Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 9:48 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:
> Am 17.06.2012 01:21, schrieb Anthony:
>
>>> I have never seen a "censorware" that works
>>> flawlessly (not even china can do this right). Either it allows to much
>>> (incomplete blacklist) or it is unnecessary limited (incomplete whitelist
>>> producing angry mob). Additionally it has to suite the view of the
>>> parents
>>> and match the age of the child. The only "software" which does this
>>> perfectly is the brain of the parents that tracks the actions of the
>>> child,
>>> stops them when necessary and gives useful advice (even better then
>>> Clippy).
>>
>> What parent tracks every action of their child?  You seem to have a
>> very unrealistic picture of how parenting works.
>
> I guess i have to really wrap any comment inside the
>  tag stack to avoid confusion...

I still would have been confused.  Still am, actually.  Did this
paragraph have a serious point at all?  I hope so, because Wikipedia's
porn problem is a serious issue.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Bjoern Hoehrmann]

* Tobias Oelgarte wrote:
>Am 17.06.2012 01:21, schrieb Anthony:
>>> I have never seen a "censorware" that works
>>> flawlessly (not even china can do this right). Either it allows to much
>>> (incomplete blacklist) or it is unnecessary limited (incomplete whitelist
>>> producing angry mob). Additionally it has to suite the view of the parents
>>> and match the age of the child. The only "software" which does this
>>> perfectly is the brain of the parents that tracks the actions of the child,
>>> stops them when necessary and gives useful advice (even better then Clippy).
>
>> What parent tracks every action of their child?  You seem to have a
>> very unrealistic picture of how parenting works.
>
>I guess i have to really wrap any comment inside the 
> tag stack to avoid confusion...

No, the Wikimedia Foundation should develop a personal sarcasm filter
for this mailing list so nobody is surprised or confused by what they
(don't) read here.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjo...@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/ 

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Tobias Oelgarte]

Am 17.06.2012 01:21, schrieb Anthony:

I have never seen a "censorware" that works
flawlessly (not even china can do this right). Either it allows to much
(incomplete blacklist) or it is unnecessary limited (incomplete whitelist
producing angry mob). Additionally it has to suite the view of the parents
and match the age of the child. The only "software" which does this
perfectly is the brain of the parents that tracks the actions of the child,
stops them when necessary and gives useful advice (even better then Clippy).

What parent tracks every action of their child?  You seem to have a
very unrealistic picture of how parenting works.
I guess i have to really wrap any comment inside the 
 tag stack to avoid confusion...



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

> I have never seen a "censorware" that works
> flawlessly (not even china can do this right). Either it allows to much
> (incomplete blacklist) or it is unnecessary limited (incomplete whitelist
> producing angry mob). Additionally it has to suite the view of the parents
> and match the age of the child. The only "software" which does this
> perfectly is the brain of the parents that tracks the actions of the child,
> stops them when necessary and gives useful advice (even better then Clippy).

What parent tracks every action of their child?  You seem to have a
very unrealistic picture of how parenting works.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 8:27 AM, Tom Morris  wrote:
> On Friday, 15 June 2012 at 13:21, David Gerard wrote:
>> I don't recall seeing any, but did anyone actually explain why the
>> market had not provided a filtering solution for Wikipedia, if there's
>> actually a demand for one?
>
> Market failures do sometimes exist.
>
> Also, because as far as I can tell, the proposed filter isn't a NetNanny type 
> thing, it's a "I don't want to see pictures of boobies" AdBlock type thing. 
> Which is a different thing entirely.
>
> Of course, there's some confusion here. Larry Sanger, for instance, is very 
> very angry about how Wikipedia hasn't implemented a "filter", even though he 
> seems slightly confused as to the difference between an AdBlock type filter 
> and a NetNanny type filter.
>
> Preventing people who don't want to see pictures of naked people from seeing 
> pictures of naked people is a lot easier a task than preventing people who DO 
> want to see pictures of naked people from doing so.

Preventing, sure.  But I think what you see as Sanger being confused
about the difference between an AdBlock type filter and a NetNanny
type filter is actually his desire for something which isn't either -
a filter which parents can set up to prevent their children from
inadvertently stumbling upon age-inappropriate materials.

As a parent I must say that there is certainly demand for this sort of
thing.  And I can think of many reasons why the market hasn't tackled
this one.  The copyleft license is near, if not at, the top of that
list.  Liability and other legal considerations would also be high up
on the list.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Tom Morris]

On Saturday, 16 June 2012 at 23:51, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:

> Am 16.06.2012 23:36, schrieb Tom Morris:
> > On Saturday, 16 June 2012 at 20:21, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:
> > > That means they already found a solution to their problem that includes
> > > the whole web at once. As you might have noticed it isn't perfect. I
> > > guess that it could be easily improved over time. But the image filter
> > > had an different goal. It wouldn't help the schools, since the content
> > > is still accessible. But why we discuss about schools and children all
> > > the time and speak about it as a net nanny?
> >  
> >  
> >  
> >  
> > Don't you get it? An image filter you can trivially opt-out of by clicking 
> > the big button labelled "show image" is a perfect way of preventing 
> > children from getting to naughty pictures…
> Is this irony? My comment included some irony as well. ;-)


I should probably get a .uk domain name for my emails to remove any doubt as to 
whether I'm being ironic and/or dryly sarcastic.   

--  
Tom Morris




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Tobias Oelgarte]

Am 16.06.2012 23:36, schrieb Tom Morris:

On Saturday, 16 June 2012 at 20:21, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:

That means they already found a solution to their problem that includes
the whole web at once. As you might have noticed it isn't perfect. I
guess that it could be easily improved over time. But the image filter
had an different goal. It wouldn't help the schools, since the content
is still accessible. But why we discuss about schools and children all
the time and speak about it as a net nanny?


Don't you get it? An image filter you can trivially opt-out of by clicking the big button 
labelled "show image" is a perfect way of preventing children from getting to 
naughty pictures…

Is this irony? My comment included some irony as well. ;-)

How would a "show image" button protect children from getting to naughty 
pictures? The first thing a child would do is to press this button out 
of curiosity alone. Real child protection software is meant to hide such 
content without giving the child even the possibility to access such 
content. That is what a so called "net nanny" software will do, since it 
is usually meant to block access in case no parent is present and 
watching over their children exploring minefields. At least the adverts 
tell this great story.

Seriously though, I'm slightly surprised that commercial censorware providers haven't bothered to 
add the nudey stuff from Commons. Pay a few bored minimum wage people to go through and find all 
the categories with the naughty stuff and stick all those images in their filter. It'd only take a 
few hours, given the extensive work already done by the Commons community neatly sorting things 
into categories with names like "Nude works including Muppets" and "Suggestive use 
of feathers" etc.
Yes they could do that. But the Internet is large. They usually use a 
combination of black and white listing which is the core evil in the 
detail. White listing delivers perfect results (as long the content 
doesn't change over night), but it is much more expensive since every 
new page would need to be checked. Blacklisting is way easier, since it 
doesn't block access to new pages or images. But at the same time it has 
it's flaws, because any unknown website (the biggest part) can be 
accessed regardless of content.

It's almost as if the censorware manufacturers are selling products to people 
who don't know any better that are ineffective and serve to give piece-of-mind 
placebo to people in place of effective access control. Oh, wait, that would be 
the inner cynic speaking.
Exactly that is the case. I have never seen a "censorware" that works 
flawlessly (not even china can do this right). Either it allows to much 
(incomplete blacklist) or it is unnecessary limited (incomplete 
whitelist producing angry mob). Additionally it has to suite the view of 
the parents and match the age of the child. The only "software" which 
does this perfectly is the brain of the parents that tracks the actions 
of the child, stops them when necessary and gives useful advice (even 
better then Clippy).


nya~

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Tom Morris]

On Saturday, 16 June 2012 at 20:21, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:
> That means they already found a solution to their problem that includes
> the whole web at once. As you might have noticed it isn't perfect. I
> guess that it could be easily improved over time. But the image filter
> had an different goal. It wouldn't help the schools, since the content
> is still accessible. But why we discuss about schools and children all
> the time and speak about it as a net nanny?


Don't you get it? An image filter you can trivially opt-out of by clicking the 
big button labelled "show image" is a perfect way of preventing children from 
getting to naughty pictures…

Seriously though, I'm slightly surprised that commercial censorware providers 
haven't bothered to add the nudey stuff from Commons. Pay a few bored minimum 
wage people to go through and find all the categories with the naughty stuff 
and stick all those images in their filter. It'd only take a few hours, given 
the extensive work already done by the Commons community neatly sorting things 
into categories with names like "Nude works including Muppets" and "Suggestive 
use of feathers" etc.

It's almost as if the censorware manufacturers are selling products to people 
who don't know any better that are ineffective and serve to give piece-of-mind 
placebo to people in place of effective access control. Oh, wait, that would be 
the inner cynic speaking.  

--  
Tom Morris









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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Tobias Oelgarte]

Am 15.06.2012 23:22, schrieb Andreas Kolbe:

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 1:21 PM, David Gerard  wrote:



I don't recall seeing any, but did anyone actually explain why the
market had not provided a filtering solution for Wikipedia, if there's
actually a demand for one?

(IIRC the various netnannies for workplaces don't filter Wikipedia, or
do so only by keyword, i.e. [[Scunthorpe problem]]-susceptible,
methods.)



UK schools of course filter, but both the bestiality video and everything
that comes up in a multimedia search for "male human" was accessible on
computers in my son's school. Much to their surprise. The one thing their
filter did catch was the masturbation videos category page in Commons.

That means they already found a solution to their problem that includes 
the whole web at once. As you might have noticed it isn't perfect. I 
guess that it could be easily improved over time. But the image filter 
had an different goal. It wouldn't help the schools, since the content 
is still accessible. But why we discuss about schools and children all 
the time and speak about it as a net nanny?


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Tobias Oelgarte]

Am 14.06.2012 22:40, schrieb Risker:

On 14 June 2012 16:19, David Gerard  wrote:


On 14 June 2012 20:36, Andrew Gray  wrote:


Least surprise is one way to try and get around this problem of not
relying on the community's own judgement in all edge cases; I'm not
sure it's the best one, but I'm not sure leaving it out is any better.


The present usage (to mean "you disagree with our editorial judgement
therefore you must be a juvenile troll") is significantly worse.



I'm not entirely certain that you've got the "usage" case correct, David.
An example would be that one should not be surprised/astonished to see an
image including nudity on the article [[World Naked Gardening Day]], but
the same image would be surprising on the article [[Gardening]].

The Commons parallel would be that an image depicting nude gardening would
be appropriately categorized as [[Cat:Nude gardening]], but would be poorly
categorized as [[Cat:Gardening]].  One expects to see a human and gardening
but not nudity in the latter, and humans, gardening, *and* nudity in the
former.

Now, in fairness, we all know that trolling with images has been a regular
occurrence on many projects for years, much of it very obviously trolling,
but edge cases can be more difficult to determine.  Thus, the more neutral
principle of least astonishment ("would an average reader be surprised to
see this image on this article?/in this category?") comes into play. I'd
suggest that the principle of least astonishment is an effort to assume
good faith.

Risker
You gave a nice description how it should be applied in the right way. 
But the usual interpretation i found in any recent discussions was 
something like this:


"We don't need to show naked people inside the article [[World Naked 
Gardening Day]]. It would be an offense against any reader that doesn't 
want to see naked people. It also might it be dangerous to read this 
article in public. ..."


Together with the usual pointy strong-wording it becomes something like 
this:


"Wikipedia dishes out porn. We need an image filter. Protect the 
children..."


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Report, May 2012

[James Salsman]

I also want to say something good.  I think the fact that the
fundraising team is using multivariate analysis instead of simple A/B
testing now is beyond good, it's just spectacular.  A/B testing was
excruciatingly slow, and this is a huge advance.  I hope it means that
all the banner text suggestions from 2010 will be tested.  There was a
very large variance in the performance of those banner text
submissions, suggesting that the best have yet to be found.

Ref.: 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2012/We_Need_A_Breakthrough#16_May.2C_2012:_Multivariate_landing_page_testing.21

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[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [cc-community] CC 4.0 and the GNU GPL

[Anthony]

Forwarding this from the CC-licenses list.  The WMF should explore
what impact, if any, one-way CC-BY-SA to GPL compatibility would have
on WMF projects.  Is anyone at the WMF talking to CC/FSF about this?

-- Forwarded message --
From: Christopher Allan Webber 
Date: Thu, May 31, 2012 at 4:51 PM
Subject: [cc-community] CC 4.0 and the GNU GPL
To: cc-commun...@lists.ibiblio.org


Hi all... to revive a thread that's been quiet publicly (but not
privately) for some time:

Brett Smith  writes:
>> How receptive generally might be the FSF to working on GPL
>> compatibility?  (Is the case made for compatibility rationale
>> compelling enough?)
>
> Very receptive.  Some of the toughest questions I deal with in my job
> pertain to license interactions in cases like you describe, where a
> piece of software is under the GPL and associated materials under
> another, often CC BY or CC BY-SA.  Being able to simplify the answers to
> those questions would be very worthwhile.

There haven't been any updates on this in a while, but I wanted to
inform that there is work being done to try and move this forward.
Creative Commons and the Free Software Foundation (with the assistance
of the Software Freedom Law Center as counsel) are working together
and are doing our best to explore this as a serious possibility.

As license stewards of CC licenses and the GNU GPL respectively, we wanted
to make clear that both Creative Commons and the Free Software
Foundation think this is an important issue and worth persuing.  Both
of our organiztions agree that license interoperability, especially
amongst copyleft licenses, is an important goal.

At the moment, the general plan is to try to explore both CC BY and CC
BY-SA one-way compatibility with the GNU GPL, aiming for direct
compatibility of terms (think Apache 2.0 and GNU GPL compatibility) with
CC BY, and compatibility between CC BY-SA and the GNU GPL via optional
relicensing (think MPL 2.0 and GNU GPL compatibility).  We are still
exploring possibilities, however.

Thanks for your interest, we will try to keep this conversation
updated as we move along.
 - Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Pro-active user privacy (Was: Update on IPv6)

[Anthony]

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 2:22 PM, James Forrester  wrote:
> There are lots of things we could do - for instance, blocking all
> edits except by logged-in editors would solve this (but is profoundly
> against our general operating principles)

It's really not, considering how incredibly easy it is to create an account.

Especially not if it is made even easier to create an account.
Autogenerate a username and the only difference between "creating an
account" and "editing while not logged in" is having to type in a
password.

> Can I suggest that we try to discuss this on-wiki (as it's more
> inclusive of the community)?

You just did.

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[Wikimedia-l] 2011 Picture of the Year Competition

[miya]

Dear Wikimedians,

The final round for the 2011 Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year
contest is now open!

The 36 images were chosen from the first round, thanks to voters like
you. In order to determine the very best picture of the remaining
candidates, you have exactly one vote left.

The finalists are listed here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2011/Finalists.

If you are eligible, you can vote in the final even if you didn't vote
in the first round. Please visit here
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2011/Introduction
for the detail. Final voting is open for about a week,  so be sure to
get in quick!

Wikimedia Commons would be happy to see you vote for whatever image
you believe deserves to be called the Picture of the Year 2011.

Thanks,
Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year committee
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2011

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] CheckUser openness

[ENWP Pine]

I do hear and understand the argument here, but it is somewhat
problematic to have to have the argument "if we do this, we'll be
handing over information to sockpuppeteers we don't want them to have,
and we can't tell you what that information is, because otherwise
we'll be handing over information to sockpuppeteers we don't want them
to have". While I think the methods currently used are probably sound,
and the information would indeed give them more possibilities to evade
the system, I can't be sure of it, because I can't be told what that
information is.

I don't think this is a viable long-term strategy. The Audit Committee
is a way around this, but as indicated before, there is somewhat of an
overlap between the committee and the Check-User in-crowd, which could
(again, could, I'm not sure if it is indeed true).

Apart from the 'timed release' of information I proposed earlier, I
don't really see a viable solution for this, as I doubt we have enough
people that are sufficiently qualified on a technical level to
actually judge the checkuser results, who also have enough statistical
knowledge to interpret the level of certainty indicated in a result,
who also have the trust of the community to carry out the task, who
also have never been a checkuser or arb, who also have the backbone to
blow the whistle if something goes wring, who also have the
willingness and time to take it upon themselves to be a meaningful
member of the Audit Committee.


Hi Martijn,

I agree that there might be ways to structure a delayed and limited release 
so that it poses only a moderate risk to investigations, but as I have said, 
I think that the benefits to an honest user are limited, and there is 
potential for substantial cost in terms of volunteer hours for many types of 
users with enhanced permissions who might get lots of requests for audits of 
CU actions and lots of detailed questions about CU policy. Even if the risk 
to investigations was zero, there would still be those costs of time. In a 
cost/benefit analysis, I think there will be more cost value than benefit 
value. Consider the amount of time that users with enhanced permissions 
could spend conducting risk-based investigations and risk-based or random 
audits of CUs, instead of being asked to spend that time answering questions 
and conducting investigations solely because users make requests for second 
opinions about their account being CU'd even if that CU action had 
relatively low risk of CU misuse and inaccuracy.


Regarding who checks the checkusers, I think the current systems of peer 
review, AUSC and arbcom reviews, ombudsman review, and WMF review are about 
as extensive as realistically possible. Maybe if I was a CU or a member of 
one of these organizations I would have deeper insight into potential 
opportunities for valuable improvements. If you are seriously interested in 
these issues then consider nominating yourself or someone you trust to serve 
as a CU, community-appointed AUSC member, ombudsman, or arbiter.


Cheers,

Pine 



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