Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[rupert THURNER]

On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 6:44 AM, Tim Starling  wrote:
> On 01/08/13 14:15, Anthony wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:27 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:
>>
>>> I would be fired and jailed before I knowingly let that occur. If this was
>>> the case I'd very surely not be working for Wikimedia Foundation.
>>>
>>
>> Key word there being "knowingly".
>
> I don't know why the NSA would sneak around in our data centres
> mirroring our ethernet ports if they already have almost all of our
> access logs by capturing unencrypted traffic as it passes through
> XKeyscore nodes.
>
> I think you should save the conspiracy theories until after we switch
> anons to HTTPS, that's when they will have an incentive.

tim, and ryan, that is not 100% true. since at least 2010 we know from
articles like these:
* http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/packet-forensics/
* 
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/researchers-reveal-likelihood-governments-fake-ssl
that man-in-the middle attacks are possible with and without HTTPS at
XKeyscore nodes. the basic problem is, that wikipedia contents is
stored in the U.S., and the site is using certificates issued in the
U.S. the same country and legislation the NSA is located. this means
the certificates can be compromised and users would not (easily)
notice it.

the best sign against snooping internet traffic would be if wikipedia
will change the hosting to a different country, and use a different
countries ssl certificate. you can bet, that the perceived impact on
the U.S. business will be so huge that this intolerable practice will
stop, at source, at NSA.

btw, ryan, you talked about firing and jailing - if you did not know
that or if you knew it and ignored it, you should be fired or not work
at WMF ;) it is _you_ who need to warn about the location beeing
vulnerable, and it is _you_ who decide to use vulnerable digicert
certificates. but you of course will not be jailed - this seems to
happen to people revealing that xkeyscore exists ...

rupert.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Peter Southwood]

Thanks, This answers my question.
P
- Original Message - 
From: "Luis Villa" 

To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" 
Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2013 2:13 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA


On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Michael Snow 
wrote:





Now if you imagine the puzzle globe on that slide implies that
Wikipedia traffic is retained for intelligence analysis, it's a short
hop to assume that the Wikimedia Foundation is also the subject of a
blanket order transferring its server logs to the NSA.


Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter, yes. But mail.ru? The shift from
"most" to "all" in the first paragraph may make it easy to assume the
similarity is universal, but it's ignoring the full context. That kind of
rhetorical shift is a favorite trick of conspiracy theorists, it's how 
they

get you to make those short hops to unwarranted conclusions.



Thanks for the voice of reason, Michael.

As a quick reminder here, before any conspiracy theories about orders and
data retention get out of control:

1) We've flat-out denied any sort of involvement in this, and we continue
to stand by that denial:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/14/prism-surveillance-wikimedia/

2) Take with a grain of salt, of course, but our understanding (based on
the few gag orders that have been made public) is that we could be forced
to not confirm having received a National Security Letter, but we can't
actually be forced to lie about it. In other words, if we'd received one 
we

would not be allowed to say "we've received one", but we also could not be
forced to deny it - we'd always have the option to remain silent instead.

3) We understand that the rules cause some people not to trust our denial,
and can't entirely blame them! That is why we've asked the government to
change the rules, so that you can have more trust in us next time we issue
the same denial:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/18/wikimedia-foundation-letter-transparency-nsa-prism/

This is not to say that the http/https issue isn't important; like
Engineering, we think progress on that issue is important. But it is
important to keep "we don't yet deploy https as widely as we'd like"
separate from "there are secret orders to transfer all our logs to the 
NSA."


Thanks-
Luis

--
Luis Villa
Deputy General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
415.839.6885 ext. 6810

NOTICE: *This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you
have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the
mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical
reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community
members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity.*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Peter Southwood]

Does the law actually require them to lie about data demands when 
questioned?

P
- Original Message - 
From: "Nathan" 

To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" 
Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2013 1:52 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA


On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Michael Snow  
wrote:

On 7/31/2013 3:31 PM, Nathan wrote:


And another thought - you know what unites most of the other companies
represented by the logos in that image? Leaks have confirmed that most
of them are the subject of secret orders to turn over huge amounts of
raw data to the government. They are all bound to secrecy by law, so
without permission none of them are permitted to describe or disclose
the nature or extent of the data demands the U.S. government has made.

Now if you imagine the puzzle globe on that slide implies that
Wikipedia traffic is retained for intelligence analysis, it's a short
hop to assume that the Wikimedia Foundation is also the subject of a
blanket order transferring its server logs to the NSA.


Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter, yes. But mail.ru? The shift from
"most" to "all" in the first paragraph may make it easy to assume the
similarity is universal, but it's ignoring the full context. That kind of
rhetorical shift is a favorite trick of conspiracy theorists, it's how 
they

get you to make those short hops to unwarranted conclusions.

--Michael Snow




It's hardly a conspiracy theory. Given the differences between mail.ru
and Wikipedia, I should think it would be clear why one might be
subject to a direct demand for transferring data while the other is
not. If anything, I think it's more reasonable to assume that
Wikipedia (which shares many features with Google, Yahoo, Twitter,
Facebook and other social networks) has been the subject of this kind
of demand than that it hasn't. No one with direct knowledge would be
able to do anything other than deny it, but we can easily see why data
held by Wikipedia (including partially anonymized e-mails, file
uploads, talk page communication, etc.) would be of interest to
intelligence agencies.

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

[Steven Walling]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 10:24 PM, Kevin Wayne Williams <
kwwilli...@kwwilliams.com> wrote:

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


Minimum viable product does not mean "anything and everything works
perfectly" just like you want right out of the box, and it definitely does
not mean feature parity with an existing product (i.e. wikitext editing).
The purpose is to release something that can help us gather feedback and
test the concept behind the product in the real world instead of in a
lab.[1] Table editing and other advanced markup is not really necessary to
test the concept with the target audience, and decide whether to move
forward.

We all know VE didn't and doesn't edit everything in a way that's perfectly
up to snuff. No one has been claiming it doesn't have warts. What the team
is pushing back against is the idea that they can just turn it off and
develop a great new editor in a vacuum, away from real use by a
representative swath of current editors (registered and anonymous, new and
old). The lack of use by a sufficiently large and representative group of
editors is a big part of why the _seven months_ of original opt-in use
didn't fix most issues.

Erik and James have clearly admitted we can achieve our goals while moving
at a slower pace than the initial rollout and making other concessions.
Despite this, the attitude of some seems to be that they should be
committing seppuku for daring to release something not 100% perfect
according to [insert personal criteria for editing perfection here]. That's
not the kind of reaction that drew me to Wikipedia back in 2006, not by a
long shot. Rather, most of us find Wikipedia so rewarding because there is
room to be bold in the name of helping the encyclopedia. Which is precisely
what the VE team has been attempting to do.

Do I really really wish editing references and tables and templates was
easier when I'm writing articles in my off hours? Holy smokes yes. Is it
helping us get there to be making bitter comments about how Erik or anybody
else at WMF doesn't care about editors? No.

Steven

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVR82uP_f6Q
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Peter Southwood]

And "non-western" countries probably go further if their technological 
capacity allows it. If you are not being spied on by "somebody" it is 
because no-one could be bothered or they havent got around to it yet, not 
because any law protects your privacy.

P
- Original Message - 
From: "Nathan" 

To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" 
Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2013 12:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA


On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 5:53 PM, Matthew Walker  
wrote:


What surprises me is that anyone is surprised by any of this 
information.



It's one thing to have suspicions and theories about it; but if the third
party is constantly denying the allegations and with no recourse there's 
no

point in getting angry. Now that we have reasonable doubt, I hesitate to
call it proof, we can start making tremendous amounts of noise.

~Matt Walker


I think that's just naive. Of course it was always denied until it
became impossible to deny it. That's how these things work. But I have
honestly assumed for many years that virtually everything transmitted
over almost any electronic medium was collected and analyzed in some
way. That appears to be the case, and in fact, I expected them to have
gone further than they have. It seems that most of the data they
collect is wiped within 3 days; that the data itself can only be
analyzed under a fairly specific set of minimization rules after the
approval of a senior executive in the administration, that the rules
are drawn from generally accepted 4th amendment jurisprudence, etc.

The cynic in me is also convinced that virtually all Western countries
do the same sort of thing, if probably on a smaller scale. I would bet
all the money I have that at a minimum the French, the English and the
Germans maintain roughly similar intelligence gathering programs. But
of course, they will deny it until it becomes impossible to deny it.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Peter Southwood]

No, but presenting an appearance of surprise is a bit disingenuous.
P
- Original Message - 
From: "David Gerard" 

To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" 
Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2013 11:10 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA



On 31 July 2013 21:47, Ryan Lane  wrote:

Why would we expect that we weren't being targeted? Knowing what people 
are

looking up is powerful knowledge.



That doesn't make it one dot less reprehensible.


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Anna Koval]

Whoops! :) That wasn't meant to be a reply-to-all. Sorry, everyone. Rookie
mistake... :]


On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 10:36 PM, Anna Koval  wrote:

> very helpful, james. thanks so much for clue-ing me in. definitely want
> to know more of the backstory on the chapters sometime. ttyt :)
>
>
> On Wednesday, July 31, 2013, Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> On 01/08/13 14:15, Anthony wrote:
>> > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:27 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:
>> >
>> >> I would be fired and jailed before I knowingly let that occur. If this
>> was
>> >> the case I'd very surely not be working for Wikimedia Foundation.
>> >>
>> >
>> > Key word there being "knowingly".
>>
>> I don't know why the NSA would sneak around in our data centres
>> mirroring our ethernet ports if they already have almost all of our
>> access logs by capturing unencrypted traffic as it passes through
>> XKeyscore nodes.
>>
>> I think you should save the conspiracy theories until after we switch
>> anons to HTTPS, that's when they will have an incentive.
>>
>> -- Tim Starling
>>
>>
>> ___
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>> 
>
>
>
> --
> *Anna Koval*
> Community Advocate
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 415-839-6885 x 6729
> ako...@wikimedia.org
>
>


-- 
*Anna Koval*
Community Advocate
Wikimedia Foundation
415-839-6885 x 6729
ako...@wikimedia.org
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Anna Koval]

very helpful, james. thanks so much for clue-ing me in. definitely want to
know more of the backstory on the chapters sometime. ttyt :)

On Wednesday, July 31, 2013, Tim Starling wrote:

> On 01/08/13 14:15, Anthony wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:27 PM, Ryan Lane 
> > >
> wrote:
> >
> >> I would be fired and jailed before I knowingly let that occur. If this
> was
> >> the case I'd very surely not be working for Wikimedia Foundation.
> >>
> >
> > Key word there being "knowingly".
>
> I don't know why the NSA would sneak around in our data centres
> mirroring our ethernet ports if they already have almost all of our
> access logs by capturing unencrypted traffic as it passes through
> XKeyscore nodes.
>
> I think you should save the conspiracy theories until after we switch
> anons to HTTPS, that's when they will have an incentive.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
> ___
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-- 
*Anna Koval*
Community Advocate
Wikimedia Foundation
415-839-6885 x 6729
ako...@wikimedia.org
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and talk about VisualEditor

[Kevin Wayne Williams]

Op 2013/07/31 21:58, Erik Moeller schreef:

There's a reason every start-up on the planet follows the idea of the
Minimum Viable Product like a religion.
If you had followed that, and understood that the Minimum Viable Product 
included cut-and-paste, table editing, and maybe the ability to 
successfully and completely edit the hundred or so most edited articles 
out of all the millions, you wouldn't have hit the level of pushback 
you've encountered. You released a sub-viable product, which is what 
caused the storm you encountered.

  I personally will never judge a team too
harshly for releasing too early, because the normal bias is the
opposite, and it's counterproductive.
I'll be content with just blaming you, then. You value your team's 
productivity over everyone else's. I don't know why you expected 
everyone that has worked on Wikipedia for years to cheerfully clean up 
after you when you make it abundantly clear that you hold everything we 
have worked on in disdain.


KWW

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

[Erik Moeller]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 1:41 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> I mean, look at how Jimbo sold the VisualEditor to the press at the start
> of the roll-out:
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/10196578/Wikipedia-introduces-new-features-to-entice-editors.html
>
> ---o0o---
>
> “VisualEditor is a user interface that is much more familiar to people.
> When you click edit you get something that looks very much like any word
> processor, and you can change things and do whatever you want.”

Except that of course the narrative you're trying to establish here is
completely wrong. Wikimedia Foundation did not launch VisualEditor
with great fanfare, promising a panacea of perfect and beautiful
software. We announced it through a single blog post, inviting
feedback and support with the rollout. We launched a community portal
which had the following statements on it from day one:

---o0o--- (I like your quotation markup, let's add it to wikitext .. j/k)
At the moment, the VisualEditor has a number of bugs; this is
inevitable. The only way to only deploy software when it is bug-free
is not to deploy it at all - we're still finding errors in MediaWiki,
and that's 10 years old. If you encounter an issue, please do not
hesitate to report it on the Feedback page. There are also some areas
where we still have to build entirely new features. Current
limitations include:

* Odd-looking — We currently struggle with making the HTML we produce
look like what you are used to seeing, so styling and so on may look a
little (or even very) odd. We're increasing the time we put into this,
but so far our focus has been on making sure that the VisualEditor
does not alter wikitext unexpectedly.
* Incomplete editing — Some elements of "complex" formatting will
display and let you edit their contents, but not let users edit their
structure or add new entries – such as tables or definition lists.
Adding features in this area is one of our priorities.
* Limited browser support — Right now, we have only got VisualEditor
to work in the most modern versions of Firefox, Chrome and Safari. It
does not work in very old versions of each browser, and does not work
in Opera, although a volunteer is working on Opera support. Internet
Explorer currently does not work, but we aim to have support for the
latest versions of IE by the time we release the VisualEditor more
widely.
* Articles and User pages only — The VisualEditor will only be enabled
for the article and user namespaces (so you can make changes in a
personal sandbox). In time, we will build out the kinds of specialised
editing tools needed for non-articles, but our focus has been on
articles.

Because of these limitations, and inevitable bugs, we recommend that
users click "review your changes" before saving the page, and report
any problems they encounter.
---o0o---

This list has been community-updated since then and is a transparent
and honest reflection of the known areas of improvement.

In terms of media, when we've received inquiries, our response has
generally been "We're still in beta, talk to us in a few months". The
article you're quoting from is a single story that's about "new
features" that WMF is launching, of which VisualEditor is one; it also
discusses Echo and Flow. It also includes the following quote from
Jimmy about the VisualEditor.

---o0o---
“This is version 1.0, which means it is the first one that has really
had mass adoption and mass use,” said Wales. “We've had a lot of
feedback and there's going to be a lot of upgrades and changes, and
we're investing a lot in that kind of thing.”
---o0o---

The VisualEditor itself has a "Beta" button which, when clicked, shows
the following text:

---o0o---
VisualEditor is in 'beta'. You may encounter software issues, and you
may not be able to edit parts of the page.
---o0o---

Is the Beta notice too small and obscure? Fair criticism. But if you
want to claim that we're somehow misleading users about the state of
VisualEditor, you'll have to do a lot better.

> I also don't understand why the Foundation would need any more feedback at
> this point in time.

James has written a very good and detailed response to this here.
Please read it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:VisualEditor/Default_State_RFC&oldid=56714#Suggested_changes

In a nutshell, it's not about volume of feedback, but about iterating
with a representative real world set of users, rather than in
isolation. In terms of volume, right now we're dealing with a
firehose, which is more than we strictly need, but has the huge
advantage of being an unbiased sample of users. We understand it's
very disruptive, which is why we've been responsive to RFCs and
community consensus asking us to slow down. But we can't do it with a
trickle of self-selected users. We need a steady stream of real user
interactions and user feedback from different groups (IPs, new users,
experienced users) in order to iterate effectively. That's not trivial
t

Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Tim Starling]

On 01/08/13 14:15, Anthony wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:27 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:
> 
>> I would be fired and jailed before I knowingly let that occur. If this was
>> the case I'd very surely not be working for Wikimedia Foundation.
>>
> 
> Key word there being "knowingly".

I don't know why the NSA would sneak around in our data centres
mirroring our ethernet ports if they already have almost all of our
access logs by capturing unencrypted traffic as it passes through
XKeyscore nodes.

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

-- Tim Starling


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Anthony]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:27 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:

> I would be fired and jailed before I knowingly let that occur. If this was
> the case I'd very surely not be working for Wikimedia Foundation.
>

Key word there being "knowingly".
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[James Salsman]

Nathan wrote:
>
>... It seems that most of the data they
> collect is wiped within 3 days; that the data itself can only be
> analyzed under a fairly specific set of minimization rules

Are you referring to the 2009 Holder minimization rules which per
http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/06/how-many-americans-does-the-nsa-spy-on-a-lot-of-them.htmlrequire
sharing records on anyone who has ever sent or received email or
chat from a foreign national with the FBI, or the more recent "three hop"
minimization rules which require permanent storage of the records
pertaining to the roughly one billion people who are connected to people
connected to people connected with suspects?
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Todd Allen]

Also keep in mind that WMF has explicitly stated that they received no such
demand. If they had, they still could say "If we had received such a
demand, we couldn't legally discuss it", still comply with the order, and
let us read between the lines. While I don't always agree with WMF, I have
more regard for them than to think they would flat out lie about a matter
that important.
On Jul 31, 2013 7:59 PM, "Marc A. Pelletier"  wrote:

> On 07/31/2013 09:27 PM, Ryan Lane wrote:
> > I would be fired and jailed before I knowingly let that occur. If this
> was
> > the case I'd very surely not be working for Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> And very many of us live outside the jurisdiction of the entities that
> would be doing the monitoring and would be very noisy indeed if
> something of that nature took place.
>
> -- Marc
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Marc A. Pelletier]

On 07/31/2013 07:52 PM, Nathan wrote:
> If anything, I think it's more reasonable to assume that
> Wikipedia (which shares many features with Google, Yahoo, Twitter,
> Facebook and other social networks) has been the subject of this kind
> of demand than that it hasn't.

You're also making an unwarranted leap there: that the Foundation would
comply with such a demand, if one was made, rather than fight it tooth
and nail.  In fact, the WMF probably has acquired quite a reputation
amongst intelligence circles as being quire uncooperative when it comes
to stomping faces with boots.

There are very few people who work for an organization that has as its
primary objective the free dissemination of knowledge that wouldn't be
willing to rattle the cages of those who seek to suppress it.  If
nothing else, we are very good at pointing out egg on faces in a very
public, very visible way.

-- Marc


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Marc A. Pelletier]

On 07/31/2013 09:27 PM, Ryan Lane wrote:
> I would be fired and jailed before I knowingly let that occur. If this was
> the case I'd very surely not be working for Wikimedia Foundation.

And very many of us live outside the jurisdiction of the entities that
would be doing the monitoring and would be very noisy indeed if
something of that nature took place.

-- Marc


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Fred Bauder]

I think it's more reasonable to assume that
> Wikipedia (which shares many features with Google, Yahoo, Twitter,
Facebook and other social networks) has been the subject of this kind
of demand than that it hasn't. No one with direct knowledge would be
able to do anything other than deny it, but we can easily see why data
held by Wikipedia (including partially anonymized e-mails, file
> uploads, talk page communication, etc.) would be of interest to
> intelligence agencies.

The capacity of the Wikimedia Foundation to keep a secret of this nature
is low. Simply too many outlaws; something NSA could probably figure out;
they are not called intelligence for nothing.

Fred

Changed "law" to "low"


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Ryan Lane]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 4:52 PM, Nathan  wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Michael Snow 
> wrote:
> > On 7/31/2013 3:31 PM, Nathan wrote:
> >>
> >> And another thought - you know what unites most of the other companies
> >> represented by the logos in that image? Leaks have confirmed that most
> >> of them are the subject of secret orders to turn over huge amounts of
> >> raw data to the government. They are all bound to secrecy by law, so
> >> without permission none of them are permitted to describe or disclose
> >> the nature or extent of the data demands the U.S. government has made.
> >>
> >> Now if you imagine the puzzle globe on that slide implies that
> >> Wikipedia traffic is retained for intelligence analysis, it's a short
> >> hop to assume that the Wikimedia Foundation is also the subject of a
> >> blanket order transferring its server logs to the NSA.
> >
> > Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter, yes. But mail.ru? The shift from
> > "most" to "all" in the first paragraph may make it easy to assume the
> > similarity is universal, but it's ignoring the full context. That kind of
> > rhetorical shift is a favorite trick of conspiracy theorists, it's how
> they
> > get you to make those short hops to unwarranted conclusions.
> >
> > --Michael Snow
> >
> >
>
> It's hardly a conspiracy theory. Given the differences between mail.ru
> and Wikipedia, I should think it would be clear why one might be
> subject to a direct demand for transferring data while the other is
> not. If anything, I think it's more reasonable to assume that
> Wikipedia (which shares many features with Google, Yahoo, Twitter,
> Facebook and other social networks) has been the subject of this kind
> of demand than that it hasn't. No one with direct knowledge would be
> able to do anything other than deny it, but we can easily see why data
> held by Wikipedia (including partially anonymized e-mails, file
> uploads, talk page communication, etc.) would be of interest to
> intelligence agencies.
>
>
I would be fired and jailed before I knowingly let that occur. If this was
the case I'd very surely not be working for Wikimedia Foundation.

- Ryan
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Fred Bauder]

I think it's more reasonable to assume that
> Wikipedia (which shares many features with Google, Yahoo, Twitter,
> Facebook and other social networks) has been the subject of this kind
> of demand than that it hasn't. No one with direct knowledge would be
> able to do anything other than deny it, but we can easily see why data
> held by Wikipedia (including partially anonymized e-mails, file
> uploads, talk page communication, etc.) would be of interest to
> intelligence agencies.

The capacity of the Wikimedia Foundation to keep a secret of this nature
is law. Simply too many outlaws; something NSA could probably figure out;
they are not called intelligence for nothing.

Fred


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Luis Villa]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Michael Snow wrote:

>
>> Now if you imagine the puzzle globe on that slide implies that
>> Wikipedia traffic is retained for intelligence analysis, it's a short
>> hop to assume that the Wikimedia Foundation is also the subject of a
>> blanket order transferring its server logs to the NSA.
>>
> Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter, yes. But mail.ru? The shift from
> "most" to "all" in the first paragraph may make it easy to assume the
> similarity is universal, but it's ignoring the full context. That kind of
> rhetorical shift is a favorite trick of conspiracy theorists, it's how they
> get you to make those short hops to unwarranted conclusions.


Thanks for the voice of reason, Michael.

As a quick reminder here, before any conspiracy theories about orders and
data retention get out of control:

1) We've flat-out denied any sort of involvement in this, and we continue
to stand by that denial:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/14/prism-surveillance-wikimedia/

2) Take with a grain of salt, of course, but our understanding (based on
the few gag orders that have been made public) is that we could be forced
to not confirm having received a National Security Letter, but we can't
actually be forced to lie about it. In other words, if we'd received one we
would not be allowed to say "we've received one", but we also could not be
forced to deny it - we'd always have the option to remain silent instead.

3) We understand that the rules cause some people not to trust our denial,
and can't entirely blame them! That is why we've asked the government to
change the rules, so that you can have more trust in us next time we issue
the same denial:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/18/wikimedia-foundation-letter-transparency-nsa-prism/

This is not to say that the http/https issue isn't important; like
Engineering, we think progress on that issue is important. But it is
important to keep "we don't yet deploy https as widely as we'd like"
separate from "there are secret orders to transfer all our logs to the NSA."

Thanks-
Luis

-- 
Luis Villa
Deputy General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
415.839.6885 ext. 6810

NOTICE: *This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you
have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the
mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical
reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community
members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity.*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Nathan]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Michael Snow  wrote:
> On 7/31/2013 3:31 PM, Nathan wrote:
>>
>> And another thought - you know what unites most of the other companies
>> represented by the logos in that image? Leaks have confirmed that most
>> of them are the subject of secret orders to turn over huge amounts of
>> raw data to the government. They are all bound to secrecy by law, so
>> without permission none of them are permitted to describe or disclose
>> the nature or extent of the data demands the U.S. government has made.
>>
>> Now if you imagine the puzzle globe on that slide implies that
>> Wikipedia traffic is retained for intelligence analysis, it's a short
>> hop to assume that the Wikimedia Foundation is also the subject of a
>> blanket order transferring its server logs to the NSA.
>
> Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter, yes. But mail.ru? The shift from
> "most" to "all" in the first paragraph may make it easy to assume the
> similarity is universal, but it's ignoring the full context. That kind of
> rhetorical shift is a favorite trick of conspiracy theorists, it's how they
> get you to make those short hops to unwarranted conclusions.
>
> --Michael Snow
>
>

It's hardly a conspiracy theory. Given the differences between mail.ru
and Wikipedia, I should think it would be clear why one might be
subject to a direct demand for transferring data while the other is
not. If anything, I think it's more reasonable to assume that
Wikipedia (which shares many features with Google, Yahoo, Twitter,
Facebook and other social networks) has been the subject of this kind
of demand than that it hasn't. No one with direct knowledge would be
able to do anything other than deny it, but we can easily see why data
held by Wikipedia (including partially anonymized e-mails, file
uploads, talk page communication, etc.) would be of interest to
intelligence agencies.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Michael Snow]

On 7/31/2013 3:31 PM, Nathan wrote:

And another thought - you know what unites most of the other companies
represented by the logos in that image? Leaks have confirmed that most
of them are the subject of secret orders to turn over huge amounts of
raw data to the government. They are all bound to secrecy by law, so
without permission none of them are permitted to describe or disclose
the nature or extent of the data demands the U.S. government has made.

Now if you imagine the puzzle globe on that slide implies that
Wikipedia traffic is retained for intelligence analysis, it's a short
hop to assume that the Wikimedia Foundation is also the subject of a
blanket order transferring its server logs to the NSA.
Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter, yes. But mail.ru? The shift from 
"most" to "all" in the first paragraph may make it easy to assume the 
similarity is universal, but it's ignoring the full context. That kind 
of rhetorical shift is a favorite trick of conspiracy theorists, it's 
how they get you to make those short hops to unwarranted conclusions.


--Michael Snow

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Nathan]

And another thought - you know what unites most of the other companies
represented by the logos in that image? Leaks have confirmed that most
of them are the subject of secret orders to turn over huge amounts of
raw data to the government. They are all bound to secrecy by law, so
without permission none of them are permitted to describe or disclose
the nature or extent of the data demands the U.S. government has made.

Now if you imagine the puzzle globe on that slide implies that
Wikipedia traffic is retained for intelligence analysis, it's a short
hop to assume that the Wikimedia Foundation is also the subject of a
blanket order transferring its server logs to the NSA.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Nathan]

Thanks David. Always appreciate your wit.

That said, I wasn't claiming that anticipating being monitored was
exceptional. Quite the opposite; I said I was surprised there was
anyone who didn't already assume everything was trapped and traced.
Your reaction of "Fuck. Fuck these people." suggests you were
surprised they might be keeping tabs on Wikipedia. Although I wouldn't
take the use of the Wikipedia logo as complete confirmation (it could
just be an illustration, for the audience, of how much people use http
traffic), its hard to imagine most people would be shocked to learn
Wikipedia traffic isn't exempt from a dragnet that catches literally
everything else.

~Nathan

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[David Gerard]

On 31 July 2013 23:01, Nathan  wrote:

> I think that's just naive. Of course it was always denied until it
> became impossible to deny it. That's how these things work. But I have
> honestly assumed for many years that virtually everything transmitted
> over almost any electronic medium was collected and analyzed in some
> way. That appears to be the case, and in fact, I expected them to have


Well done! You're very clever.


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Nathan]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 5:53 PM, Matthew Walker  wrote:
>>
>> What surprises me is that anyone is surprised by any of this information.
>
>
> It's one thing to have suspicions and theories about it; but if the third
> party is constantly denying the allegations and with no recourse there's no
> point in getting angry. Now that we have reasonable doubt, I hesitate to
> call it proof, we can start making tremendous amounts of noise.
>
> ~Matt Walker

I think that's just naive. Of course it was always denied until it
became impossible to deny it. That's how these things work. But I have
honestly assumed for many years that virtually everything transmitted
over almost any electronic medium was collected and analyzed in some
way. That appears to be the case, and in fact, I expected them to have
gone further than they have. It seems that most of the data they
collect is wiped within 3 days; that the data itself can only be
analyzed under a fairly specific set of minimization rules after the
approval of a senior executive in the administration, that the rules
are drawn from generally accepted 4th amendment jurisprudence, etc.

The cynic in me is also convinced that virtually all Western countries
do the same sort of thing, if probably on a smaller scale. I would bet
all the money I have that at a minimum the French, the English and the
Germans maintain roughly similar intelligence gathering programs. But
of course, they will deny it until it becomes impossible to deny it.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Matthew Walker]

>
> What surprises me is that anyone is surprised by any of this information.


It's one thing to have suspicions and theories about it; but if the third
party is constantly denying the allegations and with no recourse there's no
point in getting angry. Now that we have reasonable doubt, I hesitate to
call it proof, we can start making tremendous amounts of noise.

~Matt Walker
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Nathan]

What surprises me is that anyone is surprised by any of this information.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Keegan Peterzell]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 3:47 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:
>
> >
> Why would we expect that we weren't being targeted? Knowing what people are
> looking up is powerful knowledge.
>
> - Ryan


Indeed.  It's much more safe and sensible to just go down to your library
and check out a book.

Oh, wait.

-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[David Gerard]

On 31 July 2013 21:47, Ryan Lane  wrote:

> Why would we expect that we weren't being targeted? Knowing what people are
> looking up is powerful knowledge.


That doesn't make it one dot less reprehensible.


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Ryan Lane]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 1:00 PM, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 31 July 2013 21:00, David Gerard  wrote:
> > On 31 July 2013 20:48, Risker  wrote:
>
> >> I believe the concern derives from one of the subpages of the article:
> >>
> https://image.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2013/7/31/1375269604628/KS8-001.jpg
> >> (Credit to David Gerard for digging that out; this same issue is under
> >> discussion on the Wikitech-L list.)
>
> > Yes, that's the image that made me say out loud "Fuck. Fuck these
> people."
>
>
> How DARE they use us as their example. HOW DARE THEY.
>
>
Why would we expect that we weren't being targeted? Knowing what people are
looking up is powerful knowledge.

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

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 7:28 PM, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 31 July 2013 19:27, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 5:36 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
>
> >> Erik, James - how did de:wp convinced you when en:wp hasn't?
>
> > I don't really agree with your framing - it's not about who's
> > convincing who, but being on a sustainable path to making VisualEditor
> > continually better, with an appropriately diverse and large base of
>
>
> This comes across to me as a full and reasonable answer. Thanks :-)
>
>
> - d.



Commiserations. If would hazard a guess that 450+ clear and indignant votes
against the VisualEditor on the German Wikipedia, collected within the
space of a weekend, spoke much louder than a trickle of moans by a few
dozen people on the English Wikipedia, where almost everybody was at first
inclined to be polite and "assume good faith". Most people did not want to
rain on the Foundation's parade.

I mean, look at how Jimbo sold the VisualEditor to the press at the start
of the roll-out:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/10196578/Wikipedia-introduces-new-features-to-entice-editors.html

---o0o---

“VisualEditor is a user interface that is much more familiar to people.
When you click edit you get something that looks very much like any word
processor, and you can change things and do whatever you want.”

---o0o---

"Whatever you want" indeed. Except add a citation:

http://www.dnaindia.com/blogs/1863070/post-wikipedia-editing-session-for-journalism-students-at-sophia-polytechnic

---o0o---

"After spending a bit of time dealing with connectivity issues and *finding
out that the Visual Editor doesn’t function on mobile devices and Internet
Explorer*, everyone started rolling on the demo-cum-live editing session.
The volunteers had chosen two biography articles for creation on the
English language Wikipedia, based on a list of possible subjects provided
by the department. Rohini did a step-by-step demo of how to create a page,
how to ensure there are enough third-party references available etc, and
created a biographical stub on Dina Vakil. The exact same exercise was
given to the students, who followed the same process in their groups, and
created a stub article on Ritu Menon. *All the groups got stuck at using
the reference/ citations templates on the Visual Editor, so we switched
back to wiki syntax.*"

---o0o---

In part, the German Wikipedia had the advantage of seeing the problems
accumulate on the English Wikipedia before it was "their turn" to
experience the same horrors. They had a chance to see the reality as
opposed to the PR spin, and to see how big the gap was between what was
promised and what was delivered. Seeing the mountain of unfixed bugs
assembled as a result of the English Wikipedia's feedback, they wisely said
"nein, danke".

I also don't understand why the Foundation would need any more feedback at
this point in time. Developers haven't even fixed bugs that have been known
for months. It seems just catching up with Bugzilla would be enough to keep
them busy for a while.

For example, I just learnt that it was reported almost two months ago that
you cannot take a reference into the clipboard. If you try, you either
can't do it at all, or you actually end up accidentally deleting the
reference content, leaving Wikipedia with just the plain-character string
"[1]". This is a problem that can do pretty nasty damage to an article,
besides angering editors, or making newbies feel incompetent if the next
person shouts at them because they deleted a perfectly good reference.

That bug was first reported on 13 June.

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49396

It was reported again on 2 July.

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50594

It was reported again on 29 July (by me).

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52212

It still hasn't been fixed. I fail to see the point in having the same
error reported time and again, and having developers spend their time
marking reports "Resolved" because they are duplicates of earlier reports
of the same, still unsolved issue, rather than spending their time actually
fixing the bug.

Andreas
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[David Gerard]

On 31 July 2013 21:00, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 31 July 2013 20:48, Risker  wrote:

>> I believe the concern derives from one of the subpages of the article:
>> https://image.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2013/7/31/1375269604628/KS8-001.jpg
>> (Credit to David Gerard for digging that out; this same issue is under
>> discussion on the Wikitech-L list.)

> Yes, that's the image that made me say out loud "Fuck. Fuck these people."


How DARE they use us as their example. HOW DARE THEY.


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[David Gerard]

On 31 July 2013 20:48, Risker  wrote:

> I believe the concern derives from one of the subpages of the article:
> https://image.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2013/7/31/1375269604628/KS8-001.jpg
> (Credit to David Gerard for digging that out; this same issue is under
> discussion on the Wikitech-L list.)


Yes, that's the image that made me say out loud "Fuck. Fuck these people."


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[James Alexander]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 12:48 PM, Risker  wrote:

> I believe the concern derives from one of the subpages of the article:
>
> https://image.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2013/7/31/1375269604628/KS8-001.jpg
>
> (Credit to David Gerard for digging that out; this same issue is under
> discussion on the Wikitech-L list.)
>
> Risker
>
>
Aye, it's a short bit down the page but included around screenshots and
explanations of the tools they use to analyze traffic by keyword (and so
what led to Jimmy's understandable reaction imo)

James
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Fred Bauder]

Look at the attached image.

Fred

> Hmmm, the word "wiki" isn't named anywhere.
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:43 PM, Risker  wrote:
>
>> Apparently Wikipedia was or is one of the targeted websites.
>>
>> Risker
>>
>>
>> On 31 July 2013 15:42, Huib Laurens  wrote:
>>
>> > How is this related to the foundation?
>> >
>> >
>> > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:22 PM, Fred Bauder 
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > > See attachment.
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> >
>> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data
>> > >
>> > > Fred
>> > > ___
>> > > 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,
>> > 
>> >
>> ___
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>> 
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Met vriendelijke groet,
>
> Huib Laurens
> ___
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> 



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Risker]

I believe the concern derives from one of the subpages of the article:
https://image.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2013/7/31/1375269604628/KS8-001.jpg

(Credit to David Gerard for digging that out; this same issue is under
discussion on the Wikitech-L list.)

Risker


On 31 July 2013 15:44, Huib Laurens  wrote:

> Hmmm, the word "wiki" isn't named anywhere.
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:43 PM, Risker  wrote:
>
> > Apparently Wikipedia was or is one of the targeted websites.
> >
> > Risker
> >
> >
> > On 31 July 2013 15:42, Huib Laurens  wrote:
> >
> > > How is this related to the foundation?
> > >
> > >
> > > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:22 PM, Fred Bauder 
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > See attachment.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data
> > > >
> > > > Fred
> > > > ___
> > > > 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,
> > > 
> > >
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Met vriendelijke groet,
>
> Huib Laurens
> ___
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> 
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[James Alexander]

It's from a slide they have a bit down the page with our logal about why
they are interested in http. You can search for "nearly everything a
typical user does on the internet"

You can also see the slide on Jimmy's tweet about said issue:
https://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/362626509648834560

There is an ongoing thread on wikitech about https again stemming from this.

James

James Alexander
Legal and Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation
(415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur


On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Huib Laurens  wrote:

> Hmmm, the word "wiki" isn't named anywhere.
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:43 PM, Risker  wrote:
>
> > Apparently Wikipedia was or is one of the targeted websites.
> >
> > Risker
> >
> >
> > On 31 July 2013 15:42, Huib Laurens  wrote:
> >
> > > How is this related to the foundation?
> > >
> > >
> > > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:22 PM, Fred Bauder 
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > See attachment.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data
> > > >
> > > > Fred
> > > > ___
> > > > 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,
> > > 
> > >
> > ___
> > 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,
> 
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Huib Laurens]

Hmmm, the word "wiki" isn't named anywhere.


On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:43 PM, Risker  wrote:

> Apparently Wikipedia was or is one of the targeted websites.
>
> Risker
>
>
> On 31 July 2013 15:42, Huib Laurens  wrote:
>
> > How is this related to the foundation?
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:22 PM, Fred Bauder 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > See attachment.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data
> > >
> > > Fred
> > > ___
> > > 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,
> > 
> >
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>



-- 
Met vriendelijke groet,

Huib Laurens
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Risker]

Apparently Wikipedia was or is one of the targeted websites.

Risker


On 31 July 2013 15:42, Huib Laurens  wrote:

> How is this related to the foundation?
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:22 PM, Fred Bauder 
> wrote:
>
> > See attachment.
> >
> >
> >
> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data
> >
> > Fred
> > ___
> > 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,
> 
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Huib Laurens]

How is this related to the foundation?


On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:22 PM, Fred Bauder  wrote:

> See attachment.
>
>
> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data
>
> Fred
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>



-- 
Met vriendelijke groet,

Huib Laurens
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Fred Bauder]

> See attachment.
>
> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data

"the NSA has created a multi-tiered system that allows analysts to store
"interesting" content in other databases, such as one named Pinwale which
can store material for up to five years. "

Fred


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[Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Fred Bauder]

See attachment.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data

Fred___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] On the gentrification of Wikipedia, by Superbass (was: Visual Editor)

[Florence Devouard]

On 7/29/13 10:50 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:

On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 1:12 PM, Jan Ainali  wrote:

I have not read the vision statement as it is the production of knowledge
that need be availible to every human being, but the consumption.


Actually, having co-drafted the Vision Statement (it was drafted at
the October 2006 Board retreat in Frankfurt and then finalized after
community discussion), I can assure you that that was not the intent.
I recall that Florence and I talked about that specific aspect a fair
bit. We proposed the language "share in" over "given free access to"
in order to emphasize that it's not a one-directional process (some
treasure trove of knowledge that you are given access to), but a
process we are creating an opportunity to participate in. It could be
made clearer, but that was the intent.



I second that statement

Florence


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

[David Gerard]

On 31 July 2013 19:27, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 5:36 AM, David Gerard  wrote:

>> Erik, James - how did de:wp convinced you when en:wp hasn't?

> I don't really agree with your framing - it's not about who's
> convincing who, but being on a sustainable path to making VisualEditor
> continually better, with an appropriately diverse and large base of


This comes across to me as a full and reasonable answer. Thanks :-)


- d.

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

[Erik Moeller]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 5:36 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> Certainly. However, it's the obvious question to ask, and a curious
> question to spend several paragraphs not answering.
>
> Erik, James - how did de:wp convinced you when en:wp hasn't?

Hi David,

I don't really agree with your framing - it's not about who's
convincing who, but being on a sustainable path to making VisualEditor
continually better, with an appropriately diverse and large base of
users. That's a balancing act with any community. In the case of
dewiki, it became clear pretty quickly that any additional benefit of
continued feedback would be outweighed by strife and upset about the
change to the default experience. In enwiki and other deployments, in
spite of upset, we've received a ton of useful and actionable feedback
through all of July that's enabled us to continually improve, but
given the enwiki RFC on default state, it's clear that the full-on
change of the default experience isn't yet sustainable in the long run
as a way to run the beta. So we're looking at alternatives, as per my
prior note, rather than waiting for the RFC to come to a close. Once
again, the only way to continually improve VisualEditor is to ensure
that we have a large base of continued use from a diverse group of
users, minimizing self-selection bias, but we'll explore different
ways to get there.

I don't believe in hard and fast rules - in managing big and complex
changes, we need to be patient with each other. On your end, we ask
for forgiveness because we're going to sometimes do things that get in
your way, confuse and annoy you in the process of finding ways to
improve the user experience. On our end, we need to show flexibility
and willingness to find a workable solution for the main problem:
ensuring we're making development decisions in a real world context,
not in a laboratory.

All best,
Erik

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

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

[Robert Rohde]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Amir E. Aharoni
 wrote:
> God no. The whole idea of VE is to make people NOT have to remember
> CSS class names.
>
> If a template is a very common in a project, it should be a button
> with complete GUI in the VE's toolbar in that project. If a template
> is very common in many projects, it should be a button with complete
> GUI in all projects.

Enwiki has 300 templates used more than 100,000 times.  There are 1800
templates used more than 10,000 times.

That's an awful lot of buttons (or an awfully long drop-down).

There may be room for some special purpose buttons, but many tasks are
going to need to be accomplished by generalized tools.

-Robert Rohde

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

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2013/7/31 Brad Jorsch (Anomie) :
> On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 12:47 PM, Gerard Meijssen
>  wrote:
>> Quality like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One thing that I learned
>> today is that the Visual Editor will have functionality that only the more
>> accomplished editors will enter directly or they will use templates. With
>> VE these templates are redundant.
>
> Some, perhaps. But would you rather use a template or remember the
> multiple buttons in VE and the right CSS style/class string (if that's
> even possible in VE?) to do the same thing manually?

God no. The whole idea of VE is to make people NOT have to remember
CSS class names.

If a template is a very common in a project, it should be a button
with complete GUI in the VE's toolbar in that project. If a template
is very common in many projects, it should be a button with complete
GUI in all projects.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

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

[Brad Jorsch (Anomie)]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 12:47 PM, Gerard Meijssen
 wrote:
> Quality like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One thing that I learned
> today is that the Visual Editor will have functionality that only the more
> accomplished editors will enter directly or they will use templates. With
> VE these templates are redundant.

Some, perhaps. But would you rather use a template or remember the
multiple buttons in VE and the right CSS style/class string (if that's
even possible in VE?) to do the same thing manually?

> From my perspective, the future will be with the VE and not with the
> horrible tortuous templates that require study to use. One of the reasons
> why I prefer Wikidata over Wikipedia is that Wikidata does not have
> templates and is certainly as relevant. When I notice the improvements in
> the Wikidata experience, I can only applaud the improvements made.

Wikidata also deals with discrete bits of usually-unformatted data,
rather than heavily-formatted encyclopedia articles. I'm not sure
you're comparing apples to apples there.

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

[Risker]

On 31 July 2013 13:32, rupert THURNER  wrote:

> Am 31.07.2013 15:07 schrieb "Risker" :
> >
> > On 31 July 2013 08:36, David Gerard  wrote:
> >
> > > On 31 July 2013 10:59, rupert THURNER 
> wrote:
> > >
> > > >> de:wp convinced you. What would it take to convince you on en:wp?
> (I'm
> > > >> asking for a clear objective criterion here. If you can only offer a
> > > >> subjective one, please explain how de:wp convinced you when en:wp
> > > >> hasn't.)
> > >
> > > > Hi David, i am editing on dewp and enwp. I consider myself an
> experienced
> > > > editor, but not an expert. I did not participate voting in dewp, but
> i
> > > like
> > > > to try ve from time to time. Beeing a software developper I fully
> support
> > > > eriks arguments before. Imo pragmatic and flexible decisions help
> such
> > > > development a lot, just like Erik explained.
> > >
> > >
> > > Certainly. However, it's the obvious question to ask, and a curious
> > > question to spend several paragraphs not answering.
> > >
> > > Erik, James - how did de:wp convinced you when en:wp hasn't?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > I would also like to see a direct answer to David's very specific
> > question.
> >
> From a software developers standpoint its nice to have the 2 biggest wikis
> following a different strategy. Enwp is enough to get a lot of testers. But
> some accommodation of the users comes with it. Switching over wpde later
> gets again not accommodated and more critical feedback.
>
>
Without rejecting your position, what we really want to hear is Erik
Moeller's reasoning, in his role as VP Engineering.  It was Erik's
decision, and we want him to explain his reasoning in his own words.

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

[Peter Southwood]

It is not so much the presence of the button, that I ,and preumably some 
others, object to, as that if you switch from one wiki to another a lot, 
which I do, you tend to click on the wrong link a lot of the time, and that 
wastes time for absolutely no useful purpose whatsoever. The links should be 
static and easily distinguishable from the edit links on the other wikis. I 
am willing to help with beta testing, but only if they sort out the things 
that annoy me. If they dont, I will simply leave it to other people. When 
they run out of people willing to help then they will have to make changes 
to get them back. Its a simple supply and demand situation. If the devs dont 
supply what the users demand, the users will stop using it. Whether what the 
users demand is possible, practicable or even objectively desirable is a 
different issue.

Cheers,
Peter

- Original Message - 
From: "Gerard Meijssen" 

To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" 
Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2013 6:47 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and talk 
aboutVisualEditor




Hoi,
Quality like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One thing that I 
learned

today is that the Visual Editor will have functionality that only the more
accomplished editors will enter directly or they will use templates. With
VE these templates are redundant.

From my perspective, the future will be with the VE and not with the
horrible tortuous templates that require study to use. One of the reasons
why I prefer Wikidata over Wikipedia is that Wikidata does not have
templates and is certainly as relevant. When I notice the improvements in
the Wikidata experience, I can only applaud the improvements made.

What is truly beyond me is that people protest the availability of the VE
edit button. It is the choice of everybody to use VE or not. When they do
they will have a similar experience I have with Wikidata.. You can only
rejoice for the improvements that are made. Given that the improvements to
the VE are a top priority, this experience can only be that much more
enjoyable..

For all the oldies who complain about VE I want to remind them about the
Commons experience; Commons existed without any functionality. It took
months before we could use the images in any Wikipedia.

Really stop moaning and let that button be.
Thanks,
   Gerard


On 31 July 2013 18:26, Marc A. Pelletier  wrote:


On 07/31/2013 10:52 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
> I think it would be helpful, if possible, to give some guesstimates of
> this, i.e.: how longer a wait it would cost us to reach some rank of
> quality if the deployment was downscaled; or, what would be the
> "deadline" for feedback on aspects X and Y to be actually able to be
> processed and worked on, before previous development decisions become
> irreversible or the developers move on to something else.

Is it even possible to quantify this without just pulling numbers out of
one's ass?  It's not just a matter of "10 times the number of users
means 10 times the number of bugs found" since the /profile/ of the
users changes drastically as well.

For instance, allowing the VE only for registered editors is guaranteed
to never reveal bugs/issues that only affects anonymous editing or
interaction between anons and registered editors.

Likewise, requiring opt-in or allowing opt-out changes the makeup of the
users a great deal (the former making certain that only editors with at
least some familiarity with how we work use it and thus preventing
usability issues for "true newbies" from being found, the latter by
allowing the more vocal and knowing segments of editors to "hide" the VE
and no longer see issues they alone are well-equipped to notice or
evaluate).

-- Marc


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

[rupert THURNER]

Am 31.07.2013 15:07 schrieb "Risker" :
>
> On 31 July 2013 08:36, David Gerard  wrote:
>
> > On 31 July 2013 10:59, rupert THURNER  wrote:
> >
> > >> de:wp convinced you. What would it take to convince you on en:wp?
(I'm
> > >> asking for a clear objective criterion here. If you can only offer a
> > >> subjective one, please explain how de:wp convinced you when en:wp
> > >> hasn't.)
> >
> > > Hi David, i am editing on dewp and enwp. I consider myself an
experienced
> > > editor, but not an expert. I did not participate voting in dewp, but i
> > like
> > > to try ve from time to time. Beeing a software developper I fully
support
> > > eriks arguments before. Imo pragmatic and flexible decisions help such
> > > development a lot, just like Erik explained.
> >
> >
> > Certainly. However, it's the obvious question to ask, and a curious
> > question to spend several paragraphs not answering.
> >
> > Erik, James - how did de:wp convinced you when en:wp hasn't?
> >
> >
> >
> I would also like to see a direct answer to David's very specific
> question.
>
From a software developers standpoint its nice to have the 2 biggest wikis
following a different strategy. Enwp is enough to get a lot of testers. But
some accommodation of the users comes with it. Switching over wpde later
gets again not accommodated and more critical feedback.
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[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Wikimedia UK monthly report, June 2013

[Stevie Benton]

Hello everyone,

Please see below for the Wikimedia UK monthly report for June. For those of
you who prefer to view the report on wiki, you can see it
here
.

We always welcome contributions to the chapter's monthly reports from
engaged Wikimedians. Please visit the reports page for
more.

Thanks and regards,

Stevie

Below is the Wikimedia UK monthly
report for
the period 1st to 30th June 2013. If you want to keep up with the chapter's
activities as they happen, please subscribe to our
blog
, join a UK mailing
list,
and/or follow us on Twitter . If you have
any questions or comments, please drop us a line on this report's talk
page
.
 Contents  [hide ]

   - 1 Program 
activities
  - 1.1 Community
 - 1.1.1 Cambridge University Wikipedia Garden
Party
 - 1.1.2 Microgrant
outcome
  - 1.2 GLAM
activities
  - 1.3 
Technology
  - 1.4 Other
activities
 - 1.4.1 Wiki Loves
Monuments
 - 1.4.2
Microgrants
  - 1.5 UK press coverage (and coverage of UK projects &
activities)
  - 1.6 Blog posts this
month
  - 1.7 Upcoming activities in May and
June
 - 1.7.1 May 
 - 1.7.2 June 
  - 2 Administrative
activities
  - 2.1 Board
activities
  - 2.2 News from the Chief
Exec
  - 2.3 
Communications
  - 2.4 Fundraising and
Membership

Program activities Community Cambridge University Wikipedia Garden Party
 
 
A peacock visited the CUWPS garden party

A Wikipedia Garden
Party
was
held in Cambridge University on 17 June. The party is Cambridge University
Wikipedia Society's (CUWPS) 
contribution
to the great Cambridge University tradition of post-exam celebrations known
confusingly as May Week , and
marks the end of the first year of CUWPS.

The party was attended by eight people and one stray peacock. The human
attendees included seven current Cambridge students (five of them were also
Wikimedians) plus Charles
Matthews,
an alumnus who has been faithfully organising Wikipedia meetups in
Cambridge for many years. A Wikipedia cake was served at the party.

CUWPS is now looking forward to next year. The Wikipedia stall will be back
in the Cambridge University societies fair on 8-9 October and we need extra
WMUK volunteers behind the stall! Please contact WMUK's education
organiser, Toni Sant, if you're interested.

 GLAM activities

June saw a range of GLAM events with topics ranging from Military History
to Ballet and Black Music in the UK.

The three month residency at Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums came to an
end, highlights included a dialogue with WikiProject ships on the English
Wikipedia which lead to the release of this image of a battleship
launch
on
the Tyne - now included in two featured articles.

Future events that were worked on this month range from an editathon at
Conway hall in Augu

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

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Quality like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One thing that I learned
today is that the Visual Editor will have functionality that only the more
accomplished editors will enter directly or they will use templates. With
VE these templates are redundant.

From my perspective, the future will be with the VE and not with the
horrible tortuous templates that require study to use. One of the reasons
why I prefer Wikidata over Wikipedia is that Wikidata does not have
templates and is certainly as relevant. When I notice the improvements in
the Wikidata experience, I can only applaud the improvements made.

What is truly beyond me is that people protest the availability of the VE
edit button. It is the choice of everybody to use VE or not. When they do
they will have a similar experience I have with Wikidata.. You can only
rejoice for the improvements that are made. Given that the improvements to
the VE are a top priority, this experience can only be that much more
enjoyable..

For all the oldies who complain about VE I want to remind them about the
Commons experience; Commons existed without any functionality. It took
months before we could use the images in any Wikipedia.

Really stop moaning and let that button be.
Thanks,
Gerard


On 31 July 2013 18:26, Marc A. Pelletier  wrote:

> On 07/31/2013 10:52 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
> > I think it would be helpful, if possible, to give some guesstimates of
> > this, i.e.: how longer a wait it would cost us to reach some rank of
> > quality if the deployment was downscaled; or, what would be the
> > "deadline" for feedback on aspects X and Y to be actually able to be
> > processed and worked on, before previous development decisions become
> > irreversible or the developers move on to something else.
>
> Is it even possible to quantify this without just pulling numbers out of
> one's ass?  It's not just a matter of "10 times the number of users
> means 10 times the number of bugs found" since the /profile/ of the
> users changes drastically as well.
>
> For instance, allowing the VE only for registered editors is guaranteed
> to never reveal bugs/issues that only affects anonymous editing or
> interaction between anons and registered editors.
>
> Likewise, requiring opt-in or allowing opt-out changes the makeup of the
> users a great deal (the former making certain that only editors with at
> least some familiarity with how we work use it and thus preventing
> usability issues for "true newbies" from being found, the latter by
> allowing the more vocal and knowing segments of editors to "hide" the VE
> and no longer see issues they alone are well-equipped to notice or
> evaluate).
>
> -- Marc
>
>
> ___
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> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and talk about VisualEditor

[Marc A. Pelletier]

On 07/31/2013 10:52 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
> I think it would be helpful, if possible, to give some guesstimates of
> this, i.e.: how longer a wait it would cost us to reach some rank of
> quality if the deployment was downscaled; or, what would be the
> "deadline" for feedback on aspects X and Y to be actually able to be
> processed and worked on, before previous development decisions become
> irreversible or the developers move on to something else.

Is it even possible to quantify this without just pulling numbers out of
one's ass?  It's not just a matter of "10 times the number of users
means 10 times the number of bugs found" since the /profile/ of the
users changes drastically as well.

For instance, allowing the VE only for registered editors is guaranteed
to never reveal bugs/issues that only affects anonymous editing or
interaction between anons and registered editors.

Likewise, requiring opt-in or allowing opt-out changes the makeup of the
users a great deal (the former making certain that only editors with at
least some familiarity with how we work use it and thus preventing
usability issues for "true newbies" from being found, the latter by
allowing the more vocal and knowing segments of editors to "hide" the VE
and no longer see issues they alone are well-equipped to notice or
evaluate).

-- Marc


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

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Erik Moeller, 31/07/2013 07:28:

We can't just work through a
mountain of feedback in a waterfall development model and hope that
all our assumptions about how to fix this or that complex issue will
work out in practice.


+1
Also, such an important feature cannot be based on biased feedback from 
a subset of users and projects.


Erik Moeller, 30/07/2013 18:03:
> The steady stream of feedback has
> been invaluable, and I think the changelog of the last few weeks
> demonstrates that beyond all doubt.

I think it would be helpful, if possible, to give some guesstimates of 
this, i.e.: how longer a wait it would cost us to reach some rank of 
quality if the deployment was downscaled; or, what would be the 
"deadline" for feedback on aspects X and Y to be actually able to be 
processed and worked on, before previous development decisions become 
irreversible or the developers move on to something else.
	We have seen some other products stuck for a few weeks or months in 
semi-ready state, which have then been deployed and have experienced 
some problems that were not predicted; or other products which have been 
used only on en.wiki (with dozens of WMF staffers involved in processing 
the feedback from one single wiki) and which are later deployed to other 
wikis when the product is already in maintenance mode, so that those 
wikis will never have a chance to influence the development.
	If de.wiki users or other users discussing/voting on whether to delay 
wider VE deployment could do so knowing that "delaying by x months will 
make us wait y months more to get use case w to work", or "if we delay 
after day z, feedback from our community will not influence the 
deployment of w", the conclusions would be more meaningful. If one 
assumes that the cost of delaying is 0, as it's what we've been using 
for 12 years, of course the benefits will always seem to outweigh the 
downsides.


Nemo

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

[Peter Southwood]

It is a fair question.
Peter
- Original Message - 
From: "David Gerard" 

To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" 
Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2013 2:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and talk 
aboutVisualEditor




On 31 July 2013 10:59, rupert THURNER  wrote:


de:wp convinced you. What would it take to convince you on en:wp? (I'm
asking for a clear objective criterion here. If you can only offer a
subjective one, please explain how de:wp convinced you when en:wp
hasn't.)



Hi David, i am editing on dewp and enwp. I consider myself an experienced
editor, but not an expert. I did not participate voting in dewp, but i 
like

to try ve from time to time. Beeing a software developper I fully support
eriks arguments before. Imo pragmatic and flexible decisions help such
development a lot, just like Erik explained.



Certainly. However, it's the obvious question to ask, and a curious
question to spend several paragraphs not answering.

Erik, James - how did de:wp convinced you when en:wp hasn't?


- d.

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

[Risker]

On 31 July 2013 08:36, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 31 July 2013 10:59, rupert THURNER  wrote:
>
> >> de:wp convinced you. What would it take to convince you on en:wp? (I'm
> >> asking for a clear objective criterion here. If you can only offer a
> >> subjective one, please explain how de:wp convinced you when en:wp
> >> hasn't.)
>
> > Hi David, i am editing on dewp and enwp. I consider myself an experienced
> > editor, but not an expert. I did not participate voting in dewp, but i
> like
> > to try ve from time to time. Beeing a software developper I fully support
> > eriks arguments before. Imo pragmatic and flexible decisions help such
> > development a lot, just like Erik explained.
>
>
> Certainly. However, it's the obvious question to ask, and a curious
> question to spend several paragraphs not answering.
>
> Erik, James - how did de:wp convinced you when en:wp hasn't?
>
>
>
I would also like to see a direct answer to David's very specific
question.

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

[David Gerard]

On 31 July 2013 10:59, rupert THURNER  wrote:

>> de:wp convinced you. What would it take to convince you on en:wp? (I'm
>> asking for a clear objective criterion here. If you can only offer a
>> subjective one, please explain how de:wp convinced you when en:wp
>> hasn't.)

> Hi David, i am editing on dewp and enwp. I consider myself an experienced
> editor, but not an expert. I did not participate voting in dewp, but i like
> to try ve from time to time. Beeing a software developper I fully support
> eriks arguments before. Imo pragmatic and flexible decisions help such
> development a lot, just like Erik explained.


Certainly. However, it's the obvious question to ask, and a curious
question to spend several paragraphs not answering.

Erik, James - how did de:wp convinced you when en:wp hasn't?


- d.

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

[Lodewijk]

Thanks Erik for the helpful attitude.

Out of curiosity (not sure if this was discussed in more detail before -
apologies for that), is it indeed true that Visual Editor is significantly
slower than the regular editor (it feels like that to me, but might be my
computer playing tricks on me), and is there any chance this will be
overcome soon? I'm asking because you state that you want VE to move
outside the small group of users - and making it faster might quite easily
make it more popular with the non-diehard-non-new users. Right now I often
simply use the regular editor for simple edits, because it is just quicker
(less clicks, but also faster loading).

Lodewijk


2013/7/31 rupert THURNER 

> Am 30.07.2013 20:14 schrieb "David Gerard" :
> >
> > On 30 July 2013 17:03, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> >
> > >If the overwhelming community sentiment
> > > is that the cost of continuous improvement with a large scale user
> > > base is larger than the benefit (as it was on dewiki), we'll switch
> > > back (or to a compromise), and use a more rigid set of acceptance
> > > criteria and a less rigid deadline for getting back into large scale
> > > usage later in the year.
> >
> >
> > de:wp convinced you. What would it take to convince you on en:wp? (I'm
> > asking for a clear objective criterion here. If you can only offer a
> > subjective one, please explain how de:wp convinced you when en:wp
> > hasn't.)
>
> Hi David, i am editing on dewp and enwp. I consider myself an experienced
> editor, but not an expert. I did not participate voting in dewp, but i like
> to try ve from time to time. Beeing a software developper I fully support
> eriks arguments before. Imo pragmatic and flexible decisions help such
> development a lot, just like Erik explained.
>
> What i would have hoped though is that the wiki syntax gets changed where
> it is difficult to implement. And what i would have expected are more ideas
> to just edit parts of a page, like e.g. hotcat does it, to avoid such a
> mammoth dealing with everything which feels slow then.
>
> To give three examples:
> 1. why not define a metadata section for every page, where categories, and
> access rights are stored? Then these parts already can be split out of the
> "page ve".
>
> 2. Why not having a read and edit mode? Edit mode just adds "edit" links to
> all applicable parts of a page.
>
> 3. Why not decide references can only be after paragraphs, and edited via
> edit links showing up in Edit mode? so this part can be split out of "page
> ve".
>
> Rupert
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>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Questions for the WMF Board of Trustees?

[María Sefidari]

El 30/07/2013, a las 10:07, Alice Wiegand  escribió:

> Hi Lodewijk,
> I like the idea of having more opportunities to talk and to try out
> different approaches.
> That was the reason for Patricio and me to offer a Chapters Lunch Meeting
> on Sunday, where we want to talk about the role of Chapters Selected Board
> members, expectations, limitations, and the relationship we have. I read
> your suggestion like something similar, concentrating more on particular
> issues and diving somehow deeper into the subject. And yes, I would be glad
> to participate if it matches with my schedule.

+1.

Kind regards,

María

> 
> Alice.
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 7:34 AM, Bishakha Datta 
> wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 8:20 PM, Lodewijk >> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi Phoebe,
>>> 
>>> thanks for pointing to this!
>>> 
>>> I see that this year we only have one hour of board Q&A. I have always
>> seen
>>> a lot of value in these board discussions, especially when it can come to
>>> actually that: discussions. As there are several discussion sessions
>>> scheduled, without a specific topic, would you and perhaps a few other
>>> board members be willing to commit to use some of these sessions to dig a
>>> bit deeper into a few specific topics? For example, would there be three
>>> board members willing to have a round table discussion about transparency
>>> and openness at a board level?
>> 
>> I'd be interested in participating in this one - but cannot take the lead
>> on making it happen.
>> 
>> Do let us know if this does get fixed during wikimania. Cannot make it 9
>> Aug 2-4 when there's another meeting, but open to other times.
>> 
>> Best
>> Bishakha
>> 
>> 
>>> 2013/7/29 phoebe ayers 
>>> 
 Hi all,
 
 Every year at Wikimania the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
>> hosts
>>> a
 panel where they take questions from the audience on the work of the
>> WMF
 and the Board.
 
 In past years the board has also taken questions via IRC. This year
>> we'd
 also like to provide the opportunity to leave questions on a wiki page
 ahead of time:
 http://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Board_Q%26A
 
 While there is only time to answer a few questions during the session
 itself, hopefully this will be a good way of getting questions from
 attendees as well as from those who can't make it. The board will also
>>> take
 questions from the audience at Wikimania, as time permits.
 
 Remember the Board doesn't deal directly with work on or problems on
>> the
 projects, and does not have a direct hand in how the WMF operates
 day-to-day. Rather, the board thinks about the big picture, and gives
 direction on strategy for the WMF. You can find out more about what the
 board does (and does not do) here:
 http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees and
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_handbook
 
 best,
 phoebe
 
 --
 * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
>>> 
 gmail.com *
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and talk about VisualEditor

[rupert THURNER]

Am 30.07.2013 20:14 schrieb "David Gerard" :
>
> On 30 July 2013 17:03, Erik Moeller  wrote:
>
> >If the overwhelming community sentiment
> > is that the cost of continuous improvement with a large scale user
> > base is larger than the benefit (as it was on dewiki), we'll switch
> > back (or to a compromise), and use a more rigid set of acceptance
> > criteria and a less rigid deadline for getting back into large scale
> > usage later in the year.
>
>
> de:wp convinced you. What would it take to convince you on en:wp? (I'm
> asking for a clear objective criterion here. If you can only offer a
> subjective one, please explain how de:wp convinced you when en:wp
> hasn't.)

Hi David, i am editing on dewp and enwp. I consider myself an experienced
editor, but not an expert. I did not participate voting in dewp, but i like
to try ve from time to time. Beeing a software developper I fully support
eriks arguments before. Imo pragmatic and flexible decisions help such
development a lot, just like Erik explained.

What i would have hoped though is that the wiki syntax gets changed where
it is difficult to implement. And what i would have expected are more ideas
to just edit parts of a page, like e.g. hotcat does it, to avoid such a
mammoth dealing with everything which feels slow then.

To give three examples:
1. why not define a metadata section for every page, where categories, and
access rights are stored? Then these parts already can be split out of the
"page ve".

2. Why not having a read and edit mode? Edit mode just adds "edit" links to
all applicable parts of a page.

3. Why not decide references can only be after paragraphs, and edited via
edit links showing up in Edit mode? so this part can be split out of "page
ve".

Rupert
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and talkaboutVisualEditor

[Erik Moeller]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 12:56 AM, Peter Southwood
 wrote:
> That should help, Any idea of when we can expect the change?

Last time I discussed with Trevor he mentioned that it was a trivial
fix (we just need to remove the hover effect), so let me bug them
tomorrow :).

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

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

[Peter Southwood]

That should help, Any idea of when we can expect the change?
Cheers,
Peter

- Original Message - 
From: "Erik Moeller" 

To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" 
Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2013 8:58 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and 
talkaboutVisualEditor




On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 11:51 PM, Peter Southwood
 wrote:

You could start by making the edit links permanently visible and clearly
labeled.


Yeah, I've already requested this, since it seems like an easy win.
The mouseover behavior is really not a good solution - it was an
attempt to find a compromise between ensuring continued availability
of wikitext editing for sections while reducing clutter, but it
doesn't really serve that purpose well. It makes wikitext editing
secondary, which is unreasonable, adds screen flicker, and doesn't
translate to touch devices. We've been procrastinating for too long
finding the perfect solution for this problem, when really we'll
probably just need to take a marginal clutter hit right now. We'll fix
it.

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

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF 2013 elections post-mortem

[Anders Wennersten]

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


I have put up a proposal at

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

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


Anders

Bishakha Datta skrev 2013-07-30 08:54:

Dear all,

Risker has prepared a detailed report of the 2013 elections outlining
several of the challenges that the Elections Committee faced this year.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Post_mortem/Report_from_Risker#Discussion_6

My report as board liaison is on the talk page at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Post_mortem/Report_from_Risker

Both these need serious movement-wide discussion.

Please add your thoughts and comments so that we may consider various
possibilities and act to strengthen the election process before it recedes
from our consciousness.

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

[David Gerard]

On 31 July 2013 06:28, Erik Moeller  wrote:


Thanks. So, how did de:wp convince you when en:wp didn't? I notice you
didn't address that point at all.


- d.

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