Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Elections 2013
I have been working on a translation of FDC Ombud election in to Japanese. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/FDC_Ombudsperson_elections/2013 In the section of How to submit your candidacy, it reads: If you are eligible, you can submit your candidacy by doing the following: Write a brief summary of no more than 1200 characters stating what you would do if you were elected to the Funds Dissemination Committee, Shouldn't it be if you were elected to the FDC Ombuds(person), not FDC itself? --Takashi OTA On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Nicole Ebber nicole.eb...@wikimedia.de wrote: Hey, thanks for the announcement and all the work the election committee has done so far. I have written a kind of lengthy blog post about the elections and about how and why the communities can or should get involved. It's in German, but if anyone's interested in translating it, you are more than welcome to re-use and remix and build upon it (of course... ;)). https://blog.wikimedia.de/2013/04/29/community-wahlt-hochstes-gremium-des-wikimedia-universums-board-of-trustees-der-wikimedia-foundation/ Cheerio, Nicole On 2 May 2013 06:29, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: I am pleased to announce that self-nominations are now being accepted for the 2013 Wikimedia Foundation Elections. This year, elections are being held for the following roles: - Board of Trustees The Board of Trustees is the decision-making body that is ultimately responsible for the long term sustainability of the Foundation, so we value wide input into its selection. There are three positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Board_elections/2013. - Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Framework_for_the_Creation_and_Initial_Operation_of_the_FDCmakes recommendations about how to allocate Wikimedia movement http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia funds to eligible entities. There are two positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/FDC_elections/2013. - Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) Ombud The FDC Ombud receives complaints and feedback about the FDC process, investigates complaints at the request of the Board of Trustees, and summarizes the investigations and feedback for the Board of Trustees on an annual basis. One position is being filled. More information about this role can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/FDC_Ombudsperson_elections/2013. The candidacy submission phase lasts from 00:00 UTC April 24 to 23:59 UTC May 17. More information on this election can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013. Please feel free to post a note about the election on your project's village pump, or to translate it and distribute it on other Wikimedia movement mailing lists. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the talk page on Meta, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-elections AT wikimedia.org On behalf of the Election Committee, Risker ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Nicole Ebber International Affairs Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin Tel. +49 30 219158 26-0 http://wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Hi all, for those of you who do not watch the RecentChanges on the Foundation wiki https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges, I think it might be somehow surprising to see that in a top-level decision, almost all volunteer administrators of the wiki have been stripped off their adminship yesterday evening (UTC time). As far as I know, community members have been helping out maintaining this wiki for as long as 2006, spending countless hours of their free time on categorising existing pages, importing translations from Meta, and recently, deleting unnecessary and broken pages left over by WMF staff. Apparently, this is something that not only isn't appreciated, but unwelcome. Let me repeat that: the WMF does not wish volunteers to help out with running their wiki, even if they have been helping out almost since the very start of the wiki. Some questions come to my mind right now: 1) Who made the decision to remove adminship from all community members? (I'm assuming it was Gayle, but it could've be someone from the Communications department for all we know.) 2) Why did you make this decision now? What changed? 3) Why did you decide to desysop people straight away instead of discussing things with them first? These are questions directed at the WMF—for you regular folks, I have a riddle (I'll give a WikiLove barnstar to the first person to submit a correct answer). There is /at least/ one community member who does not hold any official position within the WMF, and who has not been desysopped in yesterday's purge—do you know who this person is? -- Tomasz ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
The same happend to the Wikimedia Blog. Most of the moderators where volunteers (and the only real active ones also). My moderator rights where removed and I have to go after that myself, I didn't got a message or anything. While I was list administrator for wikitech-l I got the mail also that I needed to give my password so that the list can be run by the staff. I didn't respond to that mail (Thought it was spam cause It was send by gmail). \ It gives me the feeling that we need a bigger fundraiser cause people GET PAYED for doing things other people DO FOR FREE. Huib On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 1:15 PM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: This is the email that got sent out to everyone, --- Dear XXX, Thank you for your work with the Foundation wiki. At this time, we are formalizing a new requirement, which is that administrator access is given only to staff and board. I am having administrator access to accounts that are neither staff or board be disabled, effective immediately. Sincerely, Gayle -- Gayle Karen K. Young Chief Talent and Culture Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415.310.8416 www.wikimediafoundation.org --- Gayle's response (which was the first time she has edited the wiki in ~5 months[2]) seems lacking[1] in general and the subsequent responses about knowing what these people do on the wiki Another interesting fact is that Mz got desysoped first, When you would expect it to be done in alphabetically order. We've been discussing this for awhile, and the thought is that it's ultimately the Foundation's web presence, not the community's web presence. A useful parallel to consider might be how userrights are given to staffers on the community wikis; they're distributed as and when they're needed for a specific task. Um, Rights for staff on wikis are given out like candy?, although not as much thee days but it still happens. Also, How is the foundation wiki not apart of the community? Has the position of the legal department changed? or the boards? just randomly changing without any imput or discussions seems utlimately strange. since it is actually their wiki (just like everything else that falls under the foundation) [1]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=91857oldid=91855#Users_stripped_of_rights.3F [2]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributionstarget=Gyoung [3]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Log/rights ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Met vriendelijke groet, Huib Laurens ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
This sort of tone might be appropriate coming from HR in a bank or something, but I'm tremendously disappointed that something so tactless and rude was sent out from a senior officer in the Foundation to its volunteers. I know Gayle is a new hire, so I'm assuming good faith that she wasn't aware that taking this sort of attitude with volunteers would go down like a lead balloon. Someone at the WMF needs to take Gayle into an office and patiently explain to her that the volunteers whose access she just disabled, effective immediately are the same ones that keep the websites that per her salary going. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 11 May 2013 21:15, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: This is the email that got sent out to everyone, --- Dear XXX, Thank you for your work with the Foundation wiki. At this time, we are formalizing a new requirement, which is that administrator access is given only to staff and board. I am having administrator access to accounts that are neither staff or board be disabled, effective immediately. Sincerely, Gayle -- Gayle Karen K. Young Chief Talent and Culture Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415.310.8416 www.wikimediafoundation.org --- Gayle's response (which was the first time she has edited the wiki in ~5 months[2]) seems lacking[1] in general and the subsequent responses about knowing what these people do on the wiki Another interesting fact is that Mz got desysoped first, When you would expect it to be done in alphabetically order. We've been discussing this for awhile, and the thought is that it's ultimately the Foundation's web presence, not the community's web presence. A useful parallel to consider might be how userrights are given to staffers on the community wikis; they're distributed as and when they're needed for a specific task. Um, Rights for staff on wikis are given out like candy?, although not as much thee days but it still happens. Also, How is the foundation wiki not apart of the community? Has the position of the legal department changed? or the boards? just randomly changing without any imput or discussions seems utlimately strange. since it is actually their wiki (just like everything else that falls under the foundation) [1]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=91857oldid=91855#Users_stripped_of_rights.3F [2]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributionstarget=Gyoung [3]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Log/rights ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Having an HR IR background myself, I am most surprised that the person for managing TALENT and CULTURE would take such a move without even so much as consulting with the community who keep the WMF's presence on the internet working, nor without giving them an actual reason as to why this has occurred. I can only encourage Karen to either 1) explain why this was an absolutely necessary step to make, or 2) reverse those actions. Russavia On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Craig Franklin cfrank...@halonetwork.net wrote: This sort of tone might be appropriate coming from HR in a bank or something, but I'm tremendously disappointed that something so tactless and rude was sent out from a senior officer in the Foundation to its volunteers. I know Gayle is a new hire, so I'm assuming good faith that she wasn't aware that taking this sort of attitude with volunteers would go down like a lead balloon. Someone at the WMF needs to take Gayle into an office and patiently explain to her that the volunteers whose access she just disabled, effective immediately are the same ones that keep the websites that per her salary going. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 11 May 2013 21:15, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: This is the email that got sent out to everyone, --- Dear XXX, Thank you for your work with the Foundation wiki. At this time, we are formalizing a new requirement, which is that administrator access is given only to staff and board. I am having administrator access to accounts that are neither staff or board be disabled, effective immediately. Sincerely, Gayle -- Gayle Karen K. Young Chief Talent and Culture Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415.310.8416 www.wikimediafoundation.org --- Gayle's response (which was the first time she has edited the wiki in ~5 months[2]) seems lacking[1] in general and the subsequent responses about knowing what these people do on the wiki Another interesting fact is that Mz got desysoped first, When you would expect it to be done in alphabetically order. We've been discussing this for awhile, and the thought is that it's ultimately the Foundation's web presence, not the community's web presence. A useful parallel to consider might be how userrights are given to staffers on the community wikis; they're distributed as and when they're needed for a specific task. Um, Rights for staff on wikis are given out like candy?, although not as much thee days but it still happens. Also, How is the foundation wiki not apart of the community? Has the position of the legal department changed? or the boards? just randomly changing without any imput or discussions seems utlimately strange. since it is actually their wiki (just like everything else that falls under the foundation) [1]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=91857oldid=91855#Users_stripped_of_rights.3F [2]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributionstarget=Gyoung [3]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Log/rights ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Apologies, I mean Gayle, not Karen. Russavia On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 8:14 PM, Russavia russavia.wikipe...@gmail.com wrote: Having an HR IR background myself, I am most surprised that the person for managing TALENT and CULTURE would take such a move without even so much as consulting with the community who keep the WMF's presence on the internet working, nor without giving them an actual reason as to why this has occurred. I can only encourage Karen to either 1) explain why this was an absolutely necessary step to make, or 2) reverse those actions. Russavia On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Craig Franklin cfrank...@halonetwork.net wrote: This sort of tone might be appropriate coming from HR in a bank or something, but I'm tremendously disappointed that something so tactless and rude was sent out from a senior officer in the Foundation to its volunteers. I know Gayle is a new hire, so I'm assuming good faith that she wasn't aware that taking this sort of attitude with volunteers would go down like a lead balloon. Someone at the WMF needs to take Gayle into an office and patiently explain to her that the volunteers whose access she just disabled, effective immediately are the same ones that keep the websites that per her salary going. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 11 May 2013 21:15, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: This is the email that got sent out to everyone, --- Dear XXX, Thank you for your work with the Foundation wiki. At this time, we are formalizing a new requirement, which is that administrator access is given only to staff and board. I am having administrator access to accounts that are neither staff or board be disabled, effective immediately. Sincerely, Gayle -- Gayle Karen K. Young Chief Talent and Culture Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415.310.8416 www.wikimediafoundation.org --- Gayle's response (which was the first time she has edited the wiki in ~5 months[2]) seems lacking[1] in general and the subsequent responses about knowing what these people do on the wiki Another interesting fact is that Mz got desysoped first, When you would expect it to be done in alphabetically order. We've been discussing this for awhile, and the thought is that it's ultimately the Foundation's web presence, not the community's web presence. A useful parallel to consider might be how userrights are given to staffers on the community wikis; they're distributed as and when they're needed for a specific task. Um, Rights for staff on wikis are given out like candy?, although not as much thee days but it still happens. Also, How is the foundation wiki not apart of the community? Has the position of the legal department changed? or the boards? just randomly changing without any imput or discussions seems utlimately strange. since it is actually their wiki (just like everything else that falls under the foundation) [1]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=91857oldid=91855#Users_stripped_of_rights.3F [2]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributionstarget=Gyoung [3]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Log/rights ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Affiliations Committee 2012 Annual Report
phoebe ayers, 01/05/2013 21:54: Dear Bence and all, This is a very good report! It is very clear, just the right length and gives a good picture of all of the activity of the committee -- both accomplishments and frustrations. AffComm did a lot in 2012! Thank you very much for all of your and the committee's work on behalf of Wikimedia. +1 I'm very concerned about this issue, which comes up in many points: «[...] failure to come up with a naming guideline to be applied to new affiliates that has caused significant delays and uncertainty in processing applications [...] unclear situation has caused a number of delays in the full roll-out of the new models and finding solutions that are faster and less resource intensive on the legal team [...] any name that incorporated a Wikimedia trademark would need to be pre-approved by the WMF Legal Department [...] until finalised, easier to apply guidelines are adopted that can be used independently by the volunteers behind proposed affiliates and the Affiliations Committee, the act of naming proposed affiliates will be a difficult and lengthy process.» As usual, process, role and responsibilities as clear as mud. Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Affiliations Committee 2012 Annual Report
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 3:05 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.comwrote: phoebe ayers, 01/05/2013 21:54: Dear Bence and all, This is a very good report! It is very clear, just the right length and gives a good picture of all of the activity of the committee -- both accomplishments and frustrations. AffComm did a lot in 2012! Thank you very much for all of your and the committee's work on behalf of Wikimedia. +1 I'm very concerned about this issue, which comes up in many points: «[...] failure to come up with a naming guideline to be applied to new affiliates that has caused significant delays and uncertainty in processing applications [...] unclear situation has caused a number of delays in the full roll-out of the new models and finding solutions that are faster and less resource intensive on the legal team [...] any name that incorporated a Wikimedia trademark would need to be pre-approved by the WMF Legal Department [...] until finalised, easier to apply guidelines are adopted that can be used independently by the volunteers behind proposed affiliates and the Affiliations Committee, the act of naming proposed affiliates will be a difficult and lengthy process.» As usual, process, role and responsibilities as clear as mud. Yes, to be fair, since the closing of the report, we had made some progress on this issue (e.g. we've had some user group name templates pre-approved[1] during a meeting in Milan with Stephen from the legal team and had clarified the process and responsibilities for names that don't match those templates for example in the case of thorgs). It remains to be seen if things do go smoother going forward with these improvements, but the goodwill is there on each side. Best regards, Bence [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Step-by-step_user_group_creation_guidediff=prevoldid=5476169 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Given the foundation's recent tsunami of centralisation I'm not surprised by this at all. The message is clear - the community doesn't belong here. Go back to meta. I'll be interested to see how long the WMF wiki will last before they hit their first massive technical problem happens and they need to call in a volunteer to fix it. Deryck On 11 May 2013 12:15, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: This is the email that got sent out to everyone, --- Dear XXX, Thank you for your work with the Foundation wiki. At this time, we are formalizing a new requirement, which is that administrator access is given only to staff and board. I am having administrator access to accounts that are neither staff or board be disabled, effective immediately. Sincerely, Gayle -- Gayle Karen K. Young Chief Talent and Culture Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415.310.8416 www.wikimediafoundation.org --- Gayle's response (which was the first time she has edited the wiki in ~5 months[2]) seems lacking[1] in general and the subsequent responses about knowing what these people do on the wiki Another interesting fact is that Mz got desysoped first, When you would expect it to be done in alphabetically order. We've been discussing this for awhile, and the thought is that it's ultimately the Foundation's web presence, not the community's web presence. A useful parallel to consider might be how userrights are given to staffers on the community wikis; they're distributed as and when they're needed for a specific task. Um, Rights for staff on wikis are given out like candy?, although not as much thee days but it still happens. Also, How is the foundation wiki not apart of the community? Has the position of the legal department changed? or the boards? just randomly changing without any imput or discussions seems utlimately strange. since it is actually their wiki (just like everything else that falls under the foundation) [1]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=91857oldid=91855#Users_stripped_of_rights.3F [2]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributionstarget=Gyoung [3]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Log/rights ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Can we please give time to the Foundation to response and express their side before everyone starts to attack them? I think we had enough of that on Internal-l. After the first response, or at least 24h, I will understand everyone feelings about that. (And right now I'm also don't agree or understand WMF's decision, but I'm waiting to hear them first). On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 4:46 PM, Deryck Chan deryckc...@wikimedia.hkwrote: Given the foundation's recent tsunami of centralisation I'm not surprised by this at all. The message is clear - the community doesn't belong here. Go back to meta. I'll be interested to see how long the WMF wiki will last before they hit their first massive technical problem happens and they need to call in a volunteer to fix it. Deryck On 11 May 2013 12:15, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: This is the email that got sent out to everyone, --- Dear XXX, Thank you for your work with the Foundation wiki. At this time, we are formalizing a new requirement, which is that administrator access is given only to staff and board. I am having administrator access to accounts that are neither staff or board be disabled, effective immediately. Sincerely, Gayle -- Gayle Karen K. Young Chief Talent and Culture Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415.310.8416 www.wikimediafoundation.org --- Gayle's response (which was the first time she has edited the wiki in ~5 months[2]) seems lacking[1] in general and the subsequent responses about knowing what these people do on the wiki Another interesting fact is that Mz got desysoped first, When you would expect it to be done in alphabetically order. We've been discussing this for awhile, and the thought is that it's ultimately the Foundation's web presence, not the community's web presence. A useful parallel to consider might be how userrights are given to staffers on the community wikis; they're distributed as and when they're needed for a specific task. Um, Rights for staff on wikis are given out like candy?, although not as much thee days but it still happens. Also, How is the foundation wiki not apart of the community? Has the position of the legal department changed? or the boards? just randomly changing without any imput or discussions seems utlimately strange. since it is actually their wiki (just like everything else that falls under the foundation) [1]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=91857oldid=91855#Users_stripped_of_rights.3F [2]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributionstarget=Gyoung [3]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Log/rights ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Deryck Chan wrote: Given the foundation's recent tsunami of centralisation I'm not surprised by this at all. The message is clear - the community doesn't belong here. Go back to meta. Yeah, I think you're right. It seems to be part of a larger pattern. * Blog access has been restricted (as noted). * Bugzilla adminship has been restricted to staff only. * wikimediafoundation.org adminship is now restricted to staff and Board Members. * Shell access has been restricted to staff only (no more volunteer sysadmins). Relatedly, the Toolserver is being slowly killed in favor of a controlled sandbox called Wikimedia Labs and all Wikimedia accounts are being unified (with forceable usurps/renames) to make it easier to track and control users across all Wikimedia wikis. It's very surprising that the Board has been so quiet about all of this. Generally, a few staff members (notably Philippe and his team) have tried to create tiers in which paid staff are above volunteers. Even the most trusted volunteers are no longer allowed to hold positions of trust within the Wikimedia community. This is very bad. Are there ways to address this? But to blame this on Gayle is kind of insane. It seems clear to me that she's being used as a pawn here. There are very few indications that this has anything to do with her, aside from a few log entries (from... Philippe) inexplicably pointing to her name. And the curt e-mail she sent out to affected users. Her involvement with the wiki would charitably be described as negligible. The director of _community advocacy_ (Philippe) is stripping nearly every community member of user rights. And yet there's still no provided rationale for the change in policy, other than it being based on a series of private discussions. Meanwhile, the home page of wikimediafoundation.org stresses how transparent the organization is. This is a pretty disappointing day. I'd be interested to hear what Gayle, Philippe, or the Board has to say. MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Itzik Edri wrote: Can we please give time to the Foundation to response and express their side before everyone starts to attack them? I think we had enough of that on Internal-l. After the first response, or at least 24h, I will understand everyone feelings about that. (And right now I'm also don't agree or understand WMF's decision, but I'm waiting to hear them first). I agree that it would be nice to have a full explanation from the Wikimedia Foundation here (particularly from Philippe and Gayle, who have apparently conspired). But I'm not sure I agree that time is needed to evaluate what has happened. There was certainly no wait before users were stripped of their user rights. The lack of any emergency makes this rash series of actions even more upsetting and confusing. Wikimedia _is_ its community. When a few staff members start to kick out the community (from the blog, from Bugzilla, from volunteer sysadminning), it's a pretty awful situation that needs to be immediately addressed, in my opinion. The alternative is that most volunteers will simply go away. While that may seem like a victory to certain staff members, I wonder when they'll realize that it's these same volunteers that keep the projects running. When the dedicated and trusted volunteers leave, their (paid) jobs will soon follow. Wikimedia simply isn't sustainable without trusted volunteers. Slapping them in the face does what? MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Sent from my mobile. Please excuse the brevity and typos. On May 11, 2013 4:36 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Deryck Chan wrote: Given the foundation's recent tsunami of centralisation I'm not surprised by this at all. The message is clear - the community doesn't belong here. Go back to meta. Yeah, I think you're right. It seems to be part of a larger pattern. * Blog access has been restricted (as noted). * Bugzilla adminship has been restricted to staff only. * wikimediafoundation.org adminship is now restricted to staff and Board Members. * Shell access has been restricted to staff only (no more volunteer sysadmins). Someone better tell that to domas and his ssh key. As someone tasked with protecting the servers,ssh keys should be restricted as much as possible, both with staff and volunteers. that is technical and not political. Relatedly, the Toolserver is being slowly killed in favor of a controlled sandbox called Wikimedia Labs and all Wikimedia accounts are being unified (with forceable usurps/renames) to make it easier to track and control users across all Wikimedia wikis. It's very surprising that the Board has been so quiet about all of this. Generally, a few staff members (notably Philippe and his team) have tried to create tiers in which paid staff are above volunteers. Even the most trusted volunteers are no longer allowed to hold positions of trust within the Wikimedia community. This is very bad. Are there ways to address this? But to blame this on Gayle is kind of insane. It seems clear to me that she's being used as a pawn here. There are very few indications that this has anything to do with her, aside from a few log entries (from... Philippe) inexplicably pointing to her name. And the curt e-mail she sent out to affected users. Her involvement with the wiki would charitably be described as negligible. The director of _community advocacy_ (Philippe) is stripping nearly every community member of user rights. And yet there's still no provided rationale for the change in policy, other than it being based on a series of private discussions. Meanwhile, the home page of wikimediafoundation.org stresses how transparent the organization is. This is a pretty disappointing day. I'd be interested to hear what Gayle, Philippe, or the Board has to say. MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
K. Peachey, 11/05/2013 16:59: On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 12:56 AM, Leslie Carr lc...@wikimedia.org wrote: ... As someone tasked with protecting the servers,ssh keys should be restricted as much as possible, both with staff and volunteers. that is technical and not political. That same argument can also be used for restricting all but even a smaller circle of staff from root. Probably not the best example to lead with... Yes, or all the sysops on foundationwiki with 0 edits. :) Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Leslie Carr wrote: * Shell access has been restricted to staff only (no more volunteer sysadmins). Someone better tell that to domas and his ssh key. As someone tasked with protecting the servers, ssh keys should be restricted as much as possible, both with staff and volunteers. that is technical and not political. That was just sloppy wording on my part, apologies. Shell/root access has been indeed been restricted to staff only. About four users have been grandfathered in (Domas, Jens, River, Robert S.). I'll note that these users have all contributed an enormous amount (for free!) to the Wikimedia movement. They deserve only our appreciation for the volunteer work they've done. And they serve as a model of what trusted volunteers can do. Please don't suggest that this has anything to do with technical decisions. Even a child can see that this is pure politics. Leslie, do you agree with these policies that remove all non-staff from positions of trust? Do you agree with creating tiers between staff and everyone else? MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 4:59 PM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 12:56 AM, Leslie Carr lc...@wikimedia.org wrote: ... As someone tasked with protecting the servers,ssh keys should be restricted as much as possible, both with staff and volunteers. that is technical and not political. That same argument can also be used for restricting all but even a smaller circle of staff from root. Probably not the best example to lead with... Actually it is the perfect example to lead with -- very few people with shell access have root. -- Leslie Carr Wikimedia Foundation AS 14907, 43821 http://as14907.peeringdb.com/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 5:04 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Leslie Carr wrote: * Shell access has been restricted to staff only (no more volunteer sysadmins). Someone better tell that to domas and his ssh key. As someone tasked with protecting the servers, ssh keys should be restricted as much as possible, both with staff and volunteers. that is technical and not political. That was just sloppy wording on my part, apologies. Shell/root access has been indeed been restricted to staff only. About four users have been grandfathered in (Domas, Jens, River, Robert S.). I'll note that these users have all contributed an enormous amount (for free!) to the Wikimedia movement. They deserve only our appreciation for the volunteer work they've done. And they serve as a model of what trusted volunteers can do. Please don't suggest that this has anything to do with technical decisions. Even a child can see that this is pure politics. Leslie, do you agree with these policies that remove all non-staff from positions of trust? Do you agree with creating tiers between staff and everyone else? I have no opinion on all the other policies - my concern, expertise, and really the only place I think my opinion even matters is for the servers. My opinion is that we should restrict any ssh access on the cluster to those who have demonstrated that they both need it and can handle the responsibility. If a volunteer has been very responsible in labs and has a demonstratable need, I'd be fine with that. The reason that ops staff get ssh access and root is that we (hopefully) during our interview and references have demonstrated the ability to handle the access responsibly, have a need, and on top of that have signed a big stack of paperwork. But the more that we can do on labs without ever touching production, the better off the stability of the cluster. Also I believe that several analytics folks ( under admins::restricted in admins.pp ) are not employees but do have some ssh access. Leslie MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Leslie Carr Wikimedia Foundation AS 14907, 43821 http://as14907.peeringdb.com/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On 11 May 2013 14:46, Deryck Chan deryckc...@wikimedia.hk wrote: Given the foundation's recent tsunami of centralisation I'm not surprised by this at all. Sad to say, this chimes with the Foundation's recent decision to consult on changes to en.Wikipedia's method of notifying users that they have a talk page message, and then to reject the overwhelming consensus (to return the familiar orange bar, at least while other options are discussed) of that consultation. -- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On 11 May 2013 15:36, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Yeah, I think you're right. It seems to be part of a larger pattern. + Withdrawal of the ability to use WMF logos/ wordmarks in community projects, such as QRpedia. -- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On 05/11/2013 06:26 AM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski wrote: Let me repeat that: the WMF does not wish volunteers to help out with running their wiki, even if they have been helping out almost since the very start of the wiki. Tomasz, while it seems clear that communications about that move seem to have been lacking, I think it's unwarranted to ascribe ill-intent to the WMF staff. Perhaps you should wait for a response from them before you declare what their wishes may be or what their reasons were? -- Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Marc A. Pelletier wrote: Tomasz, while it seems clear that communications about that move seem to have been lacking, I think it's unwarranted to ascribe ill-intent to the WMF staff. Perhaps you should wait for a response from them before you declare what their wishes may be or what their reasons were? I cannot tell what was the /intent/ of the WMF when they acted (for obvious reasons), but I think that my description of the situation was pretty justified — and the message sent to all those desysopped volunteers could not have been more clear. If the WMF wants their help, why would they desysop them in the first place? If you had read my e-mail, then I'm sure you noticed that I actually asked about the reasons for this decision and its execution, as I am unable to find any justification for what happened. [Yes, I do understand there is a considerable time difference, etc; I'll be patiently waiting for a response from the WMF.] -- Tomasz ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 9:32 PM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski tom...@twkozlowski.net wrote: [Yes, I do understand there is a considerable time difference, etc; I'll be patiently waiting for a response from the WMF.] Might even have to wait till Monday. This was done on a Friday night I think. There doesn't seem to be any method to how these rights are being assigned and retained. Observations- 1) Only 2 of the current board members (besides Jimmy) have admin rights. Prob. on the argument that they are community-elected? 2) A few of the current admins that retained their flag have never made a contribution, or made any in the last year. 3) Phoebe for some reason, retains her right while currently not being on staff or the board. 4) Only 2 people are prob. assigned on the basis of advisory board without any explanation. There is no updated list to check who is on the advisory board this time. There does seem to be a pattern about how this is being cleaned up, and I don't think Gayle is the impetus behind this though she is taking the blame for it. Theo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Le Sat, 11 May 2013 17:50:18 +0200, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org a écrit: Perhaps you should wait for a response from them before you declare what their wishes may be or what their reasons were? At the same time, it’s a very bad timing of doing such a controversial action just before weekend, and let people wondering during two days the reasons behind this action. So waiting still 2 days.. Sébastien ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Gayle is travelling today and not online, so I'll take a crack at responding to this. The editors are responsible for the projects: the Wikimedia Foundation knows that, acknowledges it, and is deeply appreciative (as are all readers) for the work that volunteers do in the projects. The Wikimedia Foundation is responsible for the Wikimedia Foundation wiki (and the blog). We are grateful to get community help there, and a small number of community members do really good work with us on both the WMF wiki and the blog. But ultimately that wiki, and the blog, are our responsibility, and we are accountable for making sure that e.g. the staff page, the Board bios, the resolution texts, etc., are maintained and in good shape. Most material on the WMF is not created via collaborative production processes -- it's corporate in nature, meaning that it is developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, for an audience of Wikimedia Foundation stakeholders, which includes community members and prospective community members, donors, readers of the projects, media, and others. My understanding is that administrator rights have been removed from a small number of volunteers, but that those people still have basic editing rights. My understanding is that the Wikimedia Foundation staff who work on the Foundation wiki have been grateful (and are grateful) for the help they've gotten from community members in maintaining the Foundation wiki, and that we hope they'll continue to help us. They've been great, and we're grateful. But, my understanding is also that occasionally volunteers have overridden decisions made by staff on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki. I don't think that's ever been a huge problem: I don't think we've ever had a situation in which extensive discussion hasn't reached an okay conclusion. But, the extensive discussions --which, I understand, have typically been one-on-one, by which I mean, not a large number of community members or a community consensus against something the Foundation has wanted to do, but rather one volunteer disagreeing with something staff have been asked to do as part of their job --- occasionally, those discussions have been extremely time-consuming. That's not good. The staff working on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki have jobs they've got to get done, in support of the entire movement. If they spend days or weeks needing to persuade a single community member of the merits of something they want to do on the Foundation wiki, or if they need to modify their plans extensively to accommodate the opinions of a single community member, that reduces the amount of time available for them to do the rest of their work. Which, I repeat, is in the service of the movement overall. So I would say this: This decision is not about the community versus the WMF. This decision is about the WMF staff, and making it possible for them to do their work on the WMF wiki with some reasonable degree of efficiency and effectiveness. This decision clarifies roles-and-responsibilities. On the projects, the volunteers are the editorial leads, and the WMF plays a supporting role by creating functionality, maintaining the servers, paying the bandwidth bills, and so forth. On the WMF wiki, the WMF is the editorial lead, and volunteers can (and do) play a supporting role helping staff organize pages, maintain pages, and so forth. That's a reasonable division, and I think having clarity around it is a good thing. Slightly more broadly: when the Wikimedia movement was very young, everybody did everything and there wasn't much division of roles-and-responsibilities. I remember when the Wikimedia Foundation budgets were prepared by volunteers, when the trademarks were managed by volunteers, and so forth. That was appropriate for the time, and even though it was messy, it was kind of great. Then we all went through a period in which roles-and-responsibilities were utterly unclear -- it wasn't at all obvious who should do what, and many roles-and-responsibilities were hotly disputed. Personally, I feel like we're moving into a period now in which things are getting clearer. We don't pay staff to edit the projects: staff who edit do it on their own time, as a hobby or special personal interest. We do pay staff to do things that are better done by staff than by volunteers, such as managing the trademark portfolio. Some volunteers (such as Domas) have very special privileges and powers, because they've proved over time they are exceptionally skilled. Some volunteers support the Wikimedia Foundation staff in their work in a variety of ways, because they've proved their interest and abilities. Some work happens in close partnership between staff and volunteers, such as production of blog posts, speaking with the media, and in projects such as the Global Ed one. Sometimes organized groups of volunteers are created by volunteers and supported by staff (e.g. ArbCom or AffCom) and sometimes organized groups of volunteers are created by
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Sue Gardner wrote: So. People can disagree with this decision, and that's okay. But ultimately, the Wikimedia Foundation is responsible for the Wikimedia Foundation wiki: it's our job to figure out how best to manage and Maintain it. That's what we're doing here. wikimediafoundation.org has historically been managed by the Board. Not Gayle or Philippe. I'm still waiting on the Board to chime in here. It's my understanding that several Board members (current and former) wanted to open the wiki to more editing and cleanup in the short-term and in the long-term re-unite the wiki with Meta-Wiki at www.wikimedia.org. This is a step in the wrong direction. MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On 05/11/2013 12:41 PM, Seb35 wrote: At the same time, it’s a very bad timing of doing such a controversial action just before weekend, and let people wondering during two days the reasons behind this action. So waiting still 2 days.. Yes, IMO that was a faux-pas. This should have been announced in advance and not done late Friday, if only to avoid those open questions. I note, however, that Sue gave an extended response in this thread a bit ago, so while it may not have been the best of timings, it's been swift. :-) -- Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
I'm not going to respond to all the points raised in your e-mail, Sue (partially because most of them are just too general), so let me just mentioned some of them. The editors are responsible for the projects: the Wikimedia Foundation knows that, acknowledges it, and is deeply appreciative (as are all readers) for the work that volunteers do in the projects. The Wikimedia Foundation is responsible for the Wikimedia Foundation wiki (and the blog). Then it should perhaps be renamed as the Wikimedia Foundation Blog With Guests Post from Community Members. We are grateful to get community help there, and a small number of community members do really good work with us on both the WMF wiki and the blog. But ultimately that wiki, and the blog, are our responsibility, and we are accountable for making sure that e.g. the staff page, the Board bios, the resolution texts, etc., are maintained and in good shape. Most material on the WMF is not created via collaborative production processes -- it's corporate in nature, meaning that it is developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, for an audience of Wikimedia Foundation stakeholders, which includes community members and prospective community members, donors, readers of the projects, media, and others. Well, then I am still surprised to see you thank those volunteers for their work in this matter—by desysopping them all in one, unannounced and not discussed user rights purge. The most important reason why all those pages that you mention, Sue, are maintained and in good shape is that community members have been very often driving changes, helping with importing translations, and making thousands of small changes (be it typos, categorisation or design-like). Seeing that there aren't any WMF employees who contributed as much time and work as some community members (with the possible exception of Philippe and Heather), I'm puzzled to see you make this decision. This having been written, I would like to reiterate my questions again (and add another one): 1) Who made the decision to remove adminship from all community members? 2) Why did you make this decision now? What changed? 3) Why did you decide to desysop people straight away instead of discussing things with them first? 4) /NEW/ Who precisely (what department) is responsible for the maintenance of the wiki, and why didn't they perform their roles before? -- Tomasz ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Argh, why do we have to keep going through this over and over again? I'm sure we're long past the point where Sue and many members of the staff are convinced that they will be attacked by someone in reaction to any decision they could make. Maybe that's true, but its no excuse for transforming such a picayune change into a drama bomb through the utter failure to manage the implementation of a change that affects dedicated volunteers. An advanced notice, an explanation, a thank you, an expression of hope that volunteers will continue to help. That's all it would have taken to preserve this as what it ought to have been, a non-issue. Instead, they received a terse and impersonal notice after the fact that amounted to the corporate version of ordering someone off your lawn. Now we have an explanation, but it's a bit late - and it comes in place of what the first WMF response ought to have been, an apology for once again bungling an interaction with volunteers. Not all that long ago the WMF seemed to consider ahead of time the potential reaction of volunteers, and to tailor actions and communication to limit the chance of anger, disappointment and hurt feelings among them. Perhaps it was a natural, and unspoken, priority at a time when many WMF leaders were volunteers and former volunteers. Maybe we're past that point, and the WMF needs to begin actively pushing this ethos into the organizational culture of both staff and volunteer leadership groups. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Thanks a lot for this explanation. On the other side, wikis not only need content producers (here WMF) but also curators (wikignomes) who are sorting the pages, deleting and moving pages, typocorrecting, templating things, helping new users in formatting texts, etc. (I read some of the Florence’s blogposts :) -- and not being admin restricts a lot the possible actions. And on the example you give about disagreement between two editors (e.g. staffer and volunteer), in theory there is no reason the staffer’s solution is better or worse than the volunteer’s solution, but perhaps a mean solution can be better than any of the two initial solutions; and in this case, the spent time is not a waste of time. Sébastien Le Sat, 11 May 2013 18:48:38 +0200, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org a écrit: Gayle is travelling today and not online, so I'll take a crack at responding to this. The editors are responsible for the projects: the Wikimedia Foundation knows that, acknowledges it, and is deeply appreciative (as are all readers) for the work that volunteers do in the projects. The Wikimedia Foundation is responsible for the Wikimedia Foundation wiki (and the blog). We are grateful to get community help there, and a small number of community members do really good work with us on both the WMF wiki and the blog. But ultimately that wiki, and the blog, are our responsibility, and we are accountable for making sure that e.g. the staff page, the Board bios, the resolution texts, etc., are maintained and in good shape. Most material on the WMF is not created via collaborative production processes -- it's corporate in nature, meaning that it is developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, for an audience of Wikimedia Foundation stakeholders, which includes community members and prospective community members, donors, readers of the projects, media, and others. My understanding is that administrator rights have been removed from a small number of volunteers, but that those people still have basic editing rights. My understanding is that the Wikimedia Foundation staff who work on the Foundation wiki have been grateful (and are grateful) for the help they've gotten from community members in maintaining the Foundation wiki, and that we hope they'll continue to help us. They've been great, and we're grateful. But, my understanding is also that occasionally volunteers have overridden decisions made by staff on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki. I don't think that's ever been a huge problem: I don't think we've ever had a situation in which extensive discussion hasn't reached an okay conclusion. But, the extensive discussions --which, I understand, have typically been one-on-one, by which I mean, not a large number of community members or a community consensus against something the Foundation has wanted to do, but rather one volunteer disagreeing with something staff have been asked to do as part of their job --- occasionally, those discussions have been extremely time-consuming. That's not good. The staff working on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki have jobs they've got to get done, in support of the entire movement. If they spend days or weeks needing to persuade a single community member of the merits of something they want to do on the Foundation wiki, or if they need to modify their plans extensively to accommodate the opinions of a single community member, that reduces the amount of time available for them to do the rest of their work. Which, I repeat, is in the service of the movement overall. So I would say this: This decision is not about the community versus the WMF. This decision is about the WMF staff, and making it possible for them to do their work on the WMF wiki with some reasonable degree of efficiency and effectiveness. This decision clarifies roles-and-responsibilities. On the projects, the volunteers are the editorial leads, and the WMF plays a supporting role by creating functionality, maintaining the servers, paying the bandwidth bills, and so forth. On the WMF wiki, the WMF is the editorial lead, and volunteers can (and do) play a supporting role helping staff organize pages, maintain pages, and so forth. That's a reasonable division, and I think having clarity around it is a good thing. Slightly more broadly: when the Wikimedia movement was very young, everybody did everything and there wasn't much division of roles-and-responsibilities. I remember when the Wikimedia Foundation budgets were prepared by volunteers, when the trademarks were managed by volunteers, and so forth. That was appropriate for the time, and even though it was messy, it was kind of great. Then we all went through a period in which roles-and-responsibilities were utterly unclear -- it wasn't at all obvious who should do what, and many roles-and-responsibilities were hotly disputed. Personally, I feel like we're moving into a period now in which things are getting clearer. We don't
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 9:48 AM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: My understanding is that administrator rights have been removed from a small number of volunteers, but that those people still have basic editing rights. Far more than basic, actually. The WMF wiki is unusual in that it allows insertion of raw HTML by any registered user (this is because the donation forms used to be hosted there; they're now developed on a dedicated site). Regular users also have permission to edit the MediaWiki: namespace, which helps with translation. This means that regular users can add arbitrary code that will be executed in the reader's browser, something that only admins can do on most of our other wikis. There are 600 registered users on the WMF wiki. While I understand the frustration with admin access being restricted, volunteers on this particular wiki are still trusted with extraordinary rights (without prejudice as to whether that configuration should be broadened or narrowed in future). I asked Philippe yesterday, and he said that account requests from Meta would continue to be processed (by JamesA and himself going forward). As Sue says, having the overall governance responsibilities on the wiki clarified is a normal step. Sorry for the rocky transition; no disrespect was intended. The original text on https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Welcome (written in 2004 when there was no WMF staff) with regard to the Board resolving all disputes should indeed be updated; the Board delegates day-to-day operational responsibilities to the organizational staff, and while the sentence is technically true, it was written at a time when that delegation was not possible. Nonetheless, it was clear from the very beginning that the WMF wiki was not operated according to the community governance practices established in other wikis because it serves a distinct purpose. Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Having read through this entire thread, I have to ask: would there have been any value in, instead of desysopping non-staff (because there appears to be a possibly-valid argument that non-staff did most of the administrative work on the wmf wiki), instead making it clear that unlike on all other wikis, +staff users had the final say in any administrative/editing dispute on the wmf wiki? That is, since Sue says a large part of the problem was non-staff making staff justify themselves and their decisions endlessly, why not just short-circuit that particular weak spot and otherwise let work carry on? I guess the operative questions here would be something like: 1. Was there actual misuse of admin tools being done by non-staff? 2. Were there other, non-misuse issues that arose from non-staff having +admin (i.e. we already know about too many challenges to staff, but was there anything else that made non-staff admins suboptimal? this would include even things like it looks weird to outsiders to have non-staff changing 'corporate' content) 3. If there weren't other issues, could the issue of non-staff challenging staff decisions have been corrected with a less-drastic solution (such as clarifying who had final say in things) 4. Is it true that non-staff admins do significant portions of the work on that wiki, such that their loss will now cause the wiki to go un- or more-poorly-maintained? 5. If 4 is true, what solutions can we/the WMF put in place to pick up that slack so the wiki doesn't become worse? None of these questions are intended to apportion blame or determine who was right, but they may help us figure out why actions are being done, how we could have routed around this huge blow-up, and where to go from here. -Fluffernutter On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 9:48 AM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: My understanding is that administrator rights have been removed from a small number of volunteers, but that those people still have basic editing rights. Far more than basic, actually. The WMF wiki is unusual in that it allows insertion of raw HTML by any registered user (this is because the donation forms used to be hosted there; they're now developed on a dedicated site). Regular users also have permission to edit the MediaWiki: namespace, which helps with translation. This means that regular users can add arbitrary code that will be executed in the reader's browser, something that only admins can do on most of our other wikis. There are 600 registered users on the WMF wiki. While I understand the frustration with admin access being restricted, volunteers on this particular wiki are still trusted with extraordinary rights (without prejudice as to whether that configuration should be broadened or narrowed in future). I asked Philippe yesterday, and he said that account requests from Meta would continue to be processed (by JamesA and himself going forward). As Sue says, having the overall governance responsibilities on the wiki clarified is a normal step. Sorry for the rocky transition; no disrespect was intended. The original text on https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Welcome (written in 2004 when there was no WMF staff) with regard to the Board resolving all disputes should indeed be updated; the Board delegates day-to-day operational responsibilities to the organizational staff, and while the sentence is technically true, it was written at a time when that delegation was not possible. Nonetheless, it was clear from the very beginning that the WMF wiki was not operated according to the community governance practices established in other wikis because it serves a distinct purpose. Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 3:26 AM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski tom...@twkozlowski.net wrote: These are questions directed at the WMF—for you regular folks, I have a riddle (I'll give a WikiLove barnstar to the first person to submit a correct answer). There is /at least/ one community member who does not hold any official position within the WMF, and who has not been desysopped in yesterday's purge—do you know who this person is? If you're talking about me (I still seem to have admin rights, and no official position) I'll happily give up my admin flag -- not sure why I was left out of the batch. At any rate, I haven't edited much on the wmf wiki since last year; I just had admin rights so i could move files around when I was board secretary. As for the whole thing -- it seems like especially poor timing and communication around the action. It also seems dumb to desysop some of the users who know the most about how to format and work with wikis. On the other hand, the WMF wiki is special -- as the home of material from the organization that basically does not get changed -- and I know there's been some incidents, as Sue refers to, of reversals of staff decisions that led to a lot of misunderstandings. I, and I suspect most of us, just take this in stride because it's happened to us dozens of times; newer staff may not, however. Going forward I'd still support merging most of WMF wiki into meta, where we can use a normal community admin process; and keeping a limited version of it around for version-of-record documents and whatever technical needs re: fundraising it fills, and simply being a lot more clear about policies around that content. -- phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at gmail.com * ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] movement blog, not WMF blog, was: Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski tom...@twkozlowski.net wrote: I'm not going to respond to all the points raised in your e-mail, Sue (partially because most of them are just too general), so let me just mentioned some of them. On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 6:48 PM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: The editors are responsible for the projects: the Wikimedia Foundation knows that, acknowledges it, and is deeply appreciative (as are all readers) for the work that volunteers do in the projects. The Wikimedia Foundation is responsible for the Wikimedia Foundation wiki (and the blog). Then it should perhaps be renamed as the Wikimedia Foundation Blog With Guests Post from Community Members. uh ... i never noticed this. it seems really that WMF is considering blog.wikimedia.org as their personal blog. it even says (This is a guest post by Carol Ann O’Hare of the French Wikimedia chapter.) e.g. here: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/05/10/wikimedia-france-research-award-winner/ while the domain http://www.wikimedia.org/ contents clearly states Wikimedia is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world. i would have expected a movement blog behind this URL, appropriate to the usage of the domain, but i am not sure if i am completely misreading this? rupert, wondering ... ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
I just want to highlight Nathan's excellent and reasonable point: The WMF could work on: manag[ing] the implementation of a change that affects dedicated volunteers. An advanced notice, an explanation, a thank you, an expression of hope that volunteers will continue to help. That's all it would have taken to preserve this as what it ought to have been, a non-issue. There's a lot of adversarial dynamics between the Foundation and the Community. A little bit of courtesy and civility and thoughtfulness would go a long way towards avoiding antagonism. Wikipedians are mission-driven and autonomy-craving. Work with us on that, respect it, use it to your advantage. There are pain points in transition, some of them unavoidable, but WMF should still seek to minimize harm and improve mutual understanding at each step. Otherwise, we get situations that take far more energy than a simple explanation and expression of appreciation from the outset would have taken. To paraphrase one of my favorite quotes: It takes less *time *to *do* a thing *right*, than it does to explain why you did it *wrong. Easier said than done, but a worthy goal nonetheless.* Jake (Ocaasi) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] movement blog, not WMF blog, was: Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On 11 May 2013 19:45, rupert THURNER rupert.thur...@gmail.com wrote: i would have expected a movement blog behind this URL, appropriate to the usage of the domain, but i am not sure if i am completely misreading this? Comcom has been actively seeking more contributions from people other than Foundation staff. Most chapters have their own blog, but posts from them for the Wikimedia blog are in practice heartily welcomed. (Particularly in multiple languages.) There's even posts about projects other than Wikipedia or Commons ;-) Matthew Roth can probably clarify (cc'd). - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] movement blog, not WMF blog, was: Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On 11.05.2013 21:26, David Gerard wrote: On 11 May 2013 19:45, rupert THURNER rupert.thur...@gmail.com wrote: i would have expected a movement blog behind this URL, appropriate to the usage of the domain, but i am not sure if i am completely misreading this? Comcom has been actively seeking more contributions from people other than Foundation staff. Most chapters have their own blog, but posts from them for the Wikimedia blog are in practice heartily welcomed. (Particularly in multiple languages.) There's even posts about projects other than Wikipedia or Commons ;-) Matthew Roth can probably clarify (cc'd). - d. At this point I am lost. Comcom is made of the representative of chapters, right? (I just happen to know this because the representatives of the Russian chapter there have hmm... complicated relations with the communities of Russian language projects). Is the blog then the business of WMF and chapters? Cheers Yaroslav ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] movement blog, not WMF blog, was: Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
No, ComCom is the communications committee. It's made up of people who are movement spokespeople/otherwise have an interest in communication, by my understanding. That's obviously going to include Chapters people, but it's not limited to it. On 11 May 2013 21:03, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru wrote: On 11.05.2013 21:26, David Gerard wrote: On 11 May 2013 19:45, rupert THURNER rupert.thur...@gmail.com wrote: i would have expected a movement blog behind this URL, appropriate to the usage of the domain, but i am not sure if i am completely misreading this? Comcom has been actively seeking more contributions from people other than Foundation staff. Most chapters have their own blog, but posts from them for the Wikimedia blog are in practice heartily welcomed. (Particularly in multiple languages.) There's even posts about projects other than Wikipedia or Commons ;-) Matthew Roth can probably clarify (cc'd). - d. At this point I am lost. Comcom is made of the representative of chapters, right? (I just happen to know this because the representatives of the Russian chapter there have hmm... complicated relations with the communities of Russian language projects). Is the blog then the business of WMF and chapters? Cheers Yaroslav __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Oliver Keyes Community Liaison, Product Development Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] movement blog, not WMF blog, was: Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On 11 May 2013 13:03, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru wrote: At this point I am lost. Comcom is made of the representative of chapters, right? (I just happen to know this because the representatives of the Russian chapter there have hmm... complicated relations with the communities of Russian language projects). Is the blog then the business of WMF and chapters? No. ComCom is made up of community people who take on communications roles. Some of us are normal volunteers who answer telephones and e-mails from journalists (this is why I joined in 2005); some are board members or staff of the WMF or other affiliate bodies. J. -- James D. Forrester jdforres...@gmail.com [[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] (speaking purely in a personal capacity) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] movement blog, not WMF blog, was: Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On 11 May 2013 21:03, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru wrote: At this point I am lost. Comcom is made of the representative of chapters, right? (I just happen to know this because the representatives of the Russian chapter there have hmm... complicated relations with the communities of Russian language projects). Is the blog then the business of WMF and chapters? No, it's pretty much anyone who is likely to deal with the media as any sort of representative of Wikipedia, Wikimedia, etc. So there's Foundation staff, there's board members, there's chapter representatives, there's not-formally-affiliated volunteers like me. (I think that's all the categories, no doubt I've missed someone.) (So if there's anyone who deals with the media and isn't on the list, please email Matthew or Jay promptly!) - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 7:15 AM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: This is the email that got sent out to everyone, For what it's worth, this didn't get sent out to everyone. I was a bureaucrat and administrator, and have the most edits on that wiki (afaik?), and wasn't notified. Like Huib, I was also in the batch of blog moderator removals and wasn't notified about that either. I'm not very active anymore, so it's not really a huge deal, but it's still bad form to have not gotten any kind of notification at all. -- Casey Brown (Cbrown1023) caseybrown.org ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
(Inline comments most likely, So shoot me) On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 2:48 AM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: … But, my understanding is also that occasionally volunteers have overridden decisions made by staff on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki. I don't think that's ever been a huge problem: … Can you expand on this? I haven't really involved in foundationwiki and I'm not going to go check all the edits for this, But this seems like a kindly odd-shaped argument in my view. (The only time I was involved with a staff-vol spat on wmfwiki, is when the staff member decided the to need to take it to another wiki and then onto IRC as well, where I and others had to bug staff members to find out whom they were reporting to) I highly doubt volunteers are just randomly undoing edits of staff just because, We should be looking at the underlining issues behind this, with what they are trying to fix and improving the workflow of staff and volunteers. Just /randomly/ revoking seems counter-proactive and detrimental to this. … So I would say this: This decision is not about the community versus the WMF. This decision is about the WMF staff, and making it possible for them to do their work on the WMF wiki with some reasonable degree of efficiency and effectiveness. How many staff members that have jobs that rely on editing foundationwiki? I did a quick scan of the last ~1000 or so edits and really couldn't see any examples that stood out, If a volunteer changes a staff edit, Yes it should be looked at but there is generally a good reason (I've seen plently of staff members editing other wikis that are clueless about the wiki world and people have been fixing up their edits), And just removing admin rights doesn't seem to have anything to do with that at all, Because the volunteers can still edit (afaik the only rights they really loose are delete and protect now) … This decision clarifies roles-and-responsibilities… Not really, It was done randomly and at the end of a Friday when most of the foundation stops working for the weekend, with lack of meaningful communication to those involved (or in some cases, communication at al), Personally it leaves more questions than anything. … Personally, I feel like we're moving into a period now in which things are getting clearer. We don't pay staff to edit the projects: I know at least one staff on a project, that has a bit to do with there work, and has been directed to append staff to all their edit summaries. -Crazed ramblings out, Peachey ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
There's been a long-term conflict with volunteers staff on wikimediafoundation.org. As a user, I understand. Each staff member likes to keep everything their way. They frequently revert changes (take a look at the discussion and user talk pages, especially for MZMcBride) on 'staff authority'. This is a logical next step against these users (most likely MZ) so there's no conflict. Is this a bad thing? Most likely not. Is the reason behind it a bad thing? Yes. On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 4:06 PM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: (Inline comments most likely, So shoot me) On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 2:48 AM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: … But, my understanding is also that occasionally volunteers have overridden decisions made by staff on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki. I don't think that's ever been a huge problem: … Can you expand on this? I haven't really involved in foundationwiki and I'm not going to go check all the edits for this, But this seems like a kindly odd-shaped argument in my view. (The only time I was involved with a staff-vol spat on wmfwiki, is when the staff member decided the to need to take it to another wiki and then onto IRC as well, where I and others had to bug staff members to find out whom they were reporting to) I highly doubt volunteers are just randomly undoing edits of staff just because, We should be looking at the underlining issues behind this, with what they are trying to fix and improving the workflow of staff and volunteers. Just /randomly/ revoking seems counter-proactive and detrimental to this. … So I would say this: This decision is not about the community versus the WMF. This decision is about the WMF staff, and making it possible for them to do their work on the WMF wiki with some reasonable degree of efficiency and effectiveness. How many staff members that have jobs that rely on editing foundationwiki? I did a quick scan of the last ~1000 or so edits and really couldn't see any examples that stood out, If a volunteer changes a staff edit, Yes it should be looked at but there is generally a good reason (I've seen plently of staff members editing other wikis that are clueless about the wiki world and people have been fixing up their edits), And just removing admin rights doesn't seem to have anything to do with that at all, Because the volunteers can still edit (afaik the only rights they really loose are delete and protect now) … This decision clarifies roles-and-responsibilities… Not really, It was done randomly and at the end of a Friday when most of the foundation stops working for the weekend, with lack of meaningful communication to those involved (or in some cases, communication at al), Personally it leaves more questions than anything. … Personally, I feel like we're moving into a period now in which things are getting clearer. We don't pay staff to edit the projects: I know at least one staff on a project, that has a bit to do with there work, and has been directed to append staff to all their edit summaries. -Crazed ramblings out, Peachey ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
If the conflict was primarily with MZMcBride (which seems to be the case), then it was a bit cowardly to overhaul the entire scheme on the site in order to avoid telling him to knock it off. On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 7:44 PM, Mono monom...@gmail.com wrote: There's been a long-term conflict with volunteers staff on wikimediafoundation.org. As a user, I understand. Each staff member likes to keep everything their way. They frequently revert changes (take a look at the discussion and user talk pages, especially for MZMcBride) on 'staff authority'. This is a logical next step against these users (most likely MZ) so there's no conflict. Is this a bad thing? Most likely not. Is the reason behind it a bad thing? Yes. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Casey Brown wrote: On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 7:15 AM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: This is the email that got sent out to everyone, For what it's worth, this didn't get sent out to everyone. I was a bureaucrat and administrator, and have the most edits on that wiki (afaik?), and wasn't notified. Like Huib, I was also in the batch of blog moderator removals and wasn't notified about that either. I'm left a little speechless by this. I've always considered my values to be largely aligned with Wikimedia's, but more and more, I find myself distanced from it. I don't really want to be associated with people who can't treat volunteers with basic respect and dignity. Ultimately, like every other volunteer, I have to evaluate whether my time is better spent elsewhere. It's a really sad day for Wikimedia. You and many others who were summarily stripped of their user rights were integral to building that wiki and you deserve to be recognized and appreciated, not thrown out on a whim without notice or warning. Sue talks so much about stewardship, but this apparently includes anointing a ruler of the wiki who isn't capable of caring out her own commands. What does this say about the stewardship of the wiki? Meanwhile the questions about who will actually keep the site running go unanswered. For people like Gayle and Philippe to privately collude and then fire us at the end of the day on a Friday like we're disgruntled employees was pretty bad. (Both of whom seemed to have been in such a rush to act, but now are mysteriously too busy to participate in the community mailing list discussion about their actions.) Watching Erik and Sue try to defend their actions has been even more painful to watch. But it's long-time community members who know that this isn't right and who have chosen to not say anything that are bothering me the most. It's unsurprising that you and many others aren't very active anymore. :-/ You're so much better than they deserve. MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Nathan wrote: If the conflict was primarily with MZMcBride (which seems to be the case), then it was a bit cowardly to overhaul the entire scheme on the site in order to avoid telling him to knock it off. What'd I do? MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 5:07 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 7:44 PM, Mono monom...@gmail.com wrote: There's been a long-term conflict with volunteers staff on wikimediafoundation.org. As a user, I understand. Each staff member likes to keep everything their way. They frequently revert changes (take a look at the discussion and user talk pages, especially for MZMcBride) on 'staff authority'. This is a logical next step against these users (most likely MZ) so there's no conflict. Is this a bad thing? Most likely not. Is the reason behind it a bad thing? Yes. Nathan wrote: If the conflict was primarily with MZMcBride (which seems to be the case), then it was a bit cowardly to overhaul the entire scheme on the site in order to avoid telling him to knock it off. What'd I do? MZMcBride MZMcBride, when I originally wrote this I was referencing nothing in particular. I was just observing a pattern of reversions and conflicts between you, me, staff others. Looking at the history of your talk page on wmfwiki (and mine), this can be found. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Wow, this was definitely a huge brick they dropped there... It seems, the WMF needs to hire someone (a diplomat) to counsel them about actions towards the volunteers. (Seriously!) Well, and when we are at it, the volunteer community might need a diplomat, too, one who counsels them about actions and role of the WMF, before they start complaining about any of it. :) Anyway, nothing would have been lost if Gayle had written to the folks a few weeks before the actual action was performed, informing that this is the plan and why. It's not necessary, WMF owns the page and can do just about everything there, but just for politeness it would have been nice. And yes, the email that - seemingly selectively - got sent out was not really diplomatic, either, it sounds much like thanks, bye!. Or was there any sort of emergency that made an immediate action indispensable? (A soon explanation by Gayle would certainly be helpful there.) Th. 2013/5/12 Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 7:15 AM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: This is the email that got sent out to everyone, For what it's worth, this didn't get sent out to everyone. I was a bureaucrat and administrator, and have the most edits on that wiki (afaik?), and wasn't notified. Like Huib, I was also in the batch of blog moderator removals and wasn't notified about that either. I'm not very active anymore, so it's not really a huge deal, but it's still bad form to have not gotten any kind of notification at all. -- Casey Brown (Cbrown1023) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 5:31 PM, Thomas Goldammer tho...@gmail.com wrote: Wow, this was definitely a huge brick they dropped there... It seems, the WMF needs to hire someone (a diplomat) to counsel them about actions towards the volunteers. (Seriously!) Or was there any sort of emergency that made an immediate action indispensable? (A soon explanation by Gayle would certainly be helpful there.) Th. There was no emergency. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Sue (or anyone from staff who is more precisely in charge for this), may you just revert this and open discussion to reach more sensible solution? I understand that there could be a good reason for this action, but the way it's been handled is not the perfect one. And at least permissions on a wiki are not hard to revert. On May 11, 2013 6:48 PM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: Gayle is travelling today and not online, so I'll take a crack at responding to this. The editors are responsible for the projects: the Wikimedia Foundation knows that, acknowledges it, and is deeply appreciative (as are all readers) for the work that volunteers do in the projects. The Wikimedia Foundation is responsible for the Wikimedia Foundation wiki (and the blog). We are grateful to get community help there, and a small number of community members do really good work with us on both the WMF wiki and the blog. But ultimately that wiki, and the blog, are our responsibility, and we are accountable for making sure that e.g. the staff page, the Board bios, the resolution texts, etc., are maintained and in good shape. Most material on the WMF is not created via collaborative production processes -- it's corporate in nature, meaning that it is developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, for an audience of Wikimedia Foundation stakeholders, which includes community members and prospective community members, donors, readers of the projects, media, and others. My understanding is that administrator rights have been removed from a small number of volunteers, but that those people still have basic editing rights. My understanding is that the Wikimedia Foundation staff who work on the Foundation wiki have been grateful (and are grateful) for the help they've gotten from community members in maintaining the Foundation wiki, and that we hope they'll continue to help us. They've been great, and we're grateful. But, my understanding is also that occasionally volunteers have overridden decisions made by staff on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki. I don't think that's ever been a huge problem: I don't think we've ever had a situation in which extensive discussion hasn't reached an okay conclusion. But, the extensive discussions --which, I understand, have typically been one-on-one, by which I mean, not a large number of community members or a community consensus against something the Foundation has wanted to do, but rather one volunteer disagreeing with something staff have been asked to do as part of their job --- occasionally, those discussions have been extremely time-consuming. That's not good. The staff working on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki have jobs they've got to get done, in support of the entire movement. If they spend days or weeks needing to persuade a single community member of the merits of something they want to do on the Foundation wiki, or if they need to modify their plans extensively to accommodate the opinions of a single community member, that reduces the amount of time available for them to do the rest of their work. Which, I repeat, is in the service of the movement overall. So I would say this: This decision is not about the community versus the WMF. This decision is about the WMF staff, and making it possible for them to do their work on the WMF wiki with some reasonable degree of efficiency and effectiveness. This decision clarifies roles-and-responsibilities. On the projects, the volunteers are the editorial leads, and the WMF plays a supporting role by creating functionality, maintaining the servers, paying the bandwidth bills, and so forth. On the WMF wiki, the WMF is the editorial lead, and volunteers can (and do) play a supporting role helping staff organize pages, maintain pages, and so forth. That's a reasonable division, and I think having clarity around it is a good thing. Slightly more broadly: when the Wikimedia movement was very young, everybody did everything and there wasn't much division of roles-and-responsibilities. I remember when the Wikimedia Foundation budgets were prepared by volunteers, when the trademarks were managed by volunteers, and so forth. That was appropriate for the time, and even though it was messy, it was kind of great. Then we all went through a period in which roles-and-responsibilities were utterly unclear -- it wasn't at all obvious who should do what, and many roles-and-responsibilities were hotly disputed. Personally, I feel like we're moving into a period now in which things are getting clearer. We don't pay staff to edit the projects: staff who edit do it on their own time, as a hobby or special personal interest. We do pay staff to do things that are better done by staff than by volunteers, such as managing the trademark portfolio. Some volunteers (such as Domas) have very special privileges and powers, because they've proved over time they are exceptionally skilled. Some volunteers support the
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Yes, this. I must admit, it's tremendously demotivating and makes me quite upset that people like Aphaia, Anthere, Danny B. and Thehelpfulone, people who have put hundreds if not thousands of hours of effort into this movement without asking for a single cent, over many many years, are treated as risks to be eliminated rather than assets to the movement whose input is to be treasured. My main objection is not to the actual act of removing these rights (although as pointed out above by others, it seems to be a solution looking for a problem), my main objection is the remarkably callous and hamfisted way that it was executed. In particular, I think that making a potentially controversial change, and referring questions about that change to a staffer who is heading out of town and will be unresponsive for a few days is probably not good practice at all. Does anyone from the Foundation honestly think this has been handled well? What lessons are there to be learned from this? Cheers, Craig On 12 May 2013 10:31, Thomas Goldammer tho...@gmail.com wrote: Anyway, nothing would have been lost if Gayle had written to the folks a few weeks before the actual action was performed, informing that this is the plan and why. It's not necessary, WMF owns the page and can do just about everything there, but just for politeness it would have been nice. And yes, the email that - seemingly selectively - got sent out was not really diplomatic, either, it sounds much like thanks, bye!. Or was there any sort of emergency that made an immediate action indispensable? (A soon explanation by Gayle would certainly be helpful there.) Th. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Elections 2013
This is fixed, thank you. :-) pb ___ Philippe Beaudette Director, Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 415-839-6885, x 6643 phili...@wikimedia.org On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 1:08 AM, Takashi OTA supertakot+foundatio...@gmail.com wrote: I have been working on a translation of FDC Ombud election in to Japanese. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/FDC_Ombudsperson_elections/2013 In the section of How to submit your candidacy, it reads: If you are eligible, you can submit your candidacy by doing the following: Write a brief summary of no more than 1200 characters stating what you would do if you were elected to the Funds Dissemination Committee, Shouldn't it be if you were elected to the FDC Ombuds(person), not FDC itself? --Takashi OTA On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Nicole Ebber nicole.eb...@wikimedia.de wrote: Hey, thanks for the announcement and all the work the election committee has done so far. I have written a kind of lengthy blog post about the elections and about how and why the communities can or should get involved. It's in German, but if anyone's interested in translating it, you are more than welcome to re-use and remix and build upon it (of course... ;)). https://blog.wikimedia.de/2013/04/29/community-wahlt-hochstes-gremium-des-wikimedia-universums-board-of-trustees-der-wikimedia-foundation/ Cheerio, Nicole On 2 May 2013 06:29, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: I am pleased to announce that self-nominations are now being accepted for the 2013 Wikimedia Foundation Elections. This year, elections are being held for the following roles: - Board of Trustees The Board of Trustees is the decision-making body that is ultimately responsible for the long term sustainability of the Foundation, so we value wide input into its selection. There are three positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Board_elections/2013 . - Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Framework_for_the_Creation_and_Initial_Operation_of_the_FDC makes recommendations about how to allocate Wikimedia movement http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia funds to eligible entities. There are two positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/FDC_elections/2013 . - Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) Ombud The FDC Ombud receives complaints and feedback about the FDC process, investigates complaints at the request of the Board of Trustees, and summarizes the investigations and feedback for the Board of Trustees on an annual basis. One position is being filled. More information about this role can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/FDC_Ombudsperson_elections/2013 . The candidacy submission phase lasts from 00:00 UTC April 24 to 23:59 UTC May 17. More information on this election can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013. Please feel free to post a note about the election on your project's village pump, or to translate it and distribute it on other Wikimedia movement mailing lists. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the talk page on Meta, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-elections AT wikimedia.org On behalf of the Election Committee, Risker ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Nicole Ebber International Affairs Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin Tel. +49 30 219158 26-0 http://wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
It's also worth noting this wasn't a last minute decision at all; its foreshadowed in a number of comments by Philippe going back to seemingly mid-March, and there may be warnings of it earlier. So the WMF staff have been discussing this change internally for at least 6 weeks or so. That's a long time to not think up a better plan for rolling it out. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 110, Issue 27
It doesn't sound like a smart decision to me. From my own experience I know that many office people in the Wikimedia movement do a great job, but are terrible in maintaining a wiki. While volunteers are mostly good at this because of their experience. Why removing the tools that experienced people are good in using them if needed? The signal this give the the community is: fuck off, we know better. I really hope the office doesn't actually want to give that signal but want to work alongside with the community. Please think things through... Romaine Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 21:15:02 +1000 From: K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com To: tom...@twkozlowski.net, Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least) Message-ID: CADnECnX4O9Ma=uhvemcvmbehgvj8ha4n-to_vkxsc+wdksz...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 This is the email that got sent out to everyone, --- Dear XXX, Thank you for your work with the Foundation wiki. At this time, we are formalizing a new requirement, which is that administrator access is given only to staff and board. I am having administrator access to accounts that are neither staff or board be disabled, effective immediately. Sincerely, Gayle -- Gayle Karen K. Young Chief Talent and Culture Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415.310.8416 www.wikimediafoundation.org --- Gayle's response (which was the first time she has edited the wiki in ~5 months[2]) seems lacking[1] in general and the subsequent responses about knowing what these people do on the wiki Another interesting fact is that Mz got desysoped first, When you would expect it to be done in alphabetically order. We've been discussing this for awhile, and the thought is that it's ultimately the Foundation's web presence, not the community's web presence. A useful parallel to consider might be how userrights are given to staffers on the community wikis; they're distributed as and when they're needed for a specific task. Um, Rights for staff on wikis are given out like candy?, although not as much thee days but it still happens. Also, How is the foundation wiki not apart of the community? Has the position of the legal department changed? or the boards? just randomly changing without any imput or discussions seems utlimately strange. since it is actually their wiki (just like everything else that falls under the foundation) [1]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=91857oldid=91855#Users_stripped_of_rights.3F [2]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributionstarget=Gyoung [3]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Log/rights ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l