Re: [Wikimedia-l] Specifying office action in edit summary?

[svetlana]

Risker wrote:
> Office actions are almost never undertaken by Engineering staff;
> it's usually Legal & Community Advocacy staff, or rarely another
> administrative staff member.

How should an Engineering Staff member indicate that he'd like an edit undone 
and not done again? Through an Office Action? One'd think that an edit summary 
is the only way. Why is it not being used?

An undo with appropriate edit summary would also avoid a need in escalating the 
issue - local sysops would consciously hold off their edit. If they went 
against an office action, introducing superprotect /then/ could make sense 
(although I would personally iterate through 2 undos with a massive warning in 
the second one).

Now, in your reply, why do I fail to see a reason why such approach was or is 
not used? Could you please clarify?

Risker wrote:
> What you are talking about is something that has only been done very
> occasionally over the years by Engineering/Operations staff/sysadmins.
> There has been no designated manner in which those actions should be
> flagged. 

This doesn't appear to be a problem to me. Sysops surely read edit summaries. 
(Note how Erik doesn't use a (WMF) account either - he wrote a message and 
appended 'this is a wmf action' to the end, which /WAS ENOUGH/.

Risker wrote:
> One must remember that until the last few years, the majority of
> individuals who could have taken (and in some cases, did take) such serious
> action were volunteer sysadmins, so labeling it a "WMF action" would not
> have been correct. 

OK, some context - doesn't really apply to this case. In this case it was not a 
volunteer sysadmin.

Risker wrote:
> We also have to remember that many of the systems that
> developers and engineers work with on a daily basis do not permit edit
> summaries, so adding what for many of us is an automatic and routine
> comment is for some of them a rare and unusual event. 
> (Perhaps they should set their work account preferences 
> to be "reminded" to include an edit
> summary?)

"Our Eng Staff don't know how to use wiki software" is perhaps a way to tell 
why they "forgot to do it", but it doesn't mean that doing it wouldn't've been 
a good idea.

I might perhaps even suggest going and removing superprotect, and actually 
going and using an edit summary /instead/, now. It's late, but better late then 
never.

svetlana

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Access by Wikimedia volunteers to WMF records about them

[Fæ]

To avoid tangents, here is my email trimmed to the 2 key points with no
background:

Can someone recommend if there is a WMF policy on transparency that applies?

Does the law in the USA give rights of access to records or reports the WMF
may keep on volunteers?

Fae
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Access by Wikimedia volunteers to WMF records about them

[Jan-Bart de Vreede]

Hi Fae/Everyone

Just to be clear, although the text below is factually correct it implies that 
the two of us talked about your request at Wikimania, which we did not. We 
talked for a total of around 60 seconds, most of which was spent on me 
explaining that I was looking for someon in a hurry, that fact is not relevant 
with regards to your request so I am not sure why you mention it.

The topic below is not within the scope of my governance responsibility and I 
should not be involved in this all. So please don’t involve me :)

Thanks,

Jan-Bart

PS: As this is me ‘setting the record straight” the odds are small to zero that 
I will respond to a follow up…. see above



> On 22 Aug 2014, at 17:06, Fæ  wrote:
> 
> I wrote the email below to Lila and the WMF Legal department asking
> for access to records (and reports) they hold on me, but I'm sad to
> say that after 3 weeks waiting, I have yet to receive an
> acknowledgement. As a Wikimania London volunteer I had a moment to
> speak with Jan-Bart, and some of my Wikimedia Commons uploads were
> even featured as part of a presentation by WMF Legal on their
> successes in the past year, so there was plenty of opportunity for us
> to have the friendly chat I suggested.
> 
> Can someone recommend if there is a WMF policy on transparency that
> volunteers can rely on for questions like mine, or does the law in the
> USA give me any specific rights of access to records or reports the
> WMF may keep on me that would mean that WMF Legal would do more than
> stay silent in response to reasonable requests from its established
> volunteers?
> 
> Thanks,
> Fae
> 
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Fæ 
> Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2014 13:49:45 +0100
> Subject: Request for disclosure of all WMF records relating to Fae
> To: Lila Tretikov 
> Cc: legal , Jan-Bart de Vreede 
> 
> Dear Lila,
> 
> The Wikimedia Foundation keeps information such as management
> summaries about me, which have never been shared with me.
> [Redacted example material]
> 
> Could you please ensure that all records that the WMF has retained
> about me are copied to me? It would seem fair that I have the
> opportunity to both understand what the WMF management and board have
> available to refer to when discussing my activities for Wikimedia, and
> that I have a chance to both correct any mistakes in this personal
> data, or to ask that inappropriate material gets permanently removed
> from WMF databases.
> 
> I will be active in both the Wikimania hackerthon and conference in
> the coming week, should you or an employee wish to informally review
> this request with me in person, along with my reasons for making the
> request at this time.
> ...
> -- 
> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
> 
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> 


___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Next steps regarding WMF<->community disputes about deployments

[WereSpielChequers]

"Proposing a solution to the community" should not be the start of the process 
of involving the community.

Developers are better qualified than non-developers to say whether a prom can 
be solved, and how it can be solved. But the most important steps in the 
process include deciding what could be improved or replaced, and crucially what 
priority various changes could have. Developers aren't necessarily the best 
people to decide that, sometimes their view is an outlier. For example someone 
took the decision that the Article Feedback Tool was a higherh. How many 
developers feel bitten when they have an edit conflict?

The first stage in the dialogue should be to discuss the coding philosophy. 
Currently we have some coders who believe that our mission is global, and that 
we need to support anyone who can get onto the internet; lets call that the 
EBay/Amazon/Facebook strategy. Others believe that our software should be the 
best that it could bewe are only going 



Regards

Jonathan Cardy


> 
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 08:48:14 +0200
> From: Dariusz Jemielniak 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Next steps regarding WMF<->community
>disputesabout deployments
> Message-ID:
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
> 
> one more general level solution would be having more steps: proposing a
> solution to the community (checking for support), inviting willing testers,
> after positive feedback introducing to all logged in users, and after
> positive feedback propagating on the site as a whole.
> 
> Once the initial support for an idea is established, we can take for
> granted that the change should happen - but it should be up to feedback to
> see if the solution is ready, and not up to the developers' calendar (we've
> all seen what happens when the schedule is the in the case of visual editor
> premature launch).
> 
> I think that WMF perhaps takes way too little use of our community as
> testers, commentators, supporters. If the community was more involved in
> development plans, it would also not be surprised by solutions which
> perhaps are important and wise in the log term, but still should not jump
> out of the box and be perceived as forced.
> 
> I don't think it makes any sense to perceive WMF as just a servant. But how
> should we perceive the community? Is it a disorganized mass with no uniform
> voice, that should be shepherded into accepting solutions? Is it a valuable
> resource? Is it a full partner in planning, testing and implementing the
> solutions? I think that a lot of the latter is missing, and the fault is on
> both sides. But it is mainly up to WMF to change it, as WMF has the
> structures, staff, and resources to propose procedures there.
> 
> just my two cents, anyway.
> 
> dj "pundit"
> 
> 
> On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 7:54 AM, rupert THURNER 
> wrote:
> 
>> Am 22.08.2014 04:18 schrieb "Erik Moeller" :
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 12:32 AM, Pine W  wrote:
 I am curious to hear your thoughts about the proposed Technology
>> Committee.
 That idea has some community support and had been discussed at some
>> length
 on the WMF Board Noticeboard.
>>> 

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Specifying office action in edit summary?

[Risker]

I think the problem is that your question does not really relate to the
subject line, Svetlana.  Office actions are specifically directed at
content (e.g., removal of specific content for copyvio reasons or court
orders).  Office actions are almost never undertaken by Engineering staff;
it's usually Legal & Community Advocacy staff, or rarely another
administrative staff member.

What you are talking about is something that has only been done very
occasionally over the years by Engineering/Operations staff/sysadmins.
There has been no designated manner in which those actions should be
flagged.  One must remember that until the last few years, the majority of
individuals who could have taken (and in some cases, did take) such serious
action were volunteer sysadmins, so labeling it a "WMF action" would not
have been correct.  We also have to remember that many of the systems that
developers and engineers work with on a daily basis do not permit edit
summaries, so adding what for many of us is an automatic and routine
comment is for some of them a rare and unusual event.  (Perhaps they should
set their work account preferences to be "reminded" to include an edit
summary?)


Risker/Anne


On 22 August 2014 11:50, svetlana  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm sorry to repeat, but I would like to hear some thoughts on this
> question. Also added a clarification for one of the lines.
>
> On Thu, 21 Aug 2014, at 22:26, svetlana wrote:
> >
> > Hi all.
> >
> > I understand the Engineering folks used superprotect instead of
> /undoing/ the edit and adding 'This is a WMF action.' in edit summary.
> Could I please be enlightened on the reasoning behind that?
> >
> > I suppose people could go and try editing other JS pages and cause
> havoc, but that's still possible where superprotect only affects a single
> page and not a namespace. Or can entire namespaces be protected and this
> new user right was intended to be able to prevent that easily?
>
> This is worded poorly, I mean - "or can entire namespaces be protected and
> the new user right was intended as a means to easily revoke mediawiki:*
> access?
>
> >
> > Svetlana.
>
> svetlana
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> 
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Specifying office action in edit summary?

[svetlana]

Hi all,

I'm sorry to repeat, but I would like to hear some thoughts on this question. 
Also added a clarification for one of the lines.

On Thu, 21 Aug 2014, at 22:26, svetlana wrote:
> 
> Hi all.
> 
> I understand the Engineering folks used superprotect instead of /undoing/ the 
> edit and adding 'This is a WMF action.' in edit summary. Could I please be 
> enlightened on the reasoning behind that?
> 
> I suppose people could go and try editing other JS pages and cause havoc, but 
> that's still possible where superprotect only affects a single page and not a 
> namespace. Or can entire namespaces be protected and this new user right was 
> intended to be able to prevent that easily?

This is worded poorly, I mean - "or can entire namespaces be protected and the 
new user right was intended as a means to easily revoke mediawiki:* access?

> 
> Svetlana.

svetlana

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Access by Wikimedia volunteers to WMF records about them

[Lodewijk]

Hi Fae,

in the Netherlands it is quite common for this kind of reqeusts to take
several weeks (the government usually allows itself up to six weeks to even
acknowledge receipt). Given the fact that the legal department was over
their heads busy in the past weeks, I am not very surprised it is taking a
bit longer.

I would first suggest a bit of patience, and maybe send a kind private
reminder - before jumping to conclusions. I know 3 weeks sounds like a
really long time, but in these times of the year, it really doesn't sound
like a long time at all for something that sounds like an unusual request.
Maybe it woudl be more constructive continue this conversation if there is
a flatout refusal or acceptance? I am confident that you will also update
us if you receive a positive response.

Best,
Lodewijk


2014-08-22 17:06 GMT+02:00 Fæ :

> I wrote the email below to Lila and the WMF Legal department asking
> for access to records (and reports) they hold on me, but I'm sad to
> say that after 3 weeks waiting, I have yet to receive an
> acknowledgement. As a Wikimania London volunteer I had a moment to
> speak with Jan-Bart, and some of my Wikimedia Commons uploads were
> even featured as part of a presentation by WMF Legal on their
> successes in the past year, so there was plenty of opportunity for us
> to have the friendly chat I suggested.
>
> Can someone recommend if there is a WMF policy on transparency that
> volunteers can rely on for questions like mine, or does the law in the
> USA give me any specific rights of access to records or reports the
> WMF may keep on me that would mean that WMF Legal would do more than
> stay silent in response to reasonable requests from its established
> volunteers?
>
> Thanks,
> Fae
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Fæ 
> Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2014 13:49:45 +0100
> Subject: Request for disclosure of all WMF records relating to Fae
> To: Lila Tretikov 
> Cc: legal , Jan-Bart de Vreede <
> jdevre...@wikimedia.org>
>
> Dear Lila,
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation keeps information such as management
> summaries about me, which have never been shared with me.
> [Redacted example material]
>
> Could you please ensure that all records that the WMF has retained
> about me are copied to me? It would seem fair that I have the
> opportunity to both understand what the WMF management and board have
> available to refer to when discussing my activities for Wikimedia, and
> that I have a chance to both correct any mistakes in this personal
> data, or to ask that inappropriate material gets permanently removed
> from WMF databases.
>
> I will be active in both the Wikimania hackerthon and conference in
> the coming week, should you or an employee wish to informally review
> this request with me in person, along with my reasons for making the
> request at this time.
> ...
> --
> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

[Wikimedia-l] Access by Wikimedia volunteers to WMF records about them

[Fæ]

I wrote the email below to Lila and the WMF Legal department asking
for access to records (and reports) they hold on me, but I'm sad to
say that after 3 weeks waiting, I have yet to receive an
acknowledgement. As a Wikimania London volunteer I had a moment to
speak with Jan-Bart, and some of my Wikimedia Commons uploads were
even featured as part of a presentation by WMF Legal on their
successes in the past year, so there was plenty of opportunity for us
to have the friendly chat I suggested.

Can someone recommend if there is a WMF policy on transparency that
volunteers can rely on for questions like mine, or does the law in the
USA give me any specific rights of access to records or reports the
WMF may keep on me that would mean that WMF Legal would do more than
stay silent in response to reasonable requests from its established
volunteers?

Thanks,
Fae

-- Forwarded message --
From: Fæ 
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2014 13:49:45 +0100
Subject: Request for disclosure of all WMF records relating to Fae
To: Lila Tretikov 
Cc: legal , Jan-Bart de Vreede 

Dear Lila,

The Wikimedia Foundation keeps information such as management
summaries about me, which have never been shared with me.
[Redacted example material]

Could you please ensure that all records that the WMF has retained
about me are copied to me? It would seem fair that I have the
opportunity to both understand what the WMF management and board have
available to refer to when discussing my activities for Wikimedia, and
that I have a chance to both correct any mistakes in this personal
data, or to ask that inappropriate material gets permanently removed
from WMF databases.

I will be active in both the Wikimania hackerthon and conference in
the coming week, should you or an employee wish to informally review
this request with me in person, along with my reasons for making the
request at this time.
...
-- 
fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Next steps regarding WMF<->community disputes about deployments

[David Gerard]

On 22 August 2014 14:42, Marc A. Pelletier  wrote:

> Part of the difficulty of that statement is that the very /definition/
> of "good enough" will necessarily vary from individual to individual,
> with a non-zero segment of editors defining it as "absolutely perfect
> and matching /my/ requirements exactly" (and another, just as large
> segment, calling for "any improvement to X is a gain").


Just recently I had someone seriously claim "bah, if Flow doesn't
include [obscure feature I like] it won't be fit for purpose" in all
seriousness.


> Regardless of one's opinions on the "power dynamics" of the situation,
> or on how to best serve the short- and long-term needs of the community,
> it seems to me evident that you cannot allow any one segment of the
> community what amounts to veto power to any attempts at improvement.


I think it's indisputably clear that, no matter the level of and
efforts toward consultation, people will loudly claim it wasn't
enough.


- d.

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

[Wikimedia-l] Thanks to the Wikimedia Projects, including for the great idea of the so-called navigation blocks.

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi all,

as you may have seen on the English wikipedia and elsewhere, there are
navigation blocks implemented templates like these:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:GNU

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:FOSS

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Star_Trek

Now, recently, I've contemplated some strategies for allowing people to
navigate among various topical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction#Crossovers on my home site, and ended
up concluding that implementing such navigation blocks would be the best
solution.

So I did just that:

* http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Selina-Mandrake/#star_trek_nav_block

So I'd like to thank the English wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, which
I've been using, linking or referring to, or even contributing to a little (see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shlomif ) for inspiring this feature and for
being wonderful in general. You guys rock!

Stay smashing! (And become even more so.)

Regards,

Shlomi Fish

P.S: here's a cute kitten as a token of my gratitude: http://imgur.com/NmQOgTH

-- 
-
Shlomi Fish   http://www.shlomifish.org/
http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Can-I-SCO-Now/ - “Can I SCO Now?”

There is no IGLU Cabal! None of them could pass the Turing test. But strangely
enough a computer program they coded, could.

Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Next steps regarding WMF<->community disputes about deployments

[Marc A. Pelletier]

On 08/22/2014 01:54 AM, rupert THURNER wrote:
> is the conflict not only triggered by a deliverable which was not good
> enough?

Part of the difficulty of that statement is that the very /definition/
of "good enough" will necessarily vary from individual to individual,
with a non-zero segment of editors defining it as "absolutely perfect
and matching /my/ requirements exactly" (and another, just as large
segment, calling for "any improvement to X is a gain").

Regardless of one's opinions on the "power dynamics" of the situation,
or on how to best serve the short- and long-term needs of the community,
it seems to me evident that you cannot allow any one segment of the
community what amounts to veto power to any attempts at improvement.

So the difficulty becomes simply one of finding a way to adjucate.  It
seems to me that *any* movement in that direction is an improvement, so
long as it does not devolve in a simple game of numbers.  It needs
informed opinion, not popularity polls.

-- Marc


___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Compare person data

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
There is another benefit, when Wikidata is KNOWN to have good data as it is
actively comparing its data with other sources, people will get more
confidence in the quality of Wikidata.
Thanks,
 Gerard


On 21 August 2014 16:26, WereSpielChequers 
wrote:

> re the birth anomalies, we have been running a process for several years
> now that looks for people alive according to certain wikipedias and dead
> according to up to 80 others. The format works well and has been broadened
> to various other anomalies such as being dead but not born.
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Death_anomalies_table
>
> The key thing to remember is that when Wikipedias differ you need reliable
> source to settle the difference.
>
> Wikidata may or may not make this sort of thing easier, but my suspicion
> is that resolving anomalies will improve Wikidata as well as Wikipedia.
>
> Regards
>
> Jonathan (WereSpielChequers)
>
>
>
> > On 19 Aug 2014, at 22:05, wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 09:04:17 -0400
> > From: MZMcBride 
> > To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Compare person data
> > Message-ID: 
> > Content-Type: text/plain;charset="UTF-8"
> >
> > Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> >> What is needed is a report that looks good enough for now and a public
> ie
> >> visible place to put it.
> >
> > Neat idea!
> >
> > There's , of
> > course. In my experience, users don't really care what the report is
> > titled or how it looks; they're much more concerned with accurate and
> > up-to-date (read: actionable) report data.
> >
> > One of the benefits of using a wiki page is that wiki pages have
> pre-built
> > notification structures (watchlists, RSS feeds, IRC feed, and e-mail).
> >
> > To this end, depending on who the relevant audience is of this report,
> > updating multiple pages on local wikis may be a lot more fruitful.
> >
> > MZMcBride
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Next steps regarding WMF<->community disputes about deployments

[Mike Linksvayer]

On 08/21/2014 07:17 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:
> It's very different futures -- a WMF that
> exists purely to do what communities ask it to, or a WMF that exists -
> in part - to look forward, close gaps, and help anticipate where we
> want to be 3, 5, 10 years from now. Irrespective of what my own take
> might be, both approaches do truly have their merits.

Along the same lines (by my reading) a week ago...

On 08/14/2014 02:57 AM, Erik Moeller wrote:
> If you want a WMF that slavishly implements RFCs or votes to disable
> features upon request, you'll need to petition to replace more than
> just one person. In fact, you should petition to reduce the staff
> dramatically, find an administrative ED who has no opinion on what to
> do, and exclusively focus on platform-level improvements and requests
> that clearly have community backing.

I'd enjoy reading about these very different futures. As a mostly casual
observer/fan of the various organizations and individuals of Wikimedia,
the futures don't seem necessarily different.

On looking forward -- big developments such as Wikidata (some kind of
semantic wiki database; yay!), Visual Editor (WYSIWYG editing),
Multimedia Viewer (more usable Commons; of these MV addresses the
smallest slice of the corresponding ur-wish), and Flow (more usable talk
pages) each reflect wishes expressed by many Wikip/medians for almost as
long as Wikipedia and Commons have existed, probably your expressions
and experiments being among the very earliest.

On resources, making reasonably fast progress only on features with
strong community backing would require a large paid staff, preferably
larger than what exists now.

In my limited view, WMF isn't especially visionary nor is it especially
authoritarian. What it has uniquely is the ability to do relatively
massive fundraising, and thus bring concentrated resources to bear.

I don't care about deployment disputes, and probably would never be
aware of them if I didn't follow this list and know some more active
Wikimedians socially. Hopefully some process is worked out that all in
some years see as a great innovation, or minimally, that all can forget
there was any dispute about.

But I am kind of concerned about what I perceive as an underlying theme,
with deployment disputes as a side effect: WMF as a product development
organization, some of the most passionate users of its products as
obstacles to innovation and optimization. That may be how other top n
websites are operated, but that's also how more numerous former top n
websites operated (of course I have no data). In the case of
commons-based peer production sites like Wikimedia ones, that dynamic
seems especially risky on one hand, and on the other, not leveraging the
their strengths. If communities aren't looking forward and anticipating
where we want to be 3, 5, 10 years from now (presumably facilitated by
WMF; I admired the strategy process some years ago but admittedly didn't
follow it closely enough to have an informed opinion) that's a serious
gap to close.

I expect all to muddle through, but seriously I would love to read about
(and see fully realized perhaps in new commons-based peer production
projects without organizational history) what exciting things WMF would
do if users weren't of concern (except as revealed by aggregate data and
experiments), and what a somehow user-direct-democracy version would do.
For my reading/observing satisfaction, I'd like them to have very
different results. Maybe former would quickly implement lessons from
gaming, some described by
http://www.raphkoster.com/2014/08/12/wikipedia-is-a-game/ (I'd enjoy
seeing them all tried in some commons-based peer production system)?
Maybe latter would use all that power to reform itself into being
predominantly friendly and welcoming (harder to imagine, but I'd love to
be surprised)? Or maybe the reverse!?

Mike

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Next steps regarding WMF<->community disputes about deployments

[Erik Moeller]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 10:54 PM, rupert THURNER
 wrote:

> is the conflict not only triggered by a deliverable which was not good
> enough? it did not include the authors in its use cases. the deliverable
> e.g. did include one click more for the authors workflow. which make
> hundreds of million clicks more if you sum it up.

(...)

> erik, please can you tell me one good reason what hinders you to tackle the
> source of all this, and rework the mediaviewer use case(s)?

Rupert, I always like a good devil's advocate, especially when it
doesn't sound devil-ish at all. ;-)

Let's start with some facts:

- The MediaViewer rollout was very smooth until the deployments to
German Wikipedia, English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. There could
be many reasons for that -- but it's a fact nonetheless. I do see
little evidence that users in other communities are especially unhappy
about the feature (leaving aside the politics of it now). I would be
very curious what reason people do attribute that difference to,
however (understanding that Commons is very different from the
Wikipedia use case).

- As a user, it's trivial to disable Media Viewer. Not quite as easy
as we want it to be, but literally a scroll-down and click away, which
is more than you can say about most MediaWiki preferences. It's also
trivial to skip on a case-by-case basis -- just open an image in a new
tab.

- Even on de.wp, if you read the comments from people supporting the
feature, in the poll leading up to Wikimania (a minority, but not a
tiny one - 72 voters in the poll [1]), you'll notice that the
reader/editor distinction isn't such a clear one. While many users
voted "on behalf of" readers, others pointed out that they themselves
like the fast access to the picture and switch back and forth as
needed (opening images in the background when they want to skip the
viewer). That was also what we heard from folks at Wikimania, for
example, and the generally low opt-out rates support it.

- The criticism isn't just about that -- it's about a large number of
mostly individually small issues. Generally, the idea that we
effectively "munge" some of the metadata by displaying a
machine-readable subset below the fold is viewed very negatively,
because 1) it doesn't reflect all the available information, 2) it
makes it harder for users to discover the File: page, and potentially
edit it.

Users who oppose the feature do not always do so strictly for personal
reasons, or many of them would probably be fine to disable it for
themselves; they often have criticisms that go beyond their own needs
and extend into areas like re-use, licensing information, and creating
an environment that draws people into contributing. Editors are not
blind to the needs of readers, they just have a low tolerance for
imperfections and would prefer to see a product that already addresses
all these concerns at the time of release.

We understand all that. We've read virtually every comment (surveys,
feedback page, votes/RFCs, etc.). I'm not normally as familiar with
every product WMF works on but by now I know many of the internals of
the damn thing (though Mark probably thanks the GNU deities daily that
I've not submitted any patches yet).

Change aversion is often [[loss aversion]] - people prefer avoiding
losses to making gains, which is why the positive benefits of a new
feature tend to be overshadowed quickly by any shortcomings, even if
they are (objectively speaking) comparatively small and easily
addressed.

It's true that we (WMF) should have done more early on to specifically
help with template cleanup -- we made some efforts to add
machine-readable data to key templates and rally community help, but
they were insufficient. This is not strictly an engineering problem -
the CommonsMetadata extension works just fine, the documentation is
clear, etc. It's an outreach effort that should have accompanied the
rollout more systematically. With that said, the needed fixes to
templates are fairly trivial (we just worked with de.wp to implement
one), while immediately resolving issues with license display for
large numbers of files, and help many other applications beyond the
viewer.

In addition, as previously noted [2], we're testing some pretty
significant changes of the UI, including a much more prominent
integration of the File: page link, identifying it clearly as the
canonical source of metadata.

We're not saying "You're wrong, we're right" - just that we understand
the issues pretty well, and we think the main concerns can likely be
addressed fairly quickly (and some already have been). In general, we
believe that there needs to be at least some allowance for iterating
on a release, rather than forcing an immediate revert. If we reason
things through together, try things out, look at the results, and
we're wrong, well, let's just turn the thing off completely rather
than making half-assed config changes in one wiki.

Mind you, in responding to the poll on de.wp, we did