Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and talk about VisualEditor

[Erik Moeller]

Hey Kevin,

contrary to your belief (and in spite of your desire to blame me ;-),
I actually have a ton of respect for the opinions you've expressed
throughout the process, and for the level of detail and time you've
committed to it, including helping in a hands-on manner. I don't agree
with you on quite a few issues, obviously, but I've really enjoyed
reading your comments, which are always well-reasoned and on point.
:-) I hope you don't lose your patience with us, as you really are the
kind of person we enjoy working with due to your diligence and the
quality of your reports.

So, if you've personally felt that it's been disruptive for you and
caused you annoyance and frustration, I'm sorry, because I do respect
your opinion and your work as an editor.

On the subject of an appropriate MVP:

> If you had followed that, and understood that the Minimum Viable Product
> included cut-and-paste, table editing, and maybe the ability to successfully
> and completely edit the hundred or so most edited articles out of all the
> millions, you wouldn't have hit the level of pushback you've encountered.

Couple of diffs from a few minutes ago of table edits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Major_League_Soccer&curid=71802&diff=566676293&oldid=59395
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_True_Blood_characters&curid=23290782&diff=566675268&oldid=565993704

That's not just plain vanilla tables, but tables with inline CSS
specified by hand, templates inside cells, etc. No roundtripping
issues or other problems as far as I can tell.

The kind of table you want us to make work well is this type:

{| class="wikitable" style="margin: auto; width: 100%"
|-
! colspan="2" rowspan="2" style="width:3%;"|Season
! rowspan="2" style="width:5%;"|Episodes
! colspan=2|Originally aired
! colspan=2|DVD release
|-
(...)
| style="background:green; color:#134; text-align:center;"|
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| '''[[List of Big Time Rush
episodes#Film|Film]]'''
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| {{Start date|2012|3|10}}
| style="text-align: center; top" {{N/a}}
| style="text-align: center; top" {{N/a}}

which injects this kind of template:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:N/a&action=edit

In other words, a table partially constructed out of table cell templates.

Now, I understand that you've dealt with dirty diffs resulting from
people editing pages using those templates, and I know that sucks, so
sorry about that - but it's a hard problem, and I don't think it's
reasonable to frame it as an MVP-level one. The reasonable expectation
is to fix roundtripping issues on those hairy tables as soon as
possible, and ideally avoid any kind of accidental leakage of CSS into
the UI. But as you know, some of these templates don't even map
against HTML elements, so it's not a trivial issue.

We could spend literally months trying to make
tables-constructed-out-of-templates work nicely, and it would still be
a shitty experience, and those would be months not spent on actual MVP
features. Before we sink countless person hours into
tables-constructed-out-of-templates, I think we need to step back and
see what our options are for solving that particular problem well in
the long run. Perhaps there's a type of table-template we can support
well, and gradually migrate all tables to it, but it won't be easy.

I appreciate that you created the "Disable VE" template which makes it
possible to shield pages that are vulnerable to dirty diffs from VE.
That was a great hack (we should have included _that_ one with the
MVP, it would have saved users a lot of pain), and should help in
cases where an immediate fix isn't feasible.

As for copy-and-paste, yes, it's pretty wonky still, and I'm sure
causes a fair bit of frustration for first-time VE users who have no
experience with wikitext. However, it is there within a VE session,
and we see very few diffs where users are causing problems due to
broken copy-and-paste. Does that not match your experience? I've just
inspected another round of 100 diffs and didn't see a single
copy-and-paste related issue. Contrary to Andreas' claim, copying
references isn't completely broken, but the bug is pretty nasty when
it hits, so we'll get it fixed soon.

As for performance, it already was a high priority before release, and
we made huge gains in server-side performance thanks to the deployment
of a completely new caching infrastructure for VisualEditor and lots
of optimizations on Parsoid (still more to come). Where we could have
done better prior to release was client-side performance -- we didn't
do sufficient profiling there, and pushed it off to later; but we've
made pretty significant improvements in the last month already to the
point that even Adam Cuerden remarked on it. :-)

I don't agree that focusing more on the pain points you name would
have reduced the level of pushback significantly. You don't mention
nowiki issues, but guess what, across the communit

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and talk about VisualEditor

[Robert Rohde]

If we are going to discuss Minimal Viable Product, then we might want
to take note of the line in the Wikipedia article that says:

"The product is typically deployed to a subset of possible customers,
such as early adopters that are thought to be more forgiving, more
likely to give feedback, and able to grasp a product vision from an
early prototype or marketing information."

More than any specific deficiency in VE, I think the aggressive roll
out did the most to cause user dissatisfaction.  If you want to claim
that VE is a minimal product, then it stands to reason that it
wouldn't be ready for all users.  There are plenty of ways to stage a
deployment and gather feedback that are intermediate between the early
opt-in and turning it on for all users everywhere.  The WMF took
nearly the most aggressive deployment path possible while the quality
of the software really didn't warrant that.

-Robert Rohde

On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 12:00 AM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> Hey Kevin,
>
> contrary to your belief (and in spite of your desire to blame me ;-),
> I actually have a ton of respect for the opinions you've expressed
> throughout the process, and for the level of detail and time you've
> committed to it, including helping in a hands-on manner. I don't agree
> with you on quite a few issues, obviously, but I've really enjoyed
> reading your comments, which are always well-reasoned and on point.
> :-) I hope you don't lose your patience with us, as you really are the
> kind of person we enjoy working with due to your diligence and the
> quality of your reports.
>
> So, if you've personally felt that it's been disruptive for you and
> caused you annoyance and frustration, I'm sorry, because I do respect
> your opinion and your work as an editor.
>
> On the subject of an appropriate MVP:
>
>> If you had followed that, and understood that the Minimum Viable Product
>> included cut-and-paste, table editing, and maybe the ability to successfully
>> and completely edit the hundred or so most edited articles out of all the
>> millions, you wouldn't have hit the level of pushback you've encountered.
>
> Couple of diffs from a few minutes ago of table edits:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Major_League_Soccer&curid=71802&diff=566676293&oldid=59395
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_True_Blood_characters&curid=23290782&diff=566675268&oldid=565993704
>
> That's not just plain vanilla tables, but tables with inline CSS
> specified by hand, templates inside cells, etc. No roundtripping
> issues or other problems as far as I can tell.
>
> The kind of table you want us to make work well is this type:
>
> {| class="wikitable" style="margin: auto; width: 100%"
> |-
> ! colspan="2" rowspan="2" style="width:3%;"|Season
> ! rowspan="2" style="width:5%;"|Episodes
> ! colspan=2|Originally aired
> ! colspan=2|DVD release
> |-
> (...)
> | style="background:green; color:#134; text-align:center;"|
> | style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| '''[[List of Big Time Rush
> episodes#Film|Film]]'''
> | style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| {{Start date|2012|3|10}}
> | style="text-align: center; top" {{N/a}}
> | style="text-align: center; top" {{N/a}}
>
> which injects this kind of template:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:N/a&action=edit
>
> In other words, a table partially constructed out of table cell templates.
>
> Now, I understand that you've dealt with dirty diffs resulting from
> people editing pages using those templates, and I know that sucks, so
> sorry about that - but it's a hard problem, and I don't think it's
> reasonable to frame it as an MVP-level one. The reasonable expectation
> is to fix roundtripping issues on those hairy tables as soon as
> possible, and ideally avoid any kind of accidental leakage of CSS into
> the UI. But as you know, some of these templates don't even map
> against HTML elements, so it's not a trivial issue.
>
> We could spend literally months trying to make
> tables-constructed-out-of-templates work nicely, and it would still be
> a shitty experience, and those would be months not spent on actual MVP
> features. Before we sink countless person hours into
> tables-constructed-out-of-templates, I think we need to step back and
> see what our options are for solving that particular problem well in
> the long run. Perhaps there's a type of table-template we can support
> well, and gradually migrate all tables to it, but it won't be easy.
>
> I appreciate that you created the "Disable VE" template which makes it
> possible to shield pages that are vulnerable to dirty diffs from VE.
> That was a great hack (we should have included _that_ one with the
> MVP, it would have saved users a lot of pain), and should help in
> cases where an immediate fix isn't feasible.
>
> As for copy-and-paste, yes, it's pretty wonky still, and I'm sure
> causes a fair bit of frustration for first-time VE users who have no
> experience with wikitext. However, it is there w

Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Robert Rohde]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 5:13 PM, Luis Villa  wrote:
> As a quick reminder here, before any conspiracy theories about orders and
> data retention get out of control:
>
> 1) We've flat-out denied any sort of involvement in this, and we continue
> to stand by that denial:
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/14/prism-surveillance-wikimedia/
>
> 2) Take with a grain of salt, of course, but our understanding (based on
> the few gag orders that have been made public) is that we could be forced
> to not confirm having received a National Security Letter, but we can't
> actually be forced to lie about it. In other words, if we'd received one we
> would not be allowed to say "we've received one", but we also could not be
> forced to deny it - we'd always have the option to remain silent instead.


If we are going to chase crazy down the rabbit hole, then it may be
worth noticing that the NSL gag order makes it a crime to discuss NSL
demands with anyone except A) personal legal counsel, and B) persons
who are directly necessary to fulfill the demand.  In particular, if I
(as an individual) am served with an NSL then there is no provision
allowing me to tell my boss or my subordinates unless I directly need
their help to satisfy the request.  If someone with root access were
directly served with an NSL, it isn't obvious that WMF executives
would ever learn about it.  This is one of the ways that NSL gag
orders are ridiculous.

-Robert Rohde

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[George Herbert]

The letters must be sent to the organization rather than an individual.  The 
idea of going to an individual employee and strongarming them may happen, but 
the law around NSLs is specific.

The court cases to date indicate that if an individual employee got a US NSL 
and sued over it, the judge would likely take actions that would end the FBI 
agents careers.

Such individual strongarming would almost certainly use threats or MICE (money, 
ideology, compromise, ego) enticements and no paper trail to have to testify 
over in court later.


George William Herbert
Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 1, 2013, at 2:31 AM, Robert Rohde  wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 5:13 PM, Luis Villa  wrote:
>> As a quick reminder here, before any conspiracy theories about orders and
>> data retention get out of control:
>> 
>> 1) We've flat-out denied any sort of involvement in this, and we continue
>> to stand by that denial:
>> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/14/prism-surveillance-wikimedia/
>> 
>> 2) Take with a grain of salt, of course, but our understanding (based on
>> the few gag orders that have been made public) is that we could be forced
>> to not confirm having received a National Security Letter, but we can't
>> actually be forced to lie about it. In other words, if we'd received one we
>> would not be allowed to say "we've received one", but we also could not be
>> forced to deny it - we'd always have the option to remain silent instead.
> 
> 
> If we are going to chase crazy down the rabbit hole, then it may be
> worth noticing that the NSL gag order makes it a crime to discuss NSL
> demands with anyone except A) personal legal counsel, and B) persons
> who are directly necessary to fulfill the demand.  In particular, if I
> (as an individual) am served with an NSL then there is no provision
> allowing me to tell my boss or my subordinates unless I directly need
> their help to satisfy the request.  If someone with root access were
> directly served with an NSL, it isn't obvious that WMF executives
> would ever learn about it.  This is one of the ways that NSL gag
> orders are ridiculous.
> 
> -Robert Rohde
> 
> ___
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> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> 

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Emilio J . Rodríguez-Posada]

It is funny (but also sad) to see how people thought that Internet privacy
was respected in Western world. Almost 99% only worried about China/Iran
Internet monitoring and censorship but we had here the most comprehensive
spy system logging every site you read.

Wake up!
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Changes at the Wikimedia Foundation Fundraising Team

[Zack Exley]

Thanks everyone - I learned and grew a lot here thanks to all of you. Now
Lisa, Megan, Sara, Katie and the whole fundraising team are going to take
it up to a whole new level of efficiency and brilliance.

I'm excited about my next gig -- not yet announced, but not a secret --
which is going back to Thoughtworks (where I was before WMF) to build and
lead a team that will make tools for grassroots/political organizing on a
pro bono basis.

If you ever see a group that's got a great campaign/movement/protest on
their hands who need some just-in-time tools, please let me know at
zackex...@gmail.com

Zack


On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 8:53 PM, Dan Rosenthal  wrote:

> Congratulations about the new site Zack, and congratulations to Megan,
> Lisa, and Sara!
>
> Dan Rosenthal
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 9:38 PM, James Salsman  wrote:
>
> > I know I've been critical of Zack Exley for technical reasons over the
> > past year, but I think very highly of him as a person. If I was
> > recruiting colonists for an interstellar colonization mission, he
> > would likely be in the top 100 based on his accomplishments,
> > orientation, drive, and social skills alone.
> >
> > But even if he weren't, his new project is outstandingly spectacular
> > on its own merits, and I want to urge everyone reading this in or from
> > the U.S. to sign up and join it:
> >
> > http://www.fivethirtysix.org/
> >
> > I predict that anyone with even a passing interest in U.S. politics
> > who doesn't follow FiveThirtySix will first regret it, and then end up
> > following it afterwards to prevent further such regret.
> >
> > Also, congratulations to Megan and Lisa!
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > James Salsman
> >
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> >
> ___
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> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>



-- 
Zack Exley
Chief Revenue Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Anthony]

On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 12:44 AM, Tim Starling wrote:

> On 01/08/13 14:15, Anthony wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:27 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:
> >
> >> I would be fired and jailed before I knowingly let that occur. If this
> was
> >> the case I'd very surely not be working for Wikimedia Foundation.
> >>
> >
> > Key word there being "knowingly".
>
> I don't know why the NSA would sneak around in our data centres
> mirroring our ethernet ports if they already have almost all of our
> access logs by capturing unencrypted traffic as it passes through
> XKeyscore nodes.
>

Especially not when they can get someone else to do it for them.

I think you should save the conspiracy theories until after we switch
> anons to HTTPS, that's when they will have an incentive.
>

And I thought Ryan Lane was talking about the future, not the past.  I
certainly was.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and talk aboutVisualEditor

[Peter Southwood]

This may be a stupid question, but is it possible to put a label into a 
complicated template which will simply prevent VE from trying to edit it?

P
- Original Message - 
From: "Erik Moeller" 

To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" 
Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2013 9:00 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and talk 
aboutVisualEditor




Hey Kevin,

contrary to your belief (and in spite of your desire to blame me ;-),
I actually have a ton of respect for the opinions you've expressed
throughout the process, and for the level of detail and time you've
committed to it, including helping in a hands-on manner. I don't agree
with you on quite a few issues, obviously, but I've really enjoyed
reading your comments, which are always well-reasoned and on point.
:-) I hope you don't lose your patience with us, as you really are the
kind of person we enjoy working with due to your diligence and the
quality of your reports.

So, if you've personally felt that it's been disruptive for you and
caused you annoyance and frustration, I'm sorry, because I do respect
your opinion and your work as an editor.

On the subject of an appropriate MVP:


If you had followed that, and understood that the Minimum Viable Product
included cut-and-paste, table editing, and maybe the ability to 
successfully

and completely edit the hundred or so most edited articles out of all the
millions, you wouldn't have hit the level of pushback you've encountered.


Couple of diffs from a few minutes ago of table edits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Major_League_Soccer&curid=71802&diff=566676293&oldid=59395
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_True_Blood_characters&curid=23290782&diff=566675268&oldid=565993704

That's not just plain vanilla tables, but tables with inline CSS
specified by hand, templates inside cells, etc. No roundtripping
issues or other problems as far as I can tell.

The kind of table you want us to make work well is this type:

{| class="wikitable" style="margin: auto; width: 100%"
|-
! colspan="2" rowspan="2" style="width:3%;"|Season
! rowspan="2" style="width:5%;"|Episodes
! colspan=2|Originally aired
! colspan=2|DVD release
|-
(...)
| style="background:green; color:#134; text-align:center;"|
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| '''[[List of Big Time Rush
episodes#Film|Film]]'''
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| {{Start date|2012|3|10}}
| style="text-align: center; top" {{N/a}}
| style="text-align: center; top" {{N/a}}

which injects this kind of template:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:N/a&action=edit

In other words, a table partially constructed out of table cell templates.

Now, I understand that you've dealt with dirty diffs resulting from
people editing pages using those templates, and I know that sucks, so
sorry about that - but it's a hard problem, and I don't think it's
reasonable to frame it as an MVP-level one. The reasonable expectation
is to fix roundtripping issues on those hairy tables as soon as
possible, and ideally avoid any kind of accidental leakage of CSS into
the UI. But as you know, some of these templates don't even map
against HTML elements, so it's not a trivial issue.

We could spend literally months trying to make
tables-constructed-out-of-templates work nicely, and it would still be
a shitty experience, and those would be months not spent on actual MVP
features. Before we sink countless person hours into
tables-constructed-out-of-templates, I think we need to step back and
see what our options are for solving that particular problem well in
the long run. Perhaps there's a type of table-template we can support
well, and gradually migrate all tables to it, but it won't be easy.

I appreciate that you created the "Disable VE" template which makes it
possible to shield pages that are vulnerable to dirty diffs from VE.
That was a great hack (we should have included _that_ one with the
MVP, it would have saved users a lot of pain), and should help in
cases where an immediate fix isn't feasible.

As for copy-and-paste, yes, it's pretty wonky still, and I'm sure
causes a fair bit of frustration for first-time VE users who have no
experience with wikitext. However, it is there within a VE session,
and we see very few diffs where users are causing problems due to
broken copy-and-paste. Does that not match your experience? I've just
inspected another round of 100 diffs and didn't see a single
copy-and-paste related issue. Contrary to Andreas' claim, copying
references isn't completely broken, but the bug is pretty nasty when
it hits, so we'll get it fixed soon.

As for performance, it already was a high priority before release, and
we made huge gains in server-side performance thanks to the deployment
of a completely new caching infrastructure for VisualEditor and lots
of optimizations on Parsoid (still more to come). Where we could have
done better prior to release was client-side performance -- we didn't
do sufficie

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and talk about VisualEditor

[Kevin Wayne Williams]

Op 2013/08/01 0:00, Erik Moeller schreef:
It's the constant minimization of issues that's the most annoying, Erik. 
Reading through your response, you'd think that I was some kind of picky 
person with irrationally high expectations. Nothing could be further 
from the truth.

If you had followed that, and understood that the Minimum Viable Product
included cut-and-paste, table editing, and maybe the ability to successfully
and completely edit the hundred or so most edited articles out of all the
millions, you wouldn't have hit the level of pushback you've encountered.

Couple of diffs from a few minutes ago of table edits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Major_League_Soccer&curid=71802&diff=566676293&oldid=59395
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_True_Blood_characters&curid=23290782&diff=566675268&oldid=565993704

That's not just plain vanilla tables, but tables with inline CSS
specified by hand, templates inside cells, etc. No roundtripping
issues or other problems as far as I can tell.
The editor was able to change a 4 to a 5 in an existing table, that's 
true. Could that editor add a row? No. Add a column? No. Delete a row or 
a column? No. Are all of those operations part of the bare minimum 
feature set for "table editing"? Absolutely.


The kind of table you want us to make work well is this type:

{| class="wikitable" style="margin: auto; width: 100%"
|-
! colspan="2" rowspan="2" style="width:3%;"|Season
! rowspan="2" style="width:5%;"|Episodes
! colspan=2|Originally aired
! colspan=2|DVD release
|-
(...)
| style="background:green; color:#134; text-align:center;"|
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| '''[[List of Big Time Rush
episodes#Film|Film]]'''
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| {{Start date|2012|3|10}}
| style="text-align: center; top" {{N/a}}
| style="text-align: center; top" {{N/a}}

which injects this kind of template:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:N/a&action=edit

In other words, a table partially constructed out of table cell templates.
It's not that *I* want them to work well. If you look over the whole pop 
music area, you will find that most recent articles in that area include 
at least one of {{Certification Table Top}}, {{Singlechart}}, 
{{Albumchart}}, or one of the {{won}}, {{lost}}, {{n/a}} group. Those 
templates all failed, and all failed because of *different* bugs.




Now, I understand that you've dealt with dirty diffs
It's not "dirty diffs": the articles get converted to gibberish on 
saves: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Big_Time_Rush_episodes&diff=565906957&oldid=565898974 



Wholesale destruction of articles is *not* a "dirty diff".

... it's not a trivial issue.

But it's certainly one that you knew was broken before you released

...

As for copy-and-paste, yes, it's pretty wonky still, and I'm sure
causes a fair bit of frustration for first-time VE users who have no
experience with wikitext. However, it is there within a VE session,
and we see very few diffs where users are causing problems due to
broken copy-and-paste. Does that not match your experience? I've just
inspected another round of 100 diffs and didn't see a single
copy-and-paste related issue. Contrary to Andreas' claim, copying
references isn't completely broken, but the bug is pretty nasty when
it hits, so we'll get it fixed soon.
I'm trying to generate an experience right now. So far I'm at 11 minutes 
of CPU time trying to save the results, so not having diffs is 
relatively unsurprising: if I wasn't braced for this, I would have 
killed my browser and started over 8 minutes ago.


Wow ... 34 minutes of solid CPU time and the thing still hasn't saved. 
I'll get back to the rest of the e-mail and hope it's done before I have 
to leave the house.


Just crossed the one hour mark for CPU time, so I'll look back at this 
e-mail when I'm done with my morning errands ...


At two hours and five minutes of solid CPU time, I'm going to crash my 
browser and try a smaller test. Suffice it to say that a basic test plan 
like "open the article about Lady Gaga in one edit window, paste the 
results in another edit window, and save the results" was not a smashing 
success. Corrupted the article format and could not save.


OK, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kww/pastetest2 shows the results 
of copying the second paragraph from 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Gaga?veaction=edit and pasting it into 
a second edit window. That's *broken*. Inexcusably broken. Copying text 
from one article and pasting it into another successfully is a test case 
that doesn't require a firehose test to detect, and it certainly is a 
part of the Minimum Viable Product.




But I don't want to argue with you - I'm just saying things are a bit
more complex and nuanced.
The problem is that you "do" continue to argue when you shouldn't. Has 
your team accomplished a lot? Absolutely. But your definition of Minimum 
Viable Product was so far off the 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and talk about VisualEditor

[Erik Moeller]

On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 9:36 AM, Kevin Wayne Williams
 wrote:
> The editor was able to change a 4 to a 5 in an existing table, that's true.
> Could that editor add a row? No. Add a column? No. Delete a row or a column?
> No. Are all of those operations part of the bare minimum feature set for
> "table editing"? Absolutely.

No, I don't agree -- it's actually totally fine to say for now "if you
want to add rows etc., use the source editor". And as you know, once
you start going into complex table manipulations, the product becomes
a _lot_ more complex, because you need to be able to do so in a way
that matches existing expectations of how a table should be
structured, which vary by page (some augmented by templates, some
using various inline CSS approaches, etc.). However, I do agree that
we should do a better job communicating VE's limitations (they are
listed pretty clearly in a bunch of places, but obviously you're not
going to look if you're a new editor).

This is why I think the approach of adding VE as a second tab with a
clear "beta" label and an explanation when you open it is a reasonable
way forward.

> It's not "dirty diffs": the articles get converted to gibberish on saves:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Big_Time_Rush_episodes&diff=565906957&oldid=565898974
>
> Wholesale destruction of articles is *not* a "dirty diff".

The use of "dirty diff" was not intended to minimize that - we've seen
destructive changes with VE, and we take them very seriously. Like I
said, cleanly roundtripping has always been a top priority. The way
we've prioritized them is by handcoding actual diffs we see in the
real world and fixing things that occur frequently first. I also like
the approach of shielding page content if needed. I just don't agree
that providing a clean experience for _editing_ that type of
masterfully template-constructed table is a fair expectation for a
first release.

You're right that copy/paste is badly broken across tabs, and still
pretty broken even inside tabs, and we should have tried harder for
the first release. But if I have time later today, I'll make you a
video of how badly broken and slow copy/paste is in Google Docs across
tabs, which has been around for many years now and seen a huge amount
of world-wide usage -- not to even mention other less widely used
web-based RTEs. Again, I'm not minimizing it -- just saying that what
look like obvious easy issues often turns out to be a very complex
problem that you end up being better served iterating on in the real
world.

What I do agree with is that we need to now make a change to the user
experience to acknowledge the legitimate issues with the current
experience, dial back the firehose, and more prominently inform users
about VE's limitations.

Erik

-- 
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Ryan Lane]

On Thursday, August 1, 2013, Anthony wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 12:44 AM, Tim Starling 
> 
> >wrote:
>
> > On 01/08/13 14:15, Anthony wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:27 PM, Ryan Lane 
> > > >
> wrote:
> > >
> > >> I would be fired and jailed before I knowingly let that occur. If this
> > was
> > >> the case I'd very surely not be working for Wikimedia Foundation.
> > >>
> > >
> > > Key word there being "knowingly".
> >
> > I don't know why the NSA would sneak around in our data centres
> > mirroring our ethernet ports if they already have almost all of our
> > access logs by capturing unencrypted traffic as it passes through
> > XKeyscore nodes.
> >
>
> Especially not when they can get someone else to do it for them.
>
> I think you should save the conspiracy theories until after we switch
> > anons to HTTPS, that's when they will have an incentive.
> >
>
> And I thought Ryan Lane was talking about the future, not the past.  I
> certainly was.


I'm talking about both.

- Ryan
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Invitation to WMF July 2013 Metrics & Activities Meeting: Thursday, August 1, 18:00 UTC

[Praveena Maharaj]

REMINDER: This meeting starts in 30 minutes.



On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 1:10 PM, Praveena Maharaj wrote:

Dear all,
>
> The next WMF metrics and activities meeting will take place on Thursday,
> August 1, 2013 at 6:00 PM UTC (11 AM PDT). The IRC channel is
> #wikimedia-office on irc.freenode.net and the meeting will be broadcast
> as a live YouTube stream.
>
> The current structure of the meeting is:
>
> * Review of key metrics including the monthly report card, but also
> specialized reports and analytics
> * Review of financials
> * Welcoming recent hires
> * Brief presentations on recent projects, with a focus on highest priority
> initiatives
> * Update and Q&A with the Executive Director, if available
>
> Please review
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings for
> further information about how to participate.
>
> We’ll post the video recording publicly after the meeting.
>
> Thank you,
> Praveena
>
>
> --
> Praveena Maharaj
> Executive Assistant to the VP of Engineering and Product Development
> +1 (415) 839 6885 ext. 6689
> www.wikimedia.org
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF 2013 elections post-mortem

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Anders Wennersten, 31/07/2013 09:18:

As Bishakha  I believe time now is ripe to strengthen the election
process and that we should aim for a standing committee. In the same
time I think it would be good to look into this group a bit further
(technical support, how to elect the committee, split dates for
FDC/board elections etc).

I have put up a proposal at

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Post_mortem/Report_from_Risker


where I differ with Bishakha on the size and think five members, more
dedicated, would do


The proposals differ, but they all seem to share some premises that I 
don't understand. In my opinion:
1) if we have few candidates and few votes for the WMF board election, 
of course the board itself is responsible of this and has to take care 
of it: it's not about election processes or other superstructures;
2) if the election committee as a whole failed to do its job, its scope 
and recruitment should be more focused (so that people know what's 
important to get done and they do it), rather than its prerogatives 
further expanded.

The two are tightly connected, see (B) below.

Two examples.
A) I want the election committee to ensure that each vote is kept 
private and counted fairly: this year's committee didn't explain what 
the consequences of migrating to a WMF-hosted wiki are; a bigger 
committee would reduce privacy.
B) I don't want the committee to decide the rules for the elections, 
especially during the elections. That's both wrong and a waste of time. 
Rules should be decided by the board (directly or not, addressing COI of 
course) in a way that makes them integral to a broader reasoning on what 
the board should be and what are the means for reaching the defined goals.


Nemo

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[Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Rui Correia]

Dear Colleagues at the Foundation

I just came across an artecle called "White Africans of European ancestry".
What is that even supposed to mean?  Who would be any other "white people"
if not of Europen ancestry? What other white people (yes, WP has a
definition of "white people" could these be? Especially as it already says
on the talk page that Arabs don't count.


When we have 'white people' creating every conceivable article about 'white
people', but we have no 'Khoi' people writing about 'Khoi people, then we
can't call the WP an encyclopaedia. But them the rules do say - somewhere -
that "just because ...". And those "just because" rules are all over the
place - you can't use what was done in one case to justify another similar
case because someone is bound to throw a "just because" rule at you. But
the "just because ..." rule applies only when it is convenient - the
corollary of the "just because .." is "I know more rules and tricks than
you and I will win this/ I will not allow you to have your way even if I
have to break all the rules and make new ones as I go along".

So, "just because" there isn't an artice about "Khoi people living in
Denmark" is no reason to not have an article about "White Europens of
Europen descent livng in Patagonia" or "White Europens of Europen descent
livng in Timbaktu". We have allowed ourselves to fall victim of the digital
divide - the Khoi don't have computers and internet, white Europeans do.
That is not an encyclopaedia.

Why don't we have a page on "Black Americans of African ancestry"?
Or "Black Europeans of African ancestry"? Strangely enough, type "Black
African" and you get redirected to Black people, BUT the redirect actually
takes you all the way down to Africa - yes, the article on Black people
does not start with Africa, but with the United States, then Brazil 

Like I said, When we have 'white people' creating every conceivable article
about 'white people', but we have no 'Khoi' people writing about 'Khoi
people, ...

The same goes for the so-called "Biographies of Living People". I had my
first clash on WP on the issue of the "dual nationality" of Nelly Furtado.
Two hundred million people see her as Portuguese, three - yes, 3 - editors
disagree and BRAG they will NEVER ALLOW it. The rationale changes, as can
be seen from the talk pages and archives. They go as far as 'challenging'
editors that NF sees herself as Portuguese, to then dismiss all the
evidence as not good enough - even Nelly HERSELF saying she is PORTUGESE
was thrown out! Why? Obvious! She doesn't count, she is not a NEUTRAL
source!!! We have become a joke!

How about being constructive?

If we can come up with every conceivable script in the world, why has
nobody come up with a script for controversial articles that would appear
on the the edit page - like the script that says the article is protected -
ALERTING unsuspecting editors to the fact that said article is cotroversial
for xand y reason, and that if the edit the editor is about to do falls
under that theme, to please first read the talk page, with a direct link
ALSO to an explanation on BLP and the issue of ethnic background/ present
nationality. It would save lots of wasted time and effort and the three
editors who spend sleepless nights reverting the artcile might actually do
something constructive for a change.

In closing, of the nine people featured in photos on that page, I know
(have met 5) and correspond with 2 - I can guarantee that all five of them
(and most likley all 9 [or the descendents of those no longer with us])
would object to being featured in such a racist article.

I will write to them about this. I know that each one is not a valid source
about him/ herself and therefore them objecting will probably not count.
Just as an side, in case you didn't know, the census in Brazil is done on
the basis of how people see themselves - white, back, green, pink - and
then we carry those figures here in the WP. Ah, sorry, those figures are
credible, because they come from the CIA fact book, people speaking for
themselves are not.


Best regards,

Rui
-- 
Rui Correia
Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Consultant




-- 
_
Rui Correia
Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant
Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant

Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186
Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Fred Bauder]

> Dear Colleagues at the Foundation
>
> I just came across an artecle called "White Africans of European
> ancestry".
> What is that even supposed to mean?  Who would be any other "white
> people"
> if not of Europen ancestry?

The Ainu people, not that it matters.

Fred


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[Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

[James Salsman]

With the NSA revelations over the past months, there has been some very
questionable information starting to circulate suggesting that trying to
implement perfect forward secrecy for https web traffic isn't worth the
effort. I am not sure of the provenance of these reports, and I would like
to see a much more thorough debate on their accuracy or lack thereof. Here
is an example:

http://tonyarcieri.com/imperfect-forward-secrecy-the-coming-cryptocalypse

As my IETF RFC coauthor Harald Alvestrand told me: "The stuff about 'have
to transmit the session key I the clear' is completely bogus, of course.
That's what Diffie-Hellman is all about."

Ryan Lane tweeted yesterday: "It's possible to determine what you've been
viewing even with PFS. And no, padding won't help." And he wrote on today's
Foundation blog post, "Enabling perfect forward secrecy is only useful if
we also eliminate the threat of traffic analysis of HTTPS, which can be
used to detect a user’s browsing activity, even when using HTTP," citing
http://blog.ioactive.com/2012/02/ssl-traffic-analysis-on-google-maps.html

It is not at all clear to me that discussion pertains to PFS or Wikimedia
traffic in any way.

I strongly suggest that the Foundation contract with well-known independent
reputable cryptography experts to resolve these questions. Tracking and
correcting misinformed advice, perhaps in cooperation with the EFF, is just
as important.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Denny Vrandečić]

Rui,

if your basic assumption is that Wikipedia will never be a real
encyclopedia because of the lack of diversity among its contributors, I
would like to know of any other encyclopedia that is anywhere close to the
diversity among its contributors that Wikipedia has (just a side-note, the
original Encyclopédie had an even worse bias towards aristocratic, male
French than Wikipedias does, as surprising as it sounds). So, which
Encyclopedia do you consider a real encyclopedia at all?

Also, never mind the fact that we already sport such a diversity -- we are
actively aiming and striving for even more diversity, and we are not
comparing us to the usually abysmal record of other encyclopedias, but
merely to our own high, maybe even unreachable ideals.

So, whereas I fully agree that there is a lot about Wikipedia that can be
improved, I am not sure that a mail that starts with the statement "Why the
Wikipedia will never be a real encyclopedia" deserves even the
consideration that I offered you here, and is to be considered anything
beyond trolling.

All the best,
Denny



2013/8/1 Rui Correia 

> Dear Colleagues at the Foundation
>
> I just came across an artecle called "White Africans of European ancestry".
> What is that even supposed to mean?  Who would be any other "white people"
> if not of Europen ancestry? What other white people (yes, WP has a
> definition of "white people" could these be? Especially as it already says
> on the talk page that Arabs don't count.
>
>
> When we have 'white people' creating every conceivable article about 'white
> people', but we have no 'Khoi' people writing about 'Khoi people, then we
> can't call the WP an encyclopaedia. But them the rules do say - somewhere -
> that "just because ...". And those "just because" rules are all over the
> place - you can't use what was done in one case to justify another similar
> case because someone is bound to throw a "just because" rule at you. But
> the "just because ..." rule applies only when it is convenient - the
> corollary of the "just because .." is "I know more rules and tricks than
> you and I will win this/ I will not allow you to have your way even if I
> have to break all the rules and make new ones as I go along".
>
> So, "just because" there isn't an artice about "Khoi people living in
> Denmark" is no reason to not have an article about "White Europens of
> Europen descent livng in Patagonia" or "White Europens of Europen descent
> livng in Timbaktu". We have allowed ourselves to fall victim of the digital
> divide - the Khoi don't have computers and internet, white Europeans do.
> That is not an encyclopaedia.
>
> Why don't we have a page on "Black Americans of African ancestry"?
> Or "Black Europeans of African ancestry"? Strangely enough, type "Black
> African" and you get redirected to Black people, BUT the redirect actually
> takes you all the way down to Africa - yes, the article on Black people
> does not start with Africa, but with the United States, then Brazil 
>
> Like I said, When we have 'white people' creating every conceivable article
> about 'white people', but we have no 'Khoi' people writing about 'Khoi
> people, ...
>
> The same goes for the so-called "Biographies of Living People". I had my
> first clash on WP on the issue of the "dual nationality" of Nelly Furtado.
> Two hundred million people see her as Portuguese, three - yes, 3 - editors
> disagree and BRAG they will NEVER ALLOW it. The rationale changes, as can
> be seen from the talk pages and archives. They go as far as 'challenging'
> editors that NF sees herself as Portuguese, to then dismiss all the
> evidence as not good enough - even Nelly HERSELF saying she is PORTUGESE
> was thrown out! Why? Obvious! She doesn't count, she is not a NEUTRAL
> source!!! We have become a joke!
>
> How about being constructive?
>
> If we can come up with every conceivable script in the world, why has
> nobody come up with a script for controversial articles that would appear
> on the the edit page - like the script that says the article is protected -
> ALERTING unsuspecting editors to the fact that said article is cotroversial
> for xand y reason, and that if the edit the editor is about to do falls
> under that theme, to please first read the talk page, with a direct link
> ALSO to an explanation on BLP and the issue of ethnic background/ present
> nationality. It would save lots of wasted time and effort and the three
> editors who spend sleepless nights reverting the artcile might actually do
> something constructive for a change.
>
> In closing, of the nine people featured in photos on that page, I know
> (have met 5) and correspond with 2 - I can guarantee that all five of them
> (and most likley all 9 [or the descendents of those no longer with us])
> would object to being featured in such a racist article.
>
> I will write to them about this. I know that each one is not a valid source
> about him/ herself and therefore them objecting w

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Mark]

On 8/1/13 10:22 PM, Rui Correia wrote:

So, "just because" there isn't an artice about "Khoi people living in
Denmark" is no reason to not have an article about "White Europens of
Europen descent livng in Patagonia" or "White Europens of Europen descent
livng in Timbaktu". We have allowed ourselves to fall victim of the digital
divide - the Khoi don't have computers and internet, white Europeans do.



There are a surprising number of such articles, though not specifically 
on Khoi people living in Denmark (yet). One can, however, read about 
[[Chinese people in Denmark]], [[Pakistanis in Denmark]], [[Somalis in 
Sweden]], and likewise for many pairs of X-in-Y.


I agree there is systemic bias in which subset of such X-in-Y pairs have 
articles, especially good ones. I suspect systemic bias in the 
availability of English-language sources is one contributing factor (and 
likewise the availability of German-language sources for the analogous 
de.wiki articles, etc.).


-Mark


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Rui Correia]

Denny

If you going to shoot me down as a troll, then I can say only that you are
one of those that refuse to see the elephant in the room. I am a journalist
(and a journalism trainer), I know that if I want others to read what I
have to say I need to come up a headline that will attract attention, while
at the same time abiding by age-old ethic standards - and I have done so.

Who controls what is said has become a big problem on the English and to a
degree the Portuguese WPs. Be fair to yourself, step back and just look at
some articles to see how many times a day they get reverted. The rot has
become endemic - there are so many people who do nothing but revert the
whole day without EVER contributing anything. Yes, I know that a lot of the
reverting is to undo the work of vandals with nothing better to do, but
most of it is done to preserve the view thae a specific article has
'acquired' through time.

Can you honesty tell me that you have not come across articles that are
'untouchable'? That you know they convey a view that is not entirely right,
but YOU and I cannot change it? Can you tell me that you have not come
across editors who are hell-bent on preserving this or that article just as
it is?

Rui

On 1 August 2013 22:40, Denny Vrandečić wrote:

> Rui,
>
> if your basic assumption is that Wikipedia will never be a real
> encyclopedia because of the lack of diversity among its contributors, I
> would like to know of any other encyclopedia that is anywhere close to the
> diversity among its contributors that Wikipedia has (just a side-note, the
> original Encyclopédie had an even worse bias towards aristocratic, male
> French than Wikipedias does, as surprising as it sounds). So, which
> Encyclopedia do you consider a real encyclopedia at all?
>
> Also, never mind the fact that we already sport such a diversity -- we are
> actively aiming and striving for even more diversity, and we are not
> comparing us to the usually abysmal record of other encyclopedias, but
> merely to our own high, maybe even unreachable ideals.
>
> So, whereas I fully agree that there is a lot about Wikipedia that can be
> improved, I am not sure that a mail that starts with the statement "Why the
> Wikipedia will never be a real encyclopedia" deserves even the
> consideration that I offered you here, and is to be considered anything
> beyond trolling.
>
> All the best,
> Denny
>
>
>
> 2013/8/1 Rui Correia 
>
> > Dear Colleagues at the Foundation
> >
> > I just came across an artecle called "White Africans of European
> ancestry".
> > What is that even supposed to mean?  Who would be any other "white
> people"
> > if not of Europen ancestry? What other white people (yes, WP has a
> > definition of "white people" could these be? Especially as it already
> says
> > on the talk page that Arabs don't count.
> >
> >
> > When we have 'white people' creating every conceivable article about
> 'white
> > people', but we have no 'Khoi' people writing about 'Khoi people, then we
> > can't call the WP an encyclopaedia. But them the rules do say -
> somewhere -
> > that "just because ...". And those "just because" rules are all over the
> > place - you can't use what was done in one case to justify another
> similar
> > case because someone is bound to throw a "just because" rule at you. But
> > the "just because ..." rule applies only when it is convenient - the
> > corollary of the "just because .." is "I know more rules and tricks than
> > you and I will win this/ I will not allow you to have your way even if I
> > have to break all the rules and make new ones as I go along".
> >
> > So, "just because" there isn't an artice about "Khoi people living in
> > Denmark" is no reason to not have an article about "White Europens of
> > Europen descent livng in Patagonia" or "White Europens of Europen descent
> > livng in Timbaktu". We have allowed ourselves to fall victim of the
> digital
> > divide - the Khoi don't have computers and internet, white Europeans do.
> > That is not an encyclopaedia.
> >
> > Why don't we have a page on "Black Americans of African ancestry"?
> > Or "Black Europeans of African ancestry"? Strangely enough, type "Black
> > African" and you get redirected to Black people, BUT the redirect
> actually
> > takes you all the way down to Africa - yes, the article on Black people
> > does not start with Africa, but with the United States, then Brazil 
> >
> > Like I said, When we have 'white people' creating every conceivable
> article
> > about 'white people', but we have no 'Khoi' people writing about 'Khoi
> > people, ...
> >
> > The same goes for the so-called "Biographies of Living People". I had my
> > first clash on WP on the issue of the "dual nationality" of Nelly
> Furtado.
> > Two hundred million people see her as Portuguese, three - yes, 3 -
> editors
> > disagree and BRAG they will NEVER ALLOW it. The rationale changes, as can
> > be seen from the talk pages and archives. They go as far as 'challenging'
> >

[Wikimedia-l] Open call for Individual Engagement Grant proposals and committee members

[Siko Bouterse]

Hi all,

The Wikimedia Foundation and the Individual Engagement Grants Committee
invite you to submit proposals for grants of up to $30,000 to support
6-month projects that improve the Wikimedia community. These grants fund
individuals or small teams to organize, build, create, research or
facilitate something that enhances the work of Wikimedia’s volunteers.

The deadline to submit a proposal for this round is 30 September 2013:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG

We’re also seeking new committee members to help review and recommend
proposals for funding. The round 2 committee will be finalized 31 August
2013:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Committee


You can read more about what the previous round of grantees have been
working on here:

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/08/01/ieg-learnings-call-new-proposals/

Hope to have your participation!

Best wishes,
Siko

-- 
Siko Bouterse
Head of Individual Engagement Grants
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

sboute...@wikimedia.org

*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. *
*Donate  or click the "edit" button today,
and help us make it a reality!*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Rui Correia]

Denny

PS: Your email is a typical case of "shooting the messenger". I have seen
far too often that we seem to prefer that we don;t see the elephant in the
room.

What happens to emails such as mine? Nothing. They get flushed down the
gutter of electronic waste. There are so many bodies within the Foundation,
is there a a body that specifically listens to people to be abe to gauge
the mood of the masses of editors? And I don't mean that internal/ built-in
dispute resolution mechanisms because you know just as I do that those are
dominated by the same kind of people who want to preserve a specific point
of view.

Rui

On 1 August 2013 22:55, Rui Correia  wrote:

> Denny
>
> If you going to shoot me down as a troll, then I can say only that you are
> one of those that refuse to see the elephant in the room. I am a journalist
> (and a journalism trainer), I know that if I want others to read what I
> have to say I need to come up a headline that will attract attention, while
> at the same time abiding by age-old ethic standards - and I have done so.
>
> Who controls what is said has become a big problem on the English and to a
> degree the Portuguese WPs. Be fair to yourself, step back and just look at
> some articles to see how many times a day they get reverted. The rot has
> become endemic - there are so many people who do nothing but revert the
> whole day without EVER contributing anything. Yes, I know that a lot of the
> reverting is to undo the work of vandals with nothing better to do, but
> most of it is done to preserve the view thae a specific article has
> 'acquired' through time.
>
> Can you honesty tell me that you have not come across articles that are
> 'untouchable'? That you know they convey a view that is not entirely right,
> but YOU and I cannot change it? Can you tell me that you have not come
> across editors who are hell-bent on preserving this or that article just as
> it is?
>
> Rui
>
> On 1 August 2013 22:40, Denny Vrandečić wrote:
>
>> Rui,
>>
>> if your basic assumption is that Wikipedia will never be a real
>> encyclopedia because of the lack of diversity among its contributors, I
>> would like to know of any other encyclopedia that is anywhere close to the
>> diversity among its contributors that Wikipedia has (just a side-note, the
>> original Encyclopédie had an even worse bias towards aristocratic, male
>> French than Wikipedias does, as surprising as it sounds). So, which
>> Encyclopedia do you consider a real encyclopedia at all?
>>
>> Also, never mind the fact that we already sport such a diversity -- we are
>> actively aiming and striving for even more diversity, and we are not
>> comparing us to the usually abysmal record of other encyclopedias, but
>> merely to our own high, maybe even unreachable ideals.
>>
>> So, whereas I fully agree that there is a lot about Wikipedia that can be
>> improved, I am not sure that a mail that starts with the statement "Why
>> the
>> Wikipedia will never be a real encyclopedia" deserves even the
>> consideration that I offered you here, and is to be considered anything
>> beyond trolling.
>>
>> All the best,
>> Denny
>>
>>
>>
>> 2013/8/1 Rui Correia 
>>
>> > Dear Colleagues at the Foundation
>> >
>> > I just came across an artecle called "White Africans of European
>> ancestry".
>> > What is that even supposed to mean?  Who would be any other "white
>> people"
>> > if not of Europen ancestry? What other white people (yes, WP has a
>> > definition of "white people" could these be? Especially as it already
>> says
>> > on the talk page that Arabs don't count.
>> >
>> >
>> > When we have 'white people' creating every conceivable article about
>> 'white
>> > people', but we have no 'Khoi' people writing about 'Khoi people, then
>> we
>> > can't call the WP an encyclopaedia. But them the rules do say -
>> somewhere -
>> > that "just because ...". And those "just because" rules are all over the
>> > place - you can't use what was done in one case to justify another
>> similar
>> > case because someone is bound to throw a "just because" rule at you. But
>> > the "just because ..." rule applies only when it is convenient - the
>> > corollary of the "just because .." is "I know more rules and tricks than
>> > you and I will win this/ I will not allow you to have your way even if I
>> > have to break all the rules and make new ones as I go along".
>> >
>> > So, "just because" there isn't an artice about "Khoi people living in
>> > Denmark" is no reason to not have an article about "White Europens of
>> > Europen descent livng in Patagonia" or "White Europens of Europen
>> descent
>> > livng in Timbaktu". We have allowed ourselves to fall victim of the
>> digital
>> > divide - the Khoi don't have computers and internet, white Europeans do.
>> > That is not an encyclopaedia.
>> >
>> > Why don't we have a page on "Black Americans of African ancestry"?
>> > Or "Black Europeans of African ancestry"? Strangely enough, type "Black
>> > African" and you 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Asaf Bartov]

Your disqualification of Wikipedia from being called an encyclopedia is, of
course, equally (indeed, more) applicable to _all other encyclopedias,
ever_.  It is therefore incumbent on your to either agree that there has
never been "an encyclopedia" yet, or that your bar for what constitutes an
encyclopedia is not a useful one.

We all agree the Khoi, and African topics in general (but also Vietnamese,
and Guatemalan, and Albanian, and...[1]) are underrepresented in the
volunteer-built encyclopedia we all cherish.

What _would_ be useful are realistic ideas about how to address this
underrepresentation.

   A.

[1] Two years ago, I spent 5-minutes preparing a presentation that makes
this point when someone suggested that the English Wikipedia is... kinda
done?  It's at http://prezi.com/szjdvdbtl0j_/is-wikipedia-done/


On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 1:22 PM, Rui Correia  wrote:

> Dear Colleagues at the Foundation
>
> I just came across an artecle called "White Africans of European ancestry".
> What is that even supposed to mean?  Who would be any other "white people"
> if not of Europen ancestry? What other white people (yes, WP has a
> definition of "white people" could these be? Especially as it already says
> on the talk page that Arabs don't count.
>
>
> When we have 'white people' creating every conceivable article about 'white
> people', but we have no 'Khoi' people writing about 'Khoi people, then we
> can't call the WP an encyclopaedia. But them the rules do say - somewhere -
> that "just because ...". And those "just because" rules are all over the
> place - you can't use what was done in one case to justify another similar
> case because someone is bound to throw a "just because" rule at you. But
> the "just because ..." rule applies only when it is convenient - the
> corollary of the "just because .." is "I know more rules and tricks than
> you and I will win this/ I will not allow you to have your way even if I
> have to break all the rules and make new ones as I go along".
>
> So, "just because" there isn't an artice about "Khoi people living in
> Denmark" is no reason to not have an article about "White Europens of
> Europen descent livng in Patagonia" or "White Europens of Europen descent
> livng in Timbaktu". We have allowed ourselves to fall victim of the digital
> divide - the Khoi don't have computers and internet, white Europeans do.
> That is not an encyclopaedia.
>
> Why don't we have a page on "Black Americans of African ancestry"?
> Or "Black Europeans of African ancestry"? Strangely enough, type "Black
> African" and you get redirected to Black people, BUT the redirect actually
> takes you all the way down to Africa - yes, the article on Black people
> does not start with Africa, but with the United States, then Brazil 
>
> Like I said, When we have 'white people' creating every conceivable article
> about 'white people', but we have no 'Khoi' people writing about 'Khoi
> people, ...
>
> The same goes for the so-called "Biographies of Living People". I had my
> first clash on WP on the issue of the "dual nationality" of Nelly Furtado.
> Two hundred million people see her as Portuguese, three - yes, 3 - editors
> disagree and BRAG they will NEVER ALLOW it. The rationale changes, as can
> be seen from the talk pages and archives. They go as far as 'challenging'
> editors that NF sees herself as Portuguese, to then dismiss all the
> evidence as not good enough - even Nelly HERSELF saying she is PORTUGESE
> was thrown out! Why? Obvious! She doesn't count, she is not a NEUTRAL
> source!!! We have become a joke!
>
> How about being constructive?
>
> If we can come up with every conceivable script in the world, why has
> nobody come up with a script for controversial articles that would appear
> on the the edit page - like the script that says the article is protected -
> ALERTING unsuspecting editors to the fact that said article is cotroversial
> for xand y reason, and that if the edit the editor is about to do falls
> under that theme, to please first read the talk page, with a direct link
> ALSO to an explanation on BLP and the issue of ethnic background/ present
> nationality. It would save lots of wasted time and effort and the three
> editors who spend sleepless nights reverting the artcile might actually do
> something constructive for a change.
>
> In closing, of the nine people featured in photos on that page, I know
> (have met 5) and correspond with 2 - I can guarantee that all five of them
> (and most likley all 9 [or the descendents of those no longer with us])
> would object to being featured in such a racist article.
>
> I will write to them about this. I know that each one is not a valid source
> about him/ herself and therefore them objecting will probably not count.
> Just as an side, in case you didn't know, the census in Brazil is done on
> the basis of how people see themselves - white, back, green, pink - and
> then we carry those figures here in the WP. Ah, sor

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Laura Hale]

On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 10:55 PM, Rui Correia  wrote:

>
>
> Can you honesty tell me that you have not come across articles that are
> 'untouchable'? That you know they convey a view that is not entirely right,
> but YOU and I cannot change it? Can you tell me that you have not come
> across editors who are hell-bent on preserving this or that article just as
> it is?
>
>
I too am a journalist with my work published on two different continents in
print.   I am also a social media metrics lover.  As a journalist, I value
verifiable, fact based, neutral reporting.

If you are making the claim that English and Portuguese Wikipedia are
doomed, I would love to see some verifiable, fact based, neutral oriented
data sets to support the claim, especially as this would imply systematic
bias on a large scale.  You have pulled one article and non-neutrally
labeled it as a representative article for all projects.  Yes, I know of a
number of articles and topics that are pretty much untouchable but this is
far from 99% of all articles on the project.  (I would put the number at
probably 0.1% and that feels generous.)  This feels like a sensationalist
claim (which I would normally say is trumped up by the media in order to
spin a story, but this is not a media story) based on one or two articles.

Bad research.  Bad reporting. There are ways to get attention to this VERY,
VERY important topic without resorting to sensationalist calls that have
little thoughtful documentation.

-- 
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blog: ozziesport.com
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Rui Correia]

Asaf

So you mostly agree with m, but prefer to come out knee-jerking first and
only after that showing that you somehow agree.

The elephant in the room is so big that we there isn't even enough room to
breathe properly to get enough oxygen to our brains.

Rui

On 1 August 2013 23:10, Asaf Bartov  wrote:

> Your disqualification of Wikipedia from being called an encyclopedia is, of
> course, equally (indeed, more) applicable to _all other encyclopedias,
> ever_.  It is therefore incumbent on your to either agree that there has
> never been "an encyclopedia" yet, or that your bar for what constitutes an
> encyclopedia is not a useful one.
>
> We all agree the Khoi, and African topics in general (but also Vietnamese,
> and Guatemalan, and Albanian, and...[1]) are underrepresented in the
> volunteer-built encyclopedia we all cherish.
>
> What _would_ be useful are realistic ideas about how to address this
> underrepresentation.
>
>A.
>
> [1] Two years ago, I spent 5-minutes preparing a presentation that makes
> this point when someone suggested that the English Wikipedia is... kinda
> done?  It's at http://prezi.com/szjdvdbtl0j_/is-wikipedia-done/
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 1:22 PM, Rui Correia  wrote:
>
> > Dear Colleagues at the Foundation
> >
> > I just came across an artecle called "White Africans of European
> ancestry".
> > What is that even supposed to mean?  Who would be any other "white
> people"
> > if not of Europen ancestry? What other white people (yes, WP has a
> > definition of "white people" could these be? Especially as it already
> says
> > on the talk page that Arabs don't count.
> >
> >
> > When we have 'white people' creating every conceivable article about
> 'white
> > people', but we have no 'Khoi' people writing about 'Khoi people, then we
> > can't call the WP an encyclopaedia. But them the rules do say -
> somewhere -
> > that "just because ...". And those "just because" rules are all over the
> > place - you can't use what was done in one case to justify another
> similar
> > case because someone is bound to throw a "just because" rule at you. But
> > the "just because ..." rule applies only when it is convenient - the
> > corollary of the "just because .." is "I know more rules and tricks than
> > you and I will win this/ I will not allow you to have your way even if I
> > have to break all the rules and make new ones as I go along".
> >
> > So, "just because" there isn't an artice about "Khoi people living in
> > Denmark" is no reason to not have an article about "White Europens of
> > Europen descent livng in Patagonia" or "White Europens of Europen descent
> > livng in Timbaktu". We have allowed ourselves to fall victim of the
> digital
> > divide - the Khoi don't have computers and internet, white Europeans do.
> > That is not an encyclopaedia.
> >
> > Why don't we have a page on "Black Americans of African ancestry"?
> > Or "Black Europeans of African ancestry"? Strangely enough, type "Black
> > African" and you get redirected to Black people, BUT the redirect
> actually
> > takes you all the way down to Africa - yes, the article on Black people
> > does not start with Africa, but with the United States, then Brazil 
> >
> > Like I said, When we have 'white people' creating every conceivable
> article
> > about 'white people', but we have no 'Khoi' people writing about 'Khoi
> > people, ...
> >
> > The same goes for the so-called "Biographies of Living People". I had my
> > first clash on WP on the issue of the "dual nationality" of Nelly
> Furtado.
> > Two hundred million people see her as Portuguese, three - yes, 3 -
> editors
> > disagree and BRAG they will NEVER ALLOW it. The rationale changes, as can
> > be seen from the talk pages and archives. They go as far as 'challenging'
> > editors that NF sees herself as Portuguese, to then dismiss all the
> > evidence as not good enough - even Nelly HERSELF saying she is PORTUGESE
> > was thrown out! Why? Obvious! She doesn't count, she is not a NEUTRAL
> > source!!! We have become a joke!
> >
> > How about being constructive?
> >
> > If we can come up with every conceivable script in the world, why has
> > nobody come up with a script for controversial articles that would appear
> > on the the edit page - like the script that says the article is
> protected -
> > ALERTING unsuspecting editors to the fact that said article is
> cotroversial
> > for xand y reason, and that if the edit the editor is about to do falls
> > under that theme, to please first read the talk page, with a direct link
> > ALSO to an explanation on BLP and the issue of ethnic background/ present
> > nationality. It would save lots of wasted time and effort and the three
> > editors who spend sleepless nights reverting the artcile might actually
> do
> > something constructive for a change.
> >
> > In closing, of the nine people featured in photos on that page, I know
> > (have met 5) and correspond with 2 - I can guarantee that all five of

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[David Gerard]

On 1 August 2013 22:19, Rui Correia  wrote:

> So you mostly agree with m, but prefer to come out knee-jerking first and
> only after that showing that you somehow agree.


No, he's saying you're full of it, because you are. Under your
definition, there has never been an encyclopedia in human history.
This is not a useful definition.

Systemic bias is a serious problem, but writing complete rubbish isn't
going to solve it.


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Rui Correia]

Laura

If this is a "VERY VERY important topiic", as you put it, then why don't
YOU help, instead of joingng the knee-jerking squad? If you agree that it
is a very important topic and you are apparenly a better journalist that
me, why don't you do a better job rather than attacking the messenger?

Answer the folowing questions:
Do we have problems?
Are we tackling them seriously?
Are we attacking the problems or attacking those who raise them?

Rui


On 1 August 2013 23:18, Laura Hale  wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 10:55 PM, Rui Correia 
> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Can you honesty tell me that you have not come across articles that are
> > 'untouchable'? That you know they convey a view that is not entirely
> right,
> > but YOU and I cannot change it? Can you tell me that you have not come
> > across editors who are hell-bent on preserving this or that article just
> as
> > it is?
> >
> >
> I too am a journalist with my work published on two different continents in
> print.   I am also a social media metrics lover.  As a journalist, I value
> verifiable, fact based, neutral reporting.
>
> If you are making the claim that English and Portuguese Wikipedia are
> doomed, I would love to see some verifiable, fact based, neutral oriented
> data sets to support the claim, especially as this would imply systematic
> bias on a large scale.  You have pulled one article and non-neutrally
> labeled it as a representative article for all projects.  Yes, I know of a
> number of articles and topics that are pretty much untouchable but this is
> far from 99% of all articles on the project.  (I would put the number at
> probably 0.1% and that feels generous.)  This feels like a sensationalist
> claim (which I would normally say is trumped up by the media in order to
> spin a story, but this is not a media story) based on one or two articles.
>
> Bad research.  Bad reporting. There are ways to get attention to this VERY,
> VERY important topic without resorting to sensationalist calls that have
> little thoughtful documentation.
>
> --
> twitter: purplepopple
> blog: ozziesport.com
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>



-- 
_
Rui Correia
Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant
Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant

Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186
Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Rui Correia]

David

I am glad to see to see that so far everybody agrees with me, just nobody
can see the forest for the trees and most prefer to demonstrate how
offended they feel at my pointing out how naked the emperor is.

So, whereas I write "complete rubbish", what do you do to fight "systemic
bias [which] is a serious problem"?

Rui

On 1 August 2013 23:23, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 1 August 2013 22:19, Rui Correia  wrote:
>
> > So you mostly agree with m, but prefer to come out knee-jerking first and
> > only after that showing that you somehow agree.
>
>
> No, he's saying you're full of it, because you are. Under your
> definition, there has never been an encyclopedia in human history.
> This is not a useful definition.
>
> Systemic bias is a serious problem, but writing complete rubbish isn't
> going to solve it.
>
>
> - d.
>
> ___
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> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>



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_
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Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant
Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant

Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186
Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[George Herbert]

Let me pose a set of questions -

1; Do you feel this is systemic bias in people not wanting some articles?

2; and/or, do you feel this is systemic bias in people not having yet reached 
creating some articles?

3; and/or,!do you feel this is systemic bias in lack of depth of coverage in 
accessible reliable sources of some article topics?

If more than one of the above, what do you feel the relative weights of cause 
are for that aspect of systemic bias?


George William Herbert
Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 1, 2013, at 2:29 PM, Rui Correia  wrote:

> David
> 
> I am glad to see to see that so far everybody agrees with me, just nobody
> can see the forest for the trees and most prefer to demonstrate how
> offended they feel at my pointing out how naked the emperor is.
> 
> So, whereas I write "complete rubbish", what do you do to fight "systemic
> bias [which] is a serious problem"?
> 
> Rui
> 
> On 1 August 2013 23:23, David Gerard  wrote:
> 
>> On 1 August 2013 22:19, Rui Correia  wrote:
>> 
>>> So you mostly agree with m, but prefer to come out knee-jerking first and
>>> only after that showing that you somehow agree.
>> 
>> 
>> No, he's saying you're full of it, because you are. Under your
>> definition, there has never been an encyclopedia in human history.
>> This is not a useful definition.
>> 
>> Systemic bias is a serious problem, but writing complete rubbish isn't
>> going to solve it.
>> 
>> 
>> - d.
>> 
>> ___
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>> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> _
> Rui Correia
> Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant
> Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant
> 
> Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186
> Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186
> ___
> ___
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> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> 

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Rui Correia]

George

Thank you for your interest.

It is a systematic bias in not wanting some POVs. Which is why we got to
the point that we have a whole encyclopaedia governing the issue of POV.

I think a better answer to your question would be provided by doing an
analysis of articles with a high rate of reversals, undoings, 3Rs etc and
what the POV are that lead to that behavour.

Rui

On 1 August 2013 23:38, George Herbert  wrote:

> Let me pose a set of questions -
>
> 1; Do you feel this is systemic bias in people not wanting some articles?
>
> 2; and/or, do you feel this is systemic bias in people not having yet
> reached creating some articles?
>
> 3; and/or,!do you feel this is systemic bias in lack of depth of coverage
> in accessible reliable sources of some article topics?
>
> If more than one of the above, what do you feel the relative weights of
> cause are for that aspect of systemic bias?
>
>
> George William Herbert
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Aug 1, 2013, at 2:29 PM, Rui Correia  wrote:
>
> > David
> >
> > I am glad to see to see that so far everybody agrees with me, just nobody
> > can see the forest for the trees and most prefer to demonstrate how
> > offended they feel at my pointing out how naked the emperor is.
> >
> > So, whereas I write "complete rubbish", what do you do to fight "systemic
> > bias [which] is a serious problem"?
> >
> > Rui
> >
> > On 1 August 2013 23:23, David Gerard  wrote:
> >
> >> On 1 August 2013 22:19, Rui Correia  wrote:
> >>
> >>> So you mostly agree with m, but prefer to come out knee-jerking first
> and
> >>> only after that showing that you somehow agree.
> >>
> >>
> >> No, he's saying you're full of it, because you are. Under your
> >> definition, there has never been an encyclopedia in human history.
> >> This is not a useful definition.
> >>
> >> Systemic bias is a serious problem, but writing complete rubbish isn't
> >> going to solve it.
> >>
> >>
> >> - d.
> >>
> >> ___
> >> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> >> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> >> 
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > _
> > Rui Correia
> > Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant
> > Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant
> >
> > Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186
> > Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186
> > ___
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
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> 
>



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Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[George Herbert]

The specific examples you started with are not to my knowledge "problem POVs" - 
unless one of the White Power groups showed up while I wasn't paying attention. 
 It would seem much more of the "not gotten there yet" or "not (yet) well 
covered in reliable sources" for the specific ones.

Am I misunderstanding?

Unless I did miss something, it seems to me that the specific examples were 
poorly chosen and did not either clearly identify or illustrate the problem you 
are now getting at.

Which is a real but very complicated problem.


George William Herbert
Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 1, 2013, at 2:43 PM, Rui Correia  wrote:

> George
> 
> Thank you for your interest.
> 
> It is a systematic bias in not wanting some POVs. Which is why we got to
> the point that we have a whole encyclopaedia governing the issue of POV.
> 
> I think a better answer to your question would be provided by doing an
> analysis of articles with a high rate of reversals, undoings, 3Rs etc and
> what the POV are that lead to that behavour.
> 
> Rui
> 
> On 1 August 2013 23:38, George Herbert  wrote:
> 
>> Let me pose a set of questions -
>> 
>> 1; Do you feel this is systemic bias in people not wanting some articles?
>> 
>> 2; and/or, do you feel this is systemic bias in people not having yet
>> reached creating some articles?
>> 
>> 3; and/or,!do you feel this is systemic bias in lack of depth of coverage
>> in accessible reliable sources of some article topics?
>> 
>> If more than one of the above, what do you feel the relative weights of
>> cause are for that aspect of systemic bias?
>> 
>> 
>> George William Herbert
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>> On Aug 1, 2013, at 2:29 PM, Rui Correia  wrote:
>> 
>>> David
>>> 
>>> I am glad to see to see that so far everybody agrees with me, just nobody
>>> can see the forest for the trees and most prefer to demonstrate how
>>> offended they feel at my pointing out how naked the emperor is.
>>> 
>>> So, whereas I write "complete rubbish", what do you do to fight "systemic
>>> bias [which] is a serious problem"?
>>> 
>>> Rui
>>> 
>>> On 1 August 2013 23:23, David Gerard  wrote:
>>> 
 On 1 August 2013 22:19, Rui Correia  wrote:
 
> So you mostly agree with m, but prefer to come out knee-jerking first
>> and
> only after that showing that you somehow agree.
 
 
 No, he's saying you're full of it, because you are. Under your
 definition, there has never been an encyclopedia in human history.
 This is not a useful definition.
 
 Systemic bias is a serious problem, but writing complete rubbish isn't
 going to solve it.
 
 
 - d.
 
 ___
 Wikimedia-l mailing list
 Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> _
>>> Rui Correia
>>> Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant
>>> Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant
>>> 
>>> Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186
>>> Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186
>>> ___
>>> ___
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>> 
>> 
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>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> _
> Rui Correia
> Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant
> Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant
> 
> Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186
> Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Oona Castro]

I rarely jump in controversial topics here in Wikimedia-l, but I've decided
to share my 2 cents today.

I sign up for what Laura Hale said on facts & data based support for such a
claim, but would like just to add a question:
* what does a "real encyclopedia" look like?

While I do see Rui Correia's points on diversity (of content, perspectives
and editors), and while I do agree that's important to call attention to
what could be a (even if unintentional) biased frame to whole set of
subjects, I do not see how this valuable concern and criticism might take
us to the assumption that it's not a "real encyclopedia". At least in
Wikipedia we (I mean anyone) can fight for more diverse approaches on that.

Perhaps changing the framework of such criticism (how can we pursue less
intentional or unintentional biased perspectives in WP?) might lead us to a
more interesting conversation, with more potential to succeed in terms of
real change.

Oona




On 1 August 2013 18:38, George Herbert  wrote:

> Let me pose a set of questions -
>
> 1; Do you feel this is systemic bias in people not wanting some articles?
>
> 2; and/or, do you feel this is systemic bias in people not having yet
> reached creating some articles?
>
> 3; and/or,!do you feel this is systemic bias in lack of depth of coverage
> in accessible reliable sources of some article topics?
>
> If more than one of the above, what do you feel the relative weights of
> cause are for that aspect of systemic bias?
>
>
> George William Herbert
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Aug 1, 2013, at 2:29 PM, Rui Correia  wrote:
>
> > David
> >
> > I am glad to see to see that so far everybody agrees with me, just nobody
> > can see the forest for the trees and most prefer to demonstrate how
> > offended they feel at my pointing out how naked the emperor is.
> >
> > So, whereas I write "complete rubbish", what do you do to fight "systemic
> > bias [which] is a serious problem"?
> >
> > Rui
> >
> > On 1 August 2013 23:23, David Gerard  wrote:
> >
> >> On 1 August 2013 22:19, Rui Correia  wrote:
> >>
> >>> So you mostly agree with m, but prefer to come out knee-jerking first
> and
> >>> only after that showing that you somehow agree.
> >>
> >>
> >> No, he's saying you're full of it, because you are. Under your
> >> definition, there has never been an encyclopedia in human history.
> >> This is not a useful definition.
> >>
> >> Systemic bias is a serious problem, but writing complete rubbish isn't
> >> going to solve it.
> >>
> >>
> >> - d.
> >>
> >> ___
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> >> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> >> 
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > _
> > Rui Correia
> > Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant
> > Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant
> >
> > Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186
> > Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186
> > ___
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Denny Vrandečić]

Rui,

as others are trying to tell you in this thread, I do not consider the
manner you are raising this topic to be helpful or constructive, and I
don't think that your continued defense of your approach will help or get
us anywhere.

Whereas anecdotal war stories as the one you describe can be either
interesting or boring, it does not provide sufficient evidence to act. On
the other hand, there is a growing body of research work that is trying to
understand the topic of diversity and POV in Wikipedia. Telling me that I
am refusing to see that "elephant in the room" is kind of amusing,
considering that I have co-written the proposal for and have been working
on the EU-funded research project "Render - Reflecting Knowledge Diversity"
[1], where Wikimedia is a project partner. And there are many, many others
doing research on the topic as well. All of the things you describe --
analysis of revert-patterns, approaches towards measuring POV, etc. are
being done. Maybe you want to read the papers about this and look through
the findings.

Also, diversity is a major topic at the work at the German Wikimedia
chapter, where I am employed, and it has been a major driver in the
creation of the data model underlying Wikidata, where we are working hard
on creating a truly diversity-enabling knowledge base -- something, that is
rather unique in its scope and ambition.

So, yes, I am shooting down your message. I find it as useful as telling a
smoker to quit smoking because fire is bad, as evidenced in London 1666.
There is no need to be sensationalist and counter-factual in order to get
your point across. So, why not restart the whole thread with an Email where
you make suggestions on how to improve the situation, or provide new
evidence and data that can inform the conversation further, or where you
ask for existing research on the topic to inform yourself, or ask for
initiatives where you can help in order to increase Wikipedia's diversity,
and join us in doing something constructive?

Regards,
Denny


[1] http://www.render-project.eu





2013/8/1 Rui Correia 

> Denny
>
> If you going to shoot me down as a troll, then I can say only that you are
> one of those that refuse to see the elephant in the room. I am a journalist
> (and a journalism trainer), I know that if I want others to read what I
> have to say I need to come up a headline that will attract attention, while
> at the same time abiding by age-old ethic standards - and I have done so.
>
> Who controls what is said has become a big problem on the English and to a
> degree the Portuguese WPs. Be fair to yourself, step back and just look at
> some articles to see how many times a day they get reverted. The rot has
> become endemic - there are so many people who do nothing but revert the
> whole day without EVER contributing anything. Yes, I know that a lot of the
> reverting is to undo the work of vandals with nothing better to do, but
> most of it is done to preserve the view thae a specific article has
> 'acquired' through time.
>
> Can you honesty tell me that you have not come across articles that are
> 'untouchable'? That you know they convey a view that is not entirely right,
> but YOU and I cannot change it? Can you tell me that you have not come
> across editors who are hell-bent on preserving this or that article just as
> it is?
>
> Rui
>
> On 1 August 2013 22:40, Denny Vrandečić  >wrote:
>
> > Rui,
> >
> > if your basic assumption is that Wikipedia will never be a real
> > encyclopedia because of the lack of diversity among its contributors, I
> > would like to know of any other encyclopedia that is anywhere close to
> the
> > diversity among its contributors that Wikipedia has (just a side-note,
> the
> > original Encyclopédie had an even worse bias towards aristocratic, male
> > French than Wikipedias does, as surprising as it sounds). So, which
> > Encyclopedia do you consider a real encyclopedia at all?
> >
> > Also, never mind the fact that we already sport such a diversity -- we
> are
> > actively aiming and striving for even more diversity, and we are not
> > comparing us to the usually abysmal record of other encyclopedias, but
> > merely to our own high, maybe even unreachable ideals.
> >
> > So, whereas I fully agree that there is a lot about Wikipedia that can be
> > improved, I am not sure that a mail that starts with the statement "Why
> the
> > Wikipedia will never be a real encyclopedia" deserves even the
> > consideration that I offered you here, and is to be considered anything
> > beyond trolling.
> >
> > All the best,
> > Denny
> >
> >
> >
> > 2013/8/1 Rui Correia 
> >
> > > Dear Colleagues at the Foundation
> > >
> > > I just came across an artecle called "White Africans of European
> > ancestry".
> > > What is that even supposed to mean?  Who would be any other "white
> > people"
> > > if not of Europen ancestry? What other white people (yes, WP has a
> > > definition of "white people" could these be? Especially as it alread

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

[Ryan Lane]

On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 1:33 PM, James Salsman  wrote:

> With the NSA revelations over the past months, there has been some very
> questionable information starting to circulate suggesting that trying to
> implement perfect forward secrecy for https web traffic isn't worth the
> effort. I am not sure of the provenance of these reports, and I would like
> to see a much more thorough debate on their accuracy or lack thereof. Here
> is an example:
>
> http://tonyarcieri.com/imperfect-forward-secrecy-the-coming-cryptocalypse
>
> As my IETF RFC coauthor Harald Alvestrand told me: "The stuff about 'have
> to transmit the session key I the clear' is completely bogus, of course.
> That's what Diffie-Hellman is all about."
>
> Ryan Lane tweeted yesterday: "It's possible to determine what you've been
> viewing even with PFS. And no, padding won't help." And he wrote on today's
> Foundation blog post, "Enabling perfect forward secrecy is only useful if
> we also eliminate the threat of traffic analysis of HTTPS, which can be
> used to detect a user’s browsing activity, even when using HTTP," citing
> http://blog.ioactive.com/2012/02/ssl-traffic-analysis-on-google-maps.html
>
> It is not at all clear to me that discussion pertains to PFS or Wikimedia
> traffic in any way.
>
> I strongly suggest that the Foundation contract with well-known independent
> reputable cryptography experts to resolve these questions. Tracking and
> correcting misinformed advice, perhaps in cooperation with the EFF, is just
> as important.
>

Well, my post was reviewed by quite a number of tech staff and no one
rebutted my claim.

Assuming traffic analysis can be used to determine your browsing habits as
they are occurring (which is likely not terribly hard for Wikipedia) then
there's no point in forward secrecy because there's no point in decrypting
the traffic. It would protect passwords, but people should be changing
their passwords occasionally anyway, right?

Using traffic analysis it's also likely possible to correlate edits with
users as well, based on timings of requests and the public data available
for revisions.

I'm not saying that PFS is worthless, but I am saying that implementing PFS
without first solving the issue of timing and traffic analysis
vulnerabilities is a waste of our server's resources.

- Ryan
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[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] The Signpost -- Volume 9, Issue 30 -- 31 July 2013

[Wikipedia Signpost]

Op-ed: The VisualEditor Beta and the path to change
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-07-31/Op-ed

News and notes: Gearing up for Wikimania 2013
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-07-31/News_and_notes

Featured content: Caterpillars, warblers, and frogs—oh my!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-07-31/Featured_content

Discussion report: Defining consensus; VisualEditor default state; expert and 
layperson terms in article titles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-07-31/Discussion_report

WikiProject report: Babel Series: Politics on the Turkish Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-07-31/WikiProject_report

Arbitration report: ''Race and politics'' case closes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-07-31/Arbitration_report

Traffic report: Bouncing Baby Brouhaha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-07-31/Traffic_report

Recent research: Napoleon, Michael Jackson and Srebrenica across cultures, 90% 
of Wikipedia better than Britannica, WikiSym preview
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-07-31/Recent_research


Single page view
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost/Single

PDF version
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-07-31


http://identi.ca/wikisignpost / https://twitter.com/wikisignpost
--
Wikipedia Signpost Staff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

[James Salsman]

Ryan Lane wrote:
>...
> Assuming traffic analysis can be used to determine your browsing
> habits as they are occurring (which is likely not terribly hard for Wikipedia)

The Google Maps example you linked to works by building a huge
database of the exact byte sizes of satellite image tiles. Are you
suggesting that we could fingerprint articles by their sizes and/or
the sizes of the images they load?

But if so, in your tweet you said padding wouldn't help. But padding
would completely obliterate that size information, wouldn't it?

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[Wikimedia-l] The Global Economic Map is looking for somebody with experience making bots

[Alex Peek]

The top goal for the Global Economic Map right now is to make bots that
will create empty articles for every country and region. I think this would
be a good first step right now.

Here is an empty article for spain:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mcnabber091/sandbox/Economic_Summary_of_Spain

Does anybody want to help out or have any advice on this topic?

Here is a link to the project page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_Economic_Map

Thank you,

Alex
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

[Ryan Lane]

On Thursday, August 1, 2013, James Salsman wrote:

> Ryan Lane wrote:
> >...
> > Assuming traffic analysis can be used to determine your browsing
> > habits as they are occurring (which is likely not terribly hard for
> Wikipedia)
>
> The Google Maps example you linked to works by building a huge
> database of the exact byte sizes of satellite image tiles. Are you
> suggesting that we could fingerprint articles by their sizes and/or
> the sizes of the images they load?
>

Of course. They can easily crawl us, and we provide everything for
download. Unlike sites like facebook or google, our content is delivered
exactly the same to nearly every user.

>

> But if so, in your tweet you said padding wouldn't help. But padding
> would completely obliterate that size information, wouldn't it?
>
>
Only Opera has pipelining enabled, so resource requests are serial. Also,
our resources are delivered from a number of urls (upload, bits, text)
making it easier to identify resources. Even with padding you can take the
relative size of resources being delivered, and the order of those sizes
and get a pretty good idea of the article being viewed. If there's enough
data you may be able to identify multiple articles and see if the
subsequent article is a link from the previous article, making guesses more
accurate. It only takes a single accurate guess for an edit to identify an
editor and see their entire edit history.

Proper support of pipelining in browsers or multiplexing in protocols like
SPDY would help this situation. There's probably a number of things we can
do to improve the situation without pipelining or newer protocols, and
we'll likely put some effort into this front. I think this takes priority
over PFS as PFS isn't helpful if decryption isn't necessary to track
browsing habits.

Of course the highest priority is simply to enable HTTPS by default, as it
forces the use of traffic analysis or decryption, which is likely a high
enough bar to hinder tracking efforts for a while.

- Ryan
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Peter Southwood]

Rui, His point is valid. You have a valid point but use an invalid argument 
to support it.

Cheers,
Peter
- Original Message - 
From: "Rui Correia" 

To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" 
Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2013 11:19 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia



Asaf

So you mostly agree with m, but prefer to come out knee-jerking first and
only after that showing that you somehow agree.

The elephant in the room is so big that we there isn't even enough room to
breathe properly to get enough oxygen to our brains.

Rui

On 1 August 2013 23:10, Asaf Bartov  wrote:

Your disqualification of Wikipedia from being called an encyclopedia is, 
of

course, equally (indeed, more) applicable to _all other encyclopedias,
ever_.  It is therefore incumbent on your to either agree that there has
never been "an encyclopedia" yet, or that your bar for what constitutes 
an

encyclopedia is not a useful one.

We all agree the Khoi, and African topics in general (but also 
Vietnamese,

and Guatemalan, and Albanian, and...[1]) are underrepresented in the
volunteer-built encyclopedia we all cherish.

What _would_ be useful are realistic ideas about how to address this
underrepresentation.

   A.

[1] Two years ago, I spent 5-minutes preparing a presentation that makes
this point when someone suggested that the English Wikipedia is... kinda
done?  It's at http://prezi.com/szjdvdbtl0j_/is-wikipedia-done/


On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 1:22 PM, Rui Correia  
wrote:


> Dear Colleagues at the Foundation
>
> I just came across an artecle called "White Africans of European
ancestry".
> What is that even supposed to mean?  Who would be any other "white
people"
> if not of Europen ancestry? What other white people (yes, WP has a
> definition of "white people" could these be? Especially as it already
says
> on the talk page that Arabs don't count.
>
>
> When we have 'white people' creating every conceivable article about
'white
> people', but we have no 'Khoi' people writing about 'Khoi people, then 
> we

> can't call the WP an encyclopaedia. But them the rules do say -
somewhere -
> that "just because ...". And those "just because" rules are all over 
> the

> place - you can't use what was done in one case to justify another
similar
> case because someone is bound to throw a "just because" rule at you. 
> But

> the "just because ..." rule applies only when it is convenient - the
> corollary of the "just because .." is "I know more rules and tricks 
> than
> you and I will win this/ I will not allow you to have your way even if 
> I

> have to break all the rules and make new ones as I go along".
>
> So, "just because" there isn't an artice about "Khoi people living in
> Denmark" is no reason to not have an article about "White Europens of
> Europen descent livng in Patagonia" or "White Europens of Europen 
> descent

> livng in Timbaktu". We have allowed ourselves to fall victim of the
digital
> divide - the Khoi don't have computers and internet, white Europeans 
> do.

> That is not an encyclopaedia.
>
> Why don't we have a page on "Black Americans of African ancestry"?
> Or "Black Europeans of African ancestry"? Strangely enough, type "Black
> African" and you get redirected to Black people, BUT the redirect
actually
> takes you all the way down to Africa - yes, the article on Black people
> does not start with Africa, but with the United States, then Brazil 
> 

>
> Like I said, When we have 'white people' creating every conceivable
article
> about 'white people', but we have no 'Khoi' people writing about 'Khoi
> people, ...
>
> The same goes for the so-called "Biographies of Living People". I had 
> my

> first clash on WP on the issue of the "dual nationality" of Nelly
Furtado.
> Two hundred million people see her as Portuguese, three - yes, 3 -
editors
> disagree and BRAG they will NEVER ALLOW it. The rationale changes, as 
> can
> be seen from the talk pages and archives. They go as far as 
> 'challenging'

> editors that NF sees herself as Portuguese, to then dismiss all the
> evidence as not good enough - even Nelly HERSELF saying she is 
> PORTUGESE

> was thrown out! Why? Obvious! She doesn't count, she is not a NEUTRAL
> source!!! We have become a joke!
>
> How about being constructive?
>
> If we can come up with every conceivable script in the world, why has
> nobody come up with a script for controversial articles that would 
> appear

> on the the edit page - like the script that says the article is
protected -
> ALERTING unsuspecting editors to the fact that said article is
cotroversial
> for xand y reason, and that if the edit the editor is about to do falls
> under that theme, to please first read the talk page, with a direct 
> link
> ALSO to an explanation on BLP and the issue of ethnic background/ 
> present

> nationality. It would save lots of wasted time and effort and the three
> editors who spend sleepless nights reverting the artcile might actually
do
> s

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

[George Herbert]

On Aug 1, 2013, at 10:07 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:

> Also,
> our resources are delivered from a number of urls (upload, bits, text)
> making it easier to identify resources. Even with padding you can take the
> relative size of resources being delivered, and the order of those sizes
> and get a pretty good idea of the article being viewed. If there's enough
> data you may be able to identify multiple articles and see if the
> subsequent article is a link from the previous article, making guesses more
> accurate. It only takes a single accurate guess for an edit to identify an
> editor and see their entire edit history.
> 
> Proper support of pipelining in browsers or multiplexing in protocols like
> SPDY would help this situation. There's probably a number of things we can
> do to improve the situation without pipelining or newer protocols, and
> we'll likely put some effort into this front. I think this takes priority
> over PFS as PFS isn't helpful if decryption isn't necessary to track
> browsing habits.


This needs some proper crypto expert vetting, but...

It would be trivial (both in effort and impact on customer bandwidth) to pad 
everything to a 1k boundary on https transmission once we get there.  A 
variable length non-significant header field can be used.  Forcing such size 
counts into very large bins will degrade fingerprinting significantly.

It would also not be much more effort or customer impact to pad to the next 
larger 1k size for a random large fraction of transmissions.  One could imagine 
a user setting where one could opt in or out of that, for example, and perhaps 
a set of relative inflation scheme sizes one could choose from (10% inflated, 
25% inflated, 50%, 50% plus 10% get 1-5 more k of padding, ...).

Even the slightest of these options (under https everywhere) starts to give 
plausible deniability to someone's browsing; the greater ones would make 
fingerprinting quite painful, though running a statistical exercise of such 
options to see how hard it would make it seems useful to understand the 
effects...

The question is, what is the point of this?  Provide very strong user 
obfuscation?  Provide at least minimal individual evidentiary obfuscation from 
the level of what a US court (for example) might consider scientifically 
reliable, to block use of that history in trials (even if educated guesses 
still might be made by law enforcement as to the articles)?

Countermeasures are responses to attain specific goals.  What are the goals 
people care about for such a program, and what are the Foundation willing to 
consider worth supporting with bandwidth $$ or programmer time?  How do we come 
up with a list of possible goals and prioritize amongst them in both a 
technical and policy/goals sense?

I believe that PFS will come out higher here as it's cost is really only CPU 
crunchies and already existent software settings to choose from, and its 
benefits to long term total obscurability are significant if done right.

No quantity of countermeasures beat inside info, and out-of-band compromise of 
our main keys ends up being attractive enough as the only logical attack once 
we start down this road at all past HTTPS-everywhere.  One time key compromise 
is far more likely than realtime compromise of PFS keys as they rotate, though 
even that is possible given sufficiently motivated successful stealthy 
subversion.  The credible ability to in the end be confident that's not 
happening is arguably the long term ceiling for how high we can realistically 
go with countermeasures, and contains operational security and intrusion 
detection features as its primary limits rather than in-band behavior.

At some point the ops team would need a security team, an IDS team, and a 
counterintelligence team to watch the other teams, and I don't know if the 
Foundation cares that much or would find operating that way to be a more 
comfortable moral and practical stance...


George William Herbert
Sent from my iPhone


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia

[Peter Southwood]

Journalist = professional troll
Explains but does not justify.
Peter
- Original Message - 
From: "Rui Correia" 

To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" 
Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2013 10:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the WP will never be a real encyclopaedia



Denny

If you going to shoot me down as a troll, then I can say only that you are
one of those that refuse to see the elephant in the room. I am a 
journalist

(and a journalism trainer), I know that if I want others to read what I
have to say I need to come up a headline that will attract attention, 
while

at the same time abiding by age-old ethic standards - and I have done so.

Who controls what is said has become a big problem on the English and to a
degree the Portuguese WPs. Be fair to yourself, step back and just look at
some articles to see how many times a day they get reverted. The rot has
become endemic - there are so many people who do nothing but revert the
whole day without EVER contributing anything. Yes, I know that a lot of 
the

reverting is to undo the work of vandals with nothing better to do, but
most of it is done to preserve the view thae a specific article has
'acquired' through time.

Can you honesty tell me that you have not come across articles that are
'untouchable'? That you know they convey a view that is not entirely 
right,

but YOU and I cannot change it? Can you tell me that you have not come
across editors who are hell-bent on preserving this or that article just 
as

it is?

Rui

On 1 August 2013 22:40, Denny Vrandečić 
wrote:



Rui,

if your basic assumption is that Wikipedia will never be a real
encyclopedia because of the lack of diversity among its contributors, I
would like to know of any other encyclopedia that is anywhere close to 
the
diversity among its contributors that Wikipedia has (just a side-note, 
the

original Encyclopédie had an even worse bias towards aristocratic, male
French than Wikipedias does, as surprising as it sounds). So, which
Encyclopedia do you consider a real encyclopedia at all?

Also, never mind the fact that we already sport such a diversity -- we 
are

actively aiming and striving for even more diversity, and we are not
comparing us to the usually abysmal record of other encyclopedias, but
merely to our own high, maybe even unreachable ideals.

So, whereas I fully agree that there is a lot about Wikipedia that can be
improved, I am not sure that a mail that starts with the statement "Why 
the

Wikipedia will never be a real encyclopedia" deserves even the
consideration that I offered you here, and is to be considered anything
beyond trolling.

All the best,
Denny



2013/8/1 Rui Correia 

> Dear Colleagues at the Foundation
>
> I just came across an artecle called "White Africans of European
ancestry".
> What is that even supposed to mean?  Who would be any other "white
people"
> if not of Europen ancestry? What other white people (yes, WP has a
> definition of "white people" could these be? Especially as it already
says
> on the talk page that Arabs don't count.
>
>
> When we have 'white people' creating every conceivable article about
'white
> people', but we have no 'Khoi' people writing about 'Khoi people, then 
> we

> can't call the WP an encyclopaedia. But them the rules do say -
somewhere -
> that "just because ...". And those "just because" rules are all over 
> the

> place - you can't use what was done in one case to justify another
similar
> case because someone is bound to throw a "just because" rule at you. 
> But

> the "just because ..." rule applies only when it is convenient - the
> corollary of the "just because .." is "I know more rules and tricks 
> than
> you and I will win this/ I will not allow you to have your way even if 
> I

> have to break all the rules and make new ones as I go along".
>
> So, "just because" there isn't an artice about "Khoi people living in
> Denmark" is no reason to not have an article about "White Europens of
> Europen descent livng in Patagonia" or "White Europens of Europen 
> descent

> livng in Timbaktu". We have allowed ourselves to fall victim of the
digital
> divide - the Khoi don't have computers and internet, white Europeans 
> do.

> That is not an encyclopaedia.
>
> Why don't we have a page on "Black Americans of African ancestry"?
> Or "Black Europeans of African ancestry"? Strangely enough, type "Black
> African" and you get redirected to Black people, BUT the redirect
actually
> takes you all the way down to Africa - yes, the article on Black people
> does not start with Africa, but with the United States, then Brazil 
> 

>
> Like I said, When we have 'white people' creating every conceivable
article
> about 'white people', but we have no 'Khoi' people writing about 'Khoi
> people, ...
>
> The same goes for the so-called "Biographies of Living People". I had 
> my

> first clash on WP on the issue of the "dual nationality" of Nelly
Furtado.
> Two hundred million people see her as Portuguese, three - ye