Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)
Milos Rancic skrev den 2015-06-06 21:00: I think also that it's valid idea that EC chooses voting system according to the needs of particular point of time. For example, this time it was about giving opportunity to the new candidates. Next time it could be more balanced. If you notice that Board is unstable (for example, small number of those with more than two years of experience), then Schulze again. A very good point! Anders ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)
Well, the funny thing with current system is that if people had voted in most rational way - i.e. to maximize the impact of their votes - the results would have been negative for all candidates - as this year none of them got more than 50% of positive votes. But in fact if all people would vote in that way - negative votes would be negligible - as the result will be simple exactly the same as if there will be no no votes - in both methods of calculation :-) What makes negative votes so important is just because people are not voting in rational way as they have some mental objections to vote no. But those brave ones (or smart ones or bad ones) enough to vote no have much higher impact on the results than the others - which I think is not good by itslef. By the way would interesting to know how many voters voted only yes and no, and how many voted yes for only one candidate and no for all others (the most impact for selected candidate). 2015-06-06 19:15 GMT+02:00 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: Moving this discussion into a separate thread, to leave the main one for best wishes and similar :) Before I start talking about the voting system itself, I have to say that, from my personal perspective, I wouldn't imagine better outcome: a Polish steward (my favorite Wikimedian group :) ), a Croat founder of Wikidata (whom I consider as a friend) and a very prominent English Wikipedian, with significant record of working with smaller languages (BTW, I didn't know that he's a candidate till I saw the results; I didn't vote, as I still don't think I am able to make informed decision; useful note: one year out of movement requires more than one year to be able to fully participate again). When I read the results for the first time, I thought that it's about structural changes. However, it was not. Present Board members were just punished as present board members (some people will always object your work) with negative votes, as well as Sj was punished with lack of positive votes because of his laziness :P The problem is obviously the voting system. And it's one more reason why standing committee should be created. With more time, they would know why it's perfect for stewards and why it isn't for any kind of democratic representatives (including English Wikipedia ArbCom; as far as I remember, this is exactly the method how en.wp ArbCom is elected). Stewards have to be trusted all over the projects and 80% threshold follows that idea. However, stewards are not reelected, they have to show to that they are doing good job and there is the space for those who are doing important, but not visible job. Bottom line is that stewards themselves decide if somebody would stay a steward or not. (If there were objections from the community.) And stewards are doing that job perfectly. It should be also noted that stewards are elected managers, not democratic representatives, which Board members and en.wp ArbCom members are. This system is bad because of two main reasons: (1) it isn't suitable for electing democratic representatives; and (2) it's very vulnerable to abuse, which could easily create negative culture. Applying this to the democratic elections consistently means one of two things: we want to have conformists in the Board or we want to change Board members every two years. I hope the first is not our idea. The second could be, but two years in office is too short period of time for a Board member to do anything substantially. So, this method would be a valid one if the term of a Board member would be, let's say, four years. The output of the elections is not democratic, as well. It's obvious that Maria got the most support and it's 5% more than the first one, as well as Phoebe had more support than the second one. While I think that opposing votes are important, they shouldn't be *that* important. Successful candidate had to gather 3 supporting votes for every opposing one. If the supporting and opposing votes have the same weight, it would be more fair. With the formula S-O, the results would be: 1) Dariusz: 2028-556=1472 2) Maria: 2184-775=1409 3) Phoebe: 1995-714=1281 4) James: 1857-578=1279 5) Denny: 1628-544=1084 And the results would be much more according to the expressed will of the community: Dariusz is well respected steward and community has given him a lot of support, and as he is a new candidate he didn't do anything which would annoy a part of the community. Maria had significant opposition, but also the biggest number of supporters, which has to be acknowledged. Phoebe and James would have been very close, while Denny wouldn't reach support threshold. If one opposing vote has weight of three supporting votes, this could easily change the strategy of the groups interested to see one of their candidates as Board members. Instead of vote for, we'd get vote against attitude. That's not just abusive toward the system, but
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)
On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 10:13 PM, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: Well, the funny thing with current system is that if people had voted in most rational way - i.e. to maximize the impact of their votes - the results would have been negative for all candidates - as this year none of them got more than 50% of positive votes. But in fact if all people would vote in that way - negative votes would be negligible - as the result will be simple exactly the same as if there will be no no votes - in both methods of calculation :-) What makes negative votes so important is just because people are not voting in rational way as they have some mental objections to vote no. But those brave ones (or smart ones or bad ones) enough to vote no have much higher impact on the results than the others - which I think is not good by itslef. By the way would interesting to know how many voters voted only yes and no, and how many voted yes for only one candidate and no for all others (the most impact for selected candidate). Based on the numbers, it's likely that the voting was dominantly like: I want this candidate or two; I have no opinion about these candidates; and I really really wouldn't like to see this one or two as Board members. I'd say that our democracy depends on such behavior of voters, as at the end we are getting good people in the Board, no matter who has been elected particularly. However, it could change and it could have dramatic consequences, as we are operating with small numbers. What's more likely to be seen as the outcome of rational voting is to get one or few candidates with 50% less opposing votes and although it wouldn't need to be bad in the sense of particular candidates, it would make very negative consequences to the rest of the community. First time such thing happens, next time we'd have bitter fight for every vote. And that would be the changing point: from friendly to competitive atmosphere. It would also mean that we'd get serious hidden lobby groups. (We have them now, but it's relaxed and much more about it would be great if our candidate would pass, than about serious fights for own candidates.) ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Results of 2015 WMF Board elections
Congratulations to the winners! However I must say that the results of this election are hilarious. The person with the most support votes doesn't win because of oppose votes :D El sáb., 6 de jun. de 2015 3:22, Johan Jönsson brevlis...@gmail.com escribió: Congratulations, Dariusz, James and Denny! And thanks, of course, to María, Phoebe and SJ for the time they've served on behalf of the community, as well as to all the other candidates, who were prepared to serve, and to the elections committee. //Johan Jönsson -- 2015-06-06 1:14 GMT+02:00 Gregory Varnum gregory.var...@gmail.com: Greetings, The certified results of the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election are now available on Meta-Wiki: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Results Congratulations to Dariusz Jemielniak (User:pundit), James Heilman (User:Doc James), and Denny Vrandečić (User:Denny), for receiving the most community support. They will join the Wikimedia Foundation as Trustees, after they are appointed by the Board at their July meeting at Wikimania. These results have been certified by the committee, the Wikimedia Foundation's legal department, and the Board of Trustees. There were 5512 votes cast, with 5167 of those being valid. The 345-vote difference comes from recast ballots, where eligible voters recast ballots to change their votes, and struck votes, of which there were 4. Additional information is available on the Wikimedia Blog: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/06/05/board-election-results More statistics on the elections, a post mortem from the committee, and a blog post on the process behind the elections will be published in the coming days. In the meantime, we would appreciate your input—what went well for you in this election? What could we do better next time? These reports are crucial to helping future elections be even more successful, and we hope that you will offer your feedback and ideas: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Post_mortem The committee thanks everyone that participated in this year’s election for helping make it one of the most diverse and representative in the movement’s history. Sincerely, – 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee Adrian, Anders Wennersten, Daniel, Gregory Varnum, Katie Chan, Mardetanha, Ruslan, Savh, and Trijnstel ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/guidelineswikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] What's cool?
I felt that this year's elections went remarkably smoothly. I believe that we have the Elections Committee and its tireless leader Varnet, project manager James Alexander, and the SecurePoll devs to thank. There were a few technical issues but overall I feel that everyone did a very fine job. Pine ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Results of 2015 WMF Board elections
David Cuenca Tudela skrev den 2015-06-06 09:01: However I must say that the results of this election are hilarious. The person with the most support votes doesn't win because of oppose votes :D Why hilarious? We had a full consensus in the election Committee to go for S/N/O voting, it is a kind of standard procedure in the Wikimedia world. For the algorithm (S/(S+O)) it has been used several times, but for me it was new and I initiated a deeper look into it. I looked into the alternative (S-O) which in this case would have made a difference between Raystorm and Denny. But I also found that the algorithm (S-O)/(S+O) actually gives the same result as the one we used. So in the end I believe the algortihm used makes very good sense. As with everything it could of course be debated, and any comment on this would be welcome in https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Post_mortem Anders ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] Quality for Wikidata
Hoi, When we are to assess the quality of Wikidata, there are a few criteria we need to assess. - accuracy - bias - timeliness - completeness Arguably Wikidata needs to improve a lot on all four points.Whatever approach we take all four criteria are essential. Making Wikidata more complete is done by adding data we do not have from sources that are reliable enough. Timeliness needs attention from people as well. Increased accuracy can be achieved by comparing our data with the data from others and researching the differences. Bias.. do not know what to suggest except for making our data more complete, timely and accurate. We do not need to wait for anything. We certainly should not insist on sources for each statement as this will not bring us anything re the four criteria. The reason for this post is that our priorities are flawed because of Wikipedia think. Wikidata may be used on Wikipedia and it makes sense when Wikidata data fulfils the four criteria mentioned above,, Please discuss this and consider the merits of the argument. Thanks, GerardM http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.nl/2015/06/wikipedia-its-tyranny-of-sources.html ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Results of 2015 WMF Board elections
many thanks! I extend my warm congratulations to Denny and James, and would like to sincerely thank SJ, Maria, and Phoebe, and hope to be able to draw on their tremendous experience and knowledge. best, dj On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 1:14 AM, Gregory Varnum gregory.var...@gmail.com wrote: Greetings, The certified results of the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election are now available on Meta-Wiki: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Results Congratulations to Dariusz Jemielniak (User:pundit), James Heilman (User:Doc James), and Denny Vrandečić (User:Denny), for receiving the most community support. They will join the Wikimedia Foundation as Trustees, after they are appointed by the Board at their July meeting at Wikimania. These results have been certified by the committee, the Wikimedia Foundation's legal department, and the Board of Trustees. There were 5512 votes cast, with 5167 of those being valid. The 345-vote difference comes from recast ballots, where eligible voters recast ballots to change their votes, and struck votes, of which there were 4. Additional information is available on the Wikimedia Blog: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/06/05/board-election-results More statistics on the elections, a post mortem from the committee, and a blog post on the process behind the elections will be published in the coming days. In the meantime, we would appreciate your input—what went well for you in this election? What could we do better next time? These reports are crucial to helping future elections be even more successful, and we hope that you will offer your feedback and ideas: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Post_mortem The committee thanks everyone that participated in this year’s election for helping make it one of the most diverse and representative in the movement’s history. Sincerely, – 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee Adrian, Anders Wennersten, Daniel, Gregory Varnum, Katie Chan, Mardetanha, Ruslan, Savh, and Trijnstel ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- __ prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego i centrum badawczego CROW Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl członek Akademii Młodych Uczonych Polskiej Akademii Nauk członek Komitetu Polityki Naukowej MNiSW Wyszła pierwsza na świecie etnografia Wikipedii Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia (2014, Stanford University Press) mojego autorstwa http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=24010 Recenzje Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml Pacific Standard: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/killed-wikipedia-93777/ Motherboard: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/an-ethnography-of-wikipedia The Wikipedian: http://thewikipedian.net/2014/10/10/dariusz-jemielniak-common-knowledge ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Results of 2015 WMF Board elections
Congratulations to the new Board members - I am sure you will do a great job. And commiserations to those who will be leaving the Board - thank you for all your hard work over many years. Also it is good to see a much higher turnout in this year's elections than in 2013 - well done to those involved :) On the subject of voting systems, though... On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 9:08 AM, Anders Wennersten m...@anderswennersten.se wrote: David Cuenca Tudela skrev den 2015-06-06 09:01: However I must say that the results of this election are hilarious. The person with the most support votes doesn't win because of oppose votes :D Why hilarious? We had a full consensus in the election Committee to go for S/N/O voting, it is a kind of standard procedure in the Wikimedia world. Many people looked at voting systems before the Wikimedia movement existed and virtually none of them settled on the system we ended up with. Perhaps this should tell us something! To my mind the key problems with the present system are: 1) Oppose votes have greater weight than support votes. In this case, Maria would have needed 136 additional support votes to win, or 46 fewer oppose votes. In effect an Oppose vote was worth 2.96 times as much as a support vote for her. As a result, being non-opposed is much more important than being supported. The penalty for doing anything controversial is significant. 2) There is nothing in the process to produce any diversity in the result. Say that there was a 2/3 to 1/3 split in the electorate on some important issue. The right answer would surely be that you elect 2 people with one view and 1 with the other. However, in this voting system you would likely end up electing 3 people from the majority point of view. Because the Wikimedia movement is much more complex than this it is difficult to conclude that there was any particular issue like this that would have affected the result, but still, the point applies. The voting system builds in homogeneity not diversity. Regards, Chris ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] The Signpost -- Volume 11, Issue 21 -- 27 May 2015
Hi, Just for your information, the last issue of The Signpost has been quoted in an article in *El Periódico* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Periódico_de_Catalunya about gender gap ;) http://www.elperiodico.com/es/noticias/opinion/mujeres-wikipedia-4249746 David Parreño Mont Communications Amical Wikimedia El ds., 30 maig 2015 a les 4:27, Wikipedia Signpost ( wikipediasignp...@gmail.com) va escriure: News and notes: WMF releases quarterly reports, annual plans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-05-27/News_and_notes In the media: Scrubbing Parliamentary biographies; Wikipedia's invisible history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-05-27/In_the_media Recent research: Drug articles accurate and largely complete; women slightly overrepresented; talking like an admin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-05-27/Recent_research Traffic report: Summer, summer, summertime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-05-27/Traffic_report Discussion report: A relic from the past that needs to be updated http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-05-27/Discussion_report Featured content: When music was confined to a ribbon of rust http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-05-27/Featured_content Technology report: MediaWiki blows up printers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-05-27/Technology_report Single page view http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Single/2015-05-27 PDF version http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-05-27 https://www.facebook.com/wikisignpost / https://twitter.com/wikisignpost -- Wikipedia Signpost Staff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost ___ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/guidelineswikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ContentTranslation gets to 2000
Hi Jane, Thanks for trying ContentTranslation and providing feedback. Replies inline. I decided to translate a short article from Spanish to English Currently the extension is configured for translation *from* English, but not *to* English. This will probably be changed soon to allow translation to English, but there will be a proper separate announcement about this. Then I tried to enable it for my 'Dutch userpage and got the extension up and running for Spanish-Dutch but couldn't find which link was the from link and the to link (a couple of tries and I got the dashboard up and running). The easiest ways to open the dashboard are: 1. Hovering over the Contributions link at the top personal bar and clicking Translations. 2. Opening the article that you want to translate and finding the language into which you want to translate in the interlanguage links list. (It's guessed automatically; for example, it's suposed to appear there if you selected it in ULS.) Then I found myself in the Visual editor It's not *the* VisualEditor, but *a* visual editor - a very simple WYSIWYG editor. (It's possible that in the future it will be *the* VisualEditor, but there's no solid plan for it yet.) There are several reasons for doing it this way, see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation/Documentation/FAQ . and tried to wikify some text with no luck. It doesn't support wiki syntax, as explained above. It supports simple formatting and adding links (the links support is being rewritten right now to be more stable and intuitive). Because it is not supposed to be a full-fledged article editing environment, it only provides the most basic formatting tools. For full-fledged wikification you can use the wikitext editor or the VisualEditor, whichever you wish. I then clicked on one of the reference links and lost my work. This is definitely a bug! Usually references work pretty well. Sorry about that. Which article was it? I restarted the page and saved some basics, but was disappointed that there was no translation of the infobox or the image, which was what I was hoping for. We don't support infoboxes yet. It's very challenging technically, so for now we just ignore them, but we hope to have support for them in the future. Currently, ContentTranslation is mostly for the articles' prose, links, categories and images. It is supposed to support images. In fact, in the real-life demos that I'm doing it's the feature that experienced Wikipedians usually love the most. Unfortunately, it cannot support an image that is a part of an infobox. Thanks for all of your work on this, because I do believe translating existing content is a direction that I personally want to take in the Wikiverse in general. Thank you very much again for the testing and the feedback! We'll do our best to address the bugs. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore 2015-06-05 12:41 GMT+03:00 Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com: Amir, This tool is great in theory and sounds wonderful but I am personally having some trouble putting it into practice.The short video was VERY helpful, but I am afraid I still ran into some problems on my second attempt at a translation. Here is a roundup of links: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Content_Translation_Screencast_%28English%29.webm I decided to translate a short article from Spanish to English but since my Spanish is almost zero I first tried to change the translation interface to English but no luck. Then I tried to enable it for my 'Dutch userpage and got the extension up and running for Spanish-Dutch but couldn't find which link was the from link and the to link (a couple of tries and I got the dashboard up and running). Then I found myself in the Visual editor (yikes!) and tried to wikify some text with no luck. I then clicked on one of the reference links and lost my work. I restarted the page and saved some basics, but was disappointed that there was no translation of the infobox or the image, which was what I was hoping for. Here's the original: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_sala_del_concejo_del_ayuntamiento_de_%C3%81msterdam Here's the result (all I got was the Wikidata item link, lead sentence and the category) https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raadskamer_in_het_stadhuis_van_Amsterdam Wikimagic added the Dutch infobox already, but shouldn't this be possible to do from the dashboard? Thanks for all of your work on this, because I do believe translating existing content is a direction that I personally want to take in the Wikiverse in general. Jane Thanks, Jane On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 3:23 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: [ cross-posted to MediaWiki-i18n, Wikimedia-L and Wikitech-L ] Dear Wikimedians, The 2000th article that was written using the ContentTranslation extension
[Wikimedia-l] Board diversity
[ Split from Results of 2015 WMF Board elections ] 2015-06-06 13:19 GMT+03:00 Chris Keating chriskeatingw...@gmail.com: 2) There is nothing in the process to produce any diversity in the result. Indeed. I don't see much active effort to encourage diversity in gender, professional skills, economic background, language or region. Though I'm sincerely happy about the results according to the current system, I'm not happy at all about the system. I would love to see a Board that is more diverse in the above points. I'd love to see a board with people who speak languages that are important, but weakly represented in Wikimedia projects (e.g. Hausa, Indonesian, Hindi[1]) and who are closer to the social, cultural and economic realities of the areas where they are spoken. Unless I'm missing something,[2] in the whole history of Wikimedia, there was one board member from India, one from China, and zero from Indonesia, Russia and *all of Africa*. This doesn't seem quite right for a movement that is supposed to be global. Efforts to encourage editing outside of the global North bore little fruit till now - maybe it has something to do with such a low board representation? Maybe board seats for representatives of different regions could be reserved for more diversity and less self-selection? I know very little about non-profit management, so maybe I'm naive, but it bothered me for a long time. [1] I would also argue for Russian and Arabic even if Wikipedias in them are quite large. [2] Please correct me if I'm missing something! -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] What's cool?
On 6 jun. 2015, at 17:25, Quim Gil q...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi, just in case you have missed this thread in Wikimedia where I mentioned you, and now SJ asks. -- Forwarded message -- From: Sam Klein sjkl...@hcs.harvard.edu mailto:sjkl...@hcs.harvard.edu Date: Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 2:26 AM Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] What's cool? To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Quim writes: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T96378 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T96378 (33 hackathon events) Experiment with video.js was basically a one-person-three-day [TheDJ special]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T100106 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T100106 Very neat. Does this work with popcorn? I guess with popcorn, you mean popcornjs.org http://popcornjs.org/. In that case, no, it works with https://videojs.com https://videojs.com/ The point was to show how easy it would be to replace what we have now, with something better and I just wanted to get something of the ground and demonstrable. I picked the most popular/active github project, and that seems to be videojs.com http://videojs.com/ at this moment in time. I did also consider popcornjs actually, but it seems more an experiment with temporal events, then focusing on being a good extensible player that everyone wants to use (no offense to that team, but that was the first impression). Anyway, both of them would still require significant time to get it to production. But both of them will be easier to maintain than (fixing) what we have right now. Ideally, I think we will want to make sure that players can be used interchangeably, just based on the the information in the DOM. I’m looking at defining some extensions hooks, so that we can decouple players from the TimedMediaHandler extension. And we will need brion’s ogv.js https://brionv.com/misc/ogv.js/demo/ https://brionv.com/misc/ogv.js/demo/ work to support browsers without OGV/WebM support. DJ signature.asc Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ContentTranslation gets to 2000
Again, the same problem with the infobox and lead image, but there was a gallery that popped over and I was quite pleased with that. I'm glad to hear, thank you :) I published the article with no categories, because the categories didn't line up this time as they did in the Spanish-Dutch case. Yes - categories adaptation works only if directly corresponding category pages can be found in both languages. We may make it smarter in the not-so-far future. Thinking over my experience, I would prefer you incorporate the Wikidata item info to build the infobox, rather than the source article. Using Wikidata for infoboxes would be ideal, of course. This requires better adaptation of infoboxes to Wikidata, and this must be done by the communities, but some work is being done in that direction. I was working on a painting, but a generic biography infobox has already been done with the PrepBio tool (from Magnus) so you could use that: https://tools.wmflabs.org/magnustools/prepbio.php Thanks, I'll consider it. (We are already using another tool by Magnus in the dashboard, if you haven't noticed ;) ) -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore 2015-06-06 20:28 GMT+03:00 Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com: Thanks for your thoughtful answerrs, which are certainly enlightening. I tried it again today, this time to translate an article from English to Dutch. Again, the same problem with the infobox and lead image, but there was a gallery that popped over and I was quite pleased with that. I published the article with no categories, because the categories didn't line up this time as they did in the Spanish-Dutch case. Thinking over my experience, I would prefer you incorporate the Wikidata item info to build the infobox, rather than the source article. This would be a good trigger for people to update the Wikidata item should they notice any differences. I was working on a painting, but a generic biography infobox has already been done with the PrepBio tool (from Magnus) so you could use that: https://tools.wmflabs.org/magnustools/prepbio.php On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 6:55 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Hi Jane, Thanks for trying ContentTranslation and providing feedback. Replies inline. I decided to translate a short article from Spanish to English Currently the extension is configured for translation *from* English, but not *to* English. This will probably be changed soon to allow translation to English, but there will be a proper separate announcement about this. Then I tried to enable it for my 'Dutch userpage and got the extension up and running for Spanish-Dutch but couldn't find which link was the from link and the to link (a couple of tries and I got the dashboard up and running). The easiest ways to open the dashboard are: 1. Hovering over the Contributions link at the top personal bar and clicking Translations. 2. Opening the article that you want to translate and finding the language into which you want to translate in the interlanguage links list. (It's guessed automatically; for example, it's suposed to appear there if you selected it in ULS.) Then I found myself in the Visual editor It's not *the* VisualEditor, but *a* visual editor - a very simple WYSIWYG editor. (It's possible that in the future it will be *the* VisualEditor, but there's no solid plan for it yet.) There are several reasons for doing it this way, see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation/Documentation/FAQ . and tried to wikify some text with no luck. It doesn't support wiki syntax, as explained above. It supports simple formatting and adding links (the links support is being rewritten right now to be more stable and intuitive). Because it is not supposed to be a full-fledged article editing environment, it only provides the most basic formatting tools. For full-fledged wikification you can use the wikitext editor or the VisualEditor, whichever you wish. I then clicked on one of the reference links and lost my work. This is definitely a bug! Usually references work pretty well. Sorry about that. Which article was it? I restarted the page and saved some basics, but was disappointed that there was no translation of the infobox or the image, which was what I was hoping for. We don't support infoboxes yet. It's very challenging technically, so for now we just ignore them, but we hope to have support for them in the future. Currently, ContentTranslation is mostly for the articles' prose, links, categories and images. It is supposed to support images. In fact, in the real-life demos that I'm doing it's the feature that experienced Wikipedians usually love the most. Unfortunately, it cannot support an image that is a part of an infobox.
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)
I think this is dancing around the perceived problem. You can either have open, democratic, and fair elections with a result that represents the will of the electorate, or you can have a group of people who are diverse in terms of nationality, gender, ethnicity, etcetera. Not both. And I don't think that tinkering with the formula for election and board composition is really going to do anything to address that. Seeing the candidates that stood, I think that the real problem is the lack of female candidates for us to elect. And that is a cultural problem, exacerbated by the fact that unfortunately Wikimedia projects can be quite a hostile place for women, and understandably many women don't want to make themselves targets for harassment. Once there is a more even number of men and women running, I think that this particular problem will take care of itself. Cheers, Craig On 7 June 2015 at 04:58, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: I'm happy with S/N/O and with the election winners, but concerned about the diversity of the Board. I wonder if rethinking the entire board structure is in order, for example we could have: 1. One seat per continent, elected by the whole voting community 2. Two affiliate seats chosen by all affiliates including user groups. 3. Two appointed seats with non-renewable terms. Thoughts? Pine ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)
I still think it was a big mistake (of the electcom? I don't remember, but /someone/ pushed it through without discussions) in the 2013 election to abolish the Schulze method. Am 06.06.2015 19:16 schrieb Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: Moving this discussion into a separate thread, to leave the main one for best wishes and similar :) Before I start talking about the voting system itself, I have to say that, from my personal perspective, I wouldn't imagine better outcome: a Polish steward (my favorite Wikimedian group :) ), a Croat founder of Wikidata (whom I consider as a friend) and a very prominent English Wikipedian, with significant record of working with smaller languages (BTW, I didn't know that he's a candidate till I saw the results; I didn't vote, as I still don't think I am able to make informed decision; useful note: one year out of movement requires more than one year to be able to fully participate again). When I read the results for the first time, I thought that it's about structural changes. However, it was not. Present Board members were just punished as present board members (some people will always object your work) with negative votes, as well as Sj was punished with lack of positive votes because of his laziness :P The problem is obviously the voting system. And it's one more reason why standing committee should be created. With more time, they would know why it's perfect for stewards and why it isn't for any kind of democratic representatives (including English Wikipedia ArbCom; as far as I remember, this is exactly the method how en.wp ArbCom is elected). Stewards have to be trusted all over the projects and 80% threshold follows that idea. However, stewards are not reelected, they have to show to that they are doing good job and there is the space for those who are doing important, but not visible job. Bottom line is that stewards themselves decide if somebody would stay a steward or not. (If there were objections from the community.) And stewards are doing that job perfectly. It should be also noted that stewards are elected managers, not democratic representatives, which Board members and en.wp ArbCom members are. This system is bad because of two main reasons: (1) it isn't suitable for electing democratic representatives; and (2) it's very vulnerable to abuse, which could easily create negative culture. Applying this to the democratic elections consistently means one of two things: we want to have conformists in the Board or we want to change Board members every two years. I hope the first is not our idea. The second could be, but two years in office is too short period of time for a Board member to do anything substantially. So, this method would be a valid one if the term of a Board member would be, let's say, four years. The output of the elections is not democratic, as well. It's obvious that Maria got the most support and it's 5% more than the first one, as well as Phoebe had more support than the second one. While I think that opposing votes are important, they shouldn't be *that* important. Successful candidate had to gather 3 supporting votes for every opposing one. If the supporting and opposing votes have the same weight, it would be more fair. With the formula S-O, the results would be: 1) Dariusz: 2028-556=1472 2) Maria: 2184-775=1409 3) Phoebe: 1995-714=1281 4) James: 1857-578=1279 5) Denny: 1628-544=1084 And the results would be much more according to the expressed will of the community: Dariusz is well respected steward and community has given him a lot of support, and as he is a new candidate he didn't do anything which would annoy a part of the community. Maria had significant opposition, but also the biggest number of supporters, which has to be acknowledged. Phoebe and James would have been very close, while Denny wouldn't reach support threshold. If one opposing vote has weight of three supporting votes, this could easily change the strategy of the groups interested to see one of their candidates as Board members. Instead of vote for, we'd get vote against attitude. That's not just abusive toward the system, but also creates negative atmosphere, where candidates and supporting groups could start looking into each other as enemies, not as fellow Wikimedians. So, while the current voting system has given refreshing results, it would be bad to keep it as it's now. To be honest, I would avoid negative votes at all, as I am sure that even more fair system would be implemented, if it contains negative votes next time, we'll get much more negative votes than this time, with negative consequences for our culture. On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 2:16 PM, Gregory Varnum gregory.var...@gmail.com wrote: I have a lot of personal opinions on the method, questions process, etc. Many of them will be shared in the committee's post mortem (others I will be discarding as I now process the
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)
The result could also be interpreted as a thundering success for the voting method being used. We have now the last year and two seen major improvement in professionalism in WMF (thanks Lila) and the chapters and their boards (thanks local ECs and boards, FDC members, Katy and Winnifred). But the professionalism of the Board has not really improved correspondingly, and is in my view the weakest link in the movement just now. And the key is here of course the recruitment to the Board. And while I have the highest respect for the members now leaving, and see them worthy of praise, I personally think we anyway need stronger candidates more experienced in running this type of business. And I actually see the new ones having stronger background to enabale the necessary improvement in professionalism. This by the way include a more more professional election process, including a (standing) Election Committe (that exists well before the five days that was given before having to get into operational mode that was the case this time ...). And is it not perfect that the used algorithm enables a balancing of the benefit for the existing Boardmembers of being well known with a disappointment they do not live up to the high(er) exceptions (or need of changed profiles in Board)? Anders Milos Rancic skrev den 2015-06-06 19:15: Moving this discussion into a separate thread, to leave the main one for best wishes and similar :) Before I start talking about the voting system itself, I have to say that, from my personal perspective, I wouldn't imagine better outcome: a Polish steward (my favorite Wikimedian group :) ), a Croat founder of Wikidata (whom I consider as a friend) and a very prominent English Wikipedian, with significant record of working with smaller languages (BTW, I didn't know that he's a candidate till I saw the results; I didn't vote, as I still don't think I am able to make informed decision; useful note: one year out of movement requires more than one year to be able to fully participate again). When I read the results for the first time, I thought that it's about structural changes. However, it was not. Present Board members were just punished as present board members (some people will always object your work) with negative votes, as well as Sj was punished with lack of positive votes because of his laziness :P The problem is obviously the voting system. And it's one more reason why standing committee should be created. With more time, they would know why it's perfect for stewards and why it isn't for any kind of democratic representatives (including English Wikipedia ArbCom; as far as I remember, this is exactly the method how en.wp ArbCom is elected). Stewards have to be trusted all over the projects and 80% threshold follows that idea. However, stewards are not reelected, they have to show to that they are doing good job and there is the space for those who are doing important, but not visible job. Bottom line is that stewards themselves decide if somebody would stay a steward or not. (If there were objections from the community.) And stewards are doing that job perfectly. It should be also noted that stewards are elected managers, not democratic representatives, which Board members and en.wp ArbCom members are. This system is bad because of two main reasons: (1) it isn't suitable for electing democratic representatives; and (2) it's very vulnerable to abuse, which could easily create negative culture. Applying this to the democratic elections consistently means one of two things: we want to have conformists in the Board or we want to change Board members every two years. I hope the first is not our idea. The second could be, but two years in office is too short period of time for a Board member to do anything substantially. So, this method would be a valid one if the term of a Board member would be, let's say, four years. The output of the elections is not democratic, as well. It's obvious that Maria got the most support and it's 5% more than the first one, as well as Phoebe had more support than the second one. While I think that opposing votes are important, they shouldn't be *that* important. Successful candidate had to gather 3 supporting votes for every opposing one. If the supporting and opposing votes have the same weight, it would be more fair. With the formula S-O, the results would be: 1) Dariusz: 2028-556=1472 2) Maria: 2184-775=1409 3) Phoebe: 1995-714=1281 4) James: 1857-578=1279 5) Denny: 1628-544=1084 And the results would be much more according to the expressed will of the community: Dariusz is well respected steward and community has given him a lot of support, and as he is a new candidate he didn't do anything which would annoy a part of the community. Maria had significant opposition, but also the biggest number of supporters, which has to be acknowledged. Phoebe and James would have been very close, while Denny wouldn't reach support
[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] The Signpost -- Volume 11, Issue 22 -- 03 June 2015
News and notes: Three new community-elected trustees announced, incumbents out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-06-03/News_and_notes Blog: How Wikipedia covered Caitlyn Jennerâs transition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-06-03/Blog Discussion report: The deprecation of Persondata; RfA â A broken process; Complaints from users on Swedish Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-06-03/Discussion_report Special report: Towards Health Information for All: Medical content on Wikipedia received 6.5 billion page views in 2013 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-06-03/Special_report In the media: Anonymous Australian editing targets football player, shooting victim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-06-03/In_the_media Traffic report: A rather ordinary week http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-06-03/Traffic_report Featured content: It's not over till the fat man sings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-06-03/Featured_content Technology report: Things are getting SPDYier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-06-03/Technology_report Single page view http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Single/2015-06-03 PDF version http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-06-03 https://www.facebook.com/wikisignpost / https://twitter.com/wikisignpost -- Wikipedia Signpost Staff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost ___ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)
On 06.06.2015 20:30, Risker wrote: I find it interesting that nobody seems all that worried about the FDC election (where 5 of 11 candidates got seats) or the FDC Ombud election (where both candidates came forward in the last 24 hours before nominations closed). These two elections suggest some pretty big underlying problems as well. Nobody seems all that upset that fewer than 10% of all the candidates for the 2015 elections were women - one of the lowest percentages ever - and that not a single woman was elected to any role for the first time in any election where more than one candidate was being elected. On the whole, despite having a fair number of candidates outside of the US and areas represented by large national chapters, not a single non-white, non-male candidate, not a single Asian, African or Latin American candidate was elected. We're pretty good at talking about diversity, but very poor at implementing it. Risker/Anne The election's discrepancies of FDC and Ombud can be justified. The two committees are much technical and require some specific experience. But it's important to stress that, excluding the two women looking for a re-election, there were 0 new women within the candidatures. Even there were new candidates for different areas, probably with a low wikimedian experience, but what is really important is that no women submitted a new candidature even white, global north living, English speaker. Regards -- Ilario Valdelli Wikimedia CH Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera Switzerland - 8008 Zürich Tel: +41764821371 http://www.wikimedia.ch ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)
I'm happy with S/N/O and with the election winners, but concerned about the diversity of the Board. I wonder if rethinking the entire board structure is in order, for example we could have: 1. One seat per continent, elected by the whole voting community 2. Two affiliate seats chosen by all affiliates including user groups. 3. Two appointed seats with non-renewable terms. Thoughts? Pine ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)
On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 8:26 PM, Anders Wennersten m...@anderswennersten.se wrote: The result could also be interpreted as a thundering success for the voting method being used. Just to be clear: I think you (Election committee) did very good job. Inside of the stable circumstances, like they are now, It's very useful to use a voting system which would prefer new people. I just said that this system is likely to be harmful if used for the future elections. On the long run, Schulze stability (basically, electing the mainstream) vs. this variant of approval by selection gives more weight on Schulze. But I am sure that the standing EC will find something more appropriate for the next elections. I think also that it's valid idea that EC chooses voting system according to the needs of particular point of time. For example, this time it was about giving opportunity to the new candidates. Next time it could be more balanced. If you notice that Board is unstable (for example, small number of those with more than two years of experience), then Schulze again. ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)
I basically agree with the whole of Risker's post but want to expand in this bit: On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 7:30 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: There are not very many systems, though, that are specifically designed to give multiple winners when one of the conditions is that they *not* be running on a shared ticket. One of them that is well-adapted to our circumstances is the Single Transferable Vote system. As in Schulze, voters put candidates in order of preference. However, the STV system is designed to produce diversity of opinion among an election for several people (it was originally designed as a proportional system for public elections in circumstances where there weren't party lists). There are also a couple of systems which try to combine the theoretical advantages of Schulze with the practical advantages of STV and they should be looked at as well, but STV has the advantage that it is computationally simple (you can run an election with pen and paper, unlike Schulze or anything related to it; there are a number of software packages that perform counts for you; and it must be pretty easy to code as well...) Regards, Chris ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)
On 6 June 2015 at 14:58, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: I'm happy with S/N/O and with the election winners, but concerned about the diversity of the Board. I wonder if rethinking the entire board structure is in order, for example we could have: 1. One seat per continent, elected by the whole voting community 2. Two affiliate seats chosen by all affiliates including user groups. 3. Two appointed seats with non-renewable terms. Thoughts? How many continents will get to have candidates? Six? Seven? Eight? There was some pretty significant discussion in the current election that Europe isn't really a unified continent, and that Eastern or Eastern/Central Europe shouldn't be considered the same thing as Western Europe. And I'm pretty sure we don't have anyone currently resident in Antarctica who would meet even minimal requirements for election and who would willingly be a candidate. I've never really heard a good argument for the existence of the chapter seats, which are essentially community seats elected by representatives of less than 10% of the active community. And I do not understand why appointed seats should not be renewable, although I agree that term limits should apply to all seats. These may be the only way to ensure some diversity. Illario mentioned before that there was only one new woman candidate for any of these elected positions, and the only two women candidates for the board were the incumbents. The strong push for candidates outside of the traditional areas may play a role here. Several women I approached to consider candidacies said quite bluntly that the activities they were working on or were planning to work on were more likely to make a difference in the movement than having a seat on the board would have, and certainly would be making more difference than being on the FDC would have. I think there's a fair amount of truth in that. Risker/Anne ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ContentTranslation gets to 2000
Thanks for your thoughtful answerrs, which are certainly enlightening. I tried it again today, this time to translate an article from English to Dutch. Again, the same problem with the infobox and lead image, but there was a gallery that popped over and I was quite pleased with that. I published the article with no categories, because the categories didn't line up this time as they did in the Spanish-Dutch case. Thinking over my experience, I would prefer you incorporate the Wikidata item info to build the infobox, rather than the source article. This would be a good trigger for people to update the Wikidata item should they notice any differences. I was working on a painting, but a generic biography infobox has already been done with the PrepBio tool (from Magnus) so you could use that: https://tools.wmflabs.org/magnustools/prepbio.php On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 6:55 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Hi Jane, Thanks for trying ContentTranslation and providing feedback. Replies inline. I decided to translate a short article from Spanish to English Currently the extension is configured for translation *from* English, but not *to* English. This will probably be changed soon to allow translation to English, but there will be a proper separate announcement about this. Then I tried to enable it for my 'Dutch userpage and got the extension up and running for Spanish-Dutch but couldn't find which link was the from link and the to link (a couple of tries and I got the dashboard up and running). The easiest ways to open the dashboard are: 1. Hovering over the Contributions link at the top personal bar and clicking Translations. 2. Opening the article that you want to translate and finding the language into which you want to translate in the interlanguage links list. (It's guessed automatically; for example, it's suposed to appear there if you selected it in ULS.) Then I found myself in the Visual editor It's not *the* VisualEditor, but *a* visual editor - a very simple WYSIWYG editor. (It's possible that in the future it will be *the* VisualEditor, but there's no solid plan for it yet.) There are several reasons for doing it this way, see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation/Documentation/FAQ . and tried to wikify some text with no luck. It doesn't support wiki syntax, as explained above. It supports simple formatting and adding links (the links support is being rewritten right now to be more stable and intuitive). Because it is not supposed to be a full-fledged article editing environment, it only provides the most basic formatting tools. For full-fledged wikification you can use the wikitext editor or the VisualEditor, whichever you wish. I then clicked on one of the reference links and lost my work. This is definitely a bug! Usually references work pretty well. Sorry about that. Which article was it? I restarted the page and saved some basics, but was disappointed that there was no translation of the infobox or the image, which was what I was hoping for. We don't support infoboxes yet. It's very challenging technically, so for now we just ignore them, but we hope to have support for them in the future. Currently, ContentTranslation is mostly for the articles' prose, links, categories and images. It is supposed to support images. In fact, in the real-life demos that I'm doing it's the feature that experienced Wikipedians usually love the most. Unfortunately, it cannot support an image that is a part of an infobox. Thanks for all of your work on this, because I do believe translating existing content is a direction that I personally want to take in the Wikiverse in general. Thank you very much again for the testing and the feedback! We'll do our best to address the bugs. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore 2015-06-05 12:41 GMT+03:00 Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com: Amir, This tool is great in theory and sounds wonderful but I am personally having some trouble putting it into practice.The short video was VERY helpful, but I am afraid I still ran into some problems on my second attempt at a translation. Here is a roundup of links: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Content_Translation_Screencast_%28English%29.webm I decided to translate a short article from Spanish to English but since my Spanish is almost zero I first tried to change the translation interface to English but no luck. Then I tried to enable it for my 'Dutch userpage and got the extension up and running for Spanish-Dutch but couldn't find which link was the from link and the to link (a couple of tries and I got the dashboard up and running). Then I found myself in the Visual editor (yikes!) and tried to wikify some text with no luck. I then clicked on one of the
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)
Negative votes exist for a reason. Or, let's make voters choose between support and support? Il 06/06/2015 19:15, Milos Rancic ha scritto: Moving this discussion into a separate thread, to leave the main one for best wishes and similar :) Before I start talking about the voting system itself, I have to say that, from my personal perspective, I wouldn't imagine better outcome: a Polish steward (my favorite Wikimedian group :) ), a Croat founder of Wikidata (whom I consider as a friend) and a very prominent English Wikipedian, with significant record of working with smaller languages (BTW, I didn't know that he's a candidate till I saw the results; I didn't vote, as I still don't think I am able to make informed decision; useful note: one year out of movement requires more than one year to be able to fully participate again). When I read the results for the first time, I thought that it's about structural changes. However, it was not. Present Board members were just punished as present board members (some people will always object your work) with negative votes, as well as Sj was punished with lack of positive votes because of his laziness :P The problem is obviously the voting system. And it's one more reason why standing committee should be created. With more time, they would know why it's perfect for stewards and why it isn't for any kind of democratic representatives (including English Wikipedia ArbCom; as far as I remember, this is exactly the method how en.wp ArbCom is elected). Stewards have to be trusted all over the projects and 80% threshold follows that idea. However, stewards are not reelected, they have to show to that they are doing good job and there is the space for those who are doing important, but not visible job. Bottom line is that stewards themselves decide if somebody would stay a steward or not. (If there were objections from the community.) And stewards are doing that job perfectly. It should be also noted that stewards are elected managers, not democratic representatives, which Board members and en.wp ArbCom members are. This system is bad because of two main reasons: (1) it isn't suitable for electing democratic representatives; and (2) it's very vulnerable to abuse, which could easily create negative culture. Applying this to the democratic elections consistently means one of two things: we want to have conformists in the Board or we want to change Board members every two years. I hope the first is not our idea. The second could be, but two years in office is too short period of time for a Board member to do anything substantially. So, this method would be a valid one if the term of a Board member would be, let's say, four years. The output of the elections is not democratic, as well. It's obvious that Maria got the most support and it's 5% more than the first one, as well as Phoebe had more support than the second one. While I think that opposing votes are important, they shouldn't be *that* important. Successful candidate had to gather 3 supporting votes for every opposing one. If the supporting and opposing votes have the same weight, it would be more fair. With the formula S-O, the results would be: 1) Dariusz: 2028-556=1472 2) Maria: 2184-775=1409 3) Phoebe: 1995-714=1281 4) James: 1857-578=1279 5) Denny: 1628-544=1084 And the results would be much more according to the expressed will of the community: Dariusz is well respected steward and community has given him a lot of support, and as he is a new candidate he didn't do anything which would annoy a part of the community. Maria had significant opposition, but also the biggest number of supporters, which has to be acknowledged. Phoebe and James would have been very close, while Denny wouldn't reach support threshold. If one opposing vote has weight of three supporting votes, this could easily change the strategy of the groups interested to see one of their candidates as Board members. Instead of vote for, we'd get vote against attitude. That's not just abusive toward the system, but also creates negative atmosphere, where candidates and supporting groups could start looking into each other as enemies, not as fellow Wikimedians. So, while the current voting system has given refreshing results, it would be bad to keep it as it's now. To be honest, I would avoid negative votes at all, as I am sure that even more fair system would be implemented, if it contains negative votes next time, we'll get much more negative votes than this time, with negative consequences for our culture. On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 2:16 PM, Gregory Varnum gregory.var...@gmail.com wrote: I have a lot of personal opinions on the method, questions process, etc. Many of them will be shared in the committee's post mortem (others I will be discarding as I now process the last several weeks). Also, we are beginning to post some statistics that folks may find helpful: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Stats We
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)
The Schulze method that was being used is the one that is specifically intended to give only one winner; probably most people don't know that Schulze also created a separate system that was intended to give multiple winners. It is a very confusing system and many people unintentionally gave support to candidates they did not believe should have a chance. One of the things that really becomes obvious using the S/N/O system is the number of *non-votes* or neutral votes: almost all of the candidates had more neutral votes than support and oppose votes combined. The effect of not requiring voters to decide how to classify each candidate (in Schulze, to rank the candidate; in S/N/O, to support or oppose) has radically different effects in the two systems. In S/N/O, the neutral votes have no effect at all on the outcome. In the Schulze system, not ranking a candidate is the equivalent of an oppose vote; every candidate who is ranked (even if they are ranked at a level well below the number of candidates) is ranked higher than a candidate who is not ranked at all. This is counter-intuitive and gives no effective way for people to differentiate between candidates that they really really do not think should be on the board and candidates about whom they have not formulated an opinion, or even candidates about whom they are indifferent. It is a serious weakness in the Schulze system. Nonetheless, the S/N/O system has significant weaknesses as well, as others have pointed out. There are other systems that allow only as many supports as there are seats open, which might be worth considering. There are systems that only allow support votes and no opposition. There are not very many systems, though, that are specifically designed to give multiple winners when one of the conditions is that they *not* be running on a shared ticket. We did not have enough time in 2013 (nor, to be honest, the interest amongst Election Committee members) to do a thorough review of multiple-winner voting systems. That year, we had to develop all of the processes for electing FDC members and FDC ombuds, which was a lot of work. This year, the committee barely had enough time to do the tasks that were absolutely required just to make the election happen, and in order to incorporate the specific instructions of the board with respect to outreach, seeking of diverse candidates, and increasing voter participation (all of which proved very worthwhile), they didn't have time to fine-tune a lot of the processes that were already developed. I would have loved to see changes in the way that questions are handled, and a rethinking of the voting methodology, for example. But there simply was not time to come up with a well-considered *better* way. So...yes, I agree with Milos and many others that a Standing Election Committee is needed to re-examine the way that Board candidates are elected, and to re-examine the entire framework on which the elections are based - indeed, I recommended it after the 2013 election. I find it interesting that nobody seems all that worried about the FDC election (where 5 of 11 candidates got seats) or the FDC Ombud election (where both candidates came forward in the last 24 hours before nominations closed). These two elections suggest some pretty big underlying problems as well. Nobody seems all that upset that fewer than 10% of all the candidates for the 2015 elections were women - one of the lowest percentages ever - and that not a single woman was elected to any role for the first time in any election where more than one candidate was being elected. On the whole, despite having a fair number of candidates outside of the US and areas represented by large national chapters, not a single non-white, non-male candidate, not a single Asian, African or Latin American candidate was elected. We're pretty good at talking about diversity, but very poor at implementing it. Risker/Anne On 6 June 2015 at 13:55, MF-Warburg mfwarb...@googlemail.com wrote: I still think it was a big mistake (of the electcom? I don't remember, but /someone/ pushed it through without discussions) in the 2013 election to abolish the Schulze method. Am 06.06.2015 19:16 schrieb Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: Moving this discussion into a separate thread, to leave the main one for best wishes and similar :) Before I start talking about the voting system itself, I have to say that, from my personal perspective, I wouldn't imagine better outcome: a Polish steward (my favorite Wikimedian group :) ), a Croat founder of Wikidata (whom I consider as a friend) and a very prominent English Wikipedian, with significant record of working with smaller languages (BTW, I didn't know that he's a candidate till I saw the results; I didn't vote, as I still don't think I am able to make informed decision; useful note: one year out of movement requires more than one year to be able to fully participate again). When I