PFL as they >>> encounter them in surfing our projects, users would also be able to edit >>> the PFL manually, just as it is possible to edit one's watchlist manually. >>> In this way, they could add any image file or category they want to their >>> PFL. They could also add filter lists precompiled for them by a third >>> party. Such lists could be crowdsourced by people interested in filtering, >>> according to whatever cultural criteria they choose. >> Some sort of subscription service would work well here, right? Where the >> list can auto-update from a central list on a regular basis. I think that's >> roughly how in-browser ad block lists work. Seems like it could work well. >> Keep who pulls what lists private, though, I suppose. >> >>> For unregistered users, their PFL could be stored in a cookie. >> I'm not sure you'd want to put it in a cookie, but that's an implementation >> detail. >> >> Watchlist editing is generally based on looking at titles. I don't suppose >> you'd want a gallery of hidden images, but it would make filter-list editing >> easier, heh. >> >> MZMcBride >> >> >> >> ___ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> > I'm a little bit confused by this approach. On the one side it is good > to have this information stored privately and personal, on the other > side we encouraging the development of filter lists and the tagging of > possibly objectionable articles. The later wouldn't be private at all > and even worse then tagging single images. In fact it would be some kind > of additional force to ban images from articles just to keep them in the > "clean" section. > > Overall i see little to now advantage over the previously supposed > solutions. It is much more complicated, harder to implement, more > resource intensive and not a very friendly interface for readers. > > My proposal would be: Just give it up and find other ways to improve > Wikipedia and to make it more attractive. > > nya~ > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content
Objection to the WMF implementing an image filter would in fact be removed by such a project--if, like AdBlock, it were run outside and independently of the WMF. If i believe in individual freedom, I must believe in the ability of individuals to choose in what manner they access information, even or especially when it is in a different manner than I would choose. In fact, neither we nor the board could prevent it without changing our license to forbid such a derivative use. I am aware there is some discussion of trying to adjust our category system in order to deliberately frustrate such a use, but I would regard that as showing an equal lack of devotion to intellectual freedom as would be adjusting our categories to facilitate such a use. I believe there are some members of the board who positively approve of a filter, rather than merely regard it as a lesser evil. I call upon them to form an organization to accomplish what they think is needed; I can think of many organizations in the US that would gladly fund them. On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 3:12 PM, Bob the Wikipedian wrote: > Since no one has explicitly come out and said exactly what the issue is > here, I'll ask: > > *What exactly is harmful about an opt-in filter? *If it's opt-in, then > you have the choice to not even enable it if you so choose. You don't > have to use it; it'd just be an option in the preferences page or maybe > even a link on the margin similar to the WikiBooks link I never use. Can > another option or link you never click really hurt the world, or even an > individual for that matter? > > Also, *an idea for how this could be implemented*: > > Anyway, back in 2008 I attempted to popularize such an "add-on" style > filter; the means for operating it were very simple. Here's how it worked: > > The client installs Ad-Block Plus in their Firefox browser. > They subscribe to any of a set of Wikimedia-image-targeted filters. > The beauty of Ad-Block Plus is you can turn it off as desired, block an > image yourself, specify not to block something blocked by your > subscription filter, and receive updates on the filter. > > I dropped the project when I realized there were no free places to host > a text file that had links to hundreds of nude images-- my accounts kept > getting banned! :-D > > This structure would allow for several different types of filters; a > disadvantage, however, would be that each filter would need maintained > exclusively by a different individual (for instance, the person who > maintains a human nudity filter and the person who maintains a human > torment filter would need to be using different computers), though any > individual could subscribe to as many filters as he or she chooses. > Another disadvantage is that each filter can be filled only by a single > user, so suggestions for the filter would need sent to them. > > Bob > > > On 10/9/2011 1:03 PM, church.of.emacs.ml wrote: >> On 10/09/2011 07:20 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote: >>> The community doesn't trust the WMF at the moment. A firm commitment >>> not to go against an overwhelming community opinion would go a long >>> way towards fixing that. >> That's exactly the situation. Right now, we're in a deadlock: >> WMF is waiting for the community to engange in a constructive dialog, >> forming new ideas and consensus. >> The community members* are waiting for a signal of trust by the WMF, a >> real recognition of their opposition, a clear statment that WMF and the >> community are on a par in this discussion and neither will do anything >> deemed unacceptable by the other, before they will rethink their own >> position. >> >> >> You know, it's hard to lead a constructive discussion on controversial >> content when half of the people are thinking about forking. Believe me, >> I've tried.** >> >> >> --Tobias >> >> * that is, most of the opposing community members >> ** >> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2011-09-11_Podiumsdiskussion_Bildfilter_(360p).ogv >> >> >> >> ___________ >> 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 > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions on controversial content and images of identifiable people
If this should succeed I shall work as I do now, in other areas. I want to add content and keep out spam, not to dispute whether , for example, the "images that show a human penis" should include ones where the anatomical details are blurred, or only the outline visible. There is no point in discussing the details of censorship with censors; there is point is discussing the concept of censorship with the people who are inclined to support it. Labeling designed to accomodate censorship is censorship, as Kim says. This labeling is proposed to be done on the basis not of the regular commons categories, but of special ones designed for the purpose; not on the regular WP editors, but a special committee. (There is a valid argument that the present manner of categorizing images needs some major improvements) As Lodewiijk says, anyone who wants to make use of these categories -for any purpose, is free to do so outside WP. f they want to design a filter imposed on access to WP using them, they are free to do so. If they want to use their own categories for this, they are free to do so. If they want to use computer image analysis for this, they are free to do so;, I personally consider these at best unproductive things to do, but anyone else is free to think & act otherwise. The key question remains. ''Why on wikipedia'' when it even gives the appearance of being opposed to our principles. As fr the slippery slope, Kim gives one way it can happen.There are others, which I think are pretty obvious to those who would support them. It would take very little to change the wording or appearance on the button to make it more obtrusive, or to initially hide the image. It would be easily possible to have the hide preference panel set to hide particular classes of images unless changed, instead of being blank. It would take the flip of a single bit to change the default to "hide," whether for anon users, or everyone. It wouldn't be that hard to make changing the default for some classes of images a two-step process, with the second being "are you sure?" , or even "are you of legal age in your jurisdiction?". All of these steps are under the control of the people who imposed the system in the first place. This is why I asked the question, what more drastic proposals are being supported. at the board? The very fact that they were suggested at the board level implies there are some there who would do these things, and proves the slippery slope argument to be real. . Eventually we may not have someone as sensible as phoebe to stop them (and the others who feel this way. (but as they are not commenting it is not appropriate to not name them--I give them my apologies.) . Now, if I am wrong, and there were not any more drastic alternatives considered, I will need to retract this--but it was described as a compromise. -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions on controversial content and images of identifiable people
Phebe, I ask you once more, how do you go from the statement that filtering should be available to those who want to use it, to the statement that W wrote: > On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 8:14 AM, Kim Bruning wrote: > >> On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 05:21:23PM +0200, Milos Rancic wrote: >> > Board was aware of that, as the first Robert Harris' report included >> > very similar text from Canadian librarian association. >> >> I would then like to point out that there is no practical way to >> make a value-neutral categorisation scheme to use for filtering. > > > > This seems like an over-hasty statement. There are many possible > categorization schemes that are neutral; the ALA in fact makes that > distinction itself, since libraries (obviously) use all kinds of labeling > and categorization schemes all the time. The ALA and other library > organizations have taken a stand against censorious and non-neutral > labeling, not all labeling. If you keep reading the ALA page you linked, it > says that the kind of labels that are not appropriate are when "the > prejudicial label is used to warn, discourage or prohibit users or certain > groups of users from accessing the material" -- e.g. a label that reads "not > appropriate for children". That does not mean that picture books for kids, > or mystery novels, or large-print books, aren't labeled as such in every > public library in the country -- and that is the difference between > informative and prejudicial labeling. > > The ALA also makes a point of stating that materials should be on open > shelves and accessible to everyone regardless of labeling -- this comes out > of, among other things, the once-common practice of not allowing children in > the adult section of the library. The natural equivalent for us I think is > to make sure that all materials we host are accessible to everyone > regardless of any label, which is certainly a principle we have and continue > to uphold. > > The Board didn't specify any particular mechanism or system in our > resolution. What we did was to ask for a particular kind of feature and > spell out some principles for its development. We talked about neutral > language in the interface, and our intent was exactly that distinction I > noted between informative and prejudicial -- we do not wish to set up a > system that privileges certain value judgments about content. We wish > *readers to have a choice* when they use our projects -- one they do not > have now unless they are remarkably technically inclined and > forward-looking. > > We didn't address the categorization system in particular because frankly, > it's not our business. It's the community's, and tech's. And the Trustees > didn't all agree on whether we thought categorization as proposed in the > first draft of the system was the best idea, anyway; some of us thought it > was appropriately in line with the principle of least astonishment, and some > of us thought it could lead to problems. But we did come to consensus on the > high-level idea as expressed in the resolution, and we agreed and understood > that the ideas around how to implement it would have to iterate, with > reevaluation along the way. But after all, developing informative, neutral > and useful systems for organizing information is something that the > Wikimedia projects have become world-famous for -- so if anyone can do it I > have faith that we can :) > > As I told DGG, there's a lot of caveats in that resolution. And those > caveats are there for a reason. It should not be extrapolated that the Board > as a whole *actually* supports a particular, or different, or more > censorious, filtering scheme. What we want is for people to easily be able > to hide images for themselves if they don't want to see them when using our > projects. (And we also want other things, like better tools for Commons, > that are expressed in other parts of that resolution.) > > I know we are all looking forward to seeing the referendum results, and the > data from it will need to be carefully considered. In the meantime I am glad > to see more discussion of this, but I am remembering that it is a stressful > topic! > > best, > -- phoebe > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions on controversial content and images of identifiable people
I suspect the only answer you are going to get is that some people or places would need it. What you will not get is any explanation for why the WMF itself should do it. instead of letting those who want it, to do it as they wish outside Wikipedia, as our licensing permits. (You might get the reason that we can do it more gently, and perhaps we could, but then it would hardly satisfy those who really want to censor. Any one on the board who wants to pursue that route is free to set up an organization to enable their own gentle value judgments) If someone wants to make what amounts to a skin for whatever purposes, there is nothing to stop them. We are right to have a license that permits this, even if 95% of us disapprove of their purposes. They can use whatever they might want from the neutral tags we should be applying in our categorization, or devise whatever of their own they find appropriate for expressing their own values.. Our principles of freedom for the use of our material are so broad they make no value judgments at all, and include even the freedom to censor. On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Kim Bruning wrote: > On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 05:21:23PM +0200, Milos Rancic wrote: >> Board was aware of that, as the first Robert Harris' report included >> very similar text from Canadian librarian association. > > I would then like to point out that there is no practical way to > make a value-neutral categorisation scheme to use for filtering. > > You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either the scheme is > neutral *or* it contains a value judgement so as to be usable for > filtering. Logic holds that there is no middle ground here. Further > any value judgement once made cannot be culturally neutral in > practice. > > I'm going to assume in good faith that the board was not aware of this > minor flaw. But I can't really stretch it much further. > > Could board members please chime in and elucidate? > > sincerely, > Kim Bruning > > > > > -- > [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] > gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 > 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72 > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge
Most reputable translators of literary texts do not aim at a literal translation, but one that replicate the meaning, the emotional affect as far as possible, and ideally some of the linguistic subtleties. Even in translating prose texts, a literal translation is usually not produced unless it is for some reason specifically wanted, because a literal translation will normally not convey the same meaning exactly as the original. Once you start looking for equivalent idioms, and a natural way of saying things in the target language, there is always room for interpretation. Consider the Bible: the only way of citing it accurately is to give a range of translations, along with the original. Very few of the materials we use for quotations will have good translations, now or ever. The purpose of giving the original along with whatever we can manage as a translation is first, that if the original is given , others may find or write a better translation; second, so those who know a little of the source language can see for themselves. We write the enWP for English readers--not providing some sort of a translation leaves 90% of them helpless in any particular case. I think of the 18th century writers like Gibbon who left the sexual parts in "the decent obscurity of a learned language" , with the intended effect that the gentlemen could read them, but not the ladies (very few of whom were ever taught Latin at the time) and certainly not any of the common people who might happen to see a serious book. On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 1:37 PM, David Gerard wrote: > On 29 July 2011 17:39, Wjhonson wrote: > >> I would agree with Ray that we should quote Latin texts in Latin, Spanish >> texts in Spanish no matter what language-page we are using. IF the text is >> that important to English speakers then there should be or probably will >> soon be, a verifiable English language translation *not* created in-project, >> but rather by a reputable author publishing just such a translation. > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge
Using an exact quote , from video or print, in an article is a summary, because you are normally selecting a portion of the potential material that you consider representative. But the link to the entire item, as is the required practice, does make this at least audit-able, in that anyone else can check what you chose to use, at least if the link is to material that is permanently online--as will be the videos under discussion. But choosing to use the quote at all in the article is interpretation. One normally cannot cite all possible sources. Choosing a source is intrinsically interpretation. An editor chooses a source because they consider the source useful to the article; what an editor considers useful to the article depends on what they want to say, or support. Wikipedia articles edited by diverse editors can attain a NPOV because other editors can also search for sources to use as quotes, and the principle of crowd-sourcing is that they balance out. Wikipedia articles not actively edited by multiple diverse individuals are not NPOV. How one presents a quote is interpretation and summary. How much context does one give about where the quote comes from, and the likely nature of bias from the source? It is impossible to give everything relevant, while citing all informants or all printed sources as if they were equal is even worse, and one cannot assume the reader will be able to do this for themselves. They must judge the arguments for themselves, but someone in a position to know must judge the sources and this cannot be done without bias, which can only be partially corrected by group participation and whatever conscious effort an individual's skill and integrity make possible. . Any one WP as a whole is not NPOV because the particular WP reflects the interests and POV of the overall body of editors, which is not representative of world opinion; I would argue that the enWP jas the potential to be the most neutral because of the most diverse editorship, with perhaps the fr and the es also having this advantage. A conscious effort to try to surpass personal and cultural bias is possible, and in this respect, I am less sure the enWP does very well. I cannot give examples without getting into the related controversies, which, however tempting, is not my present purpose. On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Wjhonson wrote: > > David how is an exact quote a summary or interpretation? > An exact quote, backed up by the actual audio track is... exact. > You are not summarizing it, and you are not interpreting it either. > You are presenting it. > > > > > > > -Original Message- > From: David Goodman > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List > Sent: Wed, Jul 27, 2011 12:39 pm > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge > > > On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 2:27 PM, Wjhonson wrote: > > For actual quotations from sources, you should quote the source exactly. > Then you will never be using original research. > > You are going the next step and summarizing and interpreting. Don't do that. > But selecting what quotations to use, what parts of them to use, and > n what context one uses them, and the language one uses to present > hem, is a not a mechanical or necessarily neutral endeavor. It cannot > e done without summarizing and interpreting. > Certainly in Wikipedia and everywhere else the world also, > nrepresentative of partial quotations are used to propagandistic or > ontroversial effect--sometimes even deliberately, but more often > ecause the particular quotation and manner fits what the editor > esires to express. A person in the course of a long career will say > any things on their main interests, and some will be at least > artially contradictory. Selecting what represents the person's true > iews, what represents a true change of opinion, what represent > rratic misstatements --all of this require decisions which amount to > hat we call original research and synthesis. It is not possible to > rite any but the most trivial article without research and synthesis. > reparing a summary of the state of a question intrinsically requires > t. Deciding of the balance of an article necessarily involves having > POV--if one approaches a subject where one has none initially, by > he time the article has been finished, one or the other position is > ure to have been found more appealing, and a non-neural POV is sure > o have developed. > The writing of secondary and tertiary works are inevitably > ssociated with bias. The way by which we avoid its worst > anifestations in Wikipedia is not by being free from bias, but by > aving articles written collectively by a diverse group of people. > hat we lose in elegant prose we gain in objectivity. This is why it > s important to continually increase
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge
On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 2:27 PM, Wjhonson wrote: > > For actual quotations from sources, you should quote the source exactly. > Then you will never be using original research. > > You are going the next step and summarizing and interpreting. Don't do that. But selecting what quotations to use, what parts of them to use, and in what context one uses them, and the language one uses to present them, is a not a mechanical or necessarily neutral endeavor. It cannot be done without summarizing and interpreting. Certainly in Wikipedia and everywhere else the world also, unrepresentative of partial quotations are used to propagandistic or controversial effect--sometimes even deliberately, but more often because the particular quotation and manner fits what the editor desires to express. A person in the course of a long career will say many things on their main interests, and some will be at least partially contradictory. Selecting what represents the person's true views, what represents a true change of opinion, what represent erratic misstatements --all of this require decisions which amount to what we call original research and synthesis. It is not possible to write any but the most trivial article without research and synthesis. Preparing a summary of the state of a question intrinsically requires it. Deciding of the balance of an article necessarily involves having a POV--if one approaches a subject where one has none initially, by the time the article has been finished, one or the other position is sure to have been found more appealing, and a non-neural POV is sure to have developed. The writing of secondary and tertiary works are inevitably associated with bias. The way by which we avoid its worst manifestations in Wikipedia is not by being free from bias, but by having articles written collectively by a diverse group of people. What we lose in elegant prose we gain in objectivity. This is why it is important to continually increase the number of active editors--not just to increase the scope, but to ensure adequate eyes on the articles. But even so, the different Wikipedias will be inevitably different. (Attention has recently been called on the list to http://manypedia.com/.) We need in particular more people with multiple language ability to incorporate the diversity in the individual encyclopedias.This is one reason why it is critically important to develop Wikipedias in the non-Western languages, so their views too can be represented not just in their own language, but throughout the project. -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Access to academic journals (was Re: Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser)
I can't speak for all my colleagues in the oa movement, as they disagree on almost every possible detail, and on almost every consideration of strategy, but I think most people there would regard "taxpayer access" both as a useful political slogan, and as a very productive strategy—a manner of proceeding through government regulation that can have a very wide and rapid effect--and that has indeed had one. For most of those in the movement, they do want all government sponsored work to be either PD or CC:BY, and most would extent this to all published journal literature whether directly government sponsored or not. But at this point, almost nobody considers a free license like this as really a practical first policy step, and all that is actually considered necessary is read-only access. Opinions differ about whether this must be to the final published form of the material. I think everyone involved regards the 6 or 12 month delayed-access permitted by the current government mandates to be a very unfortunate compromise, but necessary in order to get anything. On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 5:16 PM, John Vandenberg wrote: > On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:50 AM, Melissa Hagemann > wrote: >> .. >> It would be wonderful if we could find a way for the WMF and OA >> communities to more closely collaborate. Aubrey is right in that to a >> large extent, OA is not well known outside the library community. Given >> the reach of WMF, there seems that there must be a way to try to raise >> greater awareness of the materials which are being made available >> through OA. > > There is an ever-increasing number of Wikipedia articles about > journals, and they mention open access in the infobox ;-) > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proceedings_of_the_National_Academy_of_Sciences > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AJ > >> And if there is interest in advocating on this issue, SPARC developed >> the Alliance for Taxpayer Access >> (http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/index.shtml) which represents >> universities, libraries, patient advocacy groups, and physicians working >> to promote OA. > > I haven't heard of this before. > > The website/campaign name begs a lot of questions. > > "Why tax-payer access only?" > "What copyright license allows for tax-payer only redistribution?" > > ;-) > > If I understand correctly, they are promoting unrestricted access to > tax-payer funded research. Do they explicitly want govt-funded > research to be public domain, like US federal works are, and therefore > accessible to everyone, in every country? > > -- > John Vandenberg > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Access to academic journals (was Re: Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser)
I agree with that about FA/GA, possibly because I avoid that place myself, but for negotiating with publishers it would help to have a standard of some sort, in addition to a maximum number, so they would know they're not opening it up to the world in general, which is a matter of some concern to most of them. On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 8:10 PM, George Herbert wrote: > On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 3:18 PM, John Vandenberg wrote: >> On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 8:13 AM, Erik Moeller wrote: >>> 2011/3/15 SlimVirgin : >>>> Speaking of the CREDO accounts, several people have asked that their >>>> accounts be reassigned, but they don't know how to do it. Could Erik >>>> advise? See here -- >>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Credo_accounts#I_gave_up_my_account_in_June >>> >>> As per my earlier message, Credo is willing to give away up to 400 >>> additional accounts, so we really shouldn't be too worried about >>> reassigning the existing ones until we've handed these out. Here's >>> what I wrote in September: >> >> There are a few ex-Wikipedians on the current list. Not sure how you >> want to address that. > > I'm also going to go to the talk page, but... > > I object to the GA/FA/etc requirement. There are a lot of content > editors out there who won't go near the FA mafia. > > I use that term carefully, and hopefully without inciting a great > backlash. The people involved in the GA/FA etc process are welcome as > far as I am concerned to keep doing what they're doing, but I don't > want membership in that community to be a gatekeeper requirement for > other participation. > > > -- > -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 > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Access to academic journals (was Re: Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser)
Universities can't do this, generally. All contracts I have ever seen limit the off-campus access to people connected with the university. A few publishers even limit the on-campus access similarly, but most publishers explicitly permit it. But many universities do even worse than the contracts say: they limit on-campus access in such a way as to not permit access to visitors. This is true even of some public universities. Various excuses are offerred, none of them valid--the usual one is lack of computer facilities, which lost its credibility a number of years ago. On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Andreas Kolbe wrote: > --- On Tue, 15/3/11, David Goodman wrote: >> From: David Goodman > >> I've been involved with open >> access journals as a professional >> activity from the start of the movement, long before I >> joined >> Wikipedia. There has been only limited success. >> Though there are >> almost ten thousand open access journals, 95% of them are >> either very >> small or very unimportant, and in almost all fields >> of study, none or >> almost none of the important journals are open access: > > > This is my experience too; thanks for pointing it out. > > >> No important journals at all in chemistry are open access, >> Almost none in physics >> Almost none in geology >> Almost none in ecology & evolution >> A few in molecular & cell biology >> A few only in biomedical sciences >> None in psychology >> Almost none in the social sciences or the humanities >> Almost none in engineering and applied science >> A few in medicine > >> At this point, there is no academic field of study >> whatsoever where an >> adequate article could be written using only open access >> material. >> This is of course a very limiting thing for access to >> information not >> just for us, but for the world in general, and the WMF >> projects should >> certainly cooperate as closely as possible with the >> forces working >> for open access, but the suggestion that it is possible to >> limit to or >> even prefer open acces material is incompatible with the >> policy on >> using the best available sources. > > > Could someone from the Foundation please respond to the idea of contacting > universities and content database providers and inviting them to support > Wikipedia by making a certain number of log-in IDs available, with the > benefit -- to them -- that increased citation of high-quality publications > would potentially make these publications visible to a larger audience? > > Is this something the Foundation would consider pursuing? > > Andreas > > > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Access to academic journals (was Re: Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser)
I've been involved with open access journals as a professional activity from the start of the movement, long before I joined Wikipedia. There has been only limited success. Though there are almost ten thousand open access journals, 95% of them are either very small or very unimportant, and in almost all fields of study, none or almost none of the important journals are open access: No important journals at all in chemistry are open access, Almost none in physics Almost none in geology Almost none in ecology & evolution A few in molecular & cell biology A few only in biomedical sciences None in psychology Almost none in the social sciences or the humanities Almost none in engineering and applied science A few in medicine There are only two major open access publishers with high quality journals: BMC, some of whose many journals are high quality, and PLOS, all of whose are, but there are only a few of them. Not a single one of the major university presses are open access, except for one or two journals None of the major scientific society publishers are open access, With the sole exception of BMC, none of the commercial publishers are open access, except for one or two journals The major bright spot is the insistance of the NIH and other granting agencies, that articles for research they sponsor published since about 2008 be made open access 6 or 12 months after publication. Very few of the journals that do this have extended the open access earlier. At this point, there is no academic field of study whatsoever where an adequate article could be written using only open access material. This is of course a very limiting thing for access to information not just for us, but for the world in general, and the WMF projects should certainly cooperate as closely as possible with the forces working for open access, but the suggestion that it is possible to limit to or even prefer open acces material is incompatible with the policy on using the best available sources. On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 1:53 PM, Melissa Hagemann wrote: > > In general, access to academic journals is extremely expensive and > usually only possible for those affiliated with universities. However > there is an alternative. There are now over 6,000 peer-reviewed open > access journals which are freely available online (www.doaj.org) and > over 1,800 academic repositories where authors deposit copies of their > research articles (www.opendoar.org). This is the result of the open > access movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_(publishing) > which advocates for public access to publicly funded research. > > Hopefully the research which is being made available through open access > can help to support the work of the community. > > Melissa > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser
For those who have experienced it, the availability of immediate access to a very wide range of resources is an incredible advantage. The same is true for the availability of print resources. On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:54 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote: > -- On Wed, 9/3/11, SlimVirgin wrote: > >> The nearest university to me will give access to databases >> for $150 a >> year, but they make non-students and staff travel to the >> university >> itself to do it; no logging in from home, and that turns >> into a >> serious hassle over time (travelling there, very high >> parking fees, >> not being able to browse at leisure). > > These are my feelings too. It's just not practical. By the time I've spent > three-quarters of an hour in traffic (each way) and have paid $15 or more > for 3 hours' parking, I'm better off shelling out $20 to buy an article > online, where I can take time to digest it, make myself a free coffee, and > do the work without worrying about my parking meter, or closing time. > > Andreas > > > > > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser
No, I do not think the situation was solved two years ago. Some of the topics discussed here over the last year have indicated some of the continuing problems. The attitude that the volunteers are here only to write articles, and should leave the general concerns of the site to the professionals, is a good part of the problem. Many organizations do work that way, and they can be successful in their own terms. Wikipedia is an attempt to do something different. On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 6:44 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote: > On 9 March 2011 23:02, David Goodman wrote: >> Until recently, the foundation has been increasing its staff by hiring >> the best person immediately available, rather than a person good >> enough to do the necessary job. > > I don't think that's true, at least not for the past couple of years. > The WMF often takes a long time over recruitment and has been known to > re-list jobs if there were no good applicants. > >> 1. keep the job unfilled , and search again and again until there is a >> suitable applicant -- except for a critical replacement, this is >> nearly always possible, & if it is a critical position, there should >> have been a in-house person qualified to back up the position as long >> as necessary. I've known major libraries leaving key senior >> positions unfilled for 10 years, until a suitable candidate was found. > > If you can get by without a position filled for 10 years then clearly > it isn't a necessary position (or the position has been filled and you > just haven't updated that person's job title). You can't have someone > else fill in for a position indefinitely since then they won't be > doing their own job. > >> 2. redefine the job so that there are available applicants who can >> fill them. this may require rearranging other positions, including >> asking people at higher levels to take on responsibilities they would >> rather delegate. > > The WMF has definitely done that with some of the recent hires to the > community team. > >> 3. Increase the financial and non-financial aspects of the position, >> in order to attract a wider range of candidates. This is especially >> necessary to get applications from highly qualified candidates who >> would need to relocate. Some organizations may be too poor to do this, >> or be dealing with controlling outside bodies that limit their >> flexibility, in which case they can do the 4th option, an option which >> often has benefits even for the richest: > > Working for Wikipedia is a big non-financial aspect that attracts a > wide range of candidates. > >> 4. rely more on the volunteers, even for things one would not normally >> expect a volunteer to do. Wikipedia has some unusually well-qualified >> volunteers available, as compared with most any other organization. > > Things one would not normally expect a volunteer to do, such as > writing encyclopaedia articles, say? > > So, in summary, your suggestions are good but they are already being > done and the problem you observe was fixed years ago. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser
aff and > shoestrings budget that was evident in the early phases taking on the other > big companies. The appearance seems to switch between those two identities, > there is probably nothing wrong with that, but their seems to be some lack > of vision at the helm. > > My impression from the finance reports linked to earlier by someone is that > the foundation is raising more money than it actually needs, bloat would be > the most likely outcome. If its not apparent now, then it probably will be > later. My advice would be better financial planning. > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness: a radical proposal -- some proposed details and a diagram
The actual work of helping new editors and monitoring quality does not require an admin, and most of the people doing it are not admins. The main thing I use admin tools for is to delete hopelessly unacceptable articles, but almost everything I delete has been spotted by a non-admin. However, most of what I do is not the use of admin tools, but explaining to the authors of these who have come in good faith what was wrong and how they can do better, & encouraging the potentially good ones to stay. Anyone who has sufficient learned or innate politeness & understanding can do that. And anyone with politeness and understanding can pass rfa, if they care to, if they are willing to tolerate some stupid remarks. The ability to patiently tolerate stupidity is and ought to remain one of the requirements for being an admin. On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 1:42 PM, Neil Harris wrote: > Here are some more details to flesh out my proposal for new admin creation. > > Proposed rate of automatic new admin creation: 5% a month, until back to > early-Wikipedia proportions of admin number relative to edit rate. > > Although this sounds a lot, it's only about 3 new admins a day. > > - > > State transitions: > > IP user > | > | Creates an account, passes captcha test > V > User > | > | Time passes > V > Autoconfirmed user > | > | Time passes. User gets chosen at random from pool of all editors, > followed by machine checking for good participation. The daily rate of > random selection is tuned to generate the correct rate of new admins > over the long term. > V > Proposed new admin > | > | Gets message. Sends a request message to a list. Any "old admin" > checks for human-like edits, then performs one-click action to issue > admin bit. If they don't respond within (say) two weeks, the invitation > is withdrawn, and they have to wait to be be drawn again at random. > V > New admin, with limited powers > | > | One year passes without being de-adminned > V > Old admin, with full powers > > -- > > Some possible machine-detectable criteria for "good participation", > based on edits: > > * Account age: Has been a Wikipedia contributor for at least two years. > * Recent activity: Has made at least one edit in at least X days in the > last three months. > * Recent blocks: has not been blocked at all in the last year > * Responsiveness: Has edited a user page of an editor who has edited > their user page, at least Y times in the last three months. > * Edit comments: Has added a non-trivial edit comment to at least Z% of > their edits > * Namespaces: Has edited some balanced mix of articles, talk pages, user > talk pages, and project talk pages, within the last three months > > Note that this is a satisficing activity -- the aim is not to find the > best editors, or to be fair, but just to select active Wikipedia > participants who know their way around, and are not misbehaving, and > then select some of them by lot. > > The final test, for humanness, necessarily needs to be performed by a > human being, to avoid the threat of bots gaming the system, but, if as > suggested above, there are only about three or four candidates proposed > each day. > > Note also that almost this process can be implemented in a bot, > independently of the actual wikipedia software itself. > > -- Neil > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] breaking English Wikipedia apart
To the extent that the enWP is a project to build a practical encyclopedia, it seems to have been getting increased acceptance as it gets larger. There is no indication that this trend is ceasing or or even faltering. To the extent that WP is an experiment, the experiment has already succeeded beyond the limits of similar projects, and there is no reason to stop at this point. Predictions that there would be a size beyond which it no longer scales have so far all of them been wrong. Splitting the encyclopedia is irreversible--we can always decide to split, but it is very unlikely that after sections develop separately they will be able to recombine. But there is nothing to stop anyone from making a split if they desire while leaving the actual Wikipedia as it is. I think WP can only benefit from serious competition. I agree the role of the wikiprojects should be increased and perhaps formalized, but already over the last few years at the enWP, some of the various WikiProjects and less organized impromptu groups of people interested in various aspects have made decisions that the community has not supported. There is an advantage in having an Encyclopedia with uniform policies that have general agreement--people read it as a whole & have common expectations. And with respect to BLPs, the biographical information about living people permeates most areas of the Encyclopedia, not just the articles with a living person's name as the title. On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 7:33 PM, John Vandenberg wrote: > Was: Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness (was: Missing Wikipedians: An Essay) > Was: Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness > > On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 10:17 AM, Ryan Kaldari wrote: >> On 2/25/11 3:11 PM, John Vandenberg wrote: >>> On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 11:18 PM, wrote: >>>> .. >>>> I think it could also be considered to divide our huge language wikis >>>> into smaller parts. The existing WikiProjects could be made virtual wikis >>>> with their own admins, recent changes etc. That way, each project is in >>>> fact like a small wiki to which the newbie could sign up according to >>>> 'hers' area of interest and where the clarrity and friendlier atmosphere >>>> of the smaller wikis could prevail. >>> >>> This is the best solution, in my opinion. >> >> Yes, the larger wikis need to become WikiProject-centric. First step in >> doing this would be to create a WikiProject namespace. Second step would >> be to make WikiProject article tagging/assessment part of the software >> instead of template-based. > > I can see how those would be useful steps, however I think those steps > are part of a 10 year plan. > > A 10 year plan will be overrun by events. > > We need a much more direct plan. > > I recommend breaking enWP apart by finding easy chunks and moving them > to a separate instance, and having readonly copies on the main project > like we do for File: pages from Commons. > > IMO, the simplest and most useful set of articles to break apart is BLPs. > The criteria is really simple, and those articles already have lots of > policy differences around them. > > By the time we have perfected this system with the BLPs, the community > will have come to understand the costs/benefits of moving other > clusters of articles to separate projects, and we'll see other > clusters of articles migrated to sub-projects. > > btw, this idea is not new, but maybe its time has come. > http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=29729 > > -- > John Vandenberg > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Since Egypt has shutdown internet, should we too?
A wonderful precedent for other approaches to press agencies--it will perhaps work best for those agencies that have an appropriate special concern for the area or subject. On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 7:16 PM, aude wrote: > On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 6:32 PM, David Gerard wrote: > >> On 28 January 2011 23:28, aude wrote: >> > On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 5:39 PM, David Gerard wrote: >> >> >> Relevant to Egypt and WMF, it is important that Al-Jazeera has >> >> released a pile of photos and video as CC by-nd and CC-by-nc-nd: >> >> > Already have contacted them and they are willing to give us permission. >> >> >> :-D :-D :-D >> >> This is BIG NEWS. A hearty HIP HIP HOORAY to everyone involved in this! >> >> Now we need permission from a *second* network ... >> >> >> > They have posted one video now, and working on putting more up. > > http://cc.aljazeera.net/asset/language/arabic/footage-egyptian-protests-al-jazeera-office > > It's CC-BY licensed. > > I'm pretty technical, but if someone better with video wants to help convert > it to ogg theora format and get it uploaded to Commons, that would be > awesome. > > Cheers, > Katie > > > > >> - d. >> >> ___ >> 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 > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Announcement: Pete Forsyth leaving the Wikimedia Foundation
At least from my perspective, I have found Pete exceptionally helpful. I would have been considerably less active in many things this past year without his encouragement. On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 7:48 PM, Florence Devouard wrote: > Hm, > > Well, > > Thank you for your job at WMF Pete. I missed you on irc chan this > evening. Will be glad to chat with you about your next job :) > > Ant > > > On 1/13/11 9:24 PM, Frank Schulenburg wrote: >> Hi All, >> >> This email is to announce that Pete Forsyth's year-long position with >> the Foundation has come to an end and he is leaving us January 15, >> 2011. Pete's contract as Public Outreach Officer actually ended by in >> October 2010, but we asked him to stay on for an additional few months >> to finish a few things and during that time he also provided some >> critical help to Sara Crouse on grant proposals and reports. >> >> Pete's biggest achievement was to help with the first phase of our >> Public Policy Initiative. He conducted initial interviews with about >> 40 professors and other stakeholders in fall 2009. He also worked with >> Rod Dunican, Sara and me to write the grant proposal for the Stanton >> Foundation in early 2010. In August 2010, Pete was involved in the >> training of the initial cohort of volunteer Wikipedia Campus >> Ambassadors. He also procured the donation to the commons of 18 high >> quality case studies by Cambridge University Press. >> >> As Public Outreach Officer, Pete worked with volunteers on outreach >> via screencasts, software feature development, and other initatives. >> He advised numerous Wikimedia projects in community relations and >> advised staff on onboarding and training processes related to wiki >> skills and Wikimedia culture. >> >> For our Bookshelf project, Pete authored and edited instructional >> materials about Wikipedia and related projects. In addition to working >> on the Public Policy Initiative grant proposal, he worked with Sara >> developing and writing proposals and reports for grants for >> foundations including Hewlett, Stanton, Ford, and Google Charitable >> Giving Fund. >> >> During his time at the Wikimedia Foundation, Pete presented to >> graduate students and faculty at Princeton and Harvard university; and >> to museum Wikimedians, museum curators, librarians at Wikimania, the >> Chapters meeting, Recent Changes Camp, and Wikimedia France's GLAM >> event. >> >> Going forward, Pete will be working as a consultant on online peer >> production projects, and looks forward to continued collaboration with >> the Wikimedians and academics he has worked with while at the >> Foundation. In the near term, Pete will also continue to consult with >> Sara on foundation relations projects. >> >> I particularly appreciated Pete's deep insights into Wikpedia's >> culture and policies. His involvement in the Public Policy Initiative >> was key in linking Wikipedia peer production with higher education. >> >> I wish Pete all the very best for his future. >> >> Frank >> >> - >> >> NB. This mail address is used for public mailing lists. Personal >> emails sent to this address will get lost. >> >> ___ >> 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 > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age
In my experience, it is simply not correct that people who may be paid to edit, even for a nonprofit organization, are unlikely to have a bias. (Of course, so do the unpaid. COI does not require money , but money always produces COI.) I've seen too many cases of such people adding inappropriate content: inserting more links to the organization than anyone else would do, using vague adjectives of praise, using the full name of the company as often as possible, adding excessive links to internal sources, trying to mention every possible product and feature and event and minor corporate milestone, using favorable comments made about them from non-reliable sources, adding a list of too many executives, using publications from their company or organization as references disproportionately in articles, and trying to say things 3 times over, in the infobox, the lede, and the main article. These are the ways we pick up their edits now, and will be able to do so whether or not they declare themselves. I have seen such editors who do not do this but whom I can identify as paid internal or outside editing, and I agree with you there should be no objection to such editing. (I identify from the particular subject concentration, the trick of style, features in subjects I know something about which are characteristically seen in their declared PR and advertising -- and, for external editors, the consistency across different articles. Even when what they add is appropriate, there can still be a pattern.) As an easy example of what anyone can identify, are political campaign biographies. On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 4:21 PM, Kim Bruning wrote: > * Museum Curator: Adding information about artifacts in the collection. This > should be fine. > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Re: [VereinDE-l] Bericht zur Verleihung der Zedler-Medaille und Academy
is like any other. It needs a lot of practice to be > mastered. And there is no better place on Earth to master it than > Wikipedia. > > Ideally, encyclopedists shouldn't be experts in particular fields, but > experts in writing encyclopedia: those who are able to compile known > facts into readable articles, according to the encyclopedic rules. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Re: [VereinDE-l] Bericht zur Verleihung der Zedler-Medaille und Academy
We at Wikipedia are not by ourselves going to reform or replace the reward structure of the academic world. The suggestion I have recently been making, is that when someone in the academic world wants to write something general, they publish one version under their name , at least on their own website, but more formally if applicable, and use another to start or add to or replace a Wikipedia article, and then not get too concerned what people do with it in detail, but keep an eye on it in general. It would really be great if a few people publishing review articles, or, even better, textbooks, were to do this. they should think of it as a supplemental opportunity to diffuse their work very widely--especially in translation, for very few are likely to themselves prepare multiple language versions for publication? once a good article is in one Wikipedia, others will copy it. And the response to user case 1 (the deWP article on Roman (novel) ) is to suggest to the publisher that they regard it as a rough draft--and, of course, to say so at the start. On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 12:48 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: > > On Thu, 25 Nov 2010 18:13:56 +0100, Ting Chen wrote: >> Hello all, > <...> >> I think it is very important for us to understand the difficulties >> academics face if they want to join the Wikimedian community. And maybe >> we should rethink about our strategy and approach on working with >> academics. >> >> Greetings >> Ting >> > > Just today accidentally Daniel Mietchen started the page on exactly the > same topic > > http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Top_ten_reasons_why_academics_do_not_contribute_to_Wikipedia > > Input is highly welcome. > > Cheers > Yaroslav > > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age
article, (b) that someone > doesn't have their own perspective that they feel is more valid, (c) and > someone is willing to actually edit the article. Those three conditions > aren't being met nearly enough (see editor-to-article ratio above). We've > created the very situation where organizations and people are no longer > willing to accept that they have to put up with a bad article about > themselves. And precisely why should they be prevented from improving our > project?" > > As to the Volunteer Response Team, they are a very small group of volunteers > who are usually swamped with requests, and they often wind up having to > negotiate with the existing "interested" editors to clear out BLP violations > and clean up the articles to meet our own standards, sometimes having to > fight tooth and nail to do so. (I should clarify that there is a large > group of volunteers, but only a few who are actually responding to tickets > on a regular basis, not unlike most wiki-projects.) It is challenging for > subjects of articles to find their way to submit a request to have their > article fixed, too. And remember that 1:960 ratio - even if every active > editor on enwp made it their business to do nothing but maintenance and > improvement of existing articles, we couldn't keep up with the workload. > > Risker/Anne > > [1] <http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm> > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Funding Sources of Medical Research, was Misplaced Reliance, was Re: Paid editing...
Most journals do make their abstracts visible, so if funding is included there, one can see it without logging in. But there are two serious ethical problems, one of them is what people who are funded by a commercial or POV entity do incorrectly because of that funding. The worse is the concealment of one's funding in order to avoid suspicion of the bias. Everything that is done incorrectly because of funding is also done by those who have an intellectual or emotional stake in the outcome On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 6:37 PM, geni wrote: > On 8 November 2010 05:54, Andreas Kolbe wrote: >>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Funding Sources of Medical Research, was >>> Misplaced Reliance, was Re: Paid editing... >>> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" >>> Date: Monday, 8 November, 2010, 0:22 >>> On 7 November 2010 12:26, David >>> Gerard >>> wrote: >>> > That naming funding sources is in fact *standard in >>> the field* is, >>> > however, something that strongly suggests we should >>> not deliberately >>> > withhold such information from the reader. >>> >>> Err we don't. They are free to consult the source. >>> >>> However the field in question has long established >>> standards when it >>> comes to citation. >>> >>> So for example when "Anti-HIV-1 activity of salivary MUC5B >>> and MUC7 >>> mucins from HIV patients with different CD4 counts" cites >>> "Interaction >>> of HIV-1 and human salivary mucin" they do so in the form >>> of: >>> >>> "Bergey EJ, Cho MI, Blumberg BM, Hammarskjold ML, Rekosh D, >>> Epstein >>> LG, Levine MJ. Interaction of HIV-1 and human salivary >>> mucins. J >>> Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 1994;7:995–1002." >>> >>> And do not mention it's funding source >>> >>> (see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2967540/). >> >> >> This is a valid argument. >> >> However, mentioning the funding source is not unheard of in medical >> citations. See the first example given here: >> >> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bookshelf/br.fcgi?book=citmed&part=A32352#A32755 > > It's extremely uncommon though as any random perusal of pubmed will show. > >> Funding is consistently included on abstract pages. Examples: >> >> http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0013614 >> http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0010548 >> >> Here, funding is included along with the publication data. It is a standard >> format. >> > > Sure but not for references. The references in your examples do not > include funding sources. > >> Where references are hyperlinked, as in your counterexample, professionals >> can view the article. Our readers cannot, unless they have access to the >> relevant academic database. > > We have a long standing principle that we don't worry about things > like paywalls when it comes to sources. Eh your averaged paywalled > journal is highly assessable compared to some of the stuff I've cited > over the years. > > > > -- > geni > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Funding Sources of Medical Research, was Misplaced Reliance, was Re: Paid editing...
Does not work for me,, because it unreasonably implies that references without it are not so funded. On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 7:56 AM, FT2 wrote: > Works for me. > > FT2 > > > On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 8:24 PM, Fred Bauder wrote: > >> > I think you have hit the nail on the head. Now we just need to drive it >> > in >> > the rest of the way. >> >> >> >> >> These ethics standards serve the ideal of communicating reliable >> >> knowledge to readers. This is one of the ideals that the Foundation was >> >> built upon. They are also expressly designed to protect and enhance the >> >> reputation of the publication that provides this information. While our >> >> reputation will never be able to compare to those of top medical >> >> journals, >> >> I see no reason why we should fail to take reasonable and feasible >> >> steps to >> >> protect it to the extent that we can, following the example of the best >> >> sources. >> >> >> >> Andreas >> >> >> >> So, disclosure of funding source when available, included in >> Template:Cite journal >> >> Fred >> >> >> ___ >> 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 > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Misplaced Reliance, was Re: Paid editing, was Re: Ban and...
ut >> it is equally important to detect context around them. >> >> It is sad to see that Wikipedians are showing the same kind of fear >> toward more information, as classical encyclopedists was showing in >> relation to Wikipedia. Again, there are no irrelevant information (or >> the most of information treated as so are not irrelevant), there are >> just well and badly worded articles. >> > > Its not fear of information, its concern that the addition of > minutia detracts from the main purpose of the article, and that > it provides a handle for some agenda pushing. In these postings and > on the talk page there are references to "Big Pharma". IOW some > are looking to add this stuff simply in order to POV push. > > > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Misplaced Reliance, was Re: Paid editing, was Re: Ban and...
But then it should also be said what studies were NOT funded by the manufacturer, and we do not know that,m because most journals do not specify--and almost none specified in the past. On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 3:18 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote: >> > Those who advocate this, though well meaning, go way > I don't understand what is so difficult or complicated about saying, > "According to a 2009 study funded by the manufacturer, drug X is > effective in ..." > > Truly puzzled. > > Andreas > > > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Misplaced Reliance, was Re: Paid editing, was Re: Ban and...
Those who advocate this, though well meaning, go way beyond our scope. This is a matter for professional journals, not an unauthoritative reader-edited encyclopedia On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 3:19 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote: >> > I'm sure you noticed that this 2008 study >> > >> > http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050095 >> > >> > criticises media reports for citing studies and >> experts with financial ties >> > to manufacturers, without disclosing these ties to the >> reader. >> > >> > If it's improper for the media to withhold this >> information, it's equally >> > improper for us to withhold it in our articles. It's a >> question of correct >> > attribution: "According to a 2007 randomised, >> double-blind, placebo- >> > controlled trial funded by company X, involving 50 >> patients, their product >> > Y ..." >> > >> > I don't think our medical sources guideline addresses >> this point at >> > present, i.e. that we should name funding sources in >> our attribution. So >> > that is an area we could do some work on. At least it >> will be clear to >> > the reader who paid for what. >> > >> I think that would make an important difference to our >> coverage. It >> would not only inform the reader that the sources we're >> relying on >> have a financial interest in the outcome. It would also >> alert the >> editors who push to rely on those sources that additional >> disinterested sources may be needed too. > > > If anyone's interested, this is currently being discussed here: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)#Funding_of_cited_research > > A. > > > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial Content a feature to allow.....
I had not realized thatAdblock Plus was aa flexible as this--though I use it, it is only for its primary purpose, where it seems a stable and effective program that has no detrimental side-effects. If there is anyone who does want to prevent themselves or the minors under their personal care from seeing certain content, there are much worse programs out there. And, fortunately, to let people use it, we do not have to do anything ourselves. Anyone may use downstream filters who chooses--that's our required position under the CC license. We should describe all our images with accurate descriptors, not emphasizing sexual descriptors any more or less than we should emphasize sexual content. Then anyone who cares to develop such filters on whatever non-WMF site they choose can do so, according to whatever principles they choose, emphasizing what they will, whether or not compatible with our basic pillars of uncensored or NPOV. In suggesting we host such filters, I imagine the intent is to do so simply for single terms or words, in the hope that our single descriptors by themselves will be sufficient. Since it is impossible to developed filters for every conceivable combination of terms, if it will require anything more complex, then it will probably be necessary as a practical matter to tailor for a particular purpose. That must be none of our doing, for that is exactly what is inconsistent with NPOV and not censored. I do not think the recommendations have dealt with practical implication such as these. Or if they really have, and mean to apply it to sexual content only, there's only one answer consistent with not censored: those who think such content controversial are free to do what they want with it, outside the WMF. On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 9:07 PM, geni wrote: > So apparently part of the fallout from the Controversial Content study > is a recommendation "that the Wikimedia Foundation develop a feature > to allow Wikimedia project users to opt into a system that would allow > them to easily hide classes of images from their own view" > > Rather than developing a significant new feature I would suggest using > Adblock Plus > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus > > Adblock Plus is under the MPL so a stripped down or streamlined > version could be produced if required. Adblock Plus already makes it > easy to block predefined sets of images. For example if a user were to > dislike pictures of giant isopods they could download the filter that > blocked all the giant isopod images. If these filters were to be > stored localy we would probably need a new namespace or perhaps > project. In the case of the giant isopod filter the content of the > filter would look something like: > > [Adblock] > ! Checksum: l4nEGmZz7f1kh8Pfszr2rg > *Giant_isopod.jpg* > *Bathynomus_giganteus.jpg* > *Bathynomus_giganteus_NOAA.jpg* > *Front_View_Isopod_West_Sirius_Rig_GOM.JPG* > *Isopod_from_West_Sirius_Rig_GOM.JPG* > > although the average user should never see that. > > There are a number of advantages to this approach: > 1)It is entirely under the users control. They can chose what filters > to install, edit any filters they install and turn them off on a page > by page basis > 2)It doesn't require logging in. So it doesn't suddenly stop working > when someone is logged out for whatever reason > 3)It allows for a potentially unlimited number of filtering lists > 4)The lists don't have to be hosted on wikipedia allowing groups to > set up common filters without having to work through us > 5)This literally works right now. You could drop that list into an > Adblock Plus install and see no giant isopods. > > The downside: > 1)We would need to check how compatible the filters are with > equivalent software on chrome and opera > 2)There is no equivalent for internet explorer > 3)Phones could be a problem although if there is actual demand I > assume someone will produce an app. > > -- > geni > > _______ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Misplaced Reliance, was Re: Paid editing, was Re: Ban and ...
Whether or not we want it to be, whether or not it ought to be, Wikipedia is being relied on. Our foundational principles do not control the outside world. What we have produced is being used as the nearest approach to a reliable source most people are willing to look for--and in many cases actually is the closest thing to a reliable sources they can reasonably be expected to find. Not that we're particularly good, just that there is nothing as widely available that is better. This gives us responsibility. Whether or not we are ready for it, it gives us responsibility. We're no longer playing a computer game for our own satisfaction. We are now responsible for covering controversial subjects in an even-handed fashion, giving various views the appropriate emphasis, and providing enough information that people can judge them. We need to cover things with real consequences, and get them right. Since people come to us for medical or legal information, we need to provide accurate information, while explaining the limits of what we provide. This is not a mechanical process. It is editing in the true sense of the word: it takes judgement, it takes takes research-- things we have been claiming are against our basic principles. And indeed they weren't not needed for a play-project. We may wish we were still playing. But we've grown up and must take the responsibility that adults have, of working and standing behind our work. We have an obligation to provide all answers, and indicate which are the accepted answers among them. We can not provide information from scientific studies and news anecdotes and say they have equal weight. If we report things people say that are not really true or that are outright lies, we must explain their status. There are some matters in the world where there are views that almost every rational person who understands the problem considers far fringe, and yet a very significant minority or even majority of people in the world believe them to be true or at least possible. There are matters in the world which a very significant minority or even a majority think should not be judged by logic and science, and the only evidence they want is the experiences of those who agree with them. We need to explain those views, but we also need to explain their basis. On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 9:44 PM, wrote: > In a message dated 10/24/2010 5:15:14 PM Pacific Daylight Time, > wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk writes: > > >> Perhaps you aren't listening? Although I do notice moments where you >> tend to make the same points. Still what I'm trying to do is to at least >> get some here to think as to how one might produce a body of work that >> can be relied upon. Where the body of work isn't continually under >> attack or being buggered about with. >> >> > > > Perhaps it's you were aren't listening. Because we already know how "one > might produce a body of work *upon which* one can rely". > > That's not the problem however with your "suggestions". > Rather, you want to *change* Wikipedia into that sort of work. Or rather I > think actually you'd have wished it had been that way from the get-go. > > But it wasn't, it's not, and it's not really likely that this sort of > approach is one in which you'll find a result that you would wish. > Doesn't it seem to you like this sort of method, is not likely to work? > I mean, posting your grievances here on Foundation-L ? > > W > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing, was Re: Ban and moderate
A stupid PR agency would do just that. A good one , writing for any medium, would try to make sure that positive sources are also included, that the presentation was balanced., and that is was factual, not tabloid hysteria and exaggeration. A really good one that understands Wikipedia would for an article like this do it on the talk p, in order to avoid the likely criticism that would follow no matter how good the edits might be. On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 3:02 AM, SlimVirgin wrote: > > Someone working for the company that makes Lipitor would try to stop > mainstream media sources being used in the article, because it's the > media that has been pointing out problems with these drugs. And that's > exactly what happens on these articles, but it's unfortunately > Wikipedians who are doing it. Their motives are good -- to keep out > nonsense -- but the effect is to turn those articles into something > the manufacturers and their PR people would be very happy with. > > > > Sarah > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing, was Re: Ban and moderate
No. You underestimate their subtlety and professionalism.. See Durova, at http://searchengineland.com/seo-tips-tactics-from-a-wikipedia-insider-11715 . I am aware of editing by paid editing that is neither aggressive nor inappropriate. Really good PR people can learn to be careful not to express a POV when they know they are not supposed to. On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 6:20 PM, Fred Bauder wrote: >> Obviously, the ones who do better at it are the ones we cannot detect. > > It is not so much that they cannot be detected, after all their editing > has purpose and they are usually both aggressive and persistent. However, > adequate demonstration of such patterns of activity to other > administrators, or ultimately, to a committee is not trivial. > > The essential clue is that they have a strong point of view about > something that no ordinary person would be exercised about, some company > or product with public relations deficits. > > Ultimately, pursuit of any but the most clumsy is hard thankless work. > Beating on the clumsy, is, of course, a necessary task if only to correct > bad editing. > > Fred > > > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing, was Re: Ban and moderate
Obviously, the ones who do better at it are the ones we cannot detect. My experience is that some in-house PR people do a very poor and easily detectable job. An expert specialist who knows what is actually wanted will do far better than a PR generalist who approaches it like any other PR. I have, however, seen some PR people from institutions learn the merits of entering a purely factual description and of doing only articles on the notable people there, not the borderline ones. On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 5:38 PM, Ryan Kaldari wrote: > Since the can of worms has been opened... > > In my opinion, which ironically is probably similar to Greg Kohs', > having any stance on paid editing of Wikipedia is pointless. Most large > companies and organizations are already paying people to edit Wikipedia > (albeit quietly). The ones we know about and complain about are the > companies that are too small to do it in-house and try to outsource it. > Any policy we enact is going to be ignored by the people doing it > quietly and will only affect the people doing it publicly (like Kohs). > The only way we can be effective in this regard is to strengthen our > COI, NPOV, OR, and V policies to minimize misuse of Wikipedia (paid or not). > > That said, I still believe that Kohs has gone far beyond being a useful > critic. Yes, he has points that are worth discussion, but that doesn't > mean we have to overlook his disruptive behavior. He clearly has an axe > to grind and intends to grind it. We don't have to facilitate that. > > Ryan Kaldari > > On 10/22/10 2:04 PM, Fred Bauder wrote: >> Yes, but he is relentless when not prodded. Unless we chose to open up >> Wikipedia to paid editing of the sort he does he will probably continue >> to be relentless. >> >> When I was checking out thekohser on freelancer.com I found a couple of >> other Wikipedia editors who were bidding on contracts to edit Wikipedia >> for money. >> >> One, who had completed two contracts and had accepted a third, seems to >> have given up. The other seems to be an excellent editor, but at this >> point I have not identified a particular contract of theirs. >> >> The question remains: what do we expect of someone who edits Wikipedia, >> or any other foundation project, for money. And frankly, why would we >> make trouble for someone living in Bangladesh that is earning what is a >> month's salary there, $30, in return for adding an article about some >> marginally notable business to Wikipedia? >> >> Our policies remain somewhat unclear, see: >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Paid_editing >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Paid_editing_%28policy%29 >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Paid_editing_%28guideline%29 >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Paid_editing_%28guideline%29/Noticeboard >> >> And the Reward Board: >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reward_board#Money >> >> These examples are from the English Wikipedia, but potentially apply to >> any foundation project. >> >> Fred >> >> >> >> ___ >> 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 > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expertise and Wikipedia redux
What is inexcusable, is that the precise parts that sere copied from the particular sources are not in general indicated. At the first, it may have been so glaringly obvious that the entire article was copied that it was not thought necessary. Even now it is often rather easy to decipher: the part which contains unsourced unsupported generalities, is the part that was copied. (And, to be fair, if it is confirmed by the characteristic style of the reference works in question-- since many other WPedians have entered equally unsupported text best on their own personal synthesis). It is not always the text that was entered at the beginning, though it usually is, and can be seen in purest form in the obscurer academic subjects nobody has since worked on. The practices of using sources and not specifically indicating precisely what comes from which source, is plagiarism. It is not excused by public domain. It is not excused by a general warning. the only way of using it that would be acceptable in the academic or publishing world is quotation marks or the equivalent, adjusted as subsequent edits are made to indicate the specific retained phrases. (I leave aside the question of whether the synthesis or even the basic information can actually be relied on--I know of no branch of humanities or social science that has remained static over the past century. ) The current way of using this material meets neither WP:V, nor the most minimal standards of accuracy. On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 7:12 PM, Nikola Smolenski wrote: > Дана Saturday 16 October 2010 21:15:18 Peter Damian написа: >> - Original Message - >> From: >> > IF you don't like what it says, change it. >> > What really is the point, of pointing out that "Oh gosh we don't have up >> > to >> > date articles" when anyone who cares to, can simply edit the article? >> >> There is no one able to change it. It will be the same in a month's time. > > While I agree that there are articles that are impossible to actually change, > I don't think this is one of them. A meaningful change of this article will > stay. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] xkcd's map of the internet
At the NYT and similar sites, I notice a pattern where the are are a few readers who rather frequently comment on more than a single article, and consequently get to know each other, though not necessarily in a favorable sense. . On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 12:32 PM, Nathan wrote: > On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 12:18 PM, Amory Meltzer wrote: >>>social communities >> >> I think most would argue that porn is inherently anti-social. I don't see a >> lot of social communities made up of just one person (probably half of IRC). >> >> > > That's a good point, but it does include YouTube, and much of the porn > "universe" these days revolves around file-sharing and adult versions > of YouTube.[1] It also includes the New York Times and other sites > where user-participation is still more of an afterthought, and calling > them "communities" is sort of a stretch. > > [1] > http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hHa_9L1Rwp6lLcVg8mJzB-PBroXg > (Agence France Press) > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?
On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 5:26 AM, Peter Damian wrote: > >We were talking > about very aggressive editors who know absolutely nothing of the subject, > and drive away specialist editors. > I see an equal proportion of very aggressive editors among the expert as well as the non-expert editors. Expertise does not necessarily mean a devotion to expressing all significant views and presenting them fairly. I have been involved a little with some articles in Wikipedia written by fully-credentialed experts --in one case with an international reputation and distinguished academic awards-- devoted to expressing their own peculiarly one-sided view of the subject. And there was a group of articles with several experts of established high reputation each taking the position that the other ones were hopelessly wrong. And not confined to Wikipedia, I think we all know of subjects in all fields where there are or have been people of high authority with peculiar views Indeed, this sort of bias infected the old Brittanica. I am not qualified to judge articles on philosophy on my own understanding of the material. I must ask whether you are so very sure that academic consensus will endorse your views on the articles mentioned that you would be able to write a replacement article, and ask for an RfC on it, and convince outsiders by reference to multiple understandable authoritative sources? I remind you that in the case of climate change, the scientific view was eventually supported, though it took several rounds at arb com. In the other direction, disputes between experts was one of the factors that killed (or almost-killed) Citizendium. -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?
On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 8:30 AM, Marc Riddell wrote: > on 10/2/10 6:01 AM, SlimVirgin at slimvir...@gmail.com wrote: > >>> From: "David Gerard" >>>> That [...] doesn't answer the question I asked: >>>> *what* about the approach in this paper wouldn't work for philosophy, >>>> in your opinion? Please be specific. >> >> David, I think one of the reasons that biologists and others may be >> happier than philosophers to edit Wikipedia is that everyone assumes >> they know something about the latter and don't need to study for it, > >> > >> Academics don't have the time or patience to explain basic points for >> years on end to people who feel that reading books or papers about the >> subject is unnecessary. I'm sure the biology experts would give up too >> if their area of expertise were undermined in such a basic way. >> > Very well said, SV. I encounter the same thing in my field. You cannot teach > someone who will not be taught. You cannot teach someone something they > think they already know. > Sure you can, if you can just get their attention. This is the basic method behind good instructional and popular writing, as well as such specific genres as biography. You need to provide an especially attractive format and very clear presentation in a manner that implies that the presentation is expected to be entertaining, to get people started reading or listening, and then to keep them going provide intrinsically interesting material and clear dramatic verbal and pictorial illustration, and write or speak in language and manner that is at the right level of sophistication--a slightly better informed friend is usually the right level, and aim at an overall effect when finished that w;il give people a feeling of satisfaction and increased confidence. It's not easy. Few people can do this really well, and they are only occasionally professional academics. Good advertising people can do it; good journalists can do it; masters of popular non-fiction can do it; some fiction writers can even do it. It may be beyond practical levels of community participation to expect it in Wikipedia, at least on a routine basis. (Though we do have one additional factor--the attractive browsing effect. ) People do change their mind. People can be persuaded. But there are almost no articles in Wikipedia written well enough to could persuade people to pay attention to the arguments. Probably that should not be our goal. for I don't think we can accomplish it by an assortment of amateurs. Probably our basic principle is right:aim for NPOV, for those people who want it. We're always going to be dull reading--even the best professional encyclopedias usually have been. Anything more than that belongs in other media. -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Increasing the number of new accounts who actually edit
Based on patrolling thousands of speedies and prod deletions at enWP, of the people whose articles get rejected at enWP, I would say that fewer than 20% of them have even the least likelihood of becoming helpful regular editors. (and I've the reputation of taking an extremely broad view of what might be conceivably be a potentially useful article), So the actual conversion rate of potential editors is about 1 in 32 for those who write potentially useful articles that nonetheless get rejected as compared to 1 in 22 of those whose articles get accepted. That means that our procedures for scaring away editors of rejected articles only scare away 1/3 of the possibly good ones, and 2/3 persist nonetheless. I am not sure how much better we can get it without doing very extensive work with those editors. We might get a higher yield by working with editors who make edits, but not new articles, encouraging them to continue to make others. Anecdotally, many people edit to fix a single error or add a single fact , and never really want to do anything more. On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 7:11 AM, emijrp wrote: > Hi all; > > I think we can compare our retention rate with other communities like Wikia. > If its retention rate is higher, we can learn from them, otherwise they can > learn from us. > > Also, some months ago I read about a Facebook study which said that > "Facebook users who edit their profiles in the first day, use to get > involved". But now, I can't find that study. > > Regards, > emijrp > > 2010/9/23 Peter Gervai > >> On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 18:49, David Gerard wrote: >> >> > It would take a major effort to get individual wiki communities to >> >> And by that you mean communities on enwp? :-) >> People bite everywhere, and the reasons are the same as well, as you >> properly pointed out. Enpw is the largest so people bite there most >> often. >> >> > (That's because there's ridiculous amounts of complete rubbish to sift >> > through. I'm not saying it's simple or easily remedied negligence on >> > the part of existing community members, because if it was it would >> > have been trivially remedied by now.) >> >> But still I agree that the original topic is mostly non-problem. >> >> Peter >> >> ___ >> 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 > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial Content Study Update
It is possible that there is a difference between what the WMF is interested in and what the community is interested in, something which makes itself evident when there is no responses from people in the various projects. . I'm aware there are various portions of the community, but I can only judge by the responses from my own projects.--and this does not mean that I myself am necessarily not interested, as can in fact be seen by my commenting here ! On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 10:57 AM, Gerard Meijssen wrote: > Hoi, > The study was commissioned by the WMF itself. Therefore there is an interest > in the results of the study. > > As far as I am concerned, this is discussion has been very much an echo > chamber. The same points of view repeated by the same people. With very few > people actually listening and willing to compromise. At Wikimania I spoke > with one of the persons involved in the study. I asked about what I am > interested in, I got the feed back I was looking for. I am relatively > certain that I have been heard and consequently I am done discussing. > > As to referrals to the en.wp, that is as parochial as anything. It is just > one Wikipedia that does not get the input from other Wikipedias in a more > extreme fashion. Its consensus is so big in "numbers" that it does not seem > to care about what is consensus elsewhere. > > On 25 August 2010 05:58, David Goodman wrote: > >> If nobody is interested in discussing the study, the apparent >> conclusion is not that the study should move to the next phase, but >> just the opposite, that it should be abandoned. If nobody cares enough >> to talk about it, it's not worth doing. (a slightly different >> application of WP:GNG, the general notability guideline on enWP) >> --in contrast, just as Delphine says, to the enWP pending revisions >> question, which a great many people apparently feel is worth at >> least discussing. >> >> On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 3:36 PM, Excirial wrote: >> > One serious issue with the current status of the study is that it appears >> to >> > be fairly death - especially when considering that it debates a >> > controversial issue while potentially not affecting just one, but every >> > single Wikipedia. After an initial and sustained burst which saw at least >> > several edits a day we are currently in a state where 21 edits were made >> by >> > 7 unique users over the past three weeks or so. I wouls equally point out >> > that, 24 hours after new questions have been posted only two users have >> > actually reacted to them (Myself and DGG). Compare that to the huge >> amount >> > of reactions that were posted after the initial notification on June 22, >> or >> > to the current the huge amount of reactions the current straw >> > poll< >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Straw_poll#Keep:_options_2.2C_3.2C_or_4 >> >on >> > pending revisions is currently generating on the English Wiki. >> > >> > Ill be a tad blunt about two issues i see: >> > 1) This investigation needs momentum, and a boost if the momentum seems >> to >> > go down. Once the discussion seems to reduce to a trickle it is probably >> > best to move to the next fase, rather then waiting a fairly long time >> while >> > people forget. >> > 2) I cannot shake the nagging feeling that i debated the same, or similar >> > questions at least several times, which reduces my interest in debating >> them >> > again (Telling the same story 10 times grows boring after all). >> > >> > Last, a single point that just occured to me - where is this study >> > advertised? The foundation-l mailing list is mostly English, which means >> > that some of the other language Wikipedians may not be subscribed, nor be >> > able to read it or discuss it even if they wished to. To hook into >> question >> > 4. a bit - if we aren't notifying non-english speaking Wikipedians and >> > conducting the entire discussion in English, aren't we excluding certain >> > groups on the basis of language? >> > >> > ~Excirial >> > >> > 2010/8/24 Delphine Ménard >> > >> >> Robert, >> >> >> >> For what it's worth and for the record, I want to thank you for >> >> sharing your thoughts and findings about this process on this list, >> >> it's a fantastic positive and constructive example of "transparency" >> >> as I understand and value it. >> >> >> >> Bon courage
Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial Content Study Update
expressed qualified confidence that a solution on >> that >> > level may be findable). That's not to say that the intellectual and >> > philosophical debate around these issues is not valuable -- it is >> essential, in >> > my opinion. It's just to note that not only is the "devil" in the >> > details as a few of you have noted, but that the "angel" may >> > be in the details as well -- that is -- perhaps -- questions insoluble on >> > the theoretical level may find more areas of agreement on a practical >> level. >> > I'm not sure of that, but I'm presenting it as a working hypothesis at >> this >> > point. >> > >> > >> > >> > My intended course of action over the next month or so is the following. >> I'm >> > planning to actually write the study on a wiki, where my thinking as it >> > develops, plus comments, suggestions, and re-workings will be available >> > for all to see. I was planning to begin that perhaps early in September. >> (A >> > presentation to the Foundation Board is tentatively scheduled for early >> > October). Between now and then, I would like to continue the kind of >> feedback >> > I've been getting, all of it so valuable for me. I have posted another >> set of >> > questions about controversy in text articles on the Meta page devoted to >> the >> > study, ( >> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content) >> because my ambit does not just >> > include images, and text and image, in my opinion, are quite different >> forms of >> > content. As well, I will start to post research I've been collecting for >> > information and comment. I have some interesting notes about the >> > experience of public libraries in these matters (who have been struggling >> with >> > many of these same questions since the time television, not the Internet, >> was >> > the world’s new communications medium), as well as information on the >> policies >> > of other big-tent sites (Google Images, Flickr, YouTube, eBay,etc.) on >> these >> > same issues. I haven't finished collecting all the info I need on the >> latter, >> > but will say that the policies on these sites are extremely complex >> (although >> > not always presented as such) and subject within their communities to >> many of >> > the same controversies that have arisen in ours. We are not them, by any >> > means, but it is interesting to observe how they have struggled with many >> of >> > the same issues with which we are struggling. >> > >> > >> > >> > The time is soon coming when I will lose the luxury of mere >> > observation and research, and will have to face the moment where I will >> enter >> > the arena myself as a participant in these questions. I’m looking forward >> to >> > that moment, with the understanding that you will be watching what I do >> with >> > care, concern, and attention. >> > >> > >> > >> > Robert Harris >> > >> > >> > ___ >> > foundation-l mailing list >> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> > >> >> >> >> -- >> ~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 >> > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
A child seeing such a page will ordinarily go instead to something they understand. Unless we're talking about teen-agers. I see this as an excellent example of the slippery slope we would be in if we did anything targeted at facilitating censorship, especially considering the author of the book is a major writer. There are some elements of these themes in some of his other work also. Do we label them as well? The only sustainable position is that readers can do what they want with our content. If they can derive a filter for what hey want . (I don't see how they can for a novel except by putting it specifically on a blacklist) On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 2:54 PM, geni wrote: > On 25 July 2010 18:17, Andreas Kolbe wrote: >> You're right, it is not just about images. If I set up a censored account >> for a small child, I should be able to set it up in such a way that they >> won't be able to see articles like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg_(novel) >> or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_(sexual_practice) >> >> So, if the child clicks on a wikilink leading there, they would get a screen >> saying, "Sorry, >this page is only available to adult accounts." > > Child responds by logging out. > > > > -- > geni > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions forPotentially-Objectionable Content
others. :) > > If my concerns seemed legitimate, then I probably owe you and anyone > else involved a big apology for accidentally making it seem even > remotely legitimate. A far better description would be "an > illegitimate, unfounded concern that crossed my mind cause I couldn't > make sense of what was going on." > > I passed it on because in the hope it might be a little helpful just > to see where some of our thoughts are going. The downside in even > expressing stuff like that is it sort of involves distrusting a group > of total strangers, most of whose names I don't even know without > looking them up, all because they agreed to do work for my all-time > favorite non-profit. Raw deal for ya'll. > > It doesn't get said enough, but thank you to all who have done such a > wonderful job running things all these years. I never could have > done your jobs one-tenth as well as you all have. In particular, > last year's fundraising work was just phenomenal, and I really do > apologize for even suggesting, in passing, and in theory, that that > work might somehow really be tied to anything negative. I had no > basis for such a statement, I didn't sincerely believe it then, I > still don't. > > Thanks again for reply :) > Alec > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] WikiCite - new WMF project? Was: [Wiki-research-l] UPEI's proposal for a "universal citation index"
This example illustrates some of the problems. If the work is
available in other languages, the non-Serbian WPs would want to cite
the translation in their language. If the book is being cited from an
online excerpt, at least the enWP would require that this be
specified. And if different people cited different versions in this
manner, we would want to link them together. There seems to be the
delusion that accurate work of this sort can be done by automatic
programs. It can be done assisted by automated programs, but requires
manual checking of every item by someone qualified to make the
connections.
On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 5:38 PM, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> Дана Monday 19 July 2010 22:20:15 Brian J Mingus написа:
>> Feel free to provide your feedback on this idea, in addition to your own
>> ideas, in this thread, or to me personally. I am especially interested in
>> the potential benefits to the WMF projects that you see, and to hear your
>> thoughts on the potential of this project on its own, as that will feature
>> prominently in the proposal. Additionally, what do you think WikiCite would
>> eventually be like, once it is fully matured?
>
> I was thinking about this too. Main advantages that I see are that citations
> will become easier to use for editors while more informative for readers. Too
> often I just link to something instead of properly filling a cite template
> because it's just too bothersome. For example, instead of this crud:
>
> {{cite book|author=Š. Kulišić |coauthors=P. Ž. Petrović, N. Pantelić |
> title=Српски митолошки речник |origyear=1970 |publisher=[[Nolit]] |
> location=Belgrade |language=Serbian |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
>
> we would have just:
>
> {{cite|work=Српски митолошки речник |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
>
> Another advantage that I see: people will spend less time filling in the
> citation templates and will thus have more time to make more precise
> citations. This means more citations with exact page numbers or quotes.
>
> Perhaps this could be tested on-wiki prior to creating a separate project,
> perhaps through revival of Reference namespace. This could be done through
> templates only, would require no changes to MediaWiki and few changes to
> existing practices.
>
> BTW1: it is my understanding that you imagined this for literature only, but
> it could be expanded to all citable media (videos etc).
>
> BTW3: for citing online stuff, this could eventually be combined with archive
> of cited pages. If the original goes away we would still have the source for
> the readers to verify. This would also help with some copyright concerns (for
> example, using free images the source of which is later removed thus leaving
> the images with no evidence of being free).
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
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Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite
We are not competing with any other web site, or organization, and there is no reason for us to think of it that way. We are part of the capitalist world only in the sense that our physical operations must exist within it. We are trying to build a particular project for a common purpose--not to rank among the best or most widely used sites on the web, but to provide the best free encyclopedia that our method of working can provide. Other online encyclopedias are not our competitors: they are rather synergistic. Citizendium is perhaps most valuable for having showed us a path we should not follow--elaborate bureaucracy and expert editing--but in a more positive sense did highlight the need for us to improve article quality. That Baidu is more widely used by its target audience is to some extent due to political and censorship considerations, but is also due to its greater size , and shows the importance of having very wide-ranging content of importance to the users. There is however a sense in which our very wide use is beneficial, and our rank among web sites is important for morale: we want to know that our work is being used. But whether we are 5th or 10th does not matter. It does not affect our usefulness or our value. it might to some extent cause some public interest, and thus attract users--but they will remain users if they find what they want, not because of our relative position. The only sense in which we compete is that our project competes for the pool of available and interested volunteer workers. We will grow better by increasing the total pool, by showing the success of such efforts and styles of operation as ours. The more such projects, the more people will be interested in them overall. Even in the commercial world, the success of automobile or computer companies lay primarily in increasing the demand for automobiles or computers, and only secondarily by competing against each other. The basic reason why doing things by staff rather than volunteers is wrong is that it decreases one of the motivations for volunteering--the knowledge that one can participate significantly in not just the work but the decisions, and become influential in whatever activity within the project that one chooses. On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 5:37 AM, Milos Rancic wrote: > On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 11:32 AM, Milos Rancic wrote: >> On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 10:58 AM, John Vandenberg wrote: >>> Who is WMF competing with? >> >> User attention. > > Sorry, misread "who" with "what". > > Presently, with top ~20 sites for user attention. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite
We are secure because of the volunteers, not the funding. If the foundation were to disappear, the project could continue. The only funding actually necessary is for the physical operation of the project. On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 8:49 PM, Birgitte SB wrote: > > > --- On Wed, 6/30/10, Veronique Kessler wrote: > >> From: Veronique Kessler >> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to >> FoundationWebsite >> To: susanpgard...@gmail.com, "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" >> >> Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 3:53 PM >> Thanks everyone for your comments >> thus far (and for the thank yous too :)). >> >> As we progress through accomplishing the goals of the >> strategic plan, we >> will have a better idea of what level our operating budget >> will need to >> be to make everything happen and be sustainable. We >> will have done some >> experimentation with initiatives like geographic >> investments and the >> addition of more roles to support chapters. We don't >> know what our >> optimal operating level will be and what fundraising level >> we can >> sustain. We have made some predictions based on a lot >> of factors and we >> will be able to respond appropriately to new information, >> changes in >> circumstances, etc. as we progress through this fiscal year >> and future >> years. >> >> For the endowment, Eugene really summed up the endowment >> issue well. I >> want to point out that typically endowments do not fund the >> ongoing >> annual expenses of an organization. A portion of the >> annual earnings on >> the endowment may be allocated to help support operations >> but it is >> usually a small percentage. In the past, one could >> estimate 8-10% >> earnings each year and then allocate some to operations and >> roll the >> rest back to the endowment to continue to grow it. >> Alas, these days, >> 8-10% returns are hard to come by. Just to put it >> into perspective, if >> we were to support a $20 million budget with 5% earnings >> from an >> endowment, we would need $400 million dollars. >> Endowments can be very >> useful and we will continue to analyze this option for the >> future but it >> is unlikely that an endowment would ever provide our entire >> operating >> budget each year. > > I don't think anyone would expect an endowment to fund all that is being done > in the current budget. I have always thought of the endowment issue as being > about always keeping the lights on. Ensuring that the content will remain > accessible in some worst case scenario. Access is probably the weakest link > in the whole copyleft paradigm. I think most of us can name examples of how > contract law has locked up what copyright law couldn't touch. > > WMF has not always been as stable as it is right now. Maybe it is hard for > all the people who joined the movement during this upswing of stability to > understand quite how some of the earlier adopters feel about the endowment. I > think it is about people feeling that the work that we have all done is > secure. Since the WMF is not moving in the direction of an endowment right > now, it would be nice if they could highlight some other things that secure > what has already been accomplished. The endowment is not about just about > funding, I think it is probably also symbolic of endurance to many people. > There is a worry about the content remaining available in the long term. If > there is not an endowment to donate towards, I think people could use > something else to symbolize a commitment to the future endurance of the > content that has been gathered. > > Birgitte SB > > > > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Board resolution commissioning study and recommendations
If education is learning about the world, there is essentially nothing that can not be considered as having at least potential educational value. There are of course different degrees of educational value, but using it by itself as a criterion is much too simplistic. (In the context of pornography, we've separated out recreation from education, but I don't see how any imaginative form of expression has a clear line between the two). On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 2:50 PM, Victor Vasiliev wrote: > On 06/24/2010 10:40 PM, Michael Snow wrote: >> I recommend that people not confuse "educational" with "pedagogical" or >> try to divorce its interpretation from the context of the particular >> project. Historical records have educational value, for example, even >> when those records are not created for pedagogical purposes. >> >> --Michael Snow > > May then we have a clear definition of what "educational value" is? I > feel very confused about its meaning. > > --vvv > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] English language dominationism is striking again
I'd think he category can be renamed as common names (English) and similar ones be made for the other languages. It'd not jut s matter of redirection--there are many instances where some languages do, and some do not, have a common name. I think there are also cases where in one language a common names refers to a group of species, and in another to an overlapping but not identical group of species. In English at least, even academic journals aimed at non-taxonomists (e.g. PNAS, for an Open Access example) almost always use common names in the title and give the formal latin equivalent somewhere later in the paper. On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 12:10 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote: > On 22 June 2010 15:45, David Gerard wrote: >> On 22 June 2010 15:20, wrote: >> >>> The common name in any language has more stability as far as the lay person >>> is concerned. the lay person shouldn't have to first find the latin name of >>> an organism when looking it up: >>> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sp%C3%A9cial%3ARecherche&search=Phal%C3%A8ne+de+l%27ans%C3%A9rine >> >> >> Definitely. Category redirects would help here. > > I think redirects is the obvious solution. If you can't agree on what > a category should be called, choose one of the options at random and > set up redirects for the rest. It really doesn't matter which name the > category is actually at, as long as users can find the images they > want by whatever reasonable name they search by. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
The foundation's programmers have the technical power to define the experience of all aspects of the site however they please. They cannot be prevented from having this power, but they nonetheless must not use it, except for the most mundane details of day to day maintenance. Their role is to carry out the wishes of the community to the extent it is feasible. They will obviously need to figure out how to accommodate different and conflicting wishes, but it is not up to them to establish the priorities. This is true also of the specialists, such as the interface team: their role is to advise the community, not determine the results, and they should accept that their advice however excellent will nonetheless not always be followed. This is especially true for the specialists who do not have prior experience with WP, and can therefore not be expected to know the customs and way of thinking that prevails, and that sets the limits for what any individual can do by their own decision. Certainly they can be expected to learn it, but they must expect their understanding of it to be always corrected by the actual community. For example, they seem to have operated on the assumption that 1% use of a feature, or the use of an uncommon platform, is something that can be ignored. This may be a common assumption in many settings, including some I am quite familiar with, but it is not in WP. On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 5:10 PM, Austin Hair wrote: > On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 10:00 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: >> In short, there is little reason for a sophisticated user to complain >> about this for their own benefit. >> >> I think the people here are speaking up for the sake of the readers, >> and for the sake of preserving the best of the existing design >> principles used on the site. I know I am. > > I don't mean to detract from Greg's truly excellent e-mail by replying > to just part of it, but I know that this is the case for me—I still > use the Classic theme, restyled with my own CSS and Javascript, and > all of the interwiki links are right where they were before. Vector > doesn't affect me personally, but I see its impact on people around me > all day. > > For the love of all that is virtuous, please at least read everything > this man says. > > Austin > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
Any "see other languages" link should take into account the nature of the article; an article on a Japanese topic should display the Japanese wp link (if any) . This would not be impossible to do programmatically. On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 8:59 PM, Howie Fung wrote: > Per Erik M.'s previous post, we're working on a compromise solution > whereby we show a list based on user's most likely language(s), probably > based on browser, and then a "see other languages" link which would > expand to give all the other langauages. We're also looking at changing > the word "Languages" into something that's more descriptive of what the > links actually do. > > I've created the following page for more discussion/proposals on the topic: > > http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Opinion:_Language_Links > > Howie > > On 6/3/10 4:41 PM, David Goodman wrote: >> It would be nice to actually have a place at the usability wiki to >> discuss this. >> >> My own view is that the actual list of languages was the ideal >> interface object in fulfilling many purposes (as discussed in the >> posts above) and implying multiple levels of understanding without the >> need for explanation or discussion. For example, that it varied >> authomatically from article to article showed the overall level of >> progress on the multiple projects. >> >> In showing Wikipedia to new users this list was always noticed and >> proved a very expressive statement. >> >> The attitude shown by Trevor's reply speaks for itself in terms of the >> relationship between the "internal" experts and the community. I >> think that it was his wording that induced me to finally post on the >> issue. >> >> >>> I fixed it (it's a one-line change), but Trevor reverted it: >>> >>>> This goes against an intentional design >>>> decision. To discuss that decision further and submit proposals to change >>>> this >>>> design please contact Howie Fung or visit >>>> http://usability.wikimedia.org >>>> >> > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
It would be nice to actually have a place at the usability wiki to discuss this. My own view is that the actual list of languages was the ideal interface object in fulfilling many purposes (as discussed in the posts above) and implying multiple levels of understanding without the need for explanation or discussion. For example, that it varied authomatically from article to article showed the overall level of progress on the multiple projects. In showing Wikipedia to new users this list was always noticed and proved a very expressive statement. The attitude shown by Trevor's reply speaks for itself in terms of the relationship between the "internal" experts and the community. I think that it was his wording that induced me to finally post on the issue. >I fixed it (it's a one-line change), but Trevor reverted it: >> This goes against an intentional design > >decision. To discuss that decision further and submit proposals to change > >this > >design please contact Howie Fung or visit > >http://usability.wikimedia.org -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Participation of intellectual professions
The traditional academic system is based upon status differences between pupils and teachers. One of the problems is the reception they get--a great many experts do not take it kindly when they are challenged by the ignorant, and get no respect for their qualifications, or even negative comments about them. But there is no way of keeping WP open and preventing them from being subjected to this. It affects not just academic experts, but experts in all sorts of fields and knowledgeable amateurs also. Some experts can deal with it well, and a few have been known to go for years on WP without mentioning their academic status. Some have the art of explaining things to make them clear to anyone who is not willfully misunderstanding, and the patience to do it. These are the kind of people we need. Alas, the one's who cannot tolerate the fools are probably never going to be able to work effectively in a WP environment. On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 7:16 PM, Noein wrote: > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > Hash: SHA1 > > On 28/05/2010 22:42, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: >> >>> 3. High level physicists also stay away from it. (for example most of >>> the theoretical information about [[quasars]] comes from the 1960's. >>> Current information on the net is frequently only available through >>> pay-to-read sites.) >>> >> Well, I am a university professor in physics and a Wikipedia >> administrator. > > There's a misunderstanding. Not surprising because I'm terrible with words. > I'm glad you're here and I'm sure there are a lot like you. > > I'm expressing my surprise that there are so many reticences among the > intellectual professions, at least in France and Argentina where I made > my little personal investigation. > I would naively expect a massive participation from them, on the > supposition that they share a vocation for sharing knowledge and a > passion to learn from others. And indeed some do. I have the impression, > however, that they're a minority. Please correct me if I'm wrong. > If it needs to be precised, I try to never communicate to impose > personal convictions but to ask questions and provoke thoughts in the > hope of deeper questions. > -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ > > iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJMAE6/AAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6LszIIAJJ8upZ219OBGr3w6wbpp6CT > 1SnTMVszCB7rEp0961AwM1oDgiNed/QTNtk5+nH8rtT4FXlMvGDA6Abx8CttQYlS > ygDeRiHm2r6O0CsHWR6QrS+gKD3G4JkrdUUrSgFE0ZNyflpwUW0KB9Zhl/2gOXjY > DrcCiTAdA8qAX/f4OabDJi9TE8NAR0yzuti196Z0k9rAQmbEAvX/UDjxJ7Cvr3Nu > 8IVJ0LxG84tLwPDQ3iWE5E2N9S51uJiUrEK0qiKhp5KgD7T89ABKcz/JYpV5YKfV > HJxe9QvPDIYbB5dcr66nYrfAbIq95fnMcITkJOuLEtfqeYffQFXZBTZYR4CA9Eg= > =u1X4 > -END PGP SIGNATURE- > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Renaming "Flagged Protections
The most important priority of all is attracting new editors, not preventing vandalism. Vandalism we can prevent in other ways if we have editors, but the absence of new editors prevents achieving anything at all. Consequently, the likelihood of getting community approval for all pages is very low. The successful argument --the only argument which finally get a sufficient consensus--was that flagging was a less restrictive environment for new editors than semi-protection. The question now is whether it will be so obtrusive and awkward, that the non-editing of semi-protection makes more sense than fruitless and disappointing trying-to-edit with flagged protection. Unlike some of the other skeptics, I am not willing to predict failure at this. But that we don't even know what to call it remains an indicator that we do not know how it will be perceived. On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 2:39 PM, James Heilman wrote: > I think the best way of rolling this out if it is possible would be to > replace all semi protected articles with flagged protected or"double check" > protected. If it works well we could than either add more pages or apply it > to all pages. > > This would make it more seamless, draw less potentially negative media > attention, and allow all those who will be dealing with these edits to > figure out how the system works. We do not want to end up like the baggage > terminal at that new terminal in London. > > -- > James Heilman > MD, CCFP-EM, B.Sc. > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Legal requirements for sexual content -- help, please!
all of these problems are with other people than us. Our copyright license permits commercial use, and does not apply to any potential problems other than copyright. This has nothing to do with our licensing. The reason nobody has answered this before is that it is irrelevant The responsibility for following the law in uploads is with the uploaders. It would however be good to alert them to the potential problem. On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 6:55 PM, Stillwater Rising wrote: > > What I'm advocating for now is voluntary compliance, for the following > reasons (and nobody has tried to address #3 yet): > It's a proven system of record keeping that verifies information like > names of subjects, stage names, date of birth, name of photographer, > consent (implied by completing affidavit), and the date the photos > were taken. > The legal responsibility for the accuracy and content of 2257 records > remains with the record holder, and personal identifying information > of the subjects of the photos (and the legal responsibility) remain > off-wiki. > It fulfills the licensing requirements of Creative Commons, saying > that our images must be made available for commercial use, however > currently our pornographic images CAN NOT be reused legally in the US > for commercial purposes because they lack USC 2257. This falls way > short of our "free content" ideals (as well as Commons:Licensing). > All primary producers (photographers) and secondary producers > (uploaders) of pornographic images in the US must keep records, even > if the images were uploaded to Commons by using a pseudo-anonymous > username. For this reason, sexual content transferred from Flickr > without 2257 information should not be accepted. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Spectrum of views (was Re: Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening)
I recall personally deleting and asking for oversight of an identifiable picture of a clearly underage person in a similar context, where the images were the basis of an internet meme. The picture was oversighted; the article on the meme itself was almost unanimously deleted from WP. The courts may be fools. We are not. (at least not as often). David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 12:39 PM, wrote: > Samuel Klein wrote: >> To Robert's point below, >> >> I would appreciate a serious discussion on Commons, grounded in this >> sort of precedent, about what a special concern and stronger >> justification for inclusion might look like. An OTRS-based model >> release policy? How does one prove that one really is the >> photographer / the person in a photograph? >> >> There was the start of a discussion about this here, but I haven't >> seen further discussion recently: >> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Sexual_content#Consent_clarification >> > > Do you not avoid the problem by simply not accepting photographs from > unapproved sources? Just because someone genuinely could upload a > photograph of themselves and/or partner engaged in some sexual activity > is no reason to accept such images. > > Flickr delete accounts all the time for revenge postings. Where private > photos of ex-partners are uploaded to flickr and posted into the adult > groups, sometimes with contact data. > > A problem with images on wikimedia is that they have a free license, > which gives them a life outside of wikimedia. I'm reminded of the 14 yo > that had a self portrait used as the art work for a porn DVD, the > distributor saying that it was found on a PD image site. > http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Flickr-user-Lara-Jade-has-images-stolen-5442 > > Also last week in the UK a Press Complaint Commission said that "A > magazine did not intrude into a young woman's privacy when it published > photos that she had uploaded to social networking site Bebo when she was > 15 because the images had already been widely circulated online." > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/13/bebo_loaded/ > > So one may find that once an image is widely circulated on the internet > the person featured losses any rights to privacy over such images. > > Surely one could source representative images from the porn industry. > > ___ > 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] Legal requirements for sexual content -- help, please!
This seems self-contradictory. If we are exempt we're exempt. If we're exempt we have no need to keep records. We would of course do well to advise our users about their own responsibilities. If we do decide to require some sort of certification--and I do not oppose our doing so-- it raises the question that if we do it in such a manner as to match the requirements of US law, even to the extent of making use of a service set up specifically to meet that law's detailed requirements, whether we would not be perhaps admitting in advance that us law applies to us in this respect, and forfeiting our defense that we are not a producer? David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 4:16 PM, Stillwater Rising wrote: > I contacted Drew Sabol; professor, attorney, and owner of a 2257 > record-keeping service called 2257services.net<http://www.2257services.net/> > . > > His opinion is the Wikipedia is something like a social networking site that > accepts user submission. The Department of Justice (DOJ) put out an update > that discusses how child pornography laws apply to small business here: > http://18usc2257.org/literature/DOJ-2257ComplianceGuide.pdf > > On the top of page 4 there's a FAQ section that says: > > *Q. How does the rule apply to social networking sites?* > A. Most social networking sites would not be covered by the rule because its > definition of > “produces” excludes “the transmission, storage, retrieval, hosting, > formatting, or > translation (or any combination thereof) of a communication, without > selection or > alteration of the communication.” Social networking sites would not then > normally need > to comply with the rule’s record-keeping requirements, labeling > requirements, or be > required to maintain information concerning their users, and the rule would > therefore > have no effect on the operations of the site. However, users of social > networking sites > who post sexually explicit activity on “adult” networking sites may well be > primary or > secondary producers. Therefore, users of social networking sites may be > subject to the > rule, depending on their conduct. > > > He considers Wikipedia to be a social networking site therefore should not > be considered a secondary producer (we do have "selection or alteration of > the communication" however). He thinks we should find a way to make sure > that uploaders (who are primary producers if "own work" or secondary > producers if somebody else's) should be keeping records and there are > several ways to do this. We also need to report any suspected illegal images > to the proper authorities. > > Since Drew runs a contract record keeping service, he said he would be > willing to work out a deal with the Board of Trustees to modify his website > so individual users can log in and upload records while OTRS maintains > administrative rights to verify the records exist. His usual cost (after set > up fees) is $1.00 per record. His email is ad...@2257services.net and he is > willing to discuss the matter with a Board of staff member who would like to > know more. > > More information: > Generic model affidavit: > https://www.2257services.net/forms/model-affidavit.html > Bloggers Legal Guide: http://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/adult > > *On Adult Material*: "The regulations imply that the record-keeping > requirement is restricted to commercial operations. This would seem to > exclude noncommercial or educational distribution from the regulation, and > to limit secondary publishing and reproduction to material intended for > commercial distribution. However, the DOJ has left wiggle-room, and it is > still unclear if they intend to go after noncommercial websites." > > > > On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 8:25 PM, Nathan wrote: > >> On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 6:26 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote: >> > Jehochman has suggested that we need legal advice from the Foundation at >> > >> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Sexual_content >> > >> > with respect to § 2257[1}, and I tend to agree with him. The relevant >> discussion is here: >> > >> > >> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Sexual_content#The_Case_for_Using_USC_2257_on_Wikimedia_Projects >> > >> > Editors have stated that the record-keeping requirements of § 2257 do not >> apply to Commons. Do we have a qualified legal opinion that backs this >> assertion up? >> > >> > From reading § 2257, it seems it is written with commercial providers of >> sexually explicit material in mind. Commons is not a commercial provider of >> s
Re: [Foundation-l] FYI: Wikipedia, Open Access and Cognitive Virology
Some background: When I was a librarian open access was one of the principal things I worked on. Stevan has been for over 10 years an acknowledged leaders in this field, and his propaganda for open access has been a key factor for the considerable success it has had--by now all major US and UK granting agencies now require it or are about to do so. All of us who use academic material are very much indebted to him, for I do not think it would have happened to anywhere near this extent without him. But Stevan is very much set on his own preferred way of doing this. His way is good, but he thinks that only his way is good--to the extent that he has often tried to argue against other ways, even they they differ only in detail, and most of his activism in the last few years has been against other open access advocates. (I am, as you gather, one of the people who thinks other ways are at least as good or possibly better, and I have had many public & private discussions about this with him over the years, not all of them friendly. ). There are two basic methods: One is known as "Gold" open access, publishing by open access publishers in journals that are free to the reader, the costs being paid through some form of direct or indirect subsidy from the author, his institution, his granting agency, or other financing arrangement. (Familar examples of this are PLOS or BMC). The other is known as "Green" open access, publishing in journals in the conventional way, but also putting the articles, or at least unedited drafts of the manuscript ,into a repository. There are two types: using a centralized repository , either on a nationwide or subject-wide basis (the familiar examples of which are PubMed Central in biomedicine and arXiv in physics), or alternatively on an institution-wide basis (good examples are Harvard's DASH or Stevan's own repository at Southampton, ECS ) The only form Stevan supports is institutional repositories. (for reasons, I refer you to his many long postings on American Scientist Open Access Forum , which he moderates in accord with his own views.) He opposes the term open access publishing because it suggests "Gold" Open Access publishers. When I joined WP three years ago, I found that Stevan was exercising OWNership over the WP article on open access, which almost totally focussed on institutional-based repositories and referenced a great number of his own writings. When I and other made changes, Stevan always reverted them. Stevan attempted to get his form of the article fixed by personal intervention with an eminent open access supporter very close to his own views who was a member of the WMF Advisory Board, and I believe also with Jimbo. I am also a professional acquaintance of that supporter, an extraordinarily fair-minded person trusted by everyone dealing with the subject at all, and between us in personal discussion with Stevan we were able to convince Stevan to let community processes deal with the article. As phoebe says, the current wording is reasonable. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Legal requirements for sexual content -- help, please!
The right to privacy is based explicitly on respecting cultural taboos of individuals. Ordinary identifiable people should not be shown in public doing things they reasonably would not like to be seen doing, except when the public need for information is great enough to overcome this. In WP terms, this is the BLP principle of "do no harm" and it applies as much to images as it does to articles. There are people to whom this does not apply at all, such as public figures when the matter is relevant to their notability or otherwise the proper focus of responsible news coverage, and even private individuals when the matter is sufficiently important--and this is the same for images as articles, and for all WP content. As with BLP, it applies with special force to children and others incapable of giving consent or incapable of being aware that their conduct was being recorded. I am not a BLP-expansionist; I interpret the need for information fairly liberally, but when that does not apply I have always been on the strict side of enforcing this with such things as internet memes. In practice in almost all societies, sexual behavior is regarded as more private than other things, and it is related to the almost universal taboo about the display of nude genitals in public in ordinary situations. Therefore the right to privacy does apply with special force here. I think we have an obligation to remove or obscure the identities for nude or sexual images of living people who have not explicitly or implicitly given their consent, or who are unable to give it. I can imagine situations where the right to public information might over-ride this, but they would be exceptional. (The hypothetical case of a nude congressman in front of the Capitol was mentioned somewhere in these discussions.) This is to be judged in terms of their culture, not ours'; we should deal differently with a beach in Sweden or in Saudi Arabia. But all of this is irrelevant to the original censorship issue, because we are not protecting our audience, who can personally or by proxy protect themselves & have the responsibility for doing so; we are protecting our subjects, who cannot. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening
Even more than what Ray says: if we do not offer comprehensive free uncensored but reliable information, who will? Other sites may feel they have to censor; other uncensored sites may and mostly do have little standards of reliability. Some uncensored reliable sites are likely to require some form of payment, either directly or through advertising or government support. If there is a audience for compromised sources of information, there are many organizations eager to provide it. Other free uncensored reliable projects can be very important in their sphere, but we have an almost universal range. We're at present unique, which we owe to the historical fact of having been able to attract a large community, committed to free access in every sense, operating in a manner which requires no financial support beyond what can be obtained from voluntary contributions, and tied to no groups with pre-existing agendas--except the general agenda of free information. That we alone have been able to get there is initially the courage and vision of the founders, their correct guess that the conventional wisdom that this would be unworkable was erroneous, the general world-wide attractiveness of the notion of free information, and, at this point , the Matthew effect, that we are of such size and importance that working here is likely to be more attractive and more effective than working elsewhere--and thus our continuing ability to attract very large numbers of volunteer workers of many cultural backgrounds. We have everything to lose by compromising any of the principles. To the extent we ever become commercial, or censored , or unreliable, we will be submerged in the mass of better funded information providers. On the contrary, they have an interest in supporting what we do, because we provide what they cannot and give the basis for specialized endeavors. If there is a wish for a similar but censored service, this can be best done by forking ours; if there is a wish to abandon NPOV or permit commercialism, by expanding on our basis. We do not discourage these things; our licensing is in fact tailored to permitting them--but we should stay distinct from them. We have provided a general purpose feed and suitable metadata, and what the rest of the world does is up to them--our goal is not to monopolize the provision of information. We need not provide specialized hooks--just continue our goal for improved quality and organization of the content and the metadata. That China has chosen to take parts of our model and develop independently in line with its government's policy, rather than forking us, is possible because of the size of the government effort and, like us, the very large potential number of interested and willing highly literate and well-educated participants. All we can do in response is continue our own model, and hope that at some point their social values will change to see the virtues of it. If some other countries do similarly, we will at least have contributed the idea of a workable very large scale intent encyclopedia with user input. All information is good, though free information is better. If those in the Anglo-american sphere wish to censor, they know at least they have a potent uncensored competitor that it practice will also be available, which cannot but induce therm to a more liberal policy than if we did not have our standards. I wish very much Citizendium had succeeded--the existence of intellectual coopetition is a good thing. Even as it is, I think they have been a strong force in causing us to improve our formerly inadequate standards of reliability--as well as demonstrating by their failure the need for a very large committed group to emulate what we have accomplished, and also demonstrating the unworkability of excessively rigid organization and an exclusively expert-bound approach to content. I'm glad Larry did what he did in founding it--had it achieved more ,so would we have also. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 2:55 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote: > Milos Rancic wrote: >> On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 8:35 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote: >> >>> Milos Rancic wrote: >>> >>>> On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 11:28 PM, Sue Gardner >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>>> Let me know if I'm missing anything important. >>>>> >>>> Actually, yes. In spite of multicultural nature of Wikimedia, this >>>> process shouldn't be formulated as purely related to sexual content, >>>> but as related to cultural taboos or to "offensive imagery" if we want >>>> to use euphemism. >>>> >>>> Under the same category are: >>>> * sexual content; >>>> * images Muhammad; >>>> * images of sacral places of many tribes; >>>&
Re: [Foundation-l] A Board member's perspective
I think we will only make progress when we accept the apologies of the people involved. I can understand that they want to at least formally defend the original board statement, but I think they--and we all- -recognize that the discussion has moved in a somewhat more permissive direction now than that first statement implied. When people admit they've acting over-hastily, as by now I think essentially everyone has, I don't see the point of continue to berate them about it. We're returning to normalcy. Perhaps the most useful thing people with any view on the issue could do is contribute to specific discussions on improvements in how we handle challenges, on possible software improvements , and on deletion and undeletion of particular images. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 6:32 PM, K. Peachey wrote: > On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 7:48 AM, Stuart West wrote: >> ...snip... >> Jimmy acknowledged this wasn't right and I respect his apology. >> ...snip... >> - stu > You mean his little smug little reply that it was a press stunt?[1][2] > and saying that it was a urgent matter[3] (yes! because starting a > huge delete purge after being in the news is such great press!) and > then actievly and publicly approving of the weelwarring he was > particpating in over the deletion of the images[4]m oh and deleting > images he knew would be restored[5] (Can't get much more pressey than > that!). > > Then when people suggested he talk to the community involved (Commons) > on wiki he publicly said he has[6], Yeah telling them to basically to > stfu till after the matter is over and out of the press (I'm sure > someone can find those diff's if your intrested since i'm out). Then > also mentioning that it was a method to start "much" needed discussion > on wiki about the content[7], Yes! because no one would consider > starting discussion on wiki first before drawing their guns and start > shooting? > > -Peachey > > [1]. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/057896.html > [2]. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/058086.html > [3]. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/058092.html > [4]. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/058087.html > [5]. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/058091.html > [6]. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/057891.html > [7]. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/058162.html > > ___ > 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] Spectrum of views (was Re: Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening)
I agree with David Gerard's suggestion above: this is a solution that will meet a variety of needs, and is therefore value-neutral. It can be applied to more than categories--someone with a moderately slow connection might wish to disable images in articles above a certain size, or articles containing many images. Personally, I sometimes disable image loading in my browser selectively in looking at certain sites where the images interfere with use of the material I actually want. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 12:48 PM, David Gerard wrote: > On 11 May 2010 17:45, Aryeh Gregor wrote: > >> Sure, and that's inevitable. You aren't going to please people who >> have ideological problems with Wikipedia's entire premise. But >> leaving aside people who think nudity is morally wrong on principle, >> we are still left with a very large number of people who would simply >> prefer not to see it. Or would at least *sometimes* prefer not to see >> it (at work, when kids are around, etc.). If these people want to >> look at even totally innocuous articles like [[Human]], they will be >> forced to look at images they don't want to see, with no warning. > > > You're a developer. Write something for logged-in users to block > images in local or Commons categories they don't want to see. You're > the target market, after all. > > (If that isn't enough and you insist it has to be something for > default, then I fear you are unlikely to gain consensus on this.) > > > - d. > > ___ > 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] Potential ICRA labels for Wikipedia
the key distinction is that a method for getting a list of files in a category is a good thing for many purposes, and is morally totally neutral. The ethical questions depend on what other people do with the list, and like all intellectual work, it can be used for ends any person might think desirable or undesirable. To use it for compiling a better guide to content than we can do ourselves, for example, would be a very good end. We might want to restrict people from using it to a bad end, as suggested by some, by altering our terms of service, but that would be opposed to our being a free resource in the expansive sense of free that commons is, and would contradict our licensing. The opportunity for an individual to select what images to see, another proposal, is also neutral. on the other hand, adding descriptors for levels of suitability set by or corresponding to those set by outside sources cannot be used for a good end, but only for the bad end of censorship. And it contradicts our basic policy that we do not make conclusions about suitability or truth or other values. There is no reason to actively work to gain a capacity that can only be used by those who oppose the basic values of free culture. It's as if we added a capacity to the software to charge for viewing an article--and that's not even intrinsically wrong, but it's not a suitable purpose for free software. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 7:41 PM, K. Peachey wrote: > I've read most of the replies in this thread, And i think I should > point out a few things out: > > * The "omg tagging for any reason is censorship" mentality is a > needless, Yes we tag things presently *shock horror* look at the > currently category system. > > * Omg adding this to Mediawiki will destroy Wikipedia Currently > Mediawiki is a separate application from wiki and always will be, > Wikipedia is just a site that uses Mediawiki for it's back end. Just > because Mediawiki supports something, doesn't mean it will be > activated (or in the case of extensions, installed) on Wikipedia and > Wikipedia isn't the only site that uses Mediawiki. > ** Currently there are two discussions about possible implementation: > A) Bug 982: Is referring to a EXTENSION that provides the > functionality of tagging content (with it's current discussion being > pointed at ICRA) so it has a rating of sorts which can be used by > external sources (AKA filtering companies) > B) The discussion on wikitech-l is currently discussing a way > (either extension or a core functionality) to accurately grab the > contents of a category and provide it in a usable interface so that > again, it can be used by third parties. Currently this discussions has > hardly approached the rating system discussion (who it would be done? > own internal scale? some sort of standard out there?). > > * The lesser of two evils, Currently there is no easy way to get a > list of the files (and their file paths) of images contained within a > category, This can be applied for multiple things (bots for example) > but use, the discussion is primarily about a exportable format so a > machine can easily use it. Schools and Filter providers are currently > blocking whole W* projects because there are no easy ways to do it. > Unfortunately the lesser of the two evils is allow a easy way for a > company to get a list of what is contained in a certain category (Eg: > Category:Images of BDSM) and then import that into the filtering > system to block them compared to the whole project. > > > JUST A REMINDER: The current discussions are revolving around > implementations in Mediawiki as either as a core functionality (like > most of these, being enabled/disabledable) or as a extension, and not > of how to implement this in the WMF hemisphere of projects such as for > example commons. > > ___ > 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] What Wikipedia owes to Jimbo (was Re: Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions)
thousands, yes. Even conservapedia has thousands. But millions? I have no objection to working for a profit making enterprise. But when I do, I want my share of the money. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 7:48 PM, Tim Starling wrote: > On 10/05/10 20:51, Delirium wrote: >> That isn't really true, though. He recruited volunteers with the promise >> of the free-content license for sure, and with a sort of implicit >> promise of a generally free-culture / volunteer-run encyclopedia. If he >> had *not* promised anything, he would have had many more troubles >> recruiting volunteers. > > Perhaps, but the lack of a free license didn't stop IMDB or Yahoo > Answers, did it? > >> You do remember that GNUpedia was gearing up to >> serve as a competitor, and only backed down because Jimmy gave them >> enough assurances that Wikipedia was such a free-culture encyclopedia >> that their efforts would be redundant? > > No, I remember that GNUpedia was a tiny non-wiki encyclopedia project, > I don't remember it gearing up to be a competitor. > > But I'll admit that the content license was the most essential to > Wikipedia's success of the three elements I'm talking about. I think > the case is much stronger that it could have succeeded with a > for-profit stance, and with a closed-source software stack. > > Even the bulk of the open-source community doesn't mind contributing > to websites that run on a closed-source stack, look at Sourceforge or > GitHub. And for-profit organisations which commercialise > community-developed open-source projects have become the norm. > >> In short, Jimmy could not have gone the for-profit or non-free-culture >> route, because he would have been left more pitiful than Citizendium: a >> project with no contributors. > > Wikipedia collected thousands of articles while it had an FAQ that read: > > "Q. Why is wikipedia.org redirected to wikipedia.com and not the other > way around?" > > "A. I'm afraid it's for precisely the reason you fear: the people who > are organizing this view it partly, from their point of view, as a > business. They hope to recoup their costs, at the very least (certain > Wikipedia members are actually paid to help!)--by placing unobtrusive > ads, someday in the possibly-distant future. It would, thus, be > dishonest of them to use .org. Of course, if you don't like this, it > will be possible to export all the contents of Wikipedia for use > elsewhere, since the contents of Wikipedia are covered by the GNU Free > Documentation License." > > It's complete nonsense to claim that with a for-profit stance, > Wikipedia would have been "more pitiful than Citizendium". It was > bigger than Citizendium while it *had* a for-profit stance. > > Of course some contributors would have left, that's partly my point. > The policies Jimmy imposed on Wikipedia caused an accumulation of > like-minded people, and that's why Wikipedia's culture today is what > it is. > > -- Tim Starling > > > ___ > 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] Commons: An initial notice to reduce surprises
>From my favorite author (paraphrased): Young admirers to Samuel Johnson: We congratulate you on not including any indelicate words in your dictionary. SJ to young admirers: what, my dears! Have you been searching for them? David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 10:32 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: > Gregory Maxwell wrote: >> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#An_initial_notice_to_reduce_surprises >> >> _ > > Rock on! > > > Yours, > > Jussi-Ville Heiskanen > > > ___ > 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] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening
Most browsers have the ability to not automatically download images, but display only the ones that one clicks on--a very useful option for slow connections and those using screen readers. For some sites with distracting advertising, I enable it myself before I go there. But David Gerard's suggestion above would be a very flexible extension of this. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 2:14 PM, Noein wrote: > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > Hash: SHA1 > > On 10/05/2010 07:56, Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva wrote: >> 2010/5/10 Marcus Buck : >>> J Alexandr Ledbury-Romanov hett schreven: >>>> I have a problem with basing it on IP addresses. As a non Muslim in a >>>> Muslim >>>> country, why should Wikimedia decide that *I* cannot see Muhammad pictures >>>> but that it is perfectly OK to show it to a Muslim in Germany / France >>>> wherever. I think the world has moved on a bit from the one country, one >>>> religion / set of values / morals. >>>> >>> >>> You are of course right. But what is the alternative? The only >>> alternative is not basing it on location so everybody sees the same. >>> That's like "one world, one set of values". >> >> The alternative is to not censor, in any circumstance, to any kind of >> audience whatsoever. I must confess I find this particular alternative >> brilliant. >> >> It is imperfect, as any other form of freedom of thought and >> expression. But other options are more imperfect, not less, in my >> opinion. >> >> I think some projects (like the English Wikipedia) already reached >> consensus on this issue. >> > > I don't understand exactly your thoughts. What happens to someone who > wants to navigate Wikipedia or use Commons but doesn't want to reach > offending (according to his/her personal sensibility) pages? If this > person wants a protecting tool, what is your answer? You give me the > impression that you're saying: ignore him, let's let him be offended. > In this case even if you're think you're right theoretically, you're > alienating part of humanity from the big project that is reaching them > all. Creating negligently a strong feeling of rejection with a few month > of obliviousness to their culture can take dozen of years to repair. I > don't think the topic should be solved so lighly and bluntly. But maybe > I'm misunderstanding you. > -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ > > iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJL6Ez7AAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6LKkQH/0c0uBfRQ6NJsSAiJQzCHSGt > Irl+uUg2xGhK9YfkeKFVpIcpSPzOTZA2oNZXjSr8lTS65U/jTui1f2T+zJsIUlTt > 4TA87eRWY8lWub9zOdVmmlW3tOsrG12XB70GDrQOYqkVraYUX1owlRXS/nxWl877 > rU3Uq+Y7LWhcILC8cFvQQ9LIsWKAfTrDQbsPITDAmWVV7LeDcllMShn6l9cMbAs9 > TazNTb/CJwi0j/vdnjy4JYJ0sGPrGoLKfQ3QZPFSZ/EoyfcUnx6GwjgPOMPol5ZO > hEK+QzY3lbUqbtcDtEMX3/V1RR/gKCnHocP9bOiFNWxdruJq1cFAcSCTwqgPY1Q= > =1xe5 > -END PGP SIGNATURE- > > ___ > 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] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening
I have been taking an extreme anticensorship position, but I would consider this acceptable. People certainly do have the right as individuals to select what they want to see. It is not censorship, just a display option Such display options could be expanded--I would suggest an option to initially display the lead paragraph only, of articles in certain categories. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 2:18 PM, David Gerard wrote: > On 10 May 2010 19:14, Noein wrote: > >> I don't understand exactly your thoughts. What happens to someone who >> wants to navigate Wikipedia or use Commons but doesn't want to reach >> offending (according to his/her personal sensibility) pages? If this >> person wants a protecting tool, what is your answer? You give me the >> impression that you're saying: ignore him, let's let him be offended. >> In this case even if you're think you're right theoretically, you're >> alienating part of humanity from the big project that is reaching them >> all. Creating negligently a strong feeling of rejection with a few month >> of obliviousness to their culture can take dozen of years to repair. I >> don't think the topic should be solved so lighly and bluntly. But maybe >> I'm misunderstanding you. > > > Create a tool (e.g. a JavaScript gadget) that allows a logged-in user > to block images from Commons or local categories they don't want to > see images from. Then it's each individual's discretion as to what > they want not to see, and uses the existing category systems. Popular > unpopular categories can be offered as a package. > > > - d. > > ___ > 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] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening
If we follow sexual taboos, which ones do we follow? Some Moslem and non-Moslem groups object to the depiction of any part of the anatomy, some to depiction or exposure of certain parts only. Some extend it to males. Some object to the portray of certain objects in an irreverent manner--there have been major commotions over such displays of christian symbols in artworks. Different cultures have different taboos on the depiction of violence, taboos not connected with religion. There are similar cultural restrictions on verbal; expression. There are the obvious different ones for sexual expression. US law includes the concept of "community standards" --but our community is the entire world. Some have taboos against public discussion of any religion not the majority religion there. Some avoid the public discussion of politics. And so on endlessly. Someone above mentioned going by the majority in the region. Protecting minority interests is part of NPOV, and actively promoting minority languages is a policy of the WMF. There is no way to limit censorship. The only consistent positions are either to not have external media at all, a position adopted by some religious groups, or to not have censorship at all. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 12:23 PM, Noein wrote: > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Censorship#Some_reflexions_following_the_censorship_polemic_of_May_2010 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Potential ICRA labels for Wikipedia
Presumably you mean nude female breast, and then you are involved with exactly the "nudity" definition dilemma you allude to. If you mean nude or clothed, Every full or half length picture of a woman seen from the front or side contains a depiction of the female breast. As another consideration, If we are out to describe the image, we would need to put in an tag for nude male breast also, and presumably other sometimes uncovered parts of the body, like the hand. Otherwise we are concentrating on tagging those portions of images that are sexually charged, and the only reason for doing that preferentially is to facilitate censorship. (or to facilitate access by those who want sexually charged material over those who want access to other kinds of material). Neither is an appropriate function for a free encyclopedia. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 12:40 PM, Marco Chiesa wrote: > On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 6:27 PM, teun spaans wrote: >> Dear Derk-jan, >> >> As for 1), I think youtube can be compared in populairity and size with >> wikipedia, and in videos surpasses commons. >> Youtube enables its visitors to tag videos as adult. > > I think there is a difference between using tags/categories like > "contains the depiction of a female breast" or "contains a portrait of > Muhammad" and "suitable for adults only" or "offensive to Islam". The > first way is an objective categorisation, and I see nothing wrong in > someone else using such categorisation to censor contents, while the > second way is too much culture dependent. Even a concept like "nudity" > strongly depends on culture, so I wouldn't use it as a categorisation. > Cruccone > > ___ > 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] Potential ICRA labels for Wikipedia
There is no general agreement here that any system of filtering for any purpose is ever necessary, and I think it is totally contrary to the entire general idea behind the the free culture movement. But people have liberty do do as they please with our content, and if someone wants to filter for their own purposes we cannot and should not prevent them. Neither should we assist them. For JV to suggest assisting censorship by doing something that will not "feel" like censorship is not in my opinion forthright. We should have good descriptors because that's part of the context for the images, but this should be decided without the least concern about anything other than finding the images a user might want to find. Agreed that one part of that is avoiding retrieving what they do not want to receive, but there are many such criteria, such as size, date, and the like. It can be argued that we have some responsibility to those of o users who can not access unfiltered content, but the least judgmental way is to provide ourselves for a option to display images as text descriptors only, rather than leave it to browsers--especially since a text-only view is appropriate for other purposes also. We could show the proper approach by working on better descriptors for more important things than sexual images first. The necessary distinctions for any filtering service that does aim at restricting concept in a way which is not grossly heavy handed would require very detailed separation of the various types of breast images, and I do not see why distinguishing between such things as the different degrees of nudity is all that important in an encyclopedic sense. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 11:23 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: > Sue Gardner wrote: >> Hi Derk-Jan, >> >> Thank you for starting this thread. >> >> There is obviously a range of options -- let's say, on a 10-point >> scale, ranging from 0 (do nothing but enforce existing policy) to 10 >> (completely purge everything that's potentially objectionable to >> anyone, anywhere). Somewhere on that continuum are possibilities like >> i) we tag pages so that external entities can filter, ii) we point >> parents towards content filtering systems they can use, but make no >> changes ourselves, iii) we implement our own filtering system so that >> people can choose to hide objectionable content if they want, or iv) >> we implement our own filtering system, with a default to a "safe" or >> "moderate" view and the option for people to change their own >> settings. Those are just a few: there are lots of options. (e.g., >> Google Images and Flickr I believe do different versions of option iv. >> I'm not saying that means we should do the same; it does not >> necessarily mean that.) >> >> I would love to see a table of various options, with pros and cons >> including feedback from folks like EFF. If anyone feels like starting >> such a thing, I would be really grateful :-) >> >> > Hi Sue, > > Is it okay if I first explain why none of the examples > you mention are a good fit for us; and then pull a > rabbit out of my hat, and explain how one of them > can be salvaged and made into an excellent system? > > Rating by level is fixed, and it will never be culturally > sensitive. And on wikipedia no matter how it is rigged > people who edit will just get frustrated for both the > right and the wrong reasons. > > Using words like "safe" etc, will certainly offend > cultures, which are very very strict, for instance > in terms how much flesh can be seen of women. > > Pointing parents to systems of filtering, that is > half a solution, and the problem would be we > would have to keep vetting what the filtering > systems are basing their filtering, so our site > doesn't look ridiculous in some form or another, > either accidentally failing and offending the > viewer (ask me sometime, I have tales to tell), > or going to the other extreme, and leaving the > viewer without a perfectly nice result. > > The last problem, but certainly not the least one. > All of these are a *hard* *sell*. They are a hard > sell to the wikimedian community. They are also > a hard sell to a huge sector of our readers, and > those who love us, even enough to give us small > donations. Our community must matter to us, > our readers must matter to us, those who love > us should matter to us, and well, those who > give us small donations -- I am not in a place > to tell how much they matter to us. > > So now we come to the rabbit time!!! > > (DRUM-ROLL PLEASE!) > > If it is a hard sell, find a way
Re: [Foundation-l] Potential ICRA labels for Wikipedia
I can think of other concerns. The main one is that of our competence to form judgements. On some things we can: though nudity would seem something obvious, deciding on the various degrees of it is not: I do not think we are likely to agree on whether any particular nude image is primarily sexual,m or primarily non-sexual. If we tried to be precise, we would degenerate towards a situation like some legal codes which state exactly what portions of a female breast may be displayed in a particular context, or in just what way something must be covered to make it non-nude. Further, though I consider it essential that Commons should include appropriately educational sexual and even pornographic content, I do not think it should concentrate on that; important though education about human sexuality is, there are other things to educate about also, many just as much dependent upon images. A project to minutely categorize pages on sexuality would concentrate much of the volunteer effort on this portion of the contents. We need some editors who want to work on this field primarily, but we do not need everybody. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 6:26 PM, Excirial wrote: > *That is why it was addressed to FOSI and cc'ed to some parties that might > have clue about such systems. The copy to foundation-l was a courtesy > message. You are welcome to discuss censorship and your opinion about it, > but I would appreciate it even more if people actually talked about rating > systems.* > > Very well, lets see if i can write up some something more on the point then: > > *Definition and purpose*: The purpose of such a system would be to allow > certain content to be filtered from public view. The scope of such a project > is discussable, and dependent upon the goals we wish to reach. > > *Rating System*: In order to decide a contents category and offensiveness > there has to be a method to sort the images. Multiple options are available: > > *Categorization:* Categories could be added to images to establish the > subject of an image. For example, one image might be categorized nudity, the > other might be categorized as sexual intercourse and so on. The > categorization could be similar to the way we categorize our stub templates > - we could create a top-level filter for "Nudity" and create more specific > categories under that. That way it is possible to fine-tune the content one > might not wish to see. > *Rating:* Another method is rating each image. Instead of using a category > tree we might use a system that allows users to set a level of explicitness > or severity for each image. An image which shows non sexual nudity would be > rated lower then an image which shows a high level of nudity. Note that such > a system would require a clear set of rules as a rating might be subject to > ones personal idea's and feelings towards a certain subject. > > *Control mechanism*:There are various levels at which we can filter content: > > *Organization wide:* An organization wide filter would allow an organization > to block content based upon site-wide settings. Techically this would likely > prove to be the more difficult option to implement as it would require both > local and external changes. There are multiple methods to execute this > though. For example a server may rely a certain value to Wikipedia at the > start of each session detailing the content that should not be forwarded > over this connection. Based on such a value the server could be programmed > in such a way that images of a certain category won't be forwarded, or would > be replaced by placeholders. > The advantage of this method is that it allows organizations such as schools > to control which content should be shown, therefor possibly negating > complete blocks of Wikipedia. The negative is that it takes away control > from the user. > *Par-user:* A second method is allowing par-user settings. Such a system > would be easier to build and integrate as it only requires changes on > wikipedia's side. A seperate section could be made under "My preferences" > which would include a set of check boxes where a user could select which > content he or she prefers not to see. Images falling under a certain > category could be replaced with the images alt text or with an image stating > something akin to "Par your preferences, this image was removed". > *Hybrid*: A hybrid system could integrate both systems. A user might > override or increase organization level settings if he or she has personal > preferences. > > *Possible concerns* > *Responsibility and vandalism: *One risk with rating systems is that they > might be abused for personal goals, akin to article vandalism.
Re: [Foundation-l] Towards actual clean-up...
I expected, in fact, a considerably lower figure, perhaps 25%, so it It seems to me that 50% being used is a very high proportion , indicating good selectivity. A secondary purpose of Commons in for material to be used elsewhere--have we any way for checking that? I'd even say that the true success of Commons is when the material there is used elsewhere, not just in Wikimedia projects.. I interpret your number as a demonstration that there is no serious problem of excess on this particular topic. Perhaps other topics in the field will be lower or higher--my guess is that all or almost will be higher, because I think you have indeed selected the category most likely to be abused,. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Robert Rohde wrote: > Many people have generally agreed that there are or have been a large > number of redundant, low-quality penis pics on Commons. > > Towards understanding this better, I wrote a script to traverse > [[:Category:Human genitalia]] and all of it's subcategories (it is > refreshingly finite). > > In this category we have 772 images of male and female genitalia. > Most appear to photographs, though some are illustrations or other > art. > > For each image, I then determined whether it was in use in the main > namespace of any Wikimedia project. Of the 772 genitalia images, 347 > are currently being used to illustrate some page in the main namespace > of some project. (That's still a lot of penis / vulva pics but I'll > assume that the projects are at least somewhat reasonable about their > uses.) > > The remaining 425 images aren't used in the main namespace of any > project. They may still appear in other places, such as discussion > pages or user pages, but are likely to be less valuable. I would > assume it is images like these that are most likely to warrant > exclusion by any policy that aims to address the proliferation of > low-quality and redundant penis pics. Perhaps by looking at this list > one can get an idea of what the issue is and consider the best ways to > address it. > > I've compiled the list at: > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:List_of_genitalia_for_review > > (There are actually only 411 on the list, as I dropped 14 after my > editor mangled the UTF8). > > -Robert Rohde > > ___ > 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] Potential ICRA labels for Wikipedia
This is the first step towards censorship, and we should not take it. We have no experience or expertise to determine what content is suitable for particular users, or how content can be classified as such.Further, doing so is contrary to the basic principle that we do not perform original research or draw conclusions on disputed matters, but present the facts and outside opinions and leave the implication for the readers to decide. This principle has served us well in dealing with many disputes which in other settings are intractable. What we do have expertise and experience in is classifying our content by subject. We have a complex system of categories, actively maintained, and a system for determining correct titles and other metadata that reflect the content of the article. No user wants to see all of Wikipedia--they all choose what the see on the basis of these descriptors, and on the basis of external links to our site, links that are not under our control. They can choose on various grounds. They can choose by title, by links from another article, by inclusion in a category. Anyone who wishes to use this information to provide a selected version of WP can freely do so. To a certain extent , we also have visible metadata about the format of our material: the main ones which are easily present to visitors are the language, the size, and the type of computer file. There is other material that we could display,such as whether an article contains other files of particular types (in this context, images), or references, on external links. We could display a separate list of the images in an article, including their descriptions. We could include this in our search criteria. They would be useful for many purposes; someone might for example wish to see all articles on southeast Asia that contain maps, or wish to see articles about people only if they contain photographs of the subjects. This is broadly useful information, that can be used in many ways. it could easily be used to design an external filter than would, for example, display articles on people that contain photographs with the descriptors in place of the photographs, while displaying photographs in all other articles. The question is whether we should design such filters as part of the project. I think we should not take that step. We should leave it to outside services, which might for example work by viewing WP through a site that contains the desired filters, or by using a browser that incorporates them. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Sydney Poore wrote: > On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 2:34 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: > >> On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 9:24 AM, Derk-Jan Hartman >> wrote: >> > This message is CC'ed to other people who might wish to comment on this >> potential approach >> > --- >> > >> > Dear reader at FOSI, >> > >> > As a member of the Wikipedia community and the community that develops >> the software on which Wikipedia runs, I come to you with a few questions. >> > Over the past years Wikipedia has become more and more popular and >> omnipresent. This has led to enormous >> >> >> I am strongly in favour of allowing our users to choose what they see. >> "If you don't like it, don't look at it" is only useful advice when >> it's easy to avoid looking at things— and it isn't always on our >> sites. By marking up our content better and providing the right >> software tools we could _increase_ choice for our users and that can >> only be a good thing. >> > > I agree and I'm in favor of WMF allocating resources in order to develop a > system that allows users to filter content based on the particular needs of > their setting. > >> >> At the same time, and I think we'll hear a similar message from the >> EFF and the ALA, I am opposed to these organized "content labelling >> systems". These systems are primary censorship systems and are >> overwhelmingly used to subject third parties, often adults, to >> restrictions against their will. I'm sure these groups will gladly >> confirm this for us, regardless of the sales patter used to sell these >> systems to content providers and politicians. >> >> (For more information on the current state of compulsory filtering in >> the US I recommend the filing in Bradburn v. North Central Regional >> Library District an ongoing legal battle over a library system >> refusing to allow adult patrons to bypass the censorware in order to >> access constitutionally protected speech, in apparent violation of the >> suggestion by the US Supreme Court that the ability to bypass these >> filters is
Re: [Foundation-l] Potential ICRA labels for Wikipedia
In our sphere, we librarians also decided this issue some time ago: Labeling is censorship. Those who wish to censor have their own purposes, and have the ability to devise their own methods. We have metadata on our objects, both titles and categories. We have the responsibility to provide information about our images as well as the images, for educational value--and usefulness generally-- depends on context . Some people in the world think, rightly or not, that there is a need to censor certain kinds of material for at least certain audiences. What we already have should provide sufficient information for any ordinary need for censorship, formal or informal. More sophisticated systems can use image analysis. I myself think there is in fact no genuine need for censorship of any sort. But we would be wrong to adopt technical measures either to prevent the censoring of our material, or to promote it. WP has, as it ought to have, a free license that deliberately permits people to fork or modify or select from it. Our purpose is to provide free material in every sense of the word, and this freedom includes the ability to make good or bad use of it and we do not judge that. We differ in this respect from many other good sites, many of which are free except that they prohibit commercial use; we have always maintained our lack of distinction between subsequent uses as a basic principle, and should continue to maintain it. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 11:04 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: > Derk-Jan Hartman wrote: >> This message is CC'ed to other people who might wish to comment on this >> potential approach >> --- >> >> > > > You asked for comments... Here is one we prepared earlier... > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Image_censorship#ICRA > > In other words, we have been here, we have done this, and we > have the T-shirt. > > This *HAS* been suggested before, and soundly defeated. > Nothing has changed in this respect. I would heartfeltly ask > that folks just quit trying to stuff this down the throat of a > community that simply does not content labeling. > > > Yours, > > Jussi-Ville Heiskanen > > > ___ > 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] Removing questions about me and my role from this discussion
I agree that this ends the need for any immediate action by the community in this aspect of things. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 11:18 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote: > On 9 May 2010 10:46, Jimmy Wales wrote: >> >> In the interest of encouraging this discussion to be about real >> philosophical/content issues, rather than be about me and how quickly I >> acted, I've just now removed virtually all permissions to actually do >> things from the "Founder" flag. I even removed my ability to edit >> semi-protected pages! (I've kept permissions related to 'viewing' things.) >> >> I do not want to be a tyrant or dictator. I do not want us to fight >> about that kind of thing, as it's really a distraction from our work. > > Thanks for this, it is a very good move. I think this will have the > desired effect of allowing us to move on from discussing you and > discuss the actual issue. > > I notice you have kept "protect" and "undelete". Is that intentional? > If so, can you explain your thinking behind that decision? > > As someone else has mentioned in this thread, you have kept the rights > necessary to change your own rights in the future. It would probably > be best to remove them too. I'm assuming you don't intend to give > yourself back rights should you want to use them (that would make this > a meaningless gesture, which I've never known you make before), so you > have no need to keep those rights. > > I think you should also consider your admin rights on English > Wikipedia. I know they are historically a separate issue from your > founder rights, but since you have already voluntarily given up your > enwiki block rights, now might be the time to give up the rest too. > (You can use the founder flag for the various view rights, which I > think you are right to keep.) > > Thank you again for doing this - despite the fact that I've just been > picking holes in it, I really do think that even with these issues it > is an excellent thing to have done. The important this is the good > attitude you've shown in doing this. > > ___ > 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] Reflections on the recent debates
The question is not about your honesty, Mike, but the WMF board. In authorizing their statement, did they expect that Jimmy would take the sort of action he did? In practice they are the only ones who have any control over what actions he takes; I would expect that after an hysterical over-reaction like his giving their statement as justification, they would promptly act to explain that this is not what they meant by their statement. Rather, the initial reaction of at least some of the board were to support his actions. It reminds me very much of the enWP's actions after the single handed mass deletion of BLPs. They too endorsed it. They cannot most of them have really thought that thoughtless action of that sort was the way to solve the problem, but they endorsed it anyway. In the eyes of many of us, by doing this they lost a good deal of their respect and legitimacy. The board is doing likewise, but it still has time to correct itself. I do not know who besides themselves could abolish a system-wide permission, and i call on them to end the founder permission because of its uniquely great potential for inappropriate use-- which would allow the various projects to do as they choose about the other permissions on their own projects. I continue to respect Jimmy's views more than that of any other single person here (except perhaps your own, Mike, based on your very judicious comments here), but that is not the same as giving any one person unchecked power over the project. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:02 PM, Mike Godwin wrote: > Florence writes: > > Besides the fact Mike is using a language far too convoluted for many >> speakers on this list, > > > Ouch! If I do say something too convolutedly here, please send me a note, > and I'll rephrase accordingly. > > >> I would argue that one of the implications of the >> abusive deletions is that Jimbo is perceived as having "lost touch with >> base". I do not think letting someone speak on his behalf will help >> restore trust. >> > > Just to be clear about this: Jimmy didn't ask me to speak for him, and I > haven't represented here that I'm speaking for him. I'm only offering my > personal (convoluted!) point of view, trying to be helpful. > > > --Mike > ___ > 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] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
And we are about to be presented in all responsible free culture media as having acted as if such false accusations were true. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:24 AM, Fred Bauder wrote: > Note however, "We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting > hardcore pornography with zero educational value and doing nothing about > it." > > Fred Bauder > >> Further, Mr. Wales: >> >> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Wales&action=historysubmit&diff=38935852&oldid=38935659 >> >> Here, you remove about four pages of requests that you stop your >> behaviour without commenting on them, saying you know better than the >> community. >> >> You're a dsigrace. >> >> ___ >> 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 > ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
True, some people read news sources for titillation by tabloid contents, but most read to learn about current events, which is certainly one important role of education David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 11:02 AM, Victor Vasiliev wrote: > On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 6:45 PM, Ting Chen wrote: >> Commons, Wikiquote and Wikisource has by themselves no educational >> value. They gain their educational value in the way that they provide >> repositories for the other WMF projects. > > What about Wikinews? What educational value does it have? > > --vvv > > ___ > 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] Statement on appropriate educational content
The only existing US law that I think Commons might possibly not be complying with is the requirement to ensure that the models of some pictures are not minors; to what extent these provisions might be retroactive, IANAL, much less a specialist in these matters, is something that I do not know. But I do know about matters pertaining to libraries, and the responsibility for filtering is on them, not the information providers, or the sites which post the information. Most libraries deal with this by outsourcing, and relying on the standards of the providers of the filters. I see no reason why we should cooperate with censorship, however well intentioned. We should, however, maintain our own standards. (Because it is appropriate to provide some guides about our content to users generally, maintaining certain images in a collection labelled BDSM, and ensuring they have clearly descriptive titles--which remains incomplete in Commons more generally than just these images-- would seem to me quite adequate information about their likely nature. ) David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 11:39 PM, Jayen466 wrote: > One thing which I would have wished the Board's statement to address is the > need for some sort of content rating and filtering system that will enable > parents, schools and libraries to screen out content unsuitable for minors. > > Anyone giving minors access to Commons presently also gives them ready access > to collections of pornographic media, via categories such as > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:BDSM > > (and its various subcategories). > > I am concerned about this, because it reflects poorly on the project. It is > also against the law in parts of the world. In Germany, for example, > > "The spreading of pornographic content and other harmful media via the > internet is a criminal offence under German jurisdiction. A pornographic > content on the internet is legal only if technical measures prohibit minors > from getting access to the object (AVS = Age Verification System or > Adult-Check-System)." > > From: http://www.bundespruefstelle.de/bpjm/information-in-english.html > > As far as I am concerned, the community consensus model has failed us here, > resulting in immature decision-making. > > The same thing goes for Wikipedia articles that contain pornographic > material. We should have content rating categories, so schools and libraries > can make Wikipedia accessible to minors without fearing that they will > > * lose their E-Rate funding (per the Children's Internet Protection Act, > http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/cipa.html -- "Schools and libraries > subject to CIPA may not receive the discounts offered by the E-rate program > unless they certify that they have an Internet safety policy that includes > technology protection measures. The protection measures must block or filter > Internet access to pictures that are: (a) obscene, (b) child pornography, or > (c) harmful to minors (for computers that are accessed by minors)"), or > > * will be found to have infringed laws if a parent, say, complains to a > teacher about their child having stumbled upon our hardcore pornography on a > school computer. > > Doing nothing to address concerns that are widespread in society is risky and > foolhardy. There is also the issue of underage admins being asked to > administer hardcore pornographic content, making deletion decisions etc. It > doesn't look good and will come to bite us sooner or later, if it is not > addressed. > > Andreas (Jayen466) > > On 7 May 2010 21:30, Michael Snow wrote: > >> Distributing this more widely, since apparently the forwarding from >> announce-l still has issues. The Board of Trustees has directed me to >> release the following statement: >> >> The Wikimedia Foundation projects aim to bring the sum of human >> knowledge to every person on the planet. To that end, our projects >> contain a vast amount of material. Currently, there are more than six >> million images and 15 million articles on the Wikimedia sites, with new >> material continually being added. >> >> The vast majority of that material is entirely uncontroversial, but the >> projects do contain material that may be inappropriate or offensive to >> some audiences, such as children or people with religious or cultural >> sensitivities. That is consistent with Wikimedia's goal to provide the >> sum of all human knowledge. We do immediately remove material that is >> illegal under U.S. law, but we do not remove material purely on the >> grounds that it may offend. >> >> Having said that, the Wikimedia pr
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Is there anyone who disagrees that we need to hold to the policies: 1. that the WMF projects as a whole contains only material --of any sort , on any topic-- with informative or educational value, and judges that by community decision in the relevant project 2. that no WMF project contain material that it can not legally contain. 3. that if there is legal material that is objectionable to some people but that does have informative or educational value, the guiding principle is that we do not censor, and that the specific interpretation of that is guided by community decision in the relevant project. 4. That no individual whomsoever possesses ownership authority over any part of any WMF project. 5. That Commons acts as a common repository of free material for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. The opinions of particular projects about what content there to use does not control the content, nor does the opinion of the commons community control other projects. How recent actions ca be judged in this light is to me obvious, but it is clear that some responsible opinions differ. I have expressed my own personal opinion elsewhere. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 4:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen wrote: > Hoi, > There is a board message about this that is completely in line with what > Jimmy mentioned. When you consider that because of many of those images that > should have remained private the whole Wikmedia domain has been blogged, we > really have to consider how we deal with this issue. > > The first priority is what our aim is for our WMF projects, the brinkmanship > with a shit load of inappropriate content is hurting what we stand for. Is > preventing us from furthering our aims. This is what is at issue. > Thanks, > GerardM > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-May/08.html > > On 7 May 2010 22:42, Amory Meltzer wrote: > >> This is nuts. Literally, nothing has changed. Stuff on Wikimedia >> sites needs to be either educational or aimed at furthering the goals >> of the project and the foundation. We don't host articles about my >> her breasts or his penis, and we don't need to host images of them >> either. Arguing otherwise is just looking for a webhost. >> >> ~A >> >> ___ >> 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 > ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Essay
At the opposite end of the scale from FA, I often look at links from articles being proposed for deletion by various processes, and daily I encounter equally questionable non-notable subjects or very promotional articles, where sometime dozens of people have made typo or style corrections, or added categories and internal links, but none of them have ever challenged or even tagged the fundamental problems with the article. Is this sort of meticulous detail correction of what should not be in Wikipedia in the first place a worthwhile activity? David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 7:31 AM, Bod Notbod wrote: > "The primary function of the Wikipedias is to educate in the sciences, > philosophy, technology and all that truly useful stuff. Nevertheless > there's an argument for a Featured Article on South Park because it > brings in new blood. Such an article can pique the interest of teens > and twenties and get them involved. Discuss." > > My reply would be: > > There's a difficulty in that you get trapped. At the moment, the task > I've set myself is to review Featured Article candidates. You might > set yourself a task and find yourself dealing with stuff that, > frankly, isn't very educational. I proofread an article on a Bob Dylan > album because it came up for review. But should I really be > proofreading articles on biology, chemistry and physics? > > I don't have expertise in those areas but I may at least change an > "its" to an "it's" or vice versa. > > I think at the heart of the question is; do you find yourself sticking > to a routine without questioning the relative value of what you're > doing? Is fighting vandalism on a South Park article equal to fighting > vandalism on science? We all only have a certain number of hours in > the day. > > User:Bodnotbod > > ___ > 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] Fwd: Pt-Portuguese Wikipedia
If I understand the page in the ptWP correctly, they do not have the equivalent of the enWP rule that topics special to the UK, such as the article on London, are writing in the UK version of English, and those special to the US, like the article on New York City , are written in the American version of English (and analogously for Australian, Canadian, etc.). They do have the rule that if an article is started in one version it must be continued in that version--which in the enWP is supposed to be applied only to topics not special to one or another national version. Have they considered it? It certainly simplifies things in the enWP, at least for those who can easily switch between the forms. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 9:20 AM, Sir Lestaty de Lioncourt wrote: > Hello Milos, > > The languages pt-pt and pt-br, they do not have a significant difference > (pt-pt in general have a C in the words and pt-br no, among other things not > very important). > > The Portuguese Wikipedia have many internal problems and this is the reality > for people always request a new wiki (See on MetaWiki, we have a lot of > requests for a new Portuguese Wikipedia.). > > A many time ago the language difference really was problem, now this is not > more a problem. (See: < > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Language_Orthographic_Agreement_of_1990>). > > > I think the best option is the people from Portuguese Wikipedia make a > resolution of your problems, but a new wiki dont is a solution for this. > > Tonight I talked with people of both countries, and they do not agree with > the separation, perhaps this is a wish of a single person. > > Best regards > Lestaty de Lioncourt > ___ > 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] Living Person Task Force update: Policy writing
Since there is a fairly firm consensus that has been sustained through repetitive challenges on the enWP against this particular point about the default for deletion, I wonder what the policies of the other large Wikipedias are, to see what is the agreements of the actual Wikipedians upon the so-called "best practice". At the very least, there needs to be an explicit statement that makes it very clear just what part of the policies are just a suggestion--for "suggestions" of this sort tend to get taken for more definitive than they may have been intended. On 3/18/10, Keegan Peterzell wrote: > On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 3:36 PM, Apoc 2400 wrote: > >> > >> > The recommendations draft >> > is just about ready to move into finalized writing in a couple weeks >> > >> > >> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Living_People/Drafting_pages/Recommendations_to_the_Board_of_Trustees/Draft_2 >> > >> >> It look ok, but coming from enwiki most of it seems rather obvious. It >> this >> recommendation mostly intended for smaller wikis that may not have >> developed >> clear BLP rules? >> >> The exception is the end of the last item: >> >> > [...] and content is suggested to be removed if the result of a deletion >> > debate determines that there is no consensus to keep the hosted content. >> > >> which appears be meant to force "no consensus means delete" onto English >> Wikipedia. Is that correct? >> >> Can you tell me if any of the other items are meant to impose changes on >> enwp? >> >> Btw, are there logs from the March 15 IRC meeting? >> >> Thanks, >> Apoc2400 >> ___ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> > > Hi there. > > The meeting on the fifteenth didn't come together, I was busy with offline > life last week and didn't get much work done onwiki. > > The recommendations are, as you say, culled from the fairly obvious. They > are meant as a "best practices" approach for smaller projects that have no > local policies on living people, or are starting to develop them. As for > the deletion part, that's just a suggestion and won't change the face of the > English Wikipedia's deletion policies, unless of course they decide to do so > on their own after discussion. > > The idea is that we can write a global living person policy, the "light" > version, which will serve as the default policy for projects without their > own, and provide the framework for projects that have a policy in place or > are working on developing them. The recommendations are just advice, not > an enforceable tool. > > -- > ~Keegan > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] I'm here to request a new Wikimedia project
WP contains many of the essential elements of an almanac already, and could very easily cover all the rest-- it doesn't take a new project, just a relaxation of some of the self-imposed strictures. Relaxing, without eliminating , NOT NEWS , NOT DIRECTORY, and NOT INDISCRIMINATE . there's only one point that would need actual removal: NOT INDISCRIMINATE point 3, Excessive listing of statistics. The basic change could be accomplished by doing just that one deletion--there is not need for another project, or even another space for data. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 11:12 AM, Casey Brown wrote: > On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 11:02 AM, Tyler wrote: > > I was just wondering, how would you like to start an almanac, guys? That > would be neat, a wiki almanac. > > > > <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects> :-) > > -- > Casey Brown > Cbrown1023 > > ___ > 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] video presentation on explicit images on WMF projects
Were we to ever become unable to host these images in the US, we should considering moving to some country where it would be possible. That's how strongly we ought to feel about the principle. As for the link, showing these in greatly enlarged versions, without the context of the articles in which they are used, is setting up a strong bias. We've never engaged in that use of the material, nor would we. If people want to take our material out of our encyclopedic content and turn it into sexually-focused presentations, that is their look-out. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 1:05 AM, private musings wrote: > G'day all, > I continue to have concerns related to the growing number of explicit images > on WMF projects (largely commons) - but rather than banging on with dull > mailing list posts which gaurantee a chorus of groans, I'm trying to be a > bit less dull, and have made a short video presentation. > It's my intention to work on this with a few like minded wiki volunteers, > and probably then make a sort of alternate version for youtube etc. to see > what the general feeling is out there what I'd really like is for the > foundation to acknowledge that this is an issue where some regulation may be > necessary (or indeed, where the discussion of potential benefits of some > regulation is even conceivable) - I hope the board, or the advisory board, > might also be interested in offering some thoughts / recommendations too. > I've used a selection of explicit images from Commons, so please only click > through if you're over the age of majority; > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Privatemusings/WikiPr0n > ps. I'm also particularly interested if anyone can point me to where > 'section 2257' (record keeping) issues may have previously been discussed - > is it the current foundation position that section 230 acts as an exemption > to these requirements? > best, > Peter, > PM. > ___ > 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] LiquidThreads almost ready for deployment
I did not write that, except for the final sentence--The rest was an earlier comment by someone who actually knows programming, not my elementary awareness of html and the rudiments of regular expressions. The only software I've ever developed is some VBA macros for Excel. I was saying that just the most elementary knowledge is enough for talk pages. Of all the parts of Wikipedia syntax, it's the easiest. The problems for users in learning things is elsewhere. Even things I do know how to use, like the cite templates or tables, I find too complicated to bother with. What I think the usability studies show to be the hardest--and also my own experience teaching raw beginners--, is figuring just how to edit in the first place. We think we made it easy, but they still don;t find it. As for keeping track of discussions generally, the exchanges here show the difficulties, and this one is as good an example as any for how easily it is to get confused (in this case I think what did it is other comments coming between what I was answering and my own reply--the same problems as caused by edit conflicts. I'm not sure there is any way to sort it out when a number of people are talking about the same thing at the same time. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 4:24 PM, William Pietri wrote: > On 12/19/2009 10:54 AM, David Goodman wrote: >> On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 1:17 PM, William Pietri wrote: >> >>> As a software developer, I'm perfectly comfortable dealing with its dark >>> mysteries. I've spent tens of thousands of hours typing mysterious codes >>> into giant files interpreted by unforgiving machines. But for the 98% of >>> humanity that doesn't have much technical background, our discussion >>> system comes across as somewhere between perplexing and actively hostile. >> mysterious codes? All that is needed is knowing how to indent and sign. >> >> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. >> > > For a person with a PhD in molecular biology, a master's degree in > Library Science, and 3 years experience on Wikipedia, I'm sure it all > seems pretty transparent. As somebody who played with punch card > machines in kindergarten and was coding well before my voice changed, it > sure looks that way to me. But we're pretty far out on a few different > bell curves. > > I haven't seen an actual usability study on our current discussion > system, but I have seen and done plenty of other usability studies, and > my guess is that you'd get a combined drop-out plus failure rate of over > 80% for first-time users. Followed by predictable reactions: > discouragement, feeling dumb, and taking both the system and our > community as hostile or unwelcoming. > > Whether we want to attract less technical and/or less persistent users > is a reasonable question. (My view: we should.) But from the usability > experts I've worked with, I think the nicest reaction they'd give to our > current discussion system is politely disguised horror. If people are > skeptical of that, I'd encourage them to reach out to our very sharp > usability team; I'm sure they have opinions on this, and possibly some data. > > > William > > > ___ > 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] LiquidThreads almost ready for deployment
mysterious codes? All that is needed is knowing how to indent and sign. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 1:17 PM, William Pietri wrote: > On 12/19/2009 09:25 AM, Teofilo wrote: >> Wiki talk pages as they are now are good. Don't kill them. >> > > Having not used LiquidThreads yet, I can't speak to your experience with > it. But the existing discussion system is a usability nightmare. > > As a software developer, I'm perfectly comfortable dealing with its dark > mysteries. I've spent tens of thousands of hours typing mysterious codes > into giant files interpreted by unforgiving machines. But for the 98% of > humanity that doesn't have much technical background, our discussion > system comes across as somewhere between perplexing and actively hostile. > > For proof, just look at how many software packages have copied our > approach to discussions. As far as I know, the number is zero. The > common solutions seen in forums, blogs, and community sites across the > internet have a lot in common with one another, and are rightly nothing > like what we have. > > I have no idea whether LiquidThreads is the right solution, but if we > want to broaden participation, increase the number of active editors, > and improve our image, we definitely need something better than what we > have. Hopefully we can do that in a way that keeps the benefits of the > current system, but I think it's vital to mitigate the many and glaring > current flaws. > > William > > > > ___ > 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] WSJ on Wikipedia
And the WSJ can be found in essentially every library in the English speaking world also. There is thus a free way to verify--much more easily than 99.99% of books. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 12:55 PM, Gerard Meijssen wrote: > Hoi. > Maybe. However the request was to make available articles that are not > freely available.. Posting them somewhere so that people who do not have > access can formulate an opinion is probably not even legally allowed. > > A book can be found in a library and consequently there is a way to verify. > Thanks, > GerardM > > 2009/11/23 Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) > >> By that logic, a book, which costs money to buy, would never be a >> "verifiable source" either. >> >> We might *prefer* to cite free (gratis) accessible sources over others, all >> things being equal, but the fact that a source is behind a paywall does not >> negate verifiability. >> >> Newyorkbrad >> >> On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 12:20 PM, Gerard Meijssen < >> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com >> > wrote: >> >> > Hoi, >> > Given that the WSJ is making a lot of noise about moving all its content >> > behind a paywall and is planning to remove its headlines from the "prying >> > eyes" of Google, I think it is appropriate to honour their wish and no >> > longer consider the WSJ as a verifiable source. It is appropriate because >> > it >> > is the direct consequence of their actions. >> > >> > When this means that the blogs are part and parcel of this wish, then we >> > should not try to circumvent this even when they write about us. >> > Thanks, >> > GerardM >> > >> > 2009/11/23 William Pietri >> > >> > > A reporter pal points out to me that the Wall Street Journal has a >> > > front page story on Wikipedia: "Volunteers Log Off as Wikipedia Ages". >> > > Alas, it's subscriber-only: >> > > >> > > http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125893981183759969.html >> > > >> > > There's also a publicly viewable blog article "Is Wikipedia Too >> > > Unfriendly to Newbies?", and an interview with their reporters: >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > >> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/11/23/is-wikipedia-too-unfriendly-to-newbies/ >> > > >> > > >> > >> http://online.wsj.com/video/news-hub-wikipedia-volunteers-quit/BB9E24E7-2A18-4762-A55E-4D9142975029.html >> > > >> > > I suspect it's nothing we haven't been talking about for a while, but >> if >> > > anybody with access has a chance to summarize the main points, I'd find >> > > that helpful in replying to the friends who will inevitably be asking >> > > about this. If not because of this article, then from the other >> > > reporters that I presume will be joining in shortly. >> > > >> > > William >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > > ___ >> > > 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 >> > >> ___ >> 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 > ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal: Fan History joining the WMF family
Even if the license change applied only to material started after the present, it would make future collaboration possible David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 11:11 PM, Samuel Klein wrote: > Laura, > > Thanks for your work on the proposal. I hadn't looked at fanhistory in any > detail before, and enjoyed discovering it's lifecycle through your blog. > > On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 9:51 PM, John Vandenberg wrote: > >> >> I may not have time to respond to your comments in detail, but I think >> it is important to say that I appreciate the way that you are >> approaching this. >> >> Critical analysis of the potential "import" of this project is much >> easier if the project has a well defined mission, and the project >> leaders are only interested in the migration if it is a good fit >> within the WMF mission. >> >> > I agree with John here. Your approach and proposal are greatly appreciated. > Educational projects aimed at educating others, providing material for > future research, or gathering useful knowledge are certainly ones we should > give consideration to adopting. The copyright issues is a sticking point, > as geni notes -- I strongly recommend that you look into changing your > license, regardless of the result of this proposal, so that you can better > work with other projects in the future. > > SJ > ___ > 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] Growth vs. maintenance
I regret having been so unclear as to not have made it obvious that the established forms referred to the Wikipedia formal channels of DR, AfD, and the like. I have sen too many justified complaints rejected and the people placing them attacked and humiliated for not following the correct details of procedure or using the correct Board to post on, or not first asking humbly someone who gives every sign of being gruff and unaccommodating. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Bod Notbod wrote: > On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 2:05 AM, David Goodman wrote: > >> We >> need, thus, the influence of community opinion--expressed opinion, >> expressed without fear of rejection for not following the established >> forms. > > Surely the established forms are quite limited, the wiki and the > internet in general being a text-based way of communicating. > > Are you suggesting people take part in deletion debates through the > medium of interpretive dance? > > Next time I want to warn a vandal I'll make some pottery that voices > my displeasure and upload a JPEG to Commons. > > ___ > 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] Growth vs. maintenance
As I interpret what André says, I agree with him: We need, as does every voluntary society, the involvement of many ordinary members in each aspect of the government of the society. We need, thus, the influence of community opinion--expressed opinion, expressed without fear of rejection for not following the established forms. To the extent that we have special cadres, they will be self-perpetuating and excluding. To maintain coherence, we need a limitation in the numbers of people able to take the final action--as admins or arbs do--but not in the numbers of people who participate in making the decision. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 3:43 PM, Andre Engels wrote: > On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 8:33 PM, wrote: >> In a message dated 11/7/2009 10:56:27 AM Pacific Standard Time, >> andreeng...@gmail.com writes: >> >> >>> We tried that on nl: (although with 1 week rather than 24 hours >>> minimum). The effect of this is that _each and every block_ will get >>> the whole wiki in flames for a week.>> >> >> I would submit that this tells you something very significant. >> The community likes freedom, and they don't like the suppression of >> freedom. > > No, it means that whoever you block there will always be *someone* who > is against it and makes an issue out of it that the block is unfair > etcetera. It does not mean that *the community* is of that opinion. > >> The police do not like freedom, and they do like to suppress it. >> When a group of police decide to gang up on a contributor, that contributor >> has no "friend" on their side. You cannot appeal to the police to stop the >> police. > > You can appeal to other sysops, to the arbcom, to the community. What > you are proposing is to have *every* case be appealed to the community > automatically. There are always some people who are of the opinion > that if you have made personal attacks 30 times that is still 20 times > too few to be blocked. > >> That's my main point. However it has to be worked out. We need a >> contrasting force, that is dedicated to the freedom of the contributor. > > No, we don't. We need forces to help the encyclopedia get further. We > don't need a force of people who stop people who are helping creating > it, and we don't need a force of people who support people who are not > helping creating it. > > > -- > André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com > > ___ > 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] RFC: A Wikipedia/etc.-like Web Directory (e.g: dmoz.org, the old dir.yahoo.com , etc)
We can do it right. We can do it free of advertising. We can do it verified. We can do it multi-national. We can do it in a single large open community. We can do it without the uncertainty of city wikis, with their small contributor base. We can use it not just for additional material, but to relieve some of the disputes on Wikipedia about the inclusion of local information such as bus routes and local dignitaries. It can satisfy the inclusionists, because the material will be included. it will satisfy the deletionists, because it won't be included in the primary layer. It will help newcomers, because it will give them easy things to write about. There is a considerable hostility among many Wikipedia people with respect to Wikia, partly for historical/interpersonal reasons, and partly because of their extreme contamination with advertisements, and the almost total lack of standards of verifiability. I agree it will take some planning: one basic question which you allude to is whether it is meant as Wikipedia Local, or to include hobbyist material as well. And perhaps it will be more used than some of the other splits. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 1:36 AM, Steven Walling wrote: > David, there are many projects covering some or all of those ideas. There's > Wikia for "hobbyist" and popular culture content, the many city wikis > (attempts at creating a central repository of civic wikis has thus far > failed), AboutUs for domain-centric content, and the list goes on and on. As > SJ pointed to, WikiIndex.org gives one an idea of just how much there is > already outside Wikimedia. > > While I think we're on to something good, I also think that a crystal clear > scope is necessary for a project like this, whether it's part of Wikimedia > or not. Overlap with other projects isn't necessarily a barrier to success, > but it requires more clarity of vision than what I'm getting from the > discussion so far. > > Just my two cents. > > Steven Walling > > On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 8:41 PM, David Goodman wrote: > >> This works for the notable things that are in Wikipedia. The point of >> a project like this would be to go one step further, and have a open >> content directory, not based on advertising , that would cover the >> local and hobbyist material that either does not make it into >> Wikipedia or that is frequently challenged there. Names that i think >> indicate the purpose would be Wikipedia2 or Wikilocal. Whether the >> Wikimedia foundation is open to the possibilities of an additional >> project would be another matter, but there could be another home for >> it. I hope that they would consider doing it themselves, for it would >> benefit greatly from their sponsorship, their established procedures, >> and their commitment to both free copyright and freedom from >> advertising. >> >> >> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG >> >> >> >> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Ziko van Dijk >> wrote: >> > I have just seen a list of the Wikimedia projects and noticed that the >> > last one was created in 2006, is that right? >> > In spite of all sympathy for a Wiki-directory I am afraid that >> > partially Wikipedia already has taken over that part. When I am >> > looking for the web site of a museum I tend to go to the Wikipedia >> > article about that museum and look there under "Weblinks". >> > Kind regards >> > Ziko >> > >> > >> > 2009/10/27 Bod Notbod : >> >>> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Shlomi Fish >> wrote: >> >> >> >>>> This was motivated after I was referred to the "Wikipedia is not a web >> >>>> directory" section of: >> >>>> >> >>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not >> >> >> >> One workaround I've found is to add a "resources" section to the >> >> /talk/ page and list sites there. I've been responsible for a few >> >> rather long 'external links' sections and have been disappointed to >> >> see them trimmed because I felt all of the links I provided were valid >> >> (in that they provided substantial information not easily included in >> >> the article [for example, on an article about an author including >> >> links to articles written by them] or hosted images that we couldn't >> >> use [particularly useful for modern artists]). >> >> >> >> With the sect
Re: [Foundation-l] RFC: A Wikipedia/etc.-like Web Directory (e.g: dmoz.org, the old dir.yahoo.com , etc)
This works for the notable things that are in Wikipedia. The point of a project like this would be to go one step further, and have a open content directory, not based on advertising , that would cover the local and hobbyist material that either does not make it into Wikipedia or that is frequently challenged there. Names that i think indicate the purpose would be Wikipedia2 or Wikilocal. Whether the Wikimedia foundation is open to the possibilities of an additional project would be another matter, but there could be another home for it. I hope that they would consider doing it themselves, for it would benefit greatly from their sponsorship, their established procedures, and their commitment to both free copyright and freedom from advertising. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Ziko van Dijk wrote: > I have just seen a list of the Wikimedia projects and noticed that the > last one was created in 2006, is that right? > In spite of all sympathy for a Wiki-directory I am afraid that > partially Wikipedia already has taken over that part. When I am > looking for the web site of a museum I tend to go to the Wikipedia > article about that museum and look there under "Weblinks". > Kind regards > Ziko > > > 2009/10/27 Bod Notbod : >>> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Shlomi Fish wrote: >> >>>> This was motivated after I was referred to the "Wikipedia is not a web >>>> directory" section of: >>>> >>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not >> >> One workaround I've found is to add a "resources" section to the >> /talk/ page and list sites there. I've been responsible for a few >> rather long 'external links' sections and have been disappointed to >> see them trimmed because I felt all of the links I provided were valid >> (in that they provided substantial information not easily included in >> the article [for example, on an article about an author including >> links to articles written by them] or hosted images that we couldn't >> use [particularly useful for modern artists]). >> >> With the section on the talk page I added my recommendation that the >> section should not be archived when the talk page grew large as I felt >> the section would remain of value to editors and ought to remain >> relatively prominent. >> >> It's not an ideal solution because there's not much you can do with >> the section other than edit/add to it. But I felt it was a good >> compromise for those times when I was in disagreement with another >> editor over the external links section. >> >> I tend towards the "argh, no, not another project" view on things. I >> think because, and perhaps this is unfair, I dislike that they may >> drain talent and resources away from the encyclopedias. >> >> ___ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> > > > > -- > Ziko van Dijk > NL-Silvolde > > ___ > 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] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the Frenc...
But they have not changed the license to the pictures. What they have only done is changed the rights to part of the documentation: the basic info needed to say what it is is CC-BY-SA, which is very good, the long explanation and provenance information is NC, which is acceptable. I fail to see how this is more valuable than the images themselves. As the free part is only factual information, anyone could use it to write an equivalent description. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 12:45 AM, Liam Wyatt wrote: > On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 9:35 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen > wrote: > >> David Gerard wrote: >> > 2009/9/28 : >> > >> > >> >> From the earlier poster Teofilo: >> >> I disagree. I think the priority is to have the full >> >> resolution pictures of Public Domain works. >> >> That seems to be a demand to have the highest resolution copies >> possible. >> >> >> > >> > >> > That sets it out as a goal, not a demand. >> > >> > But getting back to the case in question - we're talking about the >> > sort of museum that's actually a government sub-department. Thus, >> > public domain images that the taxpayer has *already paid for*. I see >> > nothing whatsoever unreasonable about the idea of asking-to-demanding >> > those. They're owned by the public, not by the museum bureaucrats. >> > >> > >> >> In defense of museums, some of them do get it. The images of >> golden artifacts from the Staffordshire Hoard were immediately >> released under a CC license: >> >> http://www.flickr.com/photos/finds/sets/72157622378376316/with/3944490322/ >> >> >> Yours, >> >> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen >> > > Very interesting that you should raise the Staffordshire Hoard images as an > example. When they were first uploaded they were done so with a cc-by > license and therefore were copied across to Wikimedia Commons. > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Staffordshire_hoard.jpg and appeard > on the frontpage of en.wp as the "in the news" image. However, subsequently, > the images were relicensed to cc-by-nc. Since we managed to get them when > they were indeed cc-by our copies are legal (as mentioned at the bottom of > our image page at the link I just gave). But it's an interesting that you > should raise that one as an example :-) > > Also in defence of Museums, I can say very confidently that they are all > working through the tough decisions about changing licenses and coming to > grapple with this issue that we are so passionate about. Museums are a bit > like ducks: it looks like nothing is happening when you just look at a duck > floating in a pond, but underneath the water there is a lot of work going on > to move it forward - you just can't see it. > > A positive experience of a Museum that we in Australia have been working > with is the "Powerhouse Museum". They wanted to make their content more open > but the discussion about changing the license of images of objects is a long > and complicated one that is still ongoing. So, they changed the license to > something that they *know* they own the rights to - the documentation. See > their post about it here: > http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2009/04/02/powerhouse-collection-documentation-goes-creative-commons/I > think this a fantastic step and possibly even more valuable than the > images themselves. And, is one step in a broader strategy of encouraging > openness. > > -Liam [[witty lama]] > > >> >> ___ >> 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 > ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Do we have a complete set of WMF projects?
Perhaps we need a peripheral Wikipedia layer for items meeting V, but
where N being based on general assumptions: a level for verifiable
articles that don't meet current notability standards.
It could be a separate project, Wikidirectory--just as we moved out
dicdefs, and quotations, and so on, except that there are already
too many projects to keep track of. Could we do it within Wikipedia,
perhaps as a namespace?
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 9:59 AM, Robert Rohde wrote:
> If we are just throwing out random ideas...
>
> I've long wanted to see an open source project to create a world
> family tree, i.e. document the ancestry and connections between
> everyone ever. There are a couple high profile closed source / fee
> based projects aiming to do this, but no successful projects that
> really have open access as part of their foundation. Even if we
> limited such a project to just deceased individuals (as the big
> projects usually do) it would still be a massive undertaking and
> potentially very useful for researchers.
>
> However, while a wiki could work, it would be a suboptimal approach.
> Much like wikispecies, genealogical information has a heavy component
> of structured data that could benefit from dedicated tools designed
> for that data. As has been suggested elsewhere, it seems that most of
> the things that can be easily done by a wiki are already being done
> either by us or by Wikia and similar third parties.
>
> -Robert Rohde
>
> On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 8:24 AM, oscar wrote:
>> On 9/9/09, Michael Peel wrote:
>>>
>>> On 2 Sep 2009, at 12:35, David Goodman wrote:
>>>
>>>> There is sufficient missing material in every Wikipedia, sufficient
>>>> lack of coverage of areas outside the primary language zone and in
>>>> earlier periods, sufficient unsourced material; sufficient need for
>>>> updating articles, sufficient potentially free media to add,
>>>> sufficient needed imagery to get; that we have more than enough work
>>>> for all the volunteers we are likely to get.
>>>
>>> I apologise for taking this slightly out of context, but it touches
>>> upon something I've been wondering about recently, which is: do we
>>> have a complete set of WMF projects?
>>
>> great topic :-D
>>
>> in my personal vision, it is rather obvious we should consider the
>> work of the wmf as "perpetually unfinished" just as wikipedia or any
>> of its other projects: an ongoing process, never ever {{done}}
>> completely.
>>
>> to just do a little brainstorm, let me share some ideas as well:
>> * a compendium to wikipedia, collecting each and every complete older
>> encyclopedia (which is no longer copyrighted), thus also giving a peek
>> into the history of knowledge and of encyclopedias (does this really
>> belong in wikisource? maybe)
>> * a wikimusic including a musical dictionary, where one can e.g. look
>> up themes and melodies, find sheet music and recordings, searching by
>> notes etc
>> * i also thought of wikimaps, somebody mentioned this already, imnsho
>> including "all maps" in detailed resolutions also historical maps,
>> thus also giving a peek into the history of geography and of
>> cartography as well as leaving room for original creations under a
>> free license (new maps)
>>
>> just my 2 cts ;-)
>>
>> all the best,
>> oscar
>>
>> --
>> *edito ergo sum*
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Universal Library
I have been re-reading their documentation, and they have it well in hand. We would do very well to confine ourselves to matching up the entries in the WMF projects alone. Some of the data in WMF is more accurate than some of the OL data, but I would not say this to be a general rule. Far from it: the proportion of incomplete or inaccurate entires in enWP is probably well over 50% for books. (for journal articles it is better, because of a project to link to the pubmed information) The accuracy & adequacy -- let alone completeness-- of the bibliographic information in WS is close to zero, except where there is a IA scan of the cover and title page, from which full bibliographic information might be derived, but cannot necessarily be taken at face value. The unification of editions is non-trivial, as using the algorithm you suggest, you will also have all works related to Verne, and additionally a combination of general and partial translations, children's books, comic adaptation, and whatever. Modern library metadata provides for this to a certain limited extent--unfortunately most of the entries in current online catalogs do not show full modern data--many catalogs never had more than minimal records; Dublin core is probably not generally considered to be fully up to the problem either, at least in any current implementation. Those working on the OL side are fully aware of this. They have made the decision to work towards inclusion of all usable & obtainable data sets, rather than only the ones that can be immediately fully harmonized. This was very wise decision, as the way in which the information is to be combined & related is not fully developed, and , if they were to wait for that, nothing would be entered. There will therefore be the problem of upgrading the records and the record structure in place--a problem that no large bibliographic system has ever fully handled properly--not that this incarnation of OL is likely to either. Bibliographers work for their time, not for all time to come. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 6:38 AM, Yann Forget wrote: > David Goodman wrote: >> I have read your proposal. I continue to be of the opinion that we are >> not competent to do this. Since the proposal says, that "this project >> requires as much database management knowledge as librarian >> knowledge," it confirms my opinion. You will never merge the data >> properly if you do not understand it. > > That's all the point that it needs to be join project: database gurus > with librarians. What I see is that OpenLibrary lacks some basic > features that Wikimedia projects have since a long time (in Internet > scale): easy redirects, interwikis, mergings, deletion process, etc. > Some of these are planned for the next version of their software, but I > still feel that sometimes they try to reinvent the wheel we already have. > > OL claims to have 23 million book and author entries. However many > entries are duplicates of the same edition, not to mention the same > book, so the real number of unique entries is much lower. I also see > that Wikisource has data which are not included in their database (and > certainly also Wikipedia, but I didn't really check). > >> You suggest 3 practical steps >> 1. an extension for finding a book in OL is certainly doable--and it >> has been done, see >> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Book_sources]. >> 2. an OL field, link to WP -- as you say, this is already present. >> 3. An OL field, link to Wikisource. A very good project. It will be >> they who need to do it. > > Yes, but I think we should fo further than that. OpenLibrary has an API > which would allow any relevant wiki article to be dynamically linked to > their data, or that an entry could be created every time new relevant > data is added to a Wikipedia projects. This is all about avoiding > duplicate work between Wikimedia and OpenLibrary. It could also increase > accuracy by double checking facts (dates, name and title spelling, etc.) > between our projects. > >> Agreed we need translation information--I think this is a very >> important priority. It's not that hard to do a list or to add links >> that will be helpful, though not exact enough to be relied on in >> further work. That's probably a reasonable project, but it is very >> far from "a database of all books ever published" >> >> But some of this is being done--see the frWP page for Moby Dick: >> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby_Dick >> (though it omits a number of the translations listed in the French Union >> Catalog, >> http://corail.sudoc.abes.fr/xslt/DB=2.1/CMD?ACT=SRCHA&IKT=8063&SRT=RLV&TRM=
Re: [Foundation-l] Universal Library
I have read your proposal. I continue to be of the opinion that we are not competent to do this. Since the proposal says, that "this project requires as much database management knowledge as librarian knowledge," it confirms my opinion. You will never merge the data properly if you do not understand it. You suggest 3 practical steps 1. an extension for finding a book in OL is certainly doable--and it has been done, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Book_sources]. 2. an OL field, link to WP -- as you say, this is already present. 3. An OL field, link to Wikisource.A very good project. It will be they who need to do it. Agreed we need translation information--I think this is a very important priority. It's not that hard to do a list or to add links that will be helpful, though not exact enough to be relied on in further work. That's probably a reasonable project, but it is very far from "a database of all books ever published" But some of this is being done--see the frWP page for Moby Dick: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby_Dick (though it omits a number of the translations listed in the French Union Catalog, http://corail.sudoc.abes.fr/xslt/DB=2.1/CMD?ACT=SRCHA&IKT=8063&SRT=RLV&TRM=Moby+Dick] I would however not warrant without seeing the items in hand, or reading an authoritative review, that they are all complete translations. The English page on the novel lists no translations; perhaps we could in practice assume that the interwiki links are sufficient. Perhaps that could be assumed in Wiksource also? David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Yann Forget wrote: > Hello, I have already answered some of these arguments earlier. > > David Goodman wrote: >> Not only can the OpenLibrary do it perfect well without us. >> considering our rather inconsistent standards, they can probably do it >> better without us. We will just get in the way. > > The issue is not if OpenLibrary is "doing it perfect well without us", > even if that were true. Currently what OpenLibrary does is not very > useful for Wikimedia, and partly duplicate what we do. Wikimedia has > also important assets which OL doesn't have, and therefore a > collaboration seems obviously beneficial for both. > >> There is sufficient missing material in every Wikipedia, sufficient >> lack of coverage of areas outside the primary language zone and in >> earlier periods, sufficient unsourced material; sufficient need for >> updating articles, sufficient potentially free media to add, >> sufficient needed imagery to get; that we have more than enough work >> for all the volunteers we are likely to get. >> >> To duplicate an existing project is particularly unproductive when the >> other project is doing it better than we are ever going to be able to. >> Yes, there are people here who could do it or learn to do it--but I >> think everyone here with that degree of bibliographic knowledge would >> be much better occupied in sourcing articles. > > It is clear that you didn't even read my proposal. > Please do before emitting objections. > http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Building_a_database_of_all_books_ever_published > > I specifically wrote that my proposal is not necessarily starting a new > project. I agree that working with Open Library is necessary for such > project, but I also say if Wikimedia gets involved, it would be much > more successful. > > What you say here is completely the opposite how Wikimedia projects > work, i.e. openness, and that's just what is missing in Open Library. > >> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. > > Regards, > Yann > -- > http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence > http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net > http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre > http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres > > ___ > 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
