Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Thomas Townsend]

Am I right in thinking that this email, containing a long account of
the alleged poor treatment of the Treasurer of WMBE, referred to
throughout in the third person, was in fact written by that person?

The Turnip

On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 10:00, Romaine Wiki  wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> On Saturday 15 June 2019 Wikimedia Belgium had its annual General Assembly
> in Brussels.
>
> *New board*
> Two board members have indicated to step down:
> * Afernand74
> * SPQRobin
>
> We thank them for their work and valuable input in the past years!
> They remain available for advice to the board.
>
> Two board members were up for re-election after their previous terms ended.
> Both board members have been re-elected without any votes against them, and
> they will keep serving Wikimedia Belgium in their roles.
> * Geertivp - president
> * Romaine - treasurer
>
> One new board member has been elected without any votes against.
> * Taketa - long term Wikipedia editor and organiser of various activities
>
> Welcome Taketa!
>
> The rest of the board remains the same and the board continues the work and
> development of our chapter.
>
>
> *Evaluation behaviour WMF*
> As board we have the obligation to inform the General Assembly and other
> stakeholders about the developments with our chapter, both the good
> developments as well as the bad developments.
>
> A year ago, with our previous General Assembly, we were hopeful to resolve
> the issues we then had with on other organisation in the movement, the
> Wikimedia Foundation. Sadly we had to inform the General Assembly that
> instead of improvements, the behaviour of multiple individuals from the
> Wikimedia Foundation is below any standard. This concerns one member of the
> grants team and multiple members of the Trust and Safety team, as well as
> their supervisors.
>
> On request of the Trust & Safety team no names are mentioned. Below is a
> summary of what happened.
>
>
> *Case 1*
> In April 2017 the treasurer of Wikimedia Belgium (Romaine) spoke with our
> new grants staff member from the Wikimedia Foundation as WMBE was scheduled
> to change from successful project grants in 2017 and earlier years to
> Simple Annual Plan grants. During this meeting the plan for WMBE in 2018
> was proposed and was fine for the grants staff member. In the Summer of
> 2017 this had been worked out, and with an online call our annual plan was
> considered fine. With the final submission in October 2017, our annual
> grants proposal was reviewed by the grants staff member from WMF, had some
> minor remarks we fixed, and was considered to be excellent.
>
> In December 2017 we were informed that our grant request (suddenly) was, to
> summarise, complete wrong. It contained factual errors (like facts do not
> matter), inconsistencies, the comment that Wikimedia France and Wikimedia
> Netherlands could take everything over in Belgium, suggesting that Belgium
> has no culture (this is a serious insult to us), and much more.
> (For your reference: Wikimedia Belgium had over 90 events and activities in
> 2017, including a photo contest, education program, GLAM program with
> content donations, workshops and edit-a-thons, and more.)
>
> It raised us a lot of questions, which we asked, but our grants member of
> WMF refused to seriously answer them.
>
> Even with our lack of information and received insults, we tried to be
> constructive and before Christmas we proposed to the grants staff member
> that we would re-write during the Christmas holidays our annual plan (as
> the staff member had said many times we could improve it). With the e-mail
> following from the grants member of WMF this proposal was not rejected. So
> during the two weeks of the Christmas holidays we spent many days, together
> with the help from another experienced chapter representative, re-writing
> our annual plan. After the Christmas holidays, we were ready, and the
> response from the grants member from WMF was then that the re-written
> version could not be taken into account...
>
> After some further e-mails with this staff member we concluded as WMBE mid
> January 2018 that a collaboration with this individual from WMF is
> impossible and we banned this individual from ever contacting us again and
> we never communicated ever with this person again.
>
> The supervisor of this staff member has been informed by us about what
> happened, and refused to even investigate the situation.
>
> A colleague from the staff member took over and we received our budget for
> 2018. Later during 2018 and 2019 this WMF staff member helped us very well
> with questions, provided useful feedback and the annual plan for 2019 which
> was approved. We are now happy with this collaboration.
>
>
> *Case 2*
> During the Wikimedia Conference in April 2018 we still had many questions
> and our treasurer spoke with various other affiliates if they had advice,
> good practices, etc etc, so that we could improve our future annual plans.
> Instead of 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Foundation management of volunteers

[Mister Thrapostibongles]

Vito

This rather tends to support my point.  One (and not the most important)
pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely that
it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable
source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources
, such as
introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and encyclopedias, may
be cited".  So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an encyclopaedia on one
of the most important tests one could imagine, namely reliability.  And a
reason for that is its lack of effective content management policies and
mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called that being an
editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a redundant synonym
for contributor).

Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and processes
that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just like the
encyclopaedia it aims to be.  You say that even in that situation, it would
be easy to manipulate.  On that assumption, how much easier it must be to
"trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and processes in
place!

Thrapostibongles

On Sun, Jun 16, 2019 at 6:46 PM Vi to  wrote:

> Honestly I cannot imagine a functional Wikipedia citing itself.
> Such Wikipedia would be so easy to trick.
>
> Vito
>
> Il giorno dom 16 giu 2019 alle ore 16:54 Martijn Hoekstra <
> martijnhoeks...@gmail.com> ha scritto:
>
> > I disagree that Wikipedia not considering Wikipedia as an admissible
> source
> > is indicative of Wikipedia being a failure.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Jun 16, 2019, 14:18 Mister Thrapostibongles <
> > thrapostibong...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Dear all,
> > > The discussion triggered by recent WMF T actions has tended to focus
> on
> > > the merits or otherwise of that specific action (even though as I have
> > > pointed out elsewhere this is very much a case of those who know don;t
> > talk
> > > and those who talk don't know).  So I though it might be helpful to try
> > and
> > > abstract some more general points for discussion.
> > >
> > > The long-term future of the Community, and the relationship between the
> > > Foundation and its volunteers is under discussion in an elaborately
> > > structured consultation announced already here in September 2017.  It
> > would
> > > not be particularly helpful to try to run a parallel discussion here.
> > But
> > > in the short to medium term, it seems that it will be necessary for the
> > > Foundation to take a different stance with respect to the management of
> > the
> > > various projects, and the English Wikipedia in particular.
> > >
> > > It is often said that "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works
> > in
> > > practice. In theory, it can never work."  Well, that's half true.  What
> > the
> > > experiment has proved is that the theory was indeed correct --
> Wikipedia,
> > > as currently constituted, does not work.  There are two inter-related
> > > aspects to its failure: content and conduct, inextricably related in a
> > > project founded on crowd-sourcing.
> > >
> > > Let's look at the content first.  Even on Wikipedia's own terms, it has
> > > failed.  It is a principle that Wikipedia is founded on reliable
> sources,
> > > and by its own admission, Wikipedia itself is not such a source.  That
> > > bears repetition -- a project aiming to be an encyclopaedia, that
> > compares
> > > itself with Britannica, explicitly is not reliable.  Foundation
> research
> > > has shown that about one fifth of Wikipedia articles are supported  by
> > > references that are inadequate to support the text or simply are not
> > > there.  That's about a million articles each on of the larger
> Wikpedias.
> > > Some thousands of those are biographies of living people and in view of
> > the
> > > risk of defamation, no such articles should exist on Wikipedia at all.
> > > There are several thousand articles that are possible copyright
> > violations:
> > > again such articles should not be there.  And when I say "should not",
> I
> > > mean according to the rules adopted by the Wikipedia volunteer
> community
> > > itself.
> > >
> > > This links to the conduct aspects.  The self-organising policies of the
> > > "encyclopaedia that anyone can edit" have flattened out the formal
> > > hierarchy to the extent that it has been replaced, necessarily, by an
> > > informal but strong hierarchy based on a reputation econiomy.  This
> > creates
> > > an unpleasant and hence ineffective working environment, and makes it
> all
> > > but impossible to organise a volunteer workforce into coping with the
> > major
> > > violations of content policy alreay mentioned.  Indeed, the conduct
> > policy
> > > makes it all but impossible to effectively handle cases of major abuse,
> > > witting ot uwitting.  For example, one reason for the failure to manage
> > > copyright violations is that some thousand of articles were written by
> a
> > > 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Foundation management of volunteers

[Dennis During]

"One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in
a failed state is precisely that
it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable source
"

You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece of
evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which people
here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe" environment
for contributors and would-be contributors.

It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to other
sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as the
average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us from
relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very narrow set of
points of view.  Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other EB articles
as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles <
thrapostibong...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Vito
>
> This rather tends to support my point.  One (and not the most important)
> pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely that
> it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable
> source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources
> , such as
> introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and encyclopedias, may
> be cited".  So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an encyclopaedia on one
> of the most important tests one could imagine, namely reliability.  And a
> reason for that is its lack of effective content management policies and
> mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called that being an
> editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a redundant synonym
> for contributor).
>
> Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and processes
> that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just like the
> encyclopaedia it aims to be.  You say that even in that situation, it would
> be easy to manipulate.  On that assumption, how much easier it must be to
> "trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and processes in
> place!
>
> Thrapostibongles
>
>
>

-- 
Dennis C. During
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Copyright workflows - research (Was: Re: Foundation management of volunteers)

[Yann Forget]

Hi,

It has been suggested many times to ask Google for an access to their API
for searching images,
so that we could have a bot tagging copyright violations (no free access
for automated search).
That would the single best improvement in Wikimedia Commons workflow for
years.
And it would benefit all Wikipedia projects, big or small.

Regards,
Yann

Le lun. 17 juin 2019 à 17:54, Leila Zia  a écrit :

> Hi Benjamin,
>
> My name is Leila and I'm in the Research team in Wikimedia Foundation.
> Please see below.
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 12:59 AM Benjamin Lees 
> wrote:
> >
> > The community has been working on copyright violation issues for a long
> > time.[2]  There are probably ways the WMF could support improvements in
> > this area.  Maybe the WMF could even design some system that would
> > magically solve the problem.  But it's certainly not the community
> standing
> > in the way.
>
> While I understand that you brought this up as one example within a
> broader context and set of challenges, now that you have brought it
> up, I'd like to ask you for a specific guidance. Can you help me
> understand, in your view, what are some of the most pressing issues on
> this front from the perspective of those who work to detect and
> address copyright violations? (Not knowing a lot about this space, my
> first thought is to have better algorithms to detect copyright
> violations in Wikipedia (?) text (?) across many languages. Is this
> the most pressing issue?)
>
> Some more info about how we work at the end of this email.[4]
>
> Best,
> Leila
>
> > [1]
> >
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed_article_creation_trial
> > [2]
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_violations#Resources
> > Also consider
> >
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-November/128777.html
> > back in 2013.
> [3]
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Formal_collaborations
> [4]
> To give you some more information about the context I operate in:
>
> * Part of the work of our team is to listen to community conversations
> in lists such as wikimedia-l to find research questions/directions to
> work on. If we can understand the problem space clearly and define
> research questions bsaed on, we can work on priorities with the
> corresponding communities and start the research on these questions
> ourselves or through our Formal Collaborations program [3].
>
> * The types of problems that we can work (relatively) more quickly on
> are those for which the output can be an API, data-set, or knowledge.
>
> * We won't start the research based on hearing the most pressing
> issues from you. If we see that based on your response there is a
> promising direction for further research, we will follow up (with the
> corresponding parts of the community involved in this space) to learn
> more about the general and specific problems.
>

-- 
Jai Jagat 2020 Grand March Coordination Team
https://www.jaijagat2020.org/
+91-74 34 93 33 58 (also WhatsApp)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Isaac Olatunde]

Considering that it was sent by that person, one may reasonably conclude
that it was written by them. That being said, I do not want to believe that
it was not reviewed and approved by the governing board (assuming it was
written by that person). BUT if it was written by another person, reviewed
and approved by the board why is the involved person sending this email on
behalf of WMBE? Just curious.

Regards,

Isaac

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 2:27 PM Thomas Townsend 
wrote:

> Am I right in thinking that this email, containing a long account of
> the alleged poor treatment of the Treasurer of WMBE, referred to
> throughout in the third person, was in fact written by that person?
>
> The Turnip
>
> On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 10:00, Romaine Wiki  wrote:
> >
> > Hello all,
> >
> > On Saturday 15 June 2019 Wikimedia Belgium had its annual General
> Assembly
> > in Brussels.
> >
> > *New board*
> > Two board members have indicated to step down:
> > * Afernand74
> > * SPQRobin
> >
> > We thank them for their work and valuable input in the past years!
> > They remain available for advice to the board.
> >
> > Two board members were up for re-election after their previous terms
> ended.
> > Both board members have been re-elected without any votes against them,
> and
> > they will keep serving Wikimedia Belgium in their roles.
> > * Geertivp - president
> > * Romaine - treasurer
> >
> > One new board member has been elected without any votes against.
> > * Taketa - long term Wikipedia editor and organiser of various activities
> >
> > Welcome Taketa!
> >
> > The rest of the board remains the same and the board continues the work
> and
> > development of our chapter.
> >
> >
> > *Evaluation behaviour WMF*
> > As board we have the obligation to inform the General Assembly and other
> > stakeholders about the developments with our chapter, both the good
> > developments as well as the bad developments.
> >
> > A year ago, with our previous General Assembly, we were hopeful to
> resolve
> > the issues we then had with on other organisation in the movement, the
> > Wikimedia Foundation. Sadly we had to inform the General Assembly that
> > instead of improvements, the behaviour of multiple individuals from the
> > Wikimedia Foundation is below any standard. This concerns one member of
> the
> > grants team and multiple members of the Trust and Safety team, as well as
> > their supervisors.
> >
> > On request of the Trust & Safety team no names are mentioned. Below is a
> > summary of what happened.
> >
> >
> > *Case 1*
> > In April 2017 the treasurer of Wikimedia Belgium (Romaine) spoke with our
> > new grants staff member from the Wikimedia Foundation as WMBE was
> scheduled
> > to change from successful project grants in 2017 and earlier years to
> > Simple Annual Plan grants. During this meeting the plan for WMBE in 2018
> > was proposed and was fine for the grants staff member. In the Summer of
> > 2017 this had been worked out, and with an online call our annual plan
> was
> > considered fine. With the final submission in October 2017, our annual
> > grants proposal was reviewed by the grants staff member from WMF, had
> some
> > minor remarks we fixed, and was considered to be excellent.
> >
> > In December 2017 we were informed that our grant request (suddenly) was,
> to
> > summarise, complete wrong. It contained factual errors (like facts do not
> > matter), inconsistencies, the comment that Wikimedia France and Wikimedia
> > Netherlands could take everything over in Belgium, suggesting that
> Belgium
> > has no culture (this is a serious insult to us), and much more.
> > (For your reference: Wikimedia Belgium had over 90 events and activities
> in
> > 2017, including a photo contest, education program, GLAM program with
> > content donations, workshops and edit-a-thons, and more.)
> >
> > It raised us a lot of questions, which we asked, but our grants member of
> > WMF refused to seriously answer them.
> >
> > Even with our lack of information and received insults, we tried to be
> > constructive and before Christmas we proposed to the grants staff member
> > that we would re-write during the Christmas holidays our annual plan (as
> > the staff member had said many times we could improve it). With the
> e-mail
> > following from the grants member of WMF this proposal was not rejected.
> So
> > during the two weeks of the Christmas holidays we spent many days,
> together
> > with the help from another experienced chapter representative, re-writing
> > our annual plan. After the Christmas holidays, we were ready, and the
> > response from the grants member from WMF was then that the re-written
> > version could not be taken into account...
> >
> > After some further e-mails with this staff member we concluded as WMBE
> mid
> > January 2018 that a collaboration with this individual from WMF is
> > impossible and we banned this individual from ever contacting us again
> and
> > we never communicated ever with this 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Paulo Santos Perneta]

I'm comparing it to a case where spreading of rumors led to the
condemnation of presumably innocent people without due process, in a kind
of "precautionary principle".
The punishment in question is immaterial to this case. Or will you argue
that an episode is only worth of attention if people are killed or
physically hurt?

Paulo

Amir Sarabadani  escreveu no dia segunda, 17/06/2019
à(s) 15:36:

> Are you comparing banning someone to participate at conference(s) with
> hanging innocent people?
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:34 PM Paulo Santos Perneta <
> paulospern...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > " In other words, the best way to ban anyone from any event is to start a
> > rumour about them" - that's Wikimedia version of the Salem witch trials.
> > Unbelievable that this sort of thing is coming from one of the WMF
> > trustees, even as a personal opinion.
> >
> > Paulo
> >
> > Michel Vuijlsteke  escreveu no dia segunda,
> 17/06/2019
> > à(s) 15:26:
> >
> > > On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 16:12, Dariusz Jemielniak 
> > > wrote:
> > > >If there are rumors about physical violence, unbelievable as they may
> > > seem,
> > > >the bottom line common sense is to approach the alleged would-be
> > attacker
> > > and
> > > >request politely that they stay away, to deescalate even just a
> > > potentially tense situation.
> > >
> > > In other words, the best way to ban anyone from any event is to start a
> > > rumour about them?
> > >
> > > >I personally believe this fork of the discussion threat deserves a
> quick
> > > EOT and salting.
> > >
> > > I personally don't.
> > >
> > > Michel
> > > ___
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > 
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
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> > 
>
>
>
> --
> Amir (he/him)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Paulo Santos Perneta]

" I'm referring to message from Caroline" - How have you jumped from
Caroline wanting to further clarify something, to the conclusion that the
OP was  "pushing people who felt harassed or mistreated to step forward"?
Yes, she claims to have been "forced to step up", but were you able to find
any evidence for that in the OP? Any accusation is automatically true?

Paulo

Dariusz Jemielniak  escreveu no dia segunda, 17/06/2019
à(s) 15:48:

>
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:26 PM Michel Vuijlsteke  > wrote:
> In other words, the best way to ban anyone from any event is to start a
> rumour about them?
>
> My understanding is that noone was banned from an event.
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:28 PM Paulo Santos Perneta <
> paulospern...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've read and reread the WMBE message, and have not found anything near
> "pushing people who felt harassed or mistreated to step forward".
>
> I'm referring to message from Caroline.
>
>
> I also do not understand why you're addressing WMBE as "Romaine" (begging
> the question?).
>
> Can you please clarify?
>
> The message was sent from romaine.w...@gmail.com romaine.w...@gmail.com> account and I assumed that addressing the sender
> as "Romaine" is appropriate.
>
> best,
>
> dj
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Ziko van Dijk]

Hello,
It seems to me the best that a (different) member of the WMBE board
contacts a suitable person at WMF. A public list is not the best place
for sorting these things out.
Kind regards
Ziko

Am Mo., 17. Juni 2019 um 16:48 Uhr schrieb Dariusz Jemielniak
:
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:26 PM Michel Vuijlsteke 
> mailto:wikipe...@zog.org>> wrote:
> In other words, the best way to ban anyone from any event is to start a
> rumour about them?
>
> My understanding is that noone was banned from an event.
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:28 PM Paulo Santos Perneta 
> mailto:paulospern...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> I've read and reread the WMBE message, and have not found anything near 
> "pushing people who felt harassed or mistreated to step forward".
>
> I'm referring to message from Caroline.
>
>
> I also do not understand why you're addressing WMBE as "Romaine" (begging the 
> question?).
>
> Can you please clarify?
>
> The message was sent from 
> romaine.w...@gmail.com account and I assumed 
> that addressing the sender as "Romaine" is appropriate.
>
> best,
>
> dj
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Gabriel Thullen]

Thank you WMBE for your long report.
I was at Wikimania 2018 and I was deeply troubled by the actions taken by
the Trust & Safety team. I now have a much clearer understanding of what
went on, and I feel that there really needs to be some introspection done
by the Trust & Safety team.
I am also quite horrified by your quote about a comment "that Wikimedia
France and Wikimedia
Netherlands could take everything over in Belgium".
This is really so insesitive and displays such ignorance of the different
European cultures that I just cannot understand why the record has not been
set right. Belgium cannot be split up between France and the Netherlands,
just like Switzerland cannot be split up between France, Germany and Italy
(leaving just the little Romansh speaking  area to fend for itself).
Seriously, something is wrong at the Foundation, and this needs to be fixed.

Gabe
proud member of WMCH, a multi-lingual and multi-cultural chapter


On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:53 PM Ziko van Dijk  wrote:

> Hello,
> It seems to me the best that a (different) member of the WMBE board
> contacts a suitable person at WMF. A public list is not the best place
> for sorting these things out.
> Kind regards
> Ziko
>
> Am Mo., 17. Juni 2019 um 16:48 Uhr schrieb Dariusz Jemielniak
> :
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:26 PM Michel Vuijlsteke  > wrote:
> > In other words, the best way to ban anyone from any event is to start a
> > rumour about them?
> >
> > My understanding is that noone was banned from an event.
> >
> > On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:28 PM Paulo Santos Perneta <
> paulospern...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've read and reread the WMBE message, and have not found anything near
> "pushing people who felt harassed or mistreated to step forward".
> >
> > I'm referring to message from Caroline.
> >
> >
> > I also do not understand why you're addressing WMBE as "Romaine"
> (begging the question?).
> >
> > Can you please clarify?
> >
> > The message was sent from romaine.w...@gmail.com romaine.w...@gmail.com> account and I assumed that addressing the sender
> as "Romaine" is appropriate.
> >
> > best,
> >
> > dj
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

Hi Paulo,


On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:54 PM Paulo Santos Perneta wrote:
" I'm referring to message from Caroline" - How have you jumped from Caroline 
wanting to further clarify something, to the conclusion that the OP was  
"pushing people who felt harassed or mistreated to step forward"?

I'm specifically referring to this sentence " I really do not appreciate having 
this particular incident discussed here and being forced to step up
like that."

Yes, she claims to have been "forced to step up", but were you able to find any 
evidence for that in the OP? Any accusation is automatically true?

I believe that the person who voluntarily identified herself as the one 
requesting T support is not randomly lying about that. I don't think it was 
an accusation, it was an expression of the personal urge to set the record 
straight.

Again, please note that I'm not referring to what did or did not happen a year 
ago. I've been trying to express my frustration with discussing personal 
details and stories on a public list. I've clearly failed.

best,

dj


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Amir Sarabadani]

Are you comparing banning someone to participate at conference(s) with
hanging innocent people?

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:34 PM Paulo Santos Perneta <
paulospern...@gmail.com> wrote:

> " In other words, the best way to ban anyone from any event is to start a
> rumour about them" - that's Wikimedia version of the Salem witch trials.
> Unbelievable that this sort of thing is coming from one of the WMF
> trustees, even as a personal opinion.
>
> Paulo
>
> Michel Vuijlsteke  escreveu no dia segunda, 17/06/2019
> à(s) 15:26:
>
> > On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 16:12, Dariusz Jemielniak 
> > wrote:
> > >If there are rumors about physical violence, unbelievable as they may
> > seem,
> > >the bottom line common sense is to approach the alleged would-be
> attacker
> > and
> > >request politely that they stay away, to deescalate even just a
> > potentially tense situation.
> >
> > In other words, the best way to ban anyone from any event is to start a
> > rumour about them?
> >
> > >I personally believe this fork of the discussion threat deserves a quick
> > EOT and salting.
> >
> > I personally don't.
> >
> > Michel
> > ___
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> > 
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-- 
Amir (he/him)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:26 PM Michel Vuijlsteke 
mailto:wikipe...@zog.org>> wrote:
In other words, the best way to ban anyone from any event is to start a
rumour about them?

My understanding is that noone was banned from an event.

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:28 PM Paulo Santos Perneta 
mailto:paulospern...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I've read and reread the WMBE message, and have not found anything near 
"pushing people who felt harassed or mistreated to step forward".

I'm referring to message from Caroline.


I also do not understand why you're addressing WMBE as "Romaine" (begging the 
question?).

Can you please clarify?

The message was sent from romaine.w...@gmail.com 
account and I assumed that addressing the sender as "Romaine" is appropriate.

best,

dj
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Paulo Santos Perneta]

Hi Dariusz,

I understand Caroline wanted to add that she was finding difficult that
Romain was not aware of her stress or unease on a specific situation
vaguely described there (without any mention to her at all). And that later
they have talked about it, and she accepted his apologies for that in
private. I can't find the least evidence of her being forced to step up and
expose herself just to clarify that there. As far as I know, it never was
in question that some people felt uneasy with some behavior there. They
talked about it, apologies were presented, end of story. Or would have been
end of story, if not for the T interference.

Paulo



Dariusz Jemielniak  escreveu no dia segunda, 17/06/2019
à(s) 16:04:

> Hi Paulo,
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:54 PM Paulo Santos Perneta wrote:
> " I'm referring to message from Caroline" - How have you jumped from
> Caroline wanting to further clarify something, to the conclusion that the
> OP was  "pushing people who felt harassed or mistreated to step forward"?
>
> I'm specifically referring to this sentence " I really do not appreciate
> having this particular incident discussed here and being forced to step up
> like that."
>
> Yes, she claims to have been "forced to step up", but were you able to
> find any evidence for that in the OP? Any accusation is automatically true?
>
> I believe that the person who voluntarily identified herself as the one
> requesting T support is not randomly lying about that. I don't think it
> was an accusation, it was an expression of the personal urge to set the
> record straight.
>
> Again, please note that I'm not referring to what did or did not happen a
> year ago. I've been trying to express my frustration with discussing
> personal details and stories on a public list. I've clearly failed.
>
> best,
>
> dj
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Copyright workflows - research (Was: Re: Foundation management of volunteers)

[James Forrester]

On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 06:28, Yann Forget  wrote:

> It has been suggested many times to ask Google for an access to their API
> for searching images,
> so that we could have a bot tagging copyright violations (no free access
> for automated search).
> That would the single best improvement in Wikimedia Commons workflow for
> years.
> And it would benefit all Wikipedia projects, big or small.
>

Yann,

As you should remember, we asked Google for API access to their reverse
image search system, years ago (maybe 2013?). They said that there isn't
such an API any more (they killed it off in ~2012, I think), and that they
wouldn't make a custom one for us. The only commercial alternative we found
at the time would have cost us approximately US$3m a month at upload
frequency for Commons then, and when contacted said they wouldn't do any
discounts for Wikimedia. Obviously, this is far too much for the
Foundation's budget (it would be even more now), and an inappropriate way
to spend donor funds. Providing the service in-house would involve building
a search index of the entire Internet's (generally non-free) images and
media, which would cost a fortune and is totally incompatible with the
mission of the movement. This was relayed out to Commons volunteers at the
time, I'm pretty sure.

Obviously Google might have changed their mind, though it seems unlikely. I
imagine that Google engineers and product owners don't follow this list, so
it's unlikely that they will re-create the API without being asked directly.

J.
-- 
*James D. Forrester* (he/him  or they/themself
)
Wikimedia Foundation 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community Health, Roles & Responsibilities

[Chris Keating]

>
> Here's a fundamental source of disagreement. It gets at something I'm not
> sure the strategy process is properly addressing. Does the WMF lead and
> direct the Wikimedia movement?


Personally, I don't think the WMF knows the answer to this, either in
practice, or what they want.

We are in a sort of weird situation where "the WMF" often feel they don't
have any power because "the community" won't let them exercise it, and/or
they (as the WMF) don't feel they have enough mandate or are representative
enough to do things. At the same time, most of "the community" feels they
don't have any significant power or influence because the WMF makes the
real decisions and no-one is ever going to pay attention to them, the
individual community member.

Part of the reason the WMF has outsourced much of its long-term planning to
the Movement Strategy process is because it isn't confident it has the
mandate to actually make decisions like this.

Or is its role to provide support and
> services to the movement's contributors, who are (collectively) its
> leaders? Should it impose change on projects based on its own determination
> of need, or respond to needs identified by project communities?
>

I think really it depends on the quality of leadership provided by movement
contributors. Indeed, when Wikipedia was first set up the whole idea was
about empowering everyone to make decisions and assuming that good-faith
contributors would work issues out between them. This has turned out to not
work in many important areas, for reasons that I won't attempt to go into
here (and no, it's not all the WMF's fault)


> I think this becomes the true basis of the anger and resistance on the
> English Wikipedia: *the sense that the WMF has declared that it is
> leading now, instead of supporting*. That's also the message in comments
> that assert the WMF has the authority to do what it likes, and no
> obligation to explain or justify its decisions. Each time the WMF has taken
> similar decisions the reaction has been similar, but as I mentioned in a
> previous post... They are not learning the appropriate lessons.


I think you have correctly identified why so many very active Wikipedians
get so frustrated with the WMF. I am not sure how much light that sheds on
the right solution, though.

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Copyright workflows - research (Was: Re: Foundation management of volunteers)

[Mister Thrapostibongles]

Leila

Since I raised this particular issue,, I'll take the liberty of giving an
answer to this question, even though you addressed it to Benjamin.  The
failure that I was pointing to was not the failure to identify copyright
violations, but the failure to address the huge backlog of probable
infringements identified at, for example,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contributor_copyright_investigations/2008
where
there is a backlog of *thousands* of articles created by *one* user.  In
the absence of any coordinated management of the workload, at the current
rate of progress it will take about another decade to clear this single
case.  My analysis is that the pressing issue here is precisely that there
is no-one for whom this is a pressing issue: no-one is responsible for
clearing up the mess, and if there were, there are no resources available
to be allocated to it, and if there were, there is no way of deciding where
to allocate those resources.

Thrapostibongles

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 1:24 PM Leila Zia  wrote:

> Hi Benjamin,
>
> My name is Leila and I'm in the Research team in Wikimedia Foundation.
> Please see below.
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 12:59 AM Benjamin Lees 
> wrote:
> >
> > The community has been working on copyright violation issues for a long
> > time.[2]  There are probably ways the WMF could support improvements in
> > this area.  Maybe the WMF could even design some system that would
> > magically solve the problem.  But it's certainly not the community
> standing
> > in the way.
>
> While I understand that you brought this up as one example within a
> broader context and set of challenges, now that you have brought it
> up, I'd like to ask you for a specific guidance. Can you help me
> understand, in your view, what are some of the most pressing issues on
> this front from the perspective of those who work to detect and
> address copyright violations? (Not knowing a lot about this space, my
> first thought is to have better algorithms to detect copyright
> violations in Wikipedia (?) text (?) across many languages. Is this
> the most pressing issue?)
>
> Some more info about how we work at the end of this email.[4]
>
> Best,
> Leila
>
> > [1]
> >
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed_article_creation_trial
> > [2]
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_violations#Resources
> > Also consider
> >
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-November/128777.html
> > back in 2013.
> [3]
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Formal_collaborations
> [4]
> To give you some more information about the context I operate in:
>
> * Part of the work of our team is to listen to community conversations
> in lists such as wikimedia-l to find research questions/directions to
> work on. If we can understand the problem space clearly and define
> research questions bsaed on, we can work on priorities with the
> corresponding communities and start the research on these questions
> ourselves or through our Formal Collaborations program [3].
>
> * The types of problems that we can work (relatively) more quickly on
> are those for which the output can be an API, data-set, or knowledge.
>
> * We won't start the research based on hearing the most pressing
> issues from you. If we see that based on your response there is a
> promising direction for further research, we will follow up (with the
> corresponding parts of the community involved in this space) to learn
> more about the general and specific problems.
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Paulo Santos Perneta]

" In other words, the best way to ban anyone from any event is to start a
rumour about them" - that's Wikimedia version of the Salem witch trials.
Unbelievable that this sort of thing is coming from one of the WMF
trustees, even as a personal opinion.

Paulo

Michel Vuijlsteke  escreveu no dia segunda, 17/06/2019
à(s) 15:26:

> On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 16:12, Dariusz Jemielniak 
> wrote:
> >If there are rumors about physical violence, unbelievable as they may
> seem,
> >the bottom line common sense is to approach the alleged would-be attacker
> and
> >request politely that they stay away, to deescalate even just a
> potentially tense situation.
>
> In other words, the best way to ban anyone from any event is to start a
> rumour about them?
>
> >I personally believe this fork of the discussion threat deserves a quick
> EOT and salting.
>
> I personally don't.
>
> Michel
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Paulo Santos Perneta]

Dariusz,

I've read and reread the WMBE message, and have not found anything near
"pushing people who felt harassed or mistreated to step forward".
I also do not understand why you're addressing WMBE as "Romaine" (begging
the question?).

Can you please clarify?

Paulo

Dariusz Jemielniak  escreveu no dia segunda, 17/06/2019
à(s) 15:12:

> whoa!
>
> pushing people who felt harassed or mistreated to step forward is not ok
> at all. I do not honestly understand why the story from nearly a year ago
> has emerged, with personal details.
>
> It is not unusual for people who caused distress to not have done it
> intentionally, and to genuinely believe they did nothing wrong. It is
> nevertheless the role of the safety team to react to any reports they
> receive.
>
> Romaine, you're describing "a rumor that WMBE's treasurer was planning to
> attack that grants person" and are surprised that the safety team acted
> upon this rumor. I hope it is clear that they did exactly what they should
> have done. If there are rumors about physical violence, unbelievable as
> they may seem, the bottom line common sense is to approach the alleged
> would-be attacker and request politely that they stay away, to deescalate
> even just a potentially tense situation.
>
> I personally believe this fork of the discussion threat deserves a quick
> EOT and salting.
>
> Dariusz "pundit" (replying in my absolutely personal, and hastily
> expressed opinion)
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Caroline Becker]

Hi all,

I have no opinion whatsoever about all the things going on in this mail,
except for this part :

Three additional anonymous complaints were:
* speaking to loud
* standing to close
* having touched someone's hand/arm

It must be noted that *none* of the people that complained to the Trust &
Safety team had indicated to WMBE's treasurer to experience anything as
problem.


You did not just "touched my hand/arm", you took MY stuff from my hands,
and for both medical and personnal reasons which I do not wish to share on
a public list, it was a bad experience for me, and maybe I didn't *say*
anything, but I was visibly distressed. I assumed good faith from you and
accepted your apologizes later in private, but I really do not appreciate
having this particular incident discussed here and being forced to step up
like that.

Caroline


Le lun. 17 juin 2019 à 11:00, Romaine Wiki  a
écrit :

> Hello all,
>
> On Saturday 15 June 2019 Wikimedia Belgium had its annual General Assembly
> in Brussels.
>
> *New board*
> Two board members have indicated to step down:
> * Afernand74
> * SPQRobin
>
> We thank them for their work and valuable input in the past years!
> They remain available for advice to the board.
>
> Two board members were up for re-election after their previous terms ended.
> Both board members have been re-elected without any votes against them, and
> they will keep serving Wikimedia Belgium in their roles.
> * Geertivp - president
> * Romaine - treasurer
>
> One new board member has been elected without any votes against.
> * Taketa - long term Wikipedia editor and organiser of various activities
>
> Welcome Taketa!
>
> The rest of the board remains the same and the board continues the work and
> development of our chapter.
>
>
> *Evaluation behaviour WMF*
> As board we have the obligation to inform the General Assembly and other
> stakeholders about the developments with our chapter, both the good
> developments as well as the bad developments.
>
> A year ago, with our previous General Assembly, we were hopeful to resolve
> the issues we then had with on other organisation in the movement, the
> Wikimedia Foundation. Sadly we had to inform the General Assembly that
> instead of improvements, the behaviour of multiple individuals from the
> Wikimedia Foundation is below any standard. This concerns one member of the
> grants team and multiple members of the Trust and Safety team, as well as
> their supervisors.
>
> On request of the Trust & Safety team no names are mentioned. Below is a
> summary of what happened.
>
>
> *Case 1*
> In April 2017 the treasurer of Wikimedia Belgium (Romaine) spoke with our
> new grants staff member from the Wikimedia Foundation as WMBE was scheduled
> to change from successful project grants in 2017 and earlier years to
> Simple Annual Plan grants. During this meeting the plan for WMBE in 2018
> was proposed and was fine for the grants staff member. In the Summer of
> 2017 this had been worked out, and with an online call our annual plan was
> considered fine. With the final submission in October 2017, our annual
> grants proposal was reviewed by the grants staff member from WMF, had some
> minor remarks we fixed, and was considered to be excellent.
>
> In December 2017 we were informed that our grant request (suddenly) was, to
> summarise, complete wrong. It contained factual errors (like facts do not
> matter), inconsistencies, the comment that Wikimedia France and Wikimedia
> Netherlands could take everything over in Belgium, suggesting that Belgium
> has no culture (this is a serious insult to us), and much more.
> (For your reference: Wikimedia Belgium had over 90 events and activities in
> 2017, including a photo contest, education program, GLAM program with
> content donations, workshops and edit-a-thons, and more.)
>
> It raised us a lot of questions, which we asked, but our grants member of
> WMF refused to seriously answer them.
>
> Even with our lack of information and received insults, we tried to be
> constructive and before Christmas we proposed to the grants staff member
> that we would re-write during the Christmas holidays our annual plan (as
> the staff member had said many times we could improve it). With the e-mail
> following from the grants member of WMF this proposal was not rejected. So
> during the two weeks of the Christmas holidays we spent many days, together
> with the help from another experienced chapter representative, re-writing
> our annual plan. After the Christmas holidays, we were ready, and the
> response from the grants member from WMF was then that the re-written
> version could not be taken into account...
>
> After some further e-mails with this staff member we concluded as WMBE mid
> January 2018 that a collaboration with this individual from WMF is
> impossible and we banned this individual from ever contacting us again and
> we never communicated ever with this person again.
>
> The supervisor of this staff member has 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

whoa!

pushing people who felt harassed or mistreated to step forward is not ok at 
all. I do not honestly understand why the story from nearly a year ago has 
emerged, with personal details.

It is not unusual for people who caused distress to not have done it 
intentionally, and to genuinely believe they did nothing wrong. It is 
nevertheless the role of the safety team to react to any reports they receive.

Romaine, you're describing "a rumor that WMBE's treasurer was planning to 
attack that grants person" and are surprised that the safety team acted upon 
this rumor. I hope it is clear that they did exactly what they should have 
done. If there are rumors about physical violence, unbelievable as they may 
seem, the bottom line common sense is to approach the alleged would-be attacker 
and request politely that they stay away, to deescalate even just a potentially 
tense situation.

I personally believe this fork of the discussion threat deserves a quick EOT 
and salting.

Dariusz "pundit" (replying in my absolutely personal, and hastily expressed 
opinion)





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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Michel Vuijlsteke]

On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 16:12, Dariusz Jemielniak  wrote:
>If there are rumors about physical violence, unbelievable as they may seem,
>the bottom line common sense is to approach the alleged would-be attacker
and
>request politely that they stay away, to deescalate even just a
potentially tense situation.

In other words, the best way to ban anyone from any event is to start a
rumour about them?

>I personally believe this fork of the discussion threat deserves a quick
EOT and salting.

I personally don't.

Michel
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Isaac Olatunde]

The "sender is Romaine" is not the same as  "Romaine is WMBE". This sort of
confusion should have been prevented by allowing another person to send
this email on behalf of WMBE.

Regards,

Isaac



On Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 3:48 PM Dariusz Jemielniak 
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:26 PM Michel Vuijlsteke  > wrote:
> In other words, the best way to ban anyone from any event is to start a
> rumour about them?
>
> My understanding is that noone was banned from an event.
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:28 PM Paulo Santos Perneta <
> paulospern...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've read and reread the WMBE message, and have not found anything near
> "pushing people who felt harassed or mistreated to step forward".
>
> I'm referring to message from Caroline.
>
>
> I also do not understand why you're addressing WMBE as "Romaine" (begging
> the question?).
>
> Can you please clarify?
>
> The message was sent from romaine.w...@gmail.com romaine.w...@gmail.com> account and I assumed that addressing the sender
> as "Romaine" is appropriate.
>
> best,
>
> dj
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Copyright workflows - research (Was: Re: Foundation management of volunteers)

[James Salsman]

Google has been offering reverse image search as part of their vision API:

https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/internet-detection

The pricing is $3.50 per 1,000 queries for up to 5,000,000 queries per month:

https://cloud.google.com/vision/pricing

Above that quantity "Contact Google for more information":

https://cloud.google.com/contact/


On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:23 AM James Forrester
 wrote:
>
> On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 06:28, Yann Forget  wrote:
>
> > It has been suggested many times to ask Google for an access to their API
> > for searching images,
> > so that we could have a bot tagging copyright violations (no free access
> > for automated search).
> > That would the single best improvement in Wikimedia Commons workflow for
> > years.
> > And it would benefit all Wikipedia projects, big or small.
> >
>
> Yann,
>
> As you should remember, we asked Google for API access to their reverse
> image search system, years ago (maybe 2013?). They said that there isn't
> such an API any more (they killed it off in ~2012, I think), and that they
> wouldn't make a custom one for us. The only commercial alternative we found
> at the time would have cost us approximately US$3m a month at upload
> frequency for Commons then, and when contacted said they wouldn't do any
> discounts for Wikimedia. Obviously, this is far too much for the
> Foundation's budget (it would be even more now), and an inappropriate way
> to spend donor funds. Providing the service in-house would involve building
> a search index of the entire Internet's (generally non-free) images and
> media, which would cost a fortune and is totally incompatible with the
> mission of the movement. This was relayed out to Commons volunteers at the
> time, I'm pretty sure.
>
> Obviously Google might have changed their mind, though it seems unlikely. I
> imagine that Google engineers and product owners don't follow this list, so
> it's unlikely that they will re-create the API without being asked directly.
>
> J.
> --
> *James D. Forrester* (he/him  or they/themself
> )
> Wikimedia Foundation 
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[Wikimedia-l] EDUWiki Open Meeting next Monday!

[Shani Evenstein]

(Sorry for x-posting!)

Dear all,

Next Monday, June 24, between 1530-1700 UTC, the Wikipedia & Education User
Group will be hosing its bi-monthly Open Meeting and you're all invited!

The full meeting agenda is listed at the end, but it includes 2 featured
speakers this month: LiAnna Davis, from the Wiki Education Foundation in
the US, who will be talking about how to scale an education program;
and Krishna
Chaitanya Velaga from India, who will be talking about user retention and
project sustainability. We look forward to learning from their stories!
The meeting will be held between via this link: https://zoom.us/j/876197184.
Many thanks to WikiEd for hosting us using their account, so we can have
multiple people joining without any technical difficulties. :)

*Meeting Agenda: *
* Intros
* General updates from the UG board
* Updates regarding the working groups, with a focus on the tech tools
survey we are planning
* Updates on the Education Space at Wikimania
* 2 featured speakers
* Q & A
*Looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible! *
Shani, on behalf of The Wikipedia & Education User Group.

---
*Shani Evenstein Sigalov*
* Lecturer, Tel Aviv University.
* EdTech Innovation Strategist, NY/American Medical Program, Sackler School
of Medicine, Tel Aviv University.
* PhD Candidate, School of Education, Tel Aviv University.
* OER & Emerging Technologies Coordinator, UNESCO Chair
 on Technology, Internationalization
and Education, School of Education, Tel Aviv University
.
* Chairperson, WikiProject Medicine Foundation
.
* Chairperson, Wikipedia & Education User Group
.
* Chairperson, The Hebrew Literature Digitization Society
.
* Chief Editor, Project Ben-Yehuda .
+972-525640648
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Foundation management of volunteers

[Dennis During]

It might be a good thread were it based on a better line of argument.

You are making too much of an artifact of the drafting of a Wikipedia
policy.  The intent was clearly to prevent 1., bootstrapping, ie, writing
an article and using it as a 'reliable source' for another article, and 2.,
reliance on content of a wiki article which is subject to change.  There
might also have been other ways to manipulate the software and policies to
the detriment of the project.

The main thrust of the policy was to compel the use of reliable sources.
Rather than make a policy specific to WP or other project wikis, it was
much simpler to simply declare that WP was not a reliable source.

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 1:55 PM Mister Thrapostibongles <
thrapostibong...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dennis,
>
> I started this thread to discuss both conduct and content policies on
> Wikipedia, and indeed how the two interact.  Wikipedia is a project to
> build an encyclopaedia.  By its own criteria, encyclopaedias are reliable
> sources and Wikipedia is not a reliable source; hence by its own criteria,
> Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia.  That is, it is currently in a state of
> failure with respect to its own mission.
>
> One of the reasons for that state of failure is indeed the failure to
> provide a collegial working atmosphere.
>
> Thrapostibongles
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 2:19 PM Dennis During  wrote:
>
> > "One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being
> in
> > a failed state is precisely that
> > it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable
> source
> > "
> >
> > You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece of
> > evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which people
> > here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe" environment
> > for contributors and would-be contributors.
> >
> > It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to other
> > sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as the
> > average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us from
> > relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very narrow set
> of
> > points of view.  Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other EB
> articles
> > as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?
> >
> > On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles <
> > thrapostibong...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Vito
> > >
> > > This rather tends to support my point.  One (and not the most
> important)
> > > pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely
> > that
> > > it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable
> > > source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources
> > > , such as
> > > introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and encyclopedias,
> may
> > > be cited".  So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an encyclopaedia on
> > one
> > > of the most important tests one could imagine, namely reliability.
> And a
> > > reason for that is its lack of effective content management policies
> and
> > > mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called that
> being
> > an
> > > editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a redundant
> > synonym
> > > for contributor).
> > >
> > > Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and
> processes
> > > that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just like
> the
> > > encyclopaedia it aims to be.  You say that even in that situation, it
> > would
> > > be easy to manipulate.  On that assumption, how much easier it must be
> to
> > > "trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and processes
> in
> > > place!
> > >
> > > Thrapostibongles
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> > --
> > Dennis C. During
> > ___
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-- 
Dennis C. During
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Copyright issues

[James Heilman]

Clarifying one small bit, the "copypatrol" tool was initially developed by
Eran (a Wikimedia volunteer from Israel). It was than further developed by
the Wikimedia Foundation. Agree that it is a great success, not only with
respect to the final result but with respect to it being a successful
collaborative project between the foundation and the community.

James

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 10:36 AM Yaroslav Blanter  wrote:

> Actually, I am afraid, for CCI at some point we will have to remove all
> added text by bot. I do not see any other scalable solution.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 5:36 PM Stephen Philbrick <
> stephen.w.philbr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I have seen a couple comments on copyright issues in the last couple days
> > so I thought I'd share some information that I think may be not
> well-known
> > by everyone.
> >
> > Very roughly, copyright issues (text) can be viewed in three categories:
> > 1. Addition of copyrighted material to articles in years past, not yet
> > removed (one-off)
> > 2. Same as above, except by a serial violator
> > 3. Close to real-time edits which may include copyrighted material
> >
> > The reason for distinguishing these three categories is that our approach
> > and success rates are very different.
> >
> > In case 1, an editor identifies what they believe to be a copyright issue
> > in an existing article. They can report it to
> Wikipedia:Copyright_problems.
> > In the case of a single issue or a very small handful of issues, those
> > items are identified and taken care of by volunteers. (I think this
> aspect
> > is handled adequately — I used to be active there but haven't been
> > recently)
> >
> > The second case arises when a potential violation is identified. An
> > examination of the editors contributions reveals many examples (typically
> > five or more). If this occurs, it is referred to Wikipedia:Contributor
> > copyright investigations. A CCI is opened, and the intent is to examine
> > every single edit by that editor. This aspect is extremely backlogged.
> I've
> > spent many hours working on CCI's, but it isn't easy, it isn't rewarding,
> > and it is discouraging because I think the backlog is increasing rather
> > than decreasing. (This isn't due to newly created copyright issues but
> > newly found ones.)
> >
> > The third case is handled by Copy Patrol, a  foundation created tool that
> > examines all new edits in close to real time and generates a report,
> which
> > is handled by volunteers.
> >
> > I want to emphasize this third aspect for multiple reasons. I think it is
> > one of the least known tools. Some of the prior emails on the subject
> leave
> > the impression that the authors are unaware of the existence of this
> tool.
> > On the one hand, it works very well, as almost all of the several hundred
> > reports each week are reviewed, most within 24 hours.
> >
> > Good news:
> > * Copy Patrol is working, so my guess is that the growth in true
> copyright
> > issues is close to nonexistent.
> >
> > Bad news:
> > * Copy Patrol is adequately staffed but just barely. One editor is
> > responsible for the handling of far more than half of all of these
> reports
> > (major kudos to Diannaa), but that much reliance on a single volunteer is
> > not good for the long-term health of the project.
> >
> > * The copy patrol tool is pretty good, and was being improved for a
> while,
> > but I've identified some desirable improvements and my sense is that
> it's a
> > very back burner project in terms of additional enhancements.
> >
> > * CCI clearance is going to take many years
> >
> > Phil (Sphilbrick)
> > ___
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-- 
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Copyright workflows - research (Was: Re: Foundation management of volunteers)

[effe iets anders]

The landscape has changed quite a bit since 2012, and there are a number of
players that could offer a service like this by now. It may be worthwhile
exploring them briefly (including but not limited to Google), if we believe
this is important enough to invest time in (and I agree that there is a
number of use cases from the community point of view at least).

Lodewijk

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:24 AM James Forrester 
wrote:

> On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 06:28, Yann Forget  wrote:
>
> > It has been suggested many times to ask Google for an access to their API
> > for searching images,
> > so that we could have a bot tagging copyright violations (no free access
> > for automated search).
> > That would the single best improvement in Wikimedia Commons workflow for
> > years.
> > And it would benefit all Wikipedia projects, big or small.
> >
>
> Yann,
>
> As you should remember, we asked Google for API access to their reverse
> image search system, years ago (maybe 2013?). They said that there isn't
> such an API any more (they killed it off in ~2012, I think), and that they
> wouldn't make a custom one for us. The only commercial alternative we found
> at the time would have cost us approximately US$3m a month at upload
> frequency for Commons then, and when contacted said they wouldn't do any
> discounts for Wikimedia. Obviously, this is far too much for the
> Foundation's budget (it would be even more now), and an inappropriate way
> to spend donor funds. Providing the service in-house would involve building
> a search index of the entire Internet's (generally non-free) images and
> media, which would cost a fortune and is totally incompatible with the
> mission of the movement. This was relayed out to Commons volunteers at the
> time, I'm pretty sure.
>
> Obviously Google might have changed their mind, though it seems unlikely. I
> imagine that Google engineers and product owners don't follow this list, so
> it's unlikely that they will re-create the API without being asked
> directly.
>
> J.
> --
> *James D. Forrester* (he/him  or they/themself
> )
> Wikimedia Foundation 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Foundation management of volunteers

[Martijn Hoekstra]

Wikipedia itself can never be more reliable than the sources it cites. If
it's allowed to cite itself, then there is no "bottom" to lean on, and its
quality would quickly drop.

That you conclude from that that wikipedia is unreliable and therefore
failed is IMO such a silly proposition, that I dont know whether you
seriously think this, in which case we should probably take this off list,
or that you're engaging in sophistry and using arguments you don't think
are reasonable in the first place.

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 19:56 Mister Thrapostibongles <
thrapostibong...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dennis,
>
> I started this thread to discuss both conduct and content policies on
> Wikipedia, and indeed how the two interact.  Wikipedia is a project to
> build an encyclopaedia.  By its own criteria, encyclopaedias are reliable
> sources and Wikipedia is not a reliable source; hence by its own criteria,
> Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia.  That is, it is currently in a state of
> failure with respect to its own mission.
>
> One of the reasons for that state of failure is indeed the failure to
> provide a collegial working atmosphere.
>
> Thrapostibongles
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 2:19 PM Dennis During  wrote:
>
> > "One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being
> in
> > a failed state is precisely that
> > it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable
> source
> > "
> >
> > You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece of
> > evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which people
> > here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe" environment
> > for contributors and would-be contributors.
> >
> > It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to other
> > sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as the
> > average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us from
> > relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very narrow set
> of
> > points of view.  Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other EB
> articles
> > as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?
> >
> > On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles <
> > thrapostibong...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Vito
> > >
> > > This rather tends to support my point.  One (and not the most
> important)
> > > pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely
> > that
> > > it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable
> > > source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources
> > > , such as
> > > introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and encyclopedias,
> may
> > > be cited".  So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an encyclopaedia on
> > one
> > > of the most important tests one could imagine, namely reliability.
> And a
> > > reason for that is its lack of effective content management policies
> and
> > > mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called that
> being
> > an
> > > editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a redundant
> > synonym
> > > for contributor).
> > >
> > > Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and
> processes
> > > that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just like
> the
> > > encyclopaedia it aims to be.  You say that even in that situation, it
> > would
> > > be easy to manipulate.  On that assumption, how much easier it must be
> to
> > > "trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and processes
> in
> > > place!
> > >
> > > Thrapostibongles
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> > --
> > Dennis C. During
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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> > 
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[Wikimedia-l] Trust & Safety (was: New board for...)

[effe iets anders]

(forking the discussion to allow a focus on more general line, rather than
the specifics of who wrote what, why and when)
My main takeaway from this discussion would be that it's good if there is a
neutral review option for actions by the T team (or the WMF in general),
such as an ombudsperson.

A detailed discussion or evaluation of specific sanctions by the Trust and
Safety team is not the kind of conversation to have publicly - I think most
people agree on this. In conversations like this, there is always at least
one party less comfortable to discuss the matter in public (or even discuss
it at all, indeed).

At the same time, if actions are so severe, it's good if there is
opportunity to have a review of the actions taken by a third party, to
confirm to the person against who sanctions have been laid (or complainants
in case no sanctions were laid), that appropriate processes were followed.

(This is perhaps stating the obvious - and I should acknowledge that I
don't know enough about WMF processes today to know for sure whether this
has maybe already even been implemented in the WMF structures a long time
ago. I do get the impression though that if this is the case, not everyone
is familiar with this option.)

Best,
Lodewijk

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 12:40 PM Isaac Olatunde 
wrote:

> 
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 3:48 PM Dariusz Jemielniak 
> >
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[Wikimedia-l] Copyright workflows - research (Was: Re: Foundation management of volunteers)

[Leila Zia]

Hi Benjamin,

My name is Leila and I'm in the Research team in Wikimedia Foundation.
Please see below.

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 12:59 AM Benjamin Lees  wrote:
>
> The community has been working on copyright violation issues for a long
> time.[2]  There are probably ways the WMF could support improvements in
> this area.  Maybe the WMF could even design some system that would
> magically solve the problem.  But it's certainly not the community standing
> in the way.

While I understand that you brought this up as one example within a
broader context and set of challenges, now that you have brought it
up, I'd like to ask you for a specific guidance. Can you help me
understand, in your view, what are some of the most pressing issues on
this front from the perspective of those who work to detect and
address copyright violations? (Not knowing a lot about this space, my
first thought is to have better algorithms to detect copyright
violations in Wikipedia (?) text (?) across many languages. Is this
the most pressing issue?)

Some more info about how we work at the end of this email.[4]

Best,
Leila

> [1]
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed_article_creation_trial
> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_violations#Resources
> Also consider
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-November/128777.html
> back in 2013.
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Formal_collaborations
[4]
To give you some more information about the context I operate in:

* Part of the work of our team is to listen to community conversations
in lists such as wikimedia-l to find research questions/directions to
work on. If we can understand the problem space clearly and define
research questions bsaed on, we can work on priorities with the
corresponding communities and start the research on these questions
ourselves or through our Formal Collaborations program [3].

* The types of problems that we can work (relatively) more quickly on
are those for which the output can be an API, data-set, or knowledge.

* We won't start the research based on hearing the most pressing
issues from you. If we see that based on your response there is a
promising direction for further research, we will follow up (with the
corresponding parts of the community involved in this space) to learn
more about the general and specific problems.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Caroline Becker]

I was forced to step up *today* on this mailing list because the
description of the WIkimania 2018 incident in the first mail was false: the
claim that "none of us expressed there was a problem" is simply not what
happened.

And by the way this is exactly why the details of stuff like that are NOT
shared publicly. For me the incident was closed and well handled by the T
team, I really didn't need a debate where people are expressing their
uninformed, bar room like opinions about the seriousness of the incident or
what should or should not have been done.

Caroline


Le lun. 17 juin 2019 à 17:14, Paulo Santos Perneta 
a écrit :

> Hi Dariusz,
>
> I understand Caroline wanted to add that she was finding difficult that
> Romain was not aware of her stress or unease on a specific situation
> vaguely described there (without any mention to her at all). And that later
> they have talked about it, and she accepted his apologies for that in
> private. I can't find the least evidence of her being forced to step up and
> expose herself just to clarify that there. As far as I know, it never was
> in question that some people felt uneasy with some behavior there. They
> talked about it, apologies were presented, end of story. Or would have been
> end of story, if not for the T interference.
>
> Paulo
>
>
>
> Dariusz Jemielniak  escreveu no dia segunda, 17/06/2019
> à(s) 16:04:
>
> > Hi Paulo,
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:54 PM Paulo Santos Perneta wrote:
> > " I'm referring to message from Caroline" - How have you jumped from
> > Caroline wanting to further clarify something, to the conclusion that the
> > OP was  "pushing people who felt harassed or mistreated to step forward"?
> >
> > I'm specifically referring to this sentence " I really do not appreciate
> > having this particular incident discussed here and being forced to step
> up
> > like that."
> >
> > Yes, she claims to have been "forced to step up", but were you able to
> > find any evidence for that in the OP? Any accusation is automatically
> true?
> >
> > I believe that the person who voluntarily identified herself as the one
> > requesting T support is not randomly lying about that. I don't think it
> > was an accusation, it was an expression of the personal urge to set the
> > record straight.
> >
> > Again, please note that I'm not referring to what did or did not happen a
> > year ago. I've been trying to express my frustration with discussing
> > personal details and stories on a public list. I've clearly failed.
> >
> > best,
> >
> > dj
> >
> >
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Copyright issues

[Yaroslav Blanter]

Actually, I am afraid, for CCI at some point we will have to remove all
added text by bot. I do not see any other scalable solution.

Cheers
Yaroslav

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 5:36 PM Stephen Philbrick <
stephen.w.philbr...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have seen a couple comments on copyright issues in the last couple days
> so I thought I'd share some information that I think may be not well-known
> by everyone.
>
> Very roughly, copyright issues (text) can be viewed in three categories:
> 1. Addition of copyrighted material to articles in years past, not yet
> removed (one-off)
> 2. Same as above, except by a serial violator
> 3. Close to real-time edits which may include copyrighted material
>
> The reason for distinguishing these three categories is that our approach
> and success rates are very different.
>
> In case 1, an editor identifies what they believe to be a copyright issue
> in an existing article. They can report it to Wikipedia:Copyright_problems.
> In the case of a single issue or a very small handful of issues, those
> items are identified and taken care of by volunteers. (I think this aspect
> is handled adequately — I used to be active there but haven't been
> recently)
>
> The second case arises when a potential violation is identified. An
> examination of the editors contributions reveals many examples (typically
> five or more). If this occurs, it is referred to Wikipedia:Contributor
> copyright investigations. A CCI is opened, and the intent is to examine
> every single edit by that editor. This aspect is extremely backlogged. I've
> spent many hours working on CCI's, but it isn't easy, it isn't rewarding,
> and it is discouraging because I think the backlog is increasing rather
> than decreasing. (This isn't due to newly created copyright issues but
> newly found ones.)
>
> The third case is handled by Copy Patrol, a  foundation created tool that
> examines all new edits in close to real time and generates a report, which
> is handled by volunteers.
>
> I want to emphasize this third aspect for multiple reasons. I think it is
> one of the least known tools. Some of the prior emails on the subject leave
> the impression that the authors are unaware of the existence of this tool.
> On the one hand, it works very well, as almost all of the several hundred
> reports each week are reviewed, most within 24 hours.
>
> Good news:
> * Copy Patrol is working, so my guess is that the growth in true copyright
> issues is close to nonexistent.
>
> Bad news:
> * Copy Patrol is adequately staffed but just barely. One editor is
> responsible for the handling of far more than half of all of these reports
> (major kudos to Diannaa), but that much reliance on a single volunteer is
> not good for the long-term health of the project.
>
> * The copy patrol tool is pretty good, and was being improved for a while,
> but I've identified some desirable improvements and my sense is that it's a
> very back burner project in terms of additional enhancements.
>
> * CCI clearance is going to take many years
>
> Phil (Sphilbrick)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Foundation management of volunteers

[Mister Thrapostibongles]

Dennis,

I started this thread to discuss both conduct and content policies on
Wikipedia, and indeed how the two interact.  Wikipedia is a project to
build an encyclopaedia.  By its own criteria, encyclopaedias are reliable
sources and Wikipedia is not a reliable source; hence by its own criteria,
Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia.  That is, it is currently in a state of
failure with respect to its own mission.

One of the reasons for that state of failure is indeed the failure to
provide a collegial working atmosphere.

Thrapostibongles



On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 2:19 PM Dennis During  wrote:

> "One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in
> a failed state is precisely that
> it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable source
> "
>
> You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece of
> evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which people
> here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe" environment
> for contributors and would-be contributors.
>
> It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to other
> sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as the
> average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us from
> relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very narrow set of
> points of view.  Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other EB articles
> as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles <
> thrapostibong...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Vito
> >
> > This rather tends to support my point.  One (and not the most important)
> > pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely
> that
> > it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable
> > source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources
> > , such as
> > introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and encyclopedias, may
> > be cited".  So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an encyclopaedia on
> one
> > of the most important tests one could imagine, namely reliability.  And a
> > reason for that is its lack of effective content management policies and
> > mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called that being
> an
> > editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a redundant
> synonym
> > for contributor).
> >
> > Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and processes
> > that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just like the
> > encyclopaedia it aims to be.  You say that even in that situation, it
> would
> > be easy to manipulate.  On that assumption, how much easier it must be to
> > "trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and processes in
> > place!
> >
> > Thrapostibongles
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Dennis C. During
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[Wikimedia-l] Copyright issues

[Stephen Philbrick]

I have seen a couple comments on copyright issues in the last couple days
so I thought I'd share some information that I think may be not well-known
by everyone.

Very roughly, copyright issues (text) can be viewed in three categories:
1. Addition of copyrighted material to articles in years past, not yet
removed (one-off)
2. Same as above, except by a serial violator
3. Close to real-time edits which may include copyrighted material

The reason for distinguishing these three categories is that our approach
and success rates are very different.

In case 1, an editor identifies what they believe to be a copyright issue
in an existing article. They can report it to Wikipedia:Copyright_problems.
In the case of a single issue or a very small handful of issues, those
items are identified and taken care of by volunteers. (I think this aspect
is handled adequately — I used to be active there but haven't been recently)

The second case arises when a potential violation is identified. An
examination of the editors contributions reveals many examples (typically
five or more). If this occurs, it is referred to Wikipedia:Contributor
copyright investigations. A CCI is opened, and the intent is to examine
every single edit by that editor. This aspect is extremely backlogged. I've
spent many hours working on CCI's, but it isn't easy, it isn't rewarding,
and it is discouraging because I think the backlog is increasing rather
than decreasing. (This isn't due to newly created copyright issues but
newly found ones.)

The third case is handled by Copy Patrol, a  foundation created tool that
examines all new edits in close to real time and generates a report, which
is handled by volunteers.

I want to emphasize this third aspect for multiple reasons. I think it is
one of the least known tools. Some of the prior emails on the subject leave
the impression that the authors are unaware of the existence of this tool.
On the one hand, it works very well, as almost all of the several hundred
reports each week are reviewed, most within 24 hours.

Good news:
* Copy Patrol is working, so my guess is that the growth in true copyright
issues is close to nonexistent.

Bad news:
* Copy Patrol is adequately staffed but just barely. One editor is
responsible for the handling of far more than half of all of these reports
(major kudos to Diannaa), but that much reliance on a single volunteer is
not good for the long-term health of the project.

* The copy patrol tool is pretty good, and was being improved for a while,
but I've identified some desirable improvements and my sense is that it's a
very back burner project in terms of additional enhancements.

* CCI clearance is going to take many years

Phil (Sphilbrick)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Ciell Wikipedia]

Hello Caroline,

I'm very sorry for what happened back in Capetown and that today you are
reminded of this again through a public mailing list, where the story is
starting to lead it's own life. I can only imagine that you felt the need
to correct this misinterpretation of what happened to you.
I know Romaine for several years and recognise the behaviour you are
describing and even though I know he doesn't mean any harm with it (it's
his enthusiasm that gets the better of him), I do realise it may cause
distress with the other person. If you want to talk to me about this,
please contact me of list. If this was enough for you, please do not feel
you have to send any additional responses.

Hi all,

I was present at the assembly last Saturday and the whole situation is very
complicated. I think, in his emotions to tell his story, Romaine indeed got
two situations mixed up here and the emotional part should not be discussed
on a public list.
Furthermore I know first hand that both the chair of WMNL and WMBE are
involved in the conversations with T and the WMF: there is no need for us
to re-review this process, that is still ongoing at the moment.

Please let's close this thread.

Vriendelijke groet,
Ciell



Virus-free.
www.avg.com

<#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>

Op ma 17 jun. 2019 om 17:39 schreef Caroline Becker :

> I was forced to step up *today* on this mailing list because the
> description of the WIkimania 2018 incident in the first mail was false: the
> claim that "none of us expressed there was a problem" is simply not what
> happened.
>
> And by the way this is exactly why the details of stuff like that are NOT
> shared publicly. For me the incident was closed and well handled by the T
> team, I really didn't need a debate where people are expressing their
> uninformed, bar room like opinions about the seriousness of the incident or
> what should or should not have been done.
>
> Caroline
>
>
> Le lun. 17 juin 2019 à 17:14, Paulo Santos Perneta <
> paulospern...@gmail.com>
> a écrit :
>
> > Hi Dariusz,
> >
> > I understand Caroline wanted to add that she was finding difficult that
> > Romain was not aware of her stress or unease on a specific situation
> > vaguely described there (without any mention to her at all). And that
> later
> > they have talked about it, and she accepted his apologies for that in
> > private. I can't find the least evidence of her being forced to step up
> and
> > expose herself just to clarify that there. As far as I know, it never was
> > in question that some people felt uneasy with some behavior there. They
> > talked about it, apologies were presented, end of story. Or would have
> been
> > end of story, if not for the T interference.
> >
> > Paulo
> >
> >
> >
> > Dariusz Jemielniak  escreveu no dia segunda,
> 17/06/2019
> > à(s) 16:04:
> >
> > > Hi Paulo,
> > >
> > >
> > > On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 4:54 PM Paulo Santos Perneta wrote:
> > > " I'm referring to message from Caroline" - How have you jumped from
> > > Caroline wanting to further clarify something, to the conclusion that
> the
> > > OP was  "pushing people who felt harassed or mistreated to step
> forward"?
> > >
> > > I'm specifically referring to this sentence " I really do not
> appreciate
> > > having this particular incident discussed here and being forced to step
> > up
> > > like that."
> > >
> > > Yes, she claims to have been "forced to step up", but were you able to
> > > find any evidence for that in the OP? Any accusation is automatically
> > true?
> > >
> > > I believe that the person who voluntarily identified herself as the one
> > > requesting T support is not randomly lying about that. I don't think
> it
> > > was an accusation, it was an expression of the personal urge to set the
> > > record straight.
> > >
> > > Again, please note that I'm not referring to what did or did not
> happen a
> > > year ago. I've been trying to express my frustration with discussing
> > > personal details and stories on a public list. I've clearly failed.
> > >
> > > best,
> > >
> > > dj
> > >
> > >
> > > ___
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> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
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> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community Health, Roles & Responsibilities

[Yaroslav Blanter]

I went ahead and offered my time to participate in the strategy process. My
offer was rejected.. I do not think I will ever do it again.

I an afraid WMF is up to some surprises when they publish the 2030 Strategy
which was not in any way coordinated with the communities, and then see
that the communities, for whatever reason, are not interested in
enthusiastically embracing it.

Cheers
Yaroslav

On Sun, Jun 16, 2019 at 11:03 PM Ad Huikeshoven  wrote:

> We are in a turbulent episode on this mailing list and en.wp. I don't claim
> to speak for the community. I wish everybody can speak for themselves.
>
> Some people don't like the Wikimedia Foundation stepping in and banning an
> user for a specific project for a year. Most people don't react, while some
> are vocal.
>
> Some people comment on a more general level than this specific case. That
> can be separated from the case. There is an ongoing strategy discussion on
> meta and elsewhere about Wikimedia 2030.
>
> There are working groups for Community Health. There are working groups for
> Roles and Responsibilities in the movement. They do ask for input. People
> who want to influence the roles and responsibilities of project communities
> versus for example the Wikimedia Foundation board and paid staff, go ahead,
> and find your way to participate.[1] Or just fill out the survey.[2]
>
> Previously a strategic direction has been agreed. Something with diversity,
> inclusion and something about underrepresented voices, and communities that
> have been left out by structures of power and privilege. It goes as far as
> "We will break down the social, political, and technical barriers
> preventing people from accessing and contributing to free knowledge."
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation took a bold step in banning Fram for a year. They
> have the authority to do so. They are not obliged to give reasons.
>
> The Community Health group guiding questions inter alia are "How can we
> ensure that our communities are places that people want to be part of and
> participate in, and how can we make people stay? How do we engage and
> support people that have been left out by structures of power and
> privilege?"
>
> Those last two questions are interesting questions. I'ḿ curious to learn
> answers from people who strongly oppose interventions by WMF staff. and
> from others as well.
>
> I'm looking forward to have conversations about the recommendations of the
> working groups in the Wikimedia 2030 process at Wikimania Stockholm. I hope
> to see a lot of you there.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Ad Huikeshoven
>
> [1]
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Participate
> [2] https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_d718KRfJ5W3OVYV
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[Wikimedia-l] New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF

[Romaine Wiki]

Hello all,

On Saturday 15 June 2019 Wikimedia Belgium had its annual General Assembly
in Brussels.

*New board*
Two board members have indicated to step down:
* Afernand74
* SPQRobin

We thank them for their work and valuable input in the past years!
They remain available for advice to the board.

Two board members were up for re-election after their previous terms ended.
Both board members have been re-elected without any votes against them, and
they will keep serving Wikimedia Belgium in their roles.
* Geertivp - president
* Romaine - treasurer

One new board member has been elected without any votes against.
* Taketa - long term Wikipedia editor and organiser of various activities

Welcome Taketa!

The rest of the board remains the same and the board continues the work and
development of our chapter.


*Evaluation behaviour WMF*
As board we have the obligation to inform the General Assembly and other
stakeholders about the developments with our chapter, both the good
developments as well as the bad developments.

A year ago, with our previous General Assembly, we were hopeful to resolve
the issues we then had with on other organisation in the movement, the
Wikimedia Foundation. Sadly we had to inform the General Assembly that
instead of improvements, the behaviour of multiple individuals from the
Wikimedia Foundation is below any standard. This concerns one member of the
grants team and multiple members of the Trust and Safety team, as well as
their supervisors.

On request of the Trust & Safety team no names are mentioned. Below is a
summary of what happened.


*Case 1*
In April 2017 the treasurer of Wikimedia Belgium (Romaine) spoke with our
new grants staff member from the Wikimedia Foundation as WMBE was scheduled
to change from successful project grants in 2017 and earlier years to
Simple Annual Plan grants. During this meeting the plan for WMBE in 2018
was proposed and was fine for the grants staff member. In the Summer of
2017 this had been worked out, and with an online call our annual plan was
considered fine. With the final submission in October 2017, our annual
grants proposal was reviewed by the grants staff member from WMF, had some
minor remarks we fixed, and was considered to be excellent.

In December 2017 we were informed that our grant request (suddenly) was, to
summarise, complete wrong. It contained factual errors (like facts do not
matter), inconsistencies, the comment that Wikimedia France and Wikimedia
Netherlands could take everything over in Belgium, suggesting that Belgium
has no culture (this is a serious insult to us), and much more.
(For your reference: Wikimedia Belgium had over 90 events and activities in
2017, including a photo contest, education program, GLAM program with
content donations, workshops and edit-a-thons, and more.)

It raised us a lot of questions, which we asked, but our grants member of
WMF refused to seriously answer them.

Even with our lack of information and received insults, we tried to be
constructive and before Christmas we proposed to the grants staff member
that we would re-write during the Christmas holidays our annual plan (as
the staff member had said many times we could improve it). With the e-mail
following from the grants member of WMF this proposal was not rejected. So
during the two weeks of the Christmas holidays we spent many days, together
with the help from another experienced chapter representative, re-writing
our annual plan. After the Christmas holidays, we were ready, and the
response from the grants member from WMF was then that the re-written
version could not be taken into account...

After some further e-mails with this staff member we concluded as WMBE mid
January 2018 that a collaboration with this individual from WMF is
impossible and we banned this individual from ever contacting us again and
we never communicated ever with this person again.

The supervisor of this staff member has been informed by us about what
happened, and refused to even investigate the situation.

A colleague from the staff member took over and we received our budget for
2018. Later during 2018 and 2019 this WMF staff member helped us very well
with questions, provided useful feedback and the annual plan for 2019 which
was approved. We are now happy with this collaboration.


*Case 2*
During the Wikimedia Conference in April 2018 we still had many questions
and our treasurer spoke with various other affiliates if they had advice,
good practices, etc etc, so that we could improve our future annual plans.
Instead of that good advice was given, they shared their similar bad
experiences they had in the past years with our former grants person from
WMF. Many of them indicated that they do not want the feedback/criticism to
be public as they feel that their budget would be cut by WMF as result of
it.

With multiple chapter representatives we started to collect the feedback so
that we could come up with some recommendations for improvements for both
the 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community Health, Roles & Responsibilities

[Paulo Santos Perneta]

What is that "strategic direction", and where was it agreed?

Paulo

Peter Southwood  escreveu no dia segunda,
17/06/2019 à(s) 08:20:

> " Previously a strategic direction has been agreed."
> Not by that many. It is so vague that it can be interpreted to mean
> whatever the WMF want it to mean and used as a justification for a wide
> range of policies and actions that were not obviously specifically
> discussed. This was mentioned at the time and we were told that this would
> not happen. Maybe it is already happening.
> Cheers,
> P
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Ad Huikeshoven
> Sent: 16 June 2019 23:03
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Community Health, Roles & Responsibilities
>
> We are in a turbulent episode on this mailing list and en.wp. I don't claim
> to speak for the community. I wish everybody can speak for themselves.
>
> Some people don't like the Wikimedia Foundation stepping in and banning an
> user for a specific project for a year. Most people don't react, while some
> are vocal.
>
> Some people comment on a more general level than this specific case. That
> can be separated from the case. There is an ongoing strategy discussion on
> meta and elsewhere about Wikimedia 2030.
>
> There are working groups for Community Health. There are working groups for
> Roles and Responsibilities in the movement. They do ask for input. People
> who want to influence the roles and responsibilities of project communities
> versus for example the Wikimedia Foundation board and paid staff, go ahead,
> and find your way to participate.[1] Or just fill out the survey.[2]
>
> Previously a strategic direction has been agreed. Something with diversity,
> inclusion and something about underrepresented voices, and communities that
> have been left out by structures of power and privilege. It goes as far as
> "We will break down the social, political, and technical barriers
> preventing people from accessing and contributing to free knowledge."
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation took a bold step in banning Fram for a year. They
> have the authority to do so. They are not obliged to give reasons.
>
> The Community Health group guiding questions inter alia are "How can we
> ensure that our communities are places that people want to be part of and
> participate in, and how can we make people stay? How do we engage and
> support people that have been left out by structures of power and
> privilege?"
>
> Those last two questions are interesting questions. I'ḿ curious to learn
> answers from people who strongly oppose interventions by WMF staff. and
> from others as well.
>
> I'm looking forward to have conversations about the recommendations of the
> working groups in the Wikimedia 2030 process at Wikimania Stockholm. I hope
> to see a lot of you there.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Ad Huikeshoven
>
> [1]
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Participate
> [2] https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_d718KRfJ5W3OVYV
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community Health, Roles & Responsibilities

[Peter Southwood]

" Previously a strategic direction has been agreed."
Not by that many. It is so vague that it can be interpreted to mean whatever 
the WMF want it to mean and used as a justification for a wide range of 
policies and actions that were not obviously specifically discussed. This was 
mentioned at the time and we were told that this would not happen. Maybe it is 
already happening.
Cheers,
P

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Ad Huikeshoven
Sent: 16 June 2019 23:03
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Community Health, Roles & Responsibilities

We are in a turbulent episode on this mailing list and en.wp. I don't claim
to speak for the community. I wish everybody can speak for themselves.

Some people don't like the Wikimedia Foundation stepping in and banning an
user for a specific project for a year. Most people don't react, while some
are vocal.

Some people comment on a more general level than this specific case. That
can be separated from the case. There is an ongoing strategy discussion on
meta and elsewhere about Wikimedia 2030.

There are working groups for Community Health. There are working groups for
Roles and Responsibilities in the movement. They do ask for input. People
who want to influence the roles and responsibilities of project communities
versus for example the Wikimedia Foundation board and paid staff, go ahead,
and find your way to participate.[1] Or just fill out the survey.[2]

Previously a strategic direction has been agreed. Something with diversity,
inclusion and something about underrepresented voices, and communities that
have been left out by structures of power and privilege. It goes as far as
"We will break down the social, political, and technical barriers
preventing people from accessing and contributing to free knowledge."

The Wikimedia Foundation took a bold step in banning Fram for a year. They
have the authority to do so. They are not obliged to give reasons.

The Community Health group guiding questions inter alia are "How can we
ensure that our communities are places that people want to be part of and
participate in, and how can we make people stay? How do we engage and
support people that have been left out by structures of power and
privilege?"

Those last two questions are interesting questions. I'ḿ curious to learn
answers from people who strongly oppose interventions by WMF staff. and
from others as well.

I'm looking forward to have conversations about the recommendations of the
working groups in the Wikimedia 2030 process at Wikimania Stockholm. I hope
to see a lot of you there.

Kind regards,

Ad Huikeshoven

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Participate
[2] https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_d718KRfJ5W3OVYV
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Foundation management of volunteers

[Benjamin Lees]

On Sun, Jun 16, 2019 at 8:18 AM Mister Thrapostibongles <
thrapostibong...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Let's look at the content first.  Even on Wikipedia's own terms, it has
> failed.  It is a principle that Wikipedia is founded on reliable sources,
> and by its own admission, Wikipedia itself is not such a source.  That
> bears repetition -- a project aiming to be an encyclopaedia, that compares
> itself with Britannica, explicitly is not reliable.  Foundation research
> has shown that about one fifth of Wikipedia articles are supported  by
> references that are inadequate to support the text or simply are not
> there.  That's about a million articles each on of the larger Wikpedias.
> Some thousands of those are biographies of living people and in view of the
> risk of defamation, no such articles should exist on Wikipedia at all.
> There are several thousand articles that are possible copyright violations:
> again such articles should not be there.  And when I say "should not", I
> mean according to the rules adopted by the Wikipedia volunteer community
> itself.
>

The WMF has multiple, conflicting goals, just like the community.  I don't
think you should take it as a given that the WMF will take a position that
aligns perfectly with what you want.  In terms of unverified articles,
consider ACTRIAL.[1]  The community approved it in in 2011, but the WMF
vetoed it for 6 years.  Eventually, the trial was allowed to proceed; most
of the feared negative effects did not materialize, and the WMF made the
change permanent in response to overwhelming community support for it.

The community has been working on copyright violation issues for a long
time.[2]  There are probably ways the WMF could support improvements in
this area.  Maybe the WMF could even design some system that would
magically solve the problem.  But it's certainly not the community standing
in the way.

[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed_article_creation_trial
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_violations#Resources
Also consider
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-November/128777.html
back in 2013.
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