Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

Pete, I love this review committee idea. My concern is about who drives it. Provided it's driven by intelligent, skeptical volunteers (along the lines of the FDC), I'm very comfortable. If it's owned by WMF management, I wouldn't bother reading their reports. If you and Andreas were to sign on,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

Lane, it’s one thing to have nominees. It’s another to win the election. Global South candidates obviously didn’t win the community-selected seat selection, so I’d approach with some skepticism the possibility that we’ll suddenly have a Board member from those regions of the world as a result

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

I like the idea of reserved seats for the global south. I would prefer to still have some appointed members for expertise, but that number should be diminished to give the community seats a majority. Somewhat controversial: I'd prefer to scrap the affiliate - selected seats. Chapters vary so much

Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

Thanks for writing this email Brion. I agree that the movement needs to invest more in people and the processes that support people. One of the largest challenges facing the wikimedia movement, including WMF, is creating good models for how people in the movement can successfully engage with each

Re: [Wikimedia-l] "BuzzFeed: Days of Counting Pageviews and Unique Visitors Are Over"

Rosemary and Toby, do you have any thoughts that you could share from the perspectives of Reading and PC about what level(s) of priority we should place on expanding the reuse of our content off of the Wikimedia sites, and what quantitative and qualitative methods Reading and PC might use to

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership

I don't really know Lila at all, and I've not been paying an awful lot of attention to all of this until recently, when my former manager Siko Bouterse resigned. This act alone, plus her email rang alarm bells that things with the WMF aren't going great. The subsequent resignation of others

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

Hi Anthony, Thank you for sharing this. It's a very interesting, highly detailed exposition of the history of Flow, and its predecessor, LiquidThreads. (And some interesting points I hadn't been aware of, such as Hassar's efforts dating back to 2004 to improve talk pages.) At least on a quick

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

Salam, I sincerely appreciated any effort to craft a reform for the Board of Trustees membership. Thank you, Dariusz and Todd. Also, apologize for (possibly) flawed English, since it isn't my first language :) As a volunteer from the so-called Global South community, I'm much more concerned

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership

I appreciate the many constructive comments in this thread. I wish that we knew that the Board was having similar discussions, and that these discussions were transparent. > I don't think it would be wise to have a total simultaneous Board step-down > though - at least a situation of zero

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

On Feb 23, 2016 7:01 PM, "Dario Taraborelli" wrote: > > Brion, > > there was a very constructive, heartfelt session on models of bottom-up > open innovation at this year's WMF All Hands. You can find extensive notes > from this session on the Office Wiki ("Embracing

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 10:21 PM, Matthew Flaschen wrote: > On 02/21/2016 11:03 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote: > >> So, if you speak of structurally connecting *open* sources, as a basis for >> smart editing tools, you seem to be saying that such copyrighted yet >> openly >>

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

That's funny, there's also an active reading group looking into flatter organizational structures. I think we're maybe ready for a more official lack of hierarchy, or at least a more solid acknowledgement that it's flexibility that makes us strong and it should be cherished. On Tue, Feb 23, 2016

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

Brion, there was a very constructive, heartfelt session on models of bottom-up open innovation at this year's WMF All Hands. You can find extensive notes from this session on the Office Wiki ("Embracing skunkworks") which I encourage you to read and that I'd love to share publicly in a more

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

Does it make sense to have an "Incubator team" ("Bell Labs" if you will), whose core competency is to nurture small projects? When projects are mature and need to switch into maintenance mode, they move under the umbrella of a different team. On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:06 AM, Brion Vibber

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

On Feb 23, 2016 5:52 PM, "Dan Andreescu" wrote: > > but also, some projects that were not so useful, sure. But we learn, move > on, we're not the first group of people to make mistakes : ) Yep... High-tech organizations call it "failing fast". -- Brion >

Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

Amusingly I plan to contribute _more_ now. I'll be working a job that lets me out at 5pm! My first project is turning our article on Aaron Burr into a Good Article. My second project is finding someone who wants the 12 Aaron Burr biographies I now own. On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 8:47 PM, Anthony

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

> > If I remember correctly, I think that's how the Content Translation project > started -- it was someone's personal project, which got more people and > attention because it's a great idea and showed real success. and Event Logging, and the Graph extension, and Mediawiki Vagrant , and ... and

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

Well, I see nothing in the rule-book [1] that says we have to be rigid. Sure a lot of our work aligns with Reading, Editing, Discovery, and Infrastructure. But some of our work needs bits and pieces from each vertical, and even if managers and "hierarchists" [2] moan and groan, it doesn't make

Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

We've had our differences but I respect you, and hope this means we'll be seeing more of you on en.Wikipedia. All the best in your future endeavours. On Wednesday, 24 February 2016, James Forrester wrote: > On 23 February 2016 at 15:35, Oliver Keyes

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

I've advocated for flexible/ad-hoc/cross-functional teams before, and I would advocate for that again. Many of our successful projects -- both software and social -- start as initiatives from individual staff members, often in concert with volunteers providing research, testing, feedback, usage,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

Wrong link. It's here. http://wikipediocracy.com/2015/02/08/the-dream-that-died-erik-moller-and-the-wmfs-decade-long-struggle-for-the-perfect-discussion-system/ On Wednesday, 24 February 2016, Anthony Cole wrote: > This time last year, Scott Martin wrote up a history on

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

If I remember correctly, I think that's how the Content Translation project started -- it was someone's personal project, which got more people and attention because it's a great idea and showed real success. It's hard to know what the mechanism would be for how to gauge community support at

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

This time last year, Scott Martin wrote up a history on Wikipediocracy that seems to cover most of the milestones. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082313.html On Monday, 22 February 2016, Pete Forsyth wrote: > Brandon and Sarah: > > I'm

Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

On 23 February 2016 at 15:35, Oliver Keyes wrote: > I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior > Data Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be > on 18 March. ​Oliver, It's been a while

Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

Good luck. George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone > On Feb 23, 2016, at 4:01 PM, Oliver Keyes wrote: > > I genuinely misread this as describing my wit as "strange and > wonderful and awful". > > ...actually you know what that still totally works ;p > >> On Tue, Feb

Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

Sarah, thank you and Brion for some really insightful e-mails. I'll just add one thought to one of your points. On 24 February 2016 at 00:41, SarahSV wrote: > Should the Foundation be paying for that kind of work > and thinking in those ways? I would say not. [...] 4.

Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

Sorry to hear this news. Best wishes for the next phase of your life. Warm regards, Sydney On Feb 23, 2016 6:36 PM, "Oliver Keyes" wrote: > Dear all, > > I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior > Data Scientist at an information security company.

[Wikimedia-l] Are we too rigid?

Something in Oliver's departure email caught my eye: * "Because we are scared and in pain and hindered by structural biases and hierarchy, we are worse at our jobs." (quoted with Oliver's permission)* And that got me thinking. WMF, an organization that was built with the open and

Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

Oliver - Best of luck to you; there is certainly much to secure. May you keep channeling your strange, wonderful, awful wit. Sam On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 7:01 PM, Oliver Keyes wrote: > I genuinely misread this as describing my wit as "strange and > wonderful and awful". > >

Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

I genuinely misread this as describing my wit as "strange and wonderful and awful". ...actually you know what that still totally works ;p On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 6:55 PM, Brion Vibber wrote: > Oliver, thanks for all your work -- and for helping to keep many of us sane >

Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

Sorry, http://mediawiki.org/wiki/Accuracy_review On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 4:59 PM, James Salsman wrote: > SarahSV wrote: >> >>... how does a tech organization nurture and support its unpaid >> workforce of mostly writers and researchers? > > I remain convinced that

Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

SarahSV wrote: > >... how does a tech organization nurture and support its unpaid > workforce of mostly writers and researchers? I remain convinced that http://wikimedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_review can solve this problem through a new spinoff such as WikiEd Foundation, but that's still probably at

Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

Oliver, thanks for all your work -- and for helping to keep many of us sane with your wit through times strange and wonderful and awful alike. Take care of yourself and do good things! -- brion On Feb 23, 2016 3:36 PM, "Oliver Keyes" wrote: > Dear all, > > I am leaving the

Re: [Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 12:35 AM, Oliver Keyes wrote: > Dear all, > > I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior > Data Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be > on 18 March. > > After 12 months of continual stress, losses

Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

Thanks for the thoughtful response; you've raised some excellent points that strongly warrant further discussion. Some more recent initiatives like the Community Tech team have been specifically meant to help "power users" get stuff done; I hope that's working out and helping, and that the focus

Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 4:02 PM, Brion Vibber wrote: > > > I think first we have to ask: why did many people feel attacked or in > unwanted adversarial positions before (both among volunteers, and among > staff)? What sort of interactions and behavior were seen as

[Wikimedia-l] One Last Ride

Dear all, I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior Data Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be on 18 March. After 12 months of continual stress, losses and workplace fear, I no longer wish to work for the Wikimedia Foundation. While I

Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:34 PM, SarahSV wrote: > On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:29 PM, Brion Vibber > wrote: > > > > > I believe a high-tech organization should invest in smart people creating > > unique technology. But I also think it should invest in

Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:29 PM, Brion Vibber wrote: > > I believe a high-tech organization should invest in smart people creating > unique technology. But I also think it should invest in people, period. > Staff and volunteers must be cultivated and supported -- that's

Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

As a humanities person myself, I did read into Lila's post that the non-engineering aspects of Wikimedia would take a back seat... perhaps a far back seat to all the shiny new things happening in Silicon Valley. This may not be the case, but if it is, I can understand it as to an engineer,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

On 02/21/2016 11:03 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote: So, if you speak of structurally connecting *open* sources, as a basis for smart editing tools, you seem to be saying that such copyrighted yet openly accessible sources, as well as all genuinely paywalled sources, should be excluded from these

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

On 23 February 2016 at 18:22, Todd Allen wrote: > So, five community elected seats, five filled by other means. No Founder > seat. If Jimmy wants to serve, he's of course welcome to run for a > community-elected seat, or seek appointment to one of the appointed seats. >

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

Dariusz, It's very good to know that those changes are being considered at all. I do tend to agree with Andreas about two chapter seats being a slight overrepresentation, but I think there should be one. If I were to make my ideal board (and I realize you may have something else in mind, but

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 4:12 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak wrote: > > > On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 11:02 AM, Andreas Kolbe > wrote: > >> >> (1) The most compelling arguments in favour of having appointees as >> voting board members (as opposed to having them as

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Shared list

Thanks Anthony; it's really appreciated. I want to make clear that I'm not saying "don't disagree!" - of course people can disagree. Hell, we're Wikipedians. Even if nobody was disagreeing we'd disagree with ourselves ;). On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:54 AM, Anthony Cole wrote:

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Shared list

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 3:54 AM, Theo10011 wrote: > I am totally with Benjamin on this. > > On Tue, Feb 23, 2016, Oliver Keyes wrote: > >> "sorely under-represented perspective" or not, that kind of attitude >> is of course going to piss people off. And it

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 11:02 AM, Andreas Kolbe wrote: > > (1) The most compelling arguments in favour of having appointees as voting > board members (as opposed to having them as advisory board members), > I'm not sure what you're asking. I think that both external experts

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timeline of recent events at the Wikimedia Foundation

Thank you so much for working on this timeline Molly. A beautiful presentation of an ugly situation! Peter On 23 February 2016 at 07:06, GorillaWarfare < gorillawarfarewikipe...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:03 AM, Theo10011 wrote: > > > Please consider (for

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

I think it is an important conversation to have. I am a bit skeptical about creating a parliament-like body, and I am a bit worried that it would advance the disengagement of the board from the community. I am working on a proposal for some reform (in short: I want to increase the number of

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Strategy and its subtypes

it would be great if someone could give us tl;dr version of this mail Mardetanha On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 5:21 PM, James Hare wrote: > Hello everyone, > > Of the many issues, real or perceived, currently under discussion, one of > them is the matter of strategy: of the

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Powerful on-wiki art visualization

I'm planning to make a short promotional video to share on the Wikipedia social media channels about graphs, once more of them are embedded into Wikipedia pages (so that I can get real screenshots). Right now, there are only a few articles that use this new feature:

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

Lane Rasberry, I'm aware of the ongoing election - but in all respect, that has nothing to do with a house of representavtives as I envision it, i.e. being "above" the board. The present structure allows the existing board to decline access to the persons being elected. Regards, Thyge

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

I agree - few complicated problems can be solved once and for all - but it is possible to move in a better direction. "Better" in this context means to improve the existing lack of diversity and WWV (world wide view) of things. I´m fine with outsourcing the search for candidates for the board to

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

Hello, Could I remind you all that there is a board election in progress right now for 2 of the 10 seats? Please see details for the 2016 Affiliate-selected board seats election at Amir, you said that you wanted representation

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Facebook as a discussion mediam

On 23 February 2016 at 12:17, Andrew Lih wrote: > > > The main disadvantage is the lack of good archiving - it is pretty hard > to > > find something on fb after say - half a year. > > > Compare that to IRC which disallows logging altogether. It’s not just hard > to find

[Wikimedia-l] Context around the KE

The project formally know as the Knowledge Engine was frequently referred to as a "moon shot" in November 2015 by a number of my fellow board members. This terminology I believe accurately highlighted the size, expense, and risk that this proposal was. How we have described the KE to our movement

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Powerful on-wiki art visualization

I just saw! Exciting!!! (I guess un-cached interactive graphs would make the "largest disasters" list ;-) On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 1:50 PM Yuri Astrakhan wrote: > Who said you cannot already use Wikidata Query service? )) > >

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

We should not have direct elections to the board. We should have a "house of representatives" with X members from each part of the world and charged with electing the board and decide major issues like location of the WMF, changed of bylaws etc. Regards, Thyge 2016-02-23 14:38 GMT+01:00 Yaroslav

[Wikimedia-l] Strategy and its subtypes

Hello everyone, Of the many issues, real or perceived, currently under discussion, one of them is the matter of strategy: of the Wikimedia Foundation and of the movement in general. I’ve been editing Wikipedia since November of 2004 and have noticed that the general points of tension have

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Powerful on-wiki art visualization

Who said you cannot already use Wikidata Query service? )) https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph/Demo/Sparql/Largest_disasters Limitation at the moment - not enabled for interactive graphs yet until we make better caching. On Feb 23, 2016 16:17, "Magnus Manske"

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership - Board Reform

Well, since someone brought that up, I'd risk asking: Does it make any sense to make the board in some of its future incarnations more representative? More representative of the editors? More representative of the world's lands and languages? More representative of the world's different economic

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Powerful on-wiki art visualization

Especially once it supports the Wikidata query engine. On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 1:12 PM wrote: > Amazing stuff! This is going to change the face of Wikipedia. > > Best! > Subhashish Panigrahi > Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge > Centre for Internet and Society >

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Facebook as a discussion mediam

For instant messaging (faster communication) there's IRC if a group discussion that's meant to be open for anyone is considered. Of course, IRC is a bit archaic, but it doesn't force one to agree to Facebook's TOS. IRC is still quite popular in the wikimedia and free software universe. Of

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Loves Africa 2015 results

On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 9:09 PM, Florence Devouard wrote: > Good evening everyone > > Another day... another announcement :) > > We closed yesterday the last vote session for winning pictures of Wiki Loves > Africa 2015. > > We are happy to announce our winners > >

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership

Le 23/02/16 04:00, Sydney Poore a écrit : On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 2:08 PM, Pine W wrote: I also hope that the current Board members will thoughtfully consider whether it's in the best interests of the Wikimedia Foundation and the larger Wikimedia movement for them to

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Transition plans for WMF leadership

It is in cases like this that an advisory board could/should be an asset. I hope the board could reach out to one or more participants in that group for additional help and advice. Regards, Thyge 2016-02-23 5:41 GMT+01:00 Risker : > On 22 February 2016 at 22:00, Sydney

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Facebook as a discussion mediam (was: Post mortems)

For my part I can say that I've moved some discussions to Facebook, because there the communication flow is faster. In a group chat there are no edit conflicts and, since Wikipedians tend to write fast, the conversation goes almost with the speed of talking. Another usage of Facebook is for

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Shared list

Theo wrote: "PS Anthony, you shouldn't have sent a private email to the list." Yep. It won't happen again. It was an over-reaction to exactly what you're calling out in your post: people having the temerity to tell others to shut up, based mainly on their discomfort with the view being put. I

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Shared list

I am totally with Benjamin on this. On Tue, Feb 23, 2016, Oliver Keyes wrote: > "sorely under-represented perspective" or not, that kind of attitude > is of course going to piss people off. And it may be that denying the > value of peoples' experiences or dismissing their

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Shared list

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 9:37 AM, Andrea Zanni wrote: > On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 6:31 AM, Gerard Meijssen > wrote: > >> You are not the only one who is told that dissent is not appreciated. It is >> ironic that when openness and shared values

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Shared list

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 6:31 AM, Gerard Meijssen wrote: > You are not the only one who is told that dissent is not appreciated. It is > ironic that when openness and shared values are considered, these same > values are swept under the rug when people are not in line

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

As an employee of the WMF and a long-time Wikimedian, I strongly agree with Brion. Lila, I find your message completely deaf to the real concerns that staff have been raising for many months. It seems to imply that the turmoil and heartache we're suffering are not products of poor leadership, but