Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 97, Issue 32
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:27:25 -0600 From: James Heilman jmh...@gmail.com To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide Message-ID: caf1en7ubs8eabne-3l_mzxwc8tcwq3o5sblwmcvho3fyixr...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Yes WikiTravel has some poorly sourced pages that ramble on. However so does Wikipedia. The solution is to increase the size of the community and quality will increase with time. We did not always have strike referencing guidelines. To get this project to grow we need to get it based in an environment where it can grow. The Spanish Wikipedia, if I remember correctly, threatened to split off in 2004 due to Wikipedia having no solid non profit foundation. Those are WT have the same concerns. They do not want all their volunteers efforts going to the bottom line of a for profit (Internet Brands). And would anyone blame them. If we within the Wikimedia Movement want to see this content improved we should welcome them into the WMF. We have 20 editors supporting this proposal as of April 10th, 2012. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Travel_Guide -- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian Yes, this. I call on the Foundation to move quickly on this issue and welcome this project into the Wikimedia family without any further delay. Cheers, Craig ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:02:29 +0200 From: Thomas Goldammer tho...@googlemail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission Message-ID: CAL0e-KVCetcaaKNQuiSwX5ckBnxqw=9_6vhkdj988ypz3wd...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 You can clearly document the process that you follow. You can publish metrics like those Lodewijk suggested (and actual numbers, not just guesses). It would be nice to have a page on meta that says how many cases are currently at each point in the process and is kept up-to-date. You just volunteered to set up such a page on Meta (for 2012, I mean). I already described the process we use, so this should be possible for you to do. Thanks. I thought Thomas's requests and suggestions in this case were quite valid and reasonable, and they did not deserve such a condescending and passive-aggressive response. I'm sure you're all very busy but that's no excuse for not continually striving for a higher standard of transparency and accountability (within the obvious restrictions that your work imposes). Regards, Craig Franklin ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Harvard Library releases 12M bibliographic records under CC0
Firstly, let me say this is very very cool news. I went to go and have a browse though, and it's all tied up in a massive (around 3gb) archive file rather than being easily browsable. I know that WikiData is the obvious place to put it, but perhaps it would be useful as a reference work on Wikisource in its own right, decompressed and machine formatted into an easier to search format? Cheers, Craig On 25 Apr 2012, at 19:29, emijrp wrote: 2012/4/25 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki at gmail.com Thanks for sharing, I had read about it on the NYT but nothing was said on license. So now the USA have more open bibliographic data than Germany/Europe? :) lobid.org is a very nice initiative, but other catalog systems have very complex interactions between hundreds or thousands of entities and it's very hard to change the licenses. The main problem is usually deduplication and quality of the records, any information on this for Harvard's data? Mateus Nobre, 25/04/2012 19:44: Add ALL at Wikisource! Wikisource? This is only metadata. Perhaps it is OK for Wikidata. A mass dump of all of the information onto Wikisource wouldn't be good - but being able to extract complete bibliographies of specific authors on demand would actually be quite useful for properly building author pages on Wikisource, rather than the current ad-hoc and incomplete lists that currently exist. (With the consequence that bibliographies on Wikipedia could be 'outsourced' to Wikisource, bringing that project much-needed readers and editors). Thanks, Mike ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] IRC office hours with Sue Gardner, 5/11 at 17:00 UTC
Message: 5 Date: Mon, 7 May 2012 20:08:44 -0700 From: Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] IRC office hours with Sue Gardner, 5/11 at 17:00 UTC Message-ID: CAGZ0=LPPC=Zw-OOQWgCrTzxvyQCjXRT554B8D7mUgMgZQw=t...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On 7 May 2012 11:19, Steven Walling swall...@wikimedia.org wrote: As usual, docs are on Meta at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours. Also note that if you have a preference for a better time than morning work hours for us here in San Francisco, there is a poll that Sue started: http://doodle.com/hnivrcvz3t5sf2gf#table So far, by the way, the most-chosen option is Saturdays, 5-7PM UTC. Which may just mean we need more participants living in eastern Asia :-) Thanks, Sue I think this is most likely a chicken-and-egg thing. Have more sessions that aren't in the middle of the night in these timezones (which, by the way, cover more than East Asia), and you'll find more participants from those places. But to do that, they have to sign up, which they don't, because these sessions are usually at horribly inconvenient times for all of us, which could be fixed by having it in the early evening, which won't happen unless people sign up, which won't happen unless people don't think it's a US EU thing, which won't happen unless... *sigh* Cheers, Craig (who is aware that occasionally a session that's somewhat handy for Australia or Asia has been held, but would like to see a lot more of them so that people in this part of the world don't continue to be left out and overlooked) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Throttling (was: Re: Please can someone put 50p in the meter)
Can I second this one, we've run into it occasionally in WMAU outreach sessions as well, and it's always fun explaining why it's said no to someone without a foundation in computers or internet culture. A brief explanation of why it's happened and what to do in order to not lose your edit, made in simple language, would be lovely. We do find that the best way to get around the account creation throttle is to get people to create their accounts beforehand. In a given class, there's usually one or two who don't get the message or are unable to do it, but they can usually be dealt with by the instructor without triggering anything. Cheers, Craig Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2012 18:33:54 +0100 From: Andrew Gray shimg...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please can someone put 50p in the meter Message-ID: CAE4f== fljhrgck+9ftttqmhsx1cgd+ob50vxtom0+qcjrih...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 I evade account creation by always making them log in first... Periodically, with a roomful of users, we'll get told that an edit has been throttled; no further details, I think. It seems to happen with one or at most two editors at a time out of a dozen, but it can happen to different people later on. This happened several times in a couple of weeks in the summer (I only started workshops in June), and then occasionally since - including yesterday. I originally assumed it was related to external-link additions by new users, but I've seen it for no-link sandbox edits as well. My guess is that this entails something to do with checking for multiple edits from the same IP at once, but I don't know if this is actually the reason, or if it can be disabled/whitelisted. (It's the one I give, though! Corrections gratefully appreciated) - Andrew. On 13 Oct 2012 17:25, Philippe Beaudette phili...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 9:07 AM, WereSpielChequers werespielchequ...@gmail.com wrote: As it is this combined with the throttling feature made for quite a bit of disruption to a session where we had ten people having an introduction to editing. By throttling feature, do you mean the account creation restrictions? If so, you know there are ways around that, right? Email me offlist, so as not to clutter the list, and I'll give you a pointer. If you mean something different, disregard :) pb ___ Philippe Beaudette Director, Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 415-839-6885, x 6643 phili...@wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 103, Issue 54
From: WereSpielChequers werespielchequ...@gmail.com Date: 26 October 2012 09:25 Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Improving dialogue between editors and tech people To: English Wikipedia wikie...@lists.wikimedia.org Firstly move Bugzilla to Meta. Currently it is a different user experience to the rest of our wikis, and it isn't even part of the Single User Login. My god, please, no! I think the lived in experience that Meta shows us is that while Wikis are good for some things, for tracking things like bugs and discussions, they're really terrible. Use a tool that's fit for purpose, and don't try to bang a wiki-shaped peg into a bugzilla-shaped hole. (single sign-on across to bugzilla would be very cool though!) Cheers, Craig Franklin ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Aaron Swartz is dead
What a dreadful loss. I never knew Aaron except through his work and his writings, but he always came across as a confident person who was truly passionate about the work that he did. We're all the poorer for his passing. My condolences to everyone on this list who knew him. Regards, Craig Franklin ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage: Chance, bore, or hazard
Ziko, Thanks for these thoughtful posts, it's always good to consider the long term and what we might learn from our experience on other projects. Of course, it's up to the Wikivoyagers themselves to decide how they want to run their project, but a bit of advice and insight never hurts! The Australian businessman Kerry Packer once quipped that before Parliament made a law, they should be required to first repeal one. While we cannot make this a requirement on Wikimedia projects, it's a good rule of thumb to live by. On English Wikipedia, we have a dense tangle of rules, policies and essays that has raised the bar for entry to new users. This tangle has developed over the years as a result of kneejerk reactions to things like the Siegenthaler incident and the Essjay controversy. With a relatively clean slate upon which to write, the Wikivoyagers can consider the structure of their project in a holistic way, being proactive in thinking about how they will manage such incidents before they actually arise, and avoid choking their project up with hundreds of rules created as a reaction to unfortunate incidents that could have been avoided by deciding on a simple set of rules to start with, and then consistently enforcing them. Not being a travel writer, I don't have the foggiest on where the lines should be drawn, that should be left to the experts on the projects (with input and assistance from the WMF legal department, ideally). But it sounds like they're already off to a good start if the project still a rather limited set of rules, and wishes to remain so. Kind Regards, Craig Franklin ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Hi Manuel, In my professional experience with endowments (which isn't that extensive, I must confess), the investments are typically extremely conservative and designed to give a steady and reliable long term flow of dividends, rather than shooting for quick capital gains through risky investments in shares or property. Things like debentures, government bonds, fixed interest deposits, and so forth. Even in these current times of financial uncertainty, a competent investment adviser should be able to construct an investment portfolio that provides a modest return with little risk. Regards, Craig Franklin Message: 5 Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:00:21 +0100 From: Manuel Schneider manuel.schnei...@wikimedia.ch To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment Message-ID: 5141bbd5.8050...@wikimedia.ch Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Thanks Andrew and Philippe for your explanation and links. So that is a plan to build a reserve of funds that is so big that the operation can be funded by the capital's gain - interest, dividends... Sounds interesting, even though the endowment must be huge to cover our yearly budgets. Another problem is that it is currently very hard to find an interesting investment with low risks. Interest rates have been reduced by the major central banks in order to overcome the global recession, many formerly safe and interesting investments became risky and those who are still safe partly have even negative interest rates (eg. german state bonds). /Manuel -- Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Lausanne, +41 (21) 34066-22 - www.wikimedia.ch ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Committee changes at Wikimedia Australia
Hi All, As some of you may be aware, Wikimedia Australia has been planning a reshuffle of committee positions, based on ‘real world’ commitments of some committee members that made them unable to continue to commit to the heavy workload that being on the committee entails. I’m happy to report that after a consultation period with our members, the committee at our meeting yesterday approved the changes. The new committee is as follows: President: Craig Franklin Secretary: Graham Pearce Treasurer: John Vandenberg Members: Kerry Raymond, Steve Zhang Observers: Charles Gregory, Ross Mallett Charles Gregory remains an observer on the committee, and will continue to be responsible for the chapter’s social media, as well as being Wikimedia Australia’s representative to the Wikimedia Chapters’ Association. Ross Mallett will also join us as an observer on the committee, in addition to taking on the responsibility of being our Assistant Treasurer. It is my experience that when you get the basic things running like clockwork, success soon follows, and I’m confident that someone with Ross’s skills and experience around to help will see us running as smoothly as possible. The position of Vice President is currently and deliberately left vacant. Over the coming weeks we will be assessing what additional skills and expertise are required in the committee, and searching for someone who can bring that to the organisation. Stay tuned for more information on that! I’d like to thank my fellow members of the committee for their support during this process, for the work that they’ve already done, and for the great things that they’ll no doubt do for the chapter and the movement in the coming months. I’d like to specially single Charles out for praise as well, as he has been a longstanding member of the committee and helped us out of a tight spot last year by taking over as Secretary and doing a great job of organising our AGM and elections. Regards, Craig Franklin President – Wikimedia Australia ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement *please read*
Sue DID seem to enjoy herself when she was here recently. Hell, I'd settle for Premier of Queensland at this rate. Whaddaya say, Sue? Cheers, Craig On 28/03/2013 8:02 PM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 7:52 PM, Mathias Schindler mathias.schind...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 10:08 AM, Steven Zhang cro0...@gmail.com wrote: We all started talking about Sue Gardner for President 2016 on IRC today. I'd vote for her... In order to do so, there are two minor prerequisites a) We must get rid of the clause in Section 1 of Article Two of the United States Constitution (natural born citizen). A quick look in Wikipedia tells me that really no-one has any emotional attachment to this clause and there have been no previous disputes over the eligibility of candidates for this office. or b) We must overthrow the political system in Canada and change the monarchy into a republic that actually has a President so that Sue can run for it. Mathias Sue Gardner, Prime Minister of Australia. especially with our current options it's very doable. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Adopt a page
It comes down to asking what the purpose of the Foundation and a project like Wikipedia is. Is it to produce a free source of knowledge, or is to promote volunteerism? If it's possible to build a better encyclopædia by encouraging paid editing or allowing for-profit entities to sponsor a particular page, then that's a possibility that we ought to make ourselves open to. Volunteerism, of course, has served the movement well and got us to where we find ourselves today, but it is not and should not be considered an end unto itself. Of course, as has been pointed out, there are potential pitfalls with this model that have been discussed many times - there are many potential COI issues, and paid editing in some areas may discourage unpaid editing in others. However, I think it would be unwise simply to dismiss those sort of possibilities out of hand. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 30 March 2013 11:29, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: It's a weird dichotomy. I've spent several hundred quid on source material for my current topic area. I could easily have spent several grand. Paid editing is a major issue, because it conflicts with our culture But if someone were able to buy my sources then it would be of huge benefit. And, controversially, if someone could fund me one day a week to write these articles I could likely expand from one GA per month to covering this entire field in GAs in a year. Without that it will take me a good five years I've come recently to see that funding article work is not inherently an awful thing. But it needs to be done with extreme care to protect our ideals and neutrality. And that is a HARD problem. Tom On Saturday, March 30, 2013, Thomas Dalton wrote: On Mar 30, 2013 1:04 AM, Mono monom...@gmail.com javascript:; wrote: How so? It would be completely against our culture. Wikipedia is a volunteer written encyclopedia. You would end up with a two-tier system of paid editors and unpaid editors. There would inevitably be a lot of conflict between those groups. The whole concept would be extremely divisive. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Save the date: Wikimedia Australia committee get-together in Sydney, 7 April
Hi Sydneysiders, As the WMAU committee will be in Sydney this weekend for the Wikimedia in Higher Education symposiumhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney/5_April_2013, we thought that we should take the opportunity to have a get together with the Sydney Wikimedia community at large. As such, we’ve put *Sunday 7 April * aside for a face-to-face meeting with the community. This is your opportunity to meet with the committee, pepper us with QA, and talk with us about the future of the chapter and the Wikimedia movement in general. The location is still TBA, once we’ve got this secured we’ll let you know straight away. At the moment it is planned to be an all day event, but if you can’t spare the entire day feel free to drop in whenever. Cheers, Craig Franklin Wikimedia Australia ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Save the date: Wikimedia Australia committee get-together in Sydney, 7 April
Hi All, I am delighted to advise that we've now locked in the meeting room at the Customs House Library in the centre of Sydney for Sunday's session. If you're free on the day, please feel free to drop by between 11 and 4 for a chat. The library is located just opposite Circular Quay rail station, see the following link for a map: https://maps.google.com.au/maps?q=Customs+House+Library,+Sydney,+New+South+Waleshl=enll=-33.862006,151.211776spn=0.003114,0.006539sll=-33.862006,151.211293sspn=0.003114,0.006539oq=Customs+Househq=Customs+House+Library,hnear=Sydney+New+South+Walest=mz=18 Hope to see many of you there! Regards, Craig Franklin Wikimedia Australia On 2 April 2013 21:33, Craig Franklin cfrank...@halonetwork.net wrote: Hi Sydneysiders, As the WMAU committee will be in Sydney this weekend for the Wikimedia in Higher Education symposiumhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney/5_April_2013, we thought that we should take the opportunity to have a get together with the Sydney Wikimedia community at large. As such, we’ve put *Sunday 7 April* aside for a face-to-face meeting with the community. This is your opportunity to meet with the committee, pepper us with QA, and talk with us about the future of the chapter and the Wikimedia movement in general. The location is still TBA, once we’ve got this secured we’ll let you know straight away. At the moment it is planned to be an all day event, but if you can’t spare the entire day feel free to drop in whenever. Cheers, Craig Franklin Wikimedia Australia ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Proposal to use the internal wiki more
I must confess, I have access to two of those general private wikis but very seldom use them all, which probably indicates that in their current form they don't serve much purpose. So bravo to Michael for raising the issue to see if we can squeeze some more function out of them! I'm intruiged by noboard_chapterswikimedia though - what is this for? To those wondering what sort of mysterious secrets are held on them, the answer is not much interesting. Mainly contact details and a semi-out-of-date listing for the internal-l mailing list, as far as I can see. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 3 April 2013 20:40, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: FYI, list of private wikis: https://meta.wikimedia.org/** wiki/Wikimedia_wikis#Private_**wikishttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_wikis#Private_wikis There are 27 private wikis hosted by the WMF, of which 15 for WMF internal organisation (including committees) and 3 for more general Wikimedia matters. Nemo __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] French intelligency agency forces removal of aWikipedia article
...and ensuring its translated into as many languages as possible! On 06/04/2013 7:10 AM, Peter Southwood peter.southw...@telkomsa.net wrote: Well that's one way of drawing attention to the site... - Original Message - From: Tomasz W. Kozłowski odder.w...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**orgwikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, April 05, 2013 7:41 PM Subject: [Wikimedia-l] French intelligency agency forces removal of aWikipedia article Hi there, I guess you might be interested to hear that Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur (Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence, DCRI), a French intelligence agency that reports directly to the Ministry of the Interior, has apparently forced a French Wikipedia administrator to delete an article that in their opinion—as I understand it—revelead classified information deemed very harmful to the French national defence (compromission du secret de la Défense nationale). Interestingly, they contacted the WMF legal team with a request to remove (delete? suppress?) this article a couple of weeks before that, but were refused after failing to provide further information on why the article should be removed (in the words of a Foundation legal counsel). Undounted by that, they approached the said administrator — who operates under his real name, so I guess it was pretty easy to track him — and asked him to delete this article, a request which he obliged. (The article has since been restored by a different administrator). As far as I understand, the version of the article they wanted to have deleted was https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/**index.php?oldid=81104004https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=81104004 . I guess that when an intelligence agency asks their citizen to remove information from Wikipedia citing the penal code (article 413-11 of the French penal code in this case), it is something worth sharing (no harm intended). Further reading in English: * https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/**index.php?diff=prevoldid=**91703508https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prevoldid=91703508 * https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/**index.php?oldid=91705235https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=91705235 -- Tomasz W. Kozłowski a.k.a. [[user:odder]] __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l - No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2012.0.2240 / Virus Database: 2641/5726 - Release Date: 04/05/13 __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Strategic plans of the Wikimedia entities: could you link your strategy, please?
Excellent idea Ziko! I have added the WMAU strategic plan ( http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Strategic_plan ) to the list on Meta also. Cheers, Craig Franklin President - Wikimedia Australia On 23 April 2013 09:21, Everton Zanella Alvarenga t...@wikimedia.org wrote: Great idea. [2] I think WMF independent consultants that work in Brazil could add theirs and I invited my colleagues that support Wikimedia projects in Brazil to do the same. Tom On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 12:09 AM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Great idea, Ziko. I helped clean up that page a bit also. If you are part of planning for the future of wiki Projects as well - such as Wikidata or Wikisource, please link to those docs (or just the collector-bugs listing their top-priority feature requests) as well. SJ On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 6:22 PM, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nl wrote: Hello, At the Wikimedia Conference in Milan several people have asked me about the strategy document of Wikimedia Nederland. We have the link on our chapter's page on Meta Wiki: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Nederland Then, I looked up the Meta Wiki page Strategy. It seems that the page can use some update. I allowed myself to link to the WMF Strategic Plan, and start a section with chapter strategies. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy Would you like to make a link to your strategy document? Kind regards Ziko --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wikimedia.nl Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht --- ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom) A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why not everyone have the right to vote in the Board FDC elections?
Ting, I don't think that Itzik has said anywhere that the election committee is doing a bad job. I think he is simply saying that you shouldn't have to commit to having a meeting every week since February just to have an opinion on the topic that is taken seriously. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 30 April 2013 19:40, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: Hello Itzik yes, you are right. But, and this is a very big but. You organized Wikimania yourself, you know how much unseen and unthankable and unbelievable complicated and unnecessary work behind all the shiny things. The election committee is also a volunteer driven committee. It is a tremendous effort. They have weekly meeting since February, and they did a lot of things. It is unfair to stand out now and say you are doing a bad job. Greetings Ting Am 4/30/2013 11:24 AM, schrieb Itzik Edri: Ting, Risker, 1. To share thoughts and feedback about the elections, you don't must to be volunteer in the committee. 2. I indeed thought about it only when I saw the centralnotice and read the voting requirement, I may needed to raise it before. But it's still doesn't mean we need to ignore from this issue Itzik On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 11:22 AM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: Hello dear all, I would also like to ask everyone who has made their thoughts on the election to take part on the election committee themselves the next time. Unfortunately when I made the call for volunteer earlier this year not very many people responded. Greetings Ting Am 4/30/2013 12:57 AM, schrieb Risker: On 29 April 2013 18:48, Asaf Bartov abar...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 2:37 AM, Itzik Edri it...@infra.co.il wrote: I agree. We should limit it to only community members, or to give equal right to everyone. Asaf, you right, but we are talking also about the FDC elections. a processes where we are not granting chapters and others organizations the right to vote but granting to the WMF. Giving only WMF staff, and not chapters staff the right to vote in community process, it's like saying the first are part of the community, but the second are not. I don't even want to refer to the sensitive issue of the staff voting for their bosses.. That's a very good point, and I think the chapter board members and staff definitely _should_ be given a voice _at least_ in the FDC elections. I leave it to the Elections Committee to propose solutions. The Elections Committee posted its plan weeks before the election started, with hardly any commentary at all; it is only now, after candidates may start entering the race, that people are complaining that we've failed to give the right people a vote (or alternately, that we've given too many people a vote). There is almost no variation between the voter eligibility this year and in the previous election; the only relevant changes are dates for eligibility and the developer commit process (which was changed because the Engineering Department changed the way that commits were done). I suggest that those who would like to see changes at the next election post on the election post mortem page[1] now, so that these ideas aren't lost to time. Risker (Election Committee Member) [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_**http://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_** elections_2013/Post_mortemhtt**p://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/** Wikimedia_Foundation_**elections_2013/Post_mortemhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Post_mortem ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**orgWikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/ mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l h**ttps://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**orgWikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/ mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l h**ttps://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Comments on compliance and the FDC Round 2 decisions
I wonder if it will be accepted to apply to GAC for temporary position for the person responsible for preparation of FDC application :-) That's probably not as silly an idea as it sounds - having a local person on the ground with relevant expertise who can assist the chapter not just in preparing their application, but also help them set realistic goals on what could be achieved would no doubt increase the quality of FDC applications and also focus chapters on delivering useful programme work, without causing any bitterness about the Foundation at the same time. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 30 April 2013 20:42, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: 2013/4/30 Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.pl: Many members of the community (as it was confirmed in the discussions on Milan conference) are e.g. uncertain about part-time employment possibilities through GAC, as well as about professionalization efforts being funded through GAC scheme (both possible to some extent). I believe that it is imperative that a clear guideline is prepared. Actually it is here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index/Eligibility_requirements Grants through this program do not fund full-time permanent staff salaries and other recurring operating expenses, such as the rent of an office. In some cases, WMF Grants Program grants may fund part-time positions or full-time temporary positions with a limited focus and scope of work related specifically to the activities of the funded project. Requests for part-time staff will be accompanied by an assessment of the applicant's ability to effectively manage staff, and may require necessary infrastructure to support staff (such as policies around travel reimbursements, and hiring). Full-time staff and recurring operating expenses will only be funded via the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) process. Note that entities receiving funds through the FDC process may not receive funds through the WMF Grants Program during the same fiscal year. although it is a bit misleading, as in several cases (WM AR, WM SR, WM IN, WM DC) it was accepted to pay for renting an office. I wonder if it will be accepted to apply to GAC for temporary position for the person responsible for preparation of FDC application :-) -- Tomek Polimerek Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29title=tomasz-ganicz ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] UK.Gov passes Instagram Act
If the Register hates it, that usually indicates to me that it is a fantastic idea. On 02/05/2013 1:07 PM, shi zhao shiz...@gmail.com wrote: see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/29/err_act_landgrab/ The Act contains changes to UK copyright law which permit the commercial exploitation of images where information identifying the owner is missing, so-called orphan works, by placing the work into what's known as extended collective licensing schemes. Since most digital images on the internet today are orphans - the metadata is missing or has been stripped by a large organisation - millions of photographs and illustrations are swept into such schemes. For the first time anywhere in the world, the Act will permit the widespread commercial exploitation of unidentified work - the user only needs to perform a diligent search. But since this is likely to come up with a blank, they can proceed with impunity. The Act states that a user of a work can act as if they are the owner of the work (which should be you) if they're given permission to do so by the Secretary of State. The Act also fails to prohibit sub-licensing, meaning that once somebody has your work, they can wholesale it. This gives the green light to a new content-scraping industry, an industry that doesn't have to pay the originator a penny. Such is the consequence of rebalancing copyright, in reality. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
This sort of tone might be appropriate coming from HR in a bank or something, but I'm tremendously disappointed that something so tactless and rude was sent out from a senior officer in the Foundation to its volunteers. I know Gayle is a new hire, so I'm assuming good faith that she wasn't aware that taking this sort of attitude with volunteers would go down like a lead balloon. Someone at the WMF needs to take Gayle into an office and patiently explain to her that the volunteers whose access she just disabled, effective immediately are the same ones that keep the websites that per her salary going. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 11 May 2013 21:15, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: This is the email that got sent out to everyone, --- Dear XXX, Thank you for your work with the Foundation wiki. At this time, we are formalizing a new requirement, which is that administrator access is given only to staff and board. I am having administrator access to accounts that are neither staff or board be disabled, effective immediately. Sincerely, Gayle -- Gayle Karen K. Young Chief Talent and Culture Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415.310.8416 www.wikimediafoundation.org --- Gayle's response (which was the first time she has edited the wiki in ~5 months[2]) seems lacking[1] in general and the subsequent responses about knowing what these people do on the wiki Another interesting fact is that Mz got desysoped first, When you would expect it to be done in alphabetically order. We've been discussing this for awhile, and the thought is that it's ultimately the Foundation's web presence, not the community's web presence. A useful parallel to consider might be how userrights are given to staffers on the community wikis; they're distributed as and when they're needed for a specific task. Um, Rights for staff on wikis are given out like candy?, although not as much thee days but it still happens. Also, How is the foundation wiki not apart of the community? Has the position of the legal department changed? or the boards? just randomly changing without any imput or discussions seems utlimately strange. since it is actually their wiki (just like everything else that falls under the foundation) [1]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=91857oldid=91855#Users_stripped_of_rights.3F [2]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributionstarget=Gyoung [3]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Log/rights ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Yes, this. I must admit, it's tremendously demotivating and makes me quite upset that people like Aphaia, Anthere, Danny B. and Thehelpfulone, people who have put hundreds if not thousands of hours of effort into this movement without asking for a single cent, over many many years, are treated as risks to be eliminated rather than assets to the movement whose input is to be treasured. My main objection is not to the actual act of removing these rights (although as pointed out above by others, it seems to be a solution looking for a problem), my main objection is the remarkably callous and hamfisted way that it was executed. In particular, I think that making a potentially controversial change, and referring questions about that change to a staffer who is heading out of town and will be unresponsive for a few days is probably not good practice at all. Does anyone from the Foundation honestly think this has been handled well? What lessons are there to be learned from this? Cheers, Craig On 12 May 2013 10:31, Thomas Goldammer tho...@gmail.com wrote: Anyway, nothing would have been lost if Gayle had written to the folks a few weeks before the actual action was performed, informing that this is the plan and why. It's not necessary, WMF owns the page and can do just about everything there, but just for politeness it would have been nice. And yes, the email that - seemingly selectively - got sent out was not really diplomatic, either, it sounds much like thanks, bye!. Or was there any sort of emergency that made an immediate action indispensable? (A soon explanation by Gayle would certainly be helpful there.) Th. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Well, perhaps there was extensive consultation from Phillippe and Gayle if it had been planned over a long period of time and I just missed it. If that's the case, I'm sure that one of them will point it out for us first thing on Monday morning, at which point I'd have to start removing egg from my face ;-) Cheers, Craig On 12 May 2013 14:15, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: It's also worth noting this wasn't a last minute decision at all; its foreshadowed in a number of comments by Philippe going back to seemingly mid-March, and there may be warnings of it earlier. So the WMF staff have been discussing this change internally for at least 6 weeks or so. That's a long time to not think up a better plan for rolling it out. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Thanks for clarifying this Phillippe. I must say that I think this discussion is becoming unpleasantly personal (and my initial email on the topic probably didn't help there, I concede). How about we stop pointing fingers at each other and conduct an honest and transparent appraisal of what has happened with a view to learning lessons from it so that it doesn't happen again. I also have to point out that while it's not ideal at all that this happened late on a Friday afternoon when everyone was leaving the office, nor is it reasonable to expect paid staff to snap to and respond on the weekends during their personal time. The damage has been done now, and it's not so urgent an issue that it can't wait until Monday for a response. Cheers, Craig On 13 May 2013 06:23, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: That is correct. Because despite your attempts to turn me into the decision making authority here, I wasn't. You don't need to talk to the worker bee who executed, you want to talk to the person who made the decision. That's not me. And she is traveling. And also, you know, I'm working brutal hours right now and yeah, I wanted to try to not be posting this weekend. I had to deal with my mistake in not removing Phoebes rights at the same time and I had to deal with an elections thing. But was I anxious to come wading into a situation where - despite you clearly being told that I wasn't a decision maker - you continue to (for whatever reason) advance the asinine position that someone must be pulling gayles strings and therefore it must be me because I am evil? No, you know, MZ, I didn't come skipping gleefully to that conversation. Let me be clear: I respect the work that you do. But I have zero time for your distortions of the situation when you've been told that it wasn't my decision. You want an explanation? I'm sure that Gayle will offer one. But for the umpteenth time, I was the person pushing the button because someone had to be. So lets leave my motivations out of this okay? I'm spending hundreds of hours per month fighting to support the volunteer community here and your assignations to the contrary are insulting. PB — Philippe Beaudette Director, Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation, Inc On May 12, 2013, at 10:06 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Philippe has had time to go back and remove Phoebe's user rights and Philippe has had time to post to this mailing list about the upcoming Wikimedia elections, but he has chosen not to participate in this thread at all about his actions. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
Upon reading Gayle's response, and reflecting on some of the comments I made on Saturday night, I have come to the conclusion that some of the things I said may have come across as a little harsh and condescending. While that was my intention (my point was that sometimes the community can bite, so you have to watch your fingers while interacting with them!), I think that what I said could quite easily have come across as patronising. This wasn't my intent, but I sincerely and unreservedly apologise to Gayle if this was how it was taken and if my words caused anyone any distress. Later, after I have dinner, I'm going to respond with a post to analyse what went wrong and offer some positive suggestions to how I think these situations can be avoided in the future, but the positive suggestion I am going to take for myself at this point is Florence's excellent advice to step back and let people explain themselves *before* I jump down their throat. Cheers, Craig On 13 May 2013 18:02, Fae fae...@gmail.com wrote: On 13 May 2013 08:18, Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 2:03 AM, James Alexander jameso...@gmail.com wrote: That's a bit relative, James. The active folk on this mailing list make for a pretty good cross section of thoughts/feelings/opinions of the movement. I've refrained from this discussion and will continue to do so on specifics, because it's politics and that's not something I do on Wikipedia/Wikimedia. On this, I have watched this thread with interest. I started following it when sitting in a chapter board meeting all day on Saturday. From the outset I knew I would not want to make any specific comment and get sucked into another dramah, I have too big a pile of these already anyway. There are lessons to be learned here. I continue to hope that the WMF can find a way of learning from these experiences, particularly if they set a long term pattern, in addition to answering the specific questions about this incident. For me, I certainly have learned that for the other organizations I am involved with that control wikis and have the wonderful luxury of working through the good will of unpaid volunteer admins and bureaucrats, the policies that apply should only change with careful and recorded consultation, even if I am personally sure that there are very clear legal or excellent good and important or urgent governance reasons to make changes. For those on Monday morning finding a little egg left on their faces, perhaps it is time to brew some freshly ground coffee, make some hot buttered toast and turn this into a productive breakfast? Stay mellow. ;-) PS I'm not attempting to claim any high ground here, so before anyone points it out, yes I'm pretty darn flawed myself. Sometimes I do learn from mistakes though, I have a lifetime of foolishness to regret and learn from. Cheers, Fae -- fae...@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] movement blog, not WMF blog, was: Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
All other things aside, misspelling the person's name and then calling them an asshole is hardly likely to lead to an amicable solution, peace, love, or understanding, is it? On 13 May 2013 21:09, Huib Laurens sterke...@gmail.com wrote: Tillman, For the record, the time between your e-mail and my request why the rights where removed is FOUR days. So yes. I stay by my claim I had to find information myself. And showing the mails its visible that Jay didn't know about the fact you removed me either. So NO you didn't leave me a note when you did it. I get your note four days later. Other volunteers also said they where removed, and I will not post that kind of e-mails online. But on the other mailing threat there you can read it yourself also. When I was placed on the Wikimedia Blog I was already blocked by the Dutch Wikipedia, That was no problem for Jay, Erik or the other people I worked with? When I was blocked on the dutch Wikipedia I was also a moderator on Commons, Meta, Incubator and a Member of the LangCOM and the LiCOM. So now your saying: You where / are blocked so you can't be trusted? I guess that makes you a complete asshole. Since the blocks and NL.wiki and lots of other wiki's are made of complete bullshit. On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 7:00 PM, Tilman Bayer tba...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi Huib, thanks for correcting your earlier claim in the main thread that you were never notified about this kind of thing (although unfortunately this correction comes only after your claim already contributed to leaving MZ a little speechless and feeling more and more ... distanced from Wikimedia). I can confirm that this is the text of an email I sent you on November 16, 2011 when removing you from what was originally the blog comment moderators list - with one crucial difference however: On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 2:47 AM, Huib Laurens sterke...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Huib, we are currently reorganizing the internal communication about the Foundation's blog, and in the process have just removed your subscription. The list is going to see more confidential information in the future, and we want to focus membership more on people who need to know it. Curiously, here you left out one sentence from my 2011 email: And while I don't want to pass judgment over your work on the projects, the fact that you are currently blocked on Meta etc. makes it difficult to justify keeping your access at the moment. I want to emphasize that this has nothing to do with your conduct as list member, and that your interest in and support for the WMF blog (e.g. tweeting new posts) is appreciated. You can still send messages to the list, they will just need to go through moderation. -- Tilman Bayer Movement Communications Wikimedia Foundation IRC (Freenode): HaeB Strange that the blog is internal communications. You mean that https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-blog is not a public mailing list? It is my understanding that it was originally created solely as a channel of notifications about new blog comments that needed to be moderated; these obviously should not be public. Later there were efforts to make it more into a venue of internal coordination about the blog, although these did not quite pan out. Even stranger is that Erik asked to create my account, he was completly ok with it. So I'm not sure what the information on the blog is so secret that no volunteers can see it... Actually, you were the only volunteer removed at that point in 2011 - there were at least four volunteers who I think are still on the list. As indicated in the part of my email that you chose to quietly suppress, a main reason to handle your case differently was that you were at that time indefinitely blocked by the community on more than one wiki (to cite the block log entry from nlwiki: Abusing multiple accounts: general project disruption and cross-wiki disruption; trying to evade bans on other projects, running unapproved bots and so on. block per RfC and cu evidence. ) The fact that you are now trying to make your case by posting tampered emails reinforces my confidence that it was the right decision to remove you from this position of trust. -- Tilman Bayer Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications) Wikimedia Foundation IRC (Freenode): HaeB ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Met vriendelijke groet, Huib Laurens ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Report concerning appeal (FDC round 2)
Thanks Susana for so quickly documenting this matter, and thanks Jan-Bart and Patricio for referring this quickly to the Ombudsperson so that it could be investigated and dealt with quickly rather than being allowed to fester. I think that the recommendations that Susana have made are sensible and not onerous to implement, and I urge the FDC to accept and implement these recommendations as quickly as possible. Cheers, Craig Franklin 2013/5/15 Susana Morais susana.mor...@wikimedia.pt Hello, For all of you who are interested, I posted on Meta a report concerning an appeal regarding the round 2 of the Funds Dissemination Committee: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Appeals_regarding_FDC_process/2012-2013_round2#Retrospective_disqualification_of_WMCZ_and_WMHK Best, -- Susana Morais Wikimedia Portugal http://www.wikimedia.pt Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a fazer. Participe também: http://www.wikimedia. http://www.wikimedia.pt/pthttp://www.wikimedia.pt/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on Admin Rights on WMF Wiki (and other things)
Wow, I'm on the road, bur suggesting that someone ought to leave after one public error? That's brutal. Hope I never come across you while doing my day job! Cheers, Craig On 26/05/2013 5:35 AM, ENWP Pine deyntest...@hotmail.com wrote: Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 20:33:57 +0200 From: Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Gayle Karen Young gyo...@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on Admin Rights on WMF Wiki (and other things) Message-ID: 519e6115@gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Just in case someone wonders, Gayle Karen Young, 23/05/2013 06:22: [...] goal was to ensure that the function of a wiki adminstrator, which is often identified with community self-governance, is clearly mapped against the governance model of the site: [...] [...] doesn't answers the questions on the table at all. Especially as the governance model of the site doesn't exist at all and nobody has any idea of who is going to take care of it. Or in other words: Tomasz W. Kozlowski, 13/05/2013 02:04: Gayle Karen Young wrote: Hello folks, [...] Gayle So what did you want to say? I haven't been able to find any answers to any questions that have been asked by so many people in this thread. So, to quote yourself, you committed criticism and now you're insisting with stonewalling, with a flavour of defensiveness. I admit that my knowledge of Gottman is limited to a recent magazine article I read by chance a few days ago, so I may be wrong, but it seems to me that there's little room to do worse in this relationship. Nemo Nemo, I think someone posted a list of good questions in this thread awhile back. I tried to find them but I gave up after ten minutes. If you can find them would you please repost them? If you can't find them either then I'd ask you to repeat the questions that you remember and think are most important. Gayle, I am going to be frank. I think I know a little more about you and your work than the average member of this list does. I appreciate your explanations and apologies, but I'm continuing to have a hard time with this situation. With your many years of leadership experience, and in your position as Chief Culture and Talent Officer, it's shocking that you would implement such a significant change in the unprofessional way that you did, and of all people I would have expected you and Philippe (Director of Community Advocacy) to be acutely aware of our consensus-based culture and how to implement changes in a diplomatic and professional way. This situation has been a disaster for WMF-Community relations, and I'm sorry to say that my feeling is that the credibility of you and Philippe has been harmed beyond repair. Do you think you should continue to be WMF's Chief Culture and Talent Officer? I have a hard time believing that you should continue in that role after this disaster, but I want to hear your point of view. Thanks, Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage logo
I'm sure that the legal team has done their homework on this and would not have made this recommendation unless they felt that the WTO had a credible argument. Asking the Foundation to play chicken with the lawyers of a major international organisation over a trademark claim on a relatively new and easily replaced logo of ours does not offer a very good risk/reward ratio in my view. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 1 June 2013 19:59, Peter Southwood peter.southw...@telkomsa.net wrote: Has anyone done a search on other logos with similar characteristics, to see how much they differ? I think the WTO is taking a chance with this. Which specific aspects do they object to? Peter Southwood. - Original Message - From: Maggie Dennis mden...@wikimedia.org To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**orgwikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, June 01, 2013 5:39 AM Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage logo On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 8:21 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Michelle Paulson wrote: Since then, the Foundation has received a cease-and-desist letter from the WTO, requesting that we change the logo. While we wish that the WTO agreed with our assessment that the two logos contain substantial differences and could co-exist, we understand their concern. We still believe that there are some significant differences between the Wikivoyage logo and the WTO, however, such arguments are not guaranteed to win if we were to legally oppose this request because there are also some substantial similarities. With this in mind, as well as the fact that the Wikivoyage logo is still relatively new and has not had a chance to build significant brand recognition yet, we believe the better solution is to hold a new community contest for a new logo. Will the current Wikivoyage logo be an option in this upcoming logo selection contest? If the Wikivoyage community is strongly in favor of retaining the logo it already approved, what are options? On behalf of a Wikivoyager, I've already asked the legal team if derivatives of the current logo would be usable, and I'm afraid the answer is no. It must be a new logo. I don't believe there's any precedent for the Wikimedia Foundation vetoing a community-approved logo in this manner. (Is there?) This seems like unchartered territory for Wikimedia, so it's important to be cautious and careful, I think. I think that the reason why there's no precedent is because this is the first time that we have run into a trademark infringement claim against a logo. We believe that the community is the best body to decide what logo should represent their hard work and hope that interested community members will take this opportunity to once again showcase their creativity and talent by submitting designs. As I posted on the relevant Meta-Wiki talk page just now, the Wikimedia community cannot feel rushed or pressured to accept this new logo selection procedure. Typically a discussion of this nature would last at least thirty days, from my experience. This leaves two options, as I see it: pushing back the timeline for the selection of a Wikivoyage logo by a few weeks or not using this procedure for the selection of the next Wikivoyage logo. The question of process is one for Meta, where discussion is already underway. No reason to fracture it. :) I appreciate your input there. Maggie -- Maggie Dennis Senior Community Advocate Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage logo
On 2 June 2013 00:22, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Craig Franklin wrote: I'm sure that the legal team has done their homework on this and would not have made this recommendation unless they felt that the WTO had a credible argument. Asking the Foundation to play chicken with the lawyers of a major international organisation over a trademark claim on a relatively new and easily replaced logo of ours does not offer a very good risk/reward ratio in my view. You mean has done their homework on this this time, right? The General Counsel position is one of the oldest in the Wikimedia Foundation and the Legal and Community Advocacy team certainly existed before the previous Wikivoyage logo contest. If this were an issue, you'd think someone would've said something six months ago. And, of course, there's no shortage of trademark, patent, or copyright trolls in the world. I've seen both logos and while they're obviously similar, I'm sure there are a great number of lawyers who could make a number of arguments as to why there's no real issue here. Anyone can send a cease and desist letter, right? The WMF Legal team are good, but they're not *that* good. I'm sure if Geoff and the gang were capable of foretelling the future to see if they'd get issued with a cease-and-desist, they'd be spending their lottery winnings in the Caribbean rather than dealing with trademark issues. There are also at least a few Wikivoyagers who are concerned that the active participants of Wikivoyage weren't properly enfranchised during the last logo contest. That is, there's a concern that the people most involved with Wikivoyage will get drowned out by the much larger Wikimedia community in any contest of this nature. Obviously this is a valid concern, but that's best dealt with by making sure that the best process is in place for the logo competition, not by complaining about something that, lets face it, is not going to change. Obviously, for those that were unhappy with the last logo process, this is an opportunity to have an improved contest this time around. I would think some of these issues would be of concern to you. This isn't about asking anyone to play chicken. It's about ensuring that communities are free to choose their own identity. Well, obviously I'd be happy for them to pick whatever identity, so long as it's not infringing on a trademark. In other words, they can't have the Golden Arches or Mickey Mouse ears! :-). More seriously though, while I suppose the WMF might conceivably be eventually victorious in court on this sort of issue, the expense would be enormous and the legal team's time is much better spent on things other than fighting battles over non-core principles with international organisations. I also suspect that the WTO has a fair bit more cash to splash around on fancy lawyers to fight this than we do. It's not a nice situation to be in obviously, but it's better than the Foundation having to waste its money fighting this in court. Cheers, Craig ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thanks for all the fish!
Milos, Thanks for these words and I am sorry to see you leave. I think everyone agrees that the entire Wikimedia movement owes you a debt of gratitude for a decade of great work. Hopefully after some time away you'll miss us and be back, but if not, whatever group you decide to involve yourself with next will be very fortunate indeed! Regards, Craig Franklin On 8 June 2013 02:32, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: I am leaving the movement. I thought to leave it quietly, with just a bit more than a few words to stewards and Wikimedia Serbia, but after the first question why I am leaving, I realized that I actually owe to many of you the explanation for leaving the movement after almost 10 years. If you want to skip the story of my motivation, continue with Unfinished projects section. == On my motivation == In short, I am struggling with the motivation to work inside of the movement for almost two years. My participation in Haifa was the culmination of my Wikimedia engagement and everything after it was going down and down. I was struggling hard. I didn't want to leave the movement because I was feeling responsible for a number of issues. As time went, as I wasn't taking any new responsibility, the level of feeling responsible was lowering and lowering. My last really big responsibility was to push the creation of Wikimedia Serbia Office last fall. After that I felt that there is no need for me inside of the movement. But I wanted to stay, I wanted it hardly! For at least two years I was struggling with my steward activity and although I know that I am important to other stewards, I have problem to make one fucking steward action for months. And that wasn't about my free time. I have it enough. That was about my motivation. I was trying to find a way to motivate myself to participate in the movement. Alone or in cooperation with other Wikimedians, I started some not yet published projects. I thought that I could raise my motivation if I leave issues related to the chapters and I left Chapters committee. But it didn't help. I was on Amsterdam Hackathon and talking with Erik about one more important Wikimedia issue: thousands of languages which are waiting for their editions of Wikimedia projects. He was encouraging; for the first time I got clearly positive response. But it wasn't enough. Instead of enthusiastically working on the project, I just didn't have enough motivation to do anything. I thought that becoming a Board member could raise my motivation. At the beginning, I was actually very enthusiastic. But last two weeks I spent much more time in being worried about the possibility to be elected than about thinking about how to be elected. For a number of times I was thinking to quit, but this time I had appropriate personal trigger and finally got courage to admit myself that there is nothing which would change my motivation. == Wikimedia impact on me == I've just realized that if I am writing this kind of email, I should say something about Wikimedia impact on me. When I first edited Wikipedia I was less than a month older than 30. This November I will be 40. The whole decade of my life was under the strong influence of Wikimedia movement. I spent intellectually formative years inside of Wikimedia and it changed me a lot, probably not comparable to anything else. And I could write a book about how Wikipedia and Wikimedia influenced me. == Unfinished projects == This is important. I am leaving some things unfinished and both of the projects are very important. * First, languages. There are more than 6000 languages and there are less than 300 language editions of Wikipedia. It is likely that all of 3000 languages with more than 10,000 of speakers would survive if they have Wikipedia edition in their language. And if you ask why Wikimedia movement should do that, it's because there is no other relevant international body capable to do that. That makes Wikimedia's position unique and with large amount of historical responsibility. I will share my research with anyone willing to work on this issue. * Gamification. Mostly because the lack of my motivation, the project Wikichievements didn't start yet. It's actually in the very initial phase. Wikimedia Serbia and Wikimedia DC would do that. If you are interested in that, please contact Kirill Lokshin from WM DC. Gamification and social features are extremely important in making Wikimedia movement attractive to young generations again. == Wikimedia movement *is* important! == Wikimedia movement is not just important, it is the best try of our civilization to create a global movement based on completely different principles than anything else before. It's the best chance of our civilization to survive. And it's up to you to use the chance or not. If Wikimedia movement fails, I am sure that the similar chance would appear once in the future. But not soon
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
I'd suggest that while Wikimedia projects are somewhat less susceptible to PRISM-style snooping, simply because we're not a communications medium like Google or Facebook are. However, there is plenty of non-public information that could be of interest: - The IP addresses and identities of logged on users - Server logs (including logs of users who use the https version of the sites) - Times, dates, and possibly contents of emails sent through the Email this user functionality - Other information that is not kept at the application (MediaWiki) layer, but possibly could be logged at the database or OS layers. I wouldn't say that there's nothing to worry about, but at the same time I doubt we're near the top of the spooks' priority list. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 10 June 2013 13:05, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 10:53 PM, Benoit Landry benoit_lan...@hotmail.com wrote: What information could the WMF disclose that isn't already available to some volunteers anyhow? I don't know what information some volunteers have access to, who qualifies as some volunteers (does the board qualify?), or why it matters whether or not a person is a volunteer. By access logs I meant HTTP access logs. It's pretty clear that without taking extraordinary measures, what you're editing is not anonymous. But some people are probably under the impression that what they're reading and searching (and linking from) is private. The IP addresses of logged-in editors are visible to volunteer CUs; En-masse, or one-request-at-a-time? deleted revisions and log entries are visible to all volunteers admins. Wikipedia's inherently a pretty transparent system... Transparent? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM
If the NSA, CIA, or some other spook agency is getting information off of Wikimedia servers, they don't have a CU account or anything like that. They'd have a program running at the operating system level that extracts the data in a standardised format and sends it off to some secret server somewhere where it can be collated for data mining purposes. If they have some way of getting private information, it's going to be well hidden and not something you or I are likely to (or capable of) stumbling across. Cheers, Craig On 10 June 2013 20:09, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 June 2013 10:56, Florence Devouard anthe...@yahoo.com wrote: Precisely, they could ask to have CU accounts... There are people who closely monitor who has what powers. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Funds Dissemination Committee first progress reports
Given that this is an assessment that is being performed by paid staff, I think it's unreasonable to think that the staff would issue more than very mild criticism (Your report is so great it makes everyone else look terrible!), even if the report was so poor as to deserve criticism. I'm not saying that it *is*, but I don't think anyone that values their job would carpet their employer in a public forum, even if the employer invited them to do so. There should certainly be a note in this report to declare the massive COI involved in having WMF staff 'critically' assessing a WMF report. That said, I do find the assessment for everyone else useful in terms of seeing what the WMF staff will think, and I'm sure that chapters considering an FDC application will take that on board. I am a little disappointed at the focus by WMF staff on quantitative metrics over everything else, which I think may have the unfortunate side-effect of encouraging entities to go after easily measurable activities rather than the most effective and worthwhile activities. Hopefully this will be taken into account on future assessments. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 12 June 2013 20:52, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: Katy Love, 11/06/2013 22:52: [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/FDC_portal/Proposals/** 2012-2013_round1/Staff_**summary/Progress_report_form/**Q1http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Proposals/2012-2013_round1/Staff_summary/Progress_report_form/Q1 Funny: «WMF notes [stats]», «WMFR claims [stats]». Nemo __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Funds Dissemination Committee first progress reports
Thanks SJ for these thoughts, it's gratifying and encouraging that we have a WMF trustee on the case :-) While getting chapter staff to likewise review reports is a good idea, there are two potential problems that I can see with it: 1. Chapter staff may be unwilling to criticise the reports of other chapters that they're hoping to embark on joint projects with, and; 2. The various funding programs available through the WMF (FDC, GAC) make no secret of the fact that they want staff to be doing programme work, *not* administrative or overhead work. It would be difficult for most chapters to spare the resources to do this properly. Perhaps the movement could look at getting an external firm in to do the assessment? It would probably be costly, but if the firm is properly chosen it should at least minimise any COI concerns. Of course, their reporting can and should be supported by vigourous assessment by the community. Cheers, Craig On 15 June 2013 12:02, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 1:37 PM, Manuel Merz manuel.m...@wikimedia.de wrote: I am a little disappointed at the focus by WMF staff on quantitative I find it distracting, though currently accurate, that this is framed as a WMF staff focus. The report makes a point of taling about FDC staff instead. How can we set up FDC support, from across the movement, so that we stop talking about WMF staff and start talking about staff supporting the FDC? In my view, this should be a mix of [staff] from across the movement. This does not get away from the COI problem of having movement entities reviewing how well they are doing, but it adds some of the natural checks and balances of peer review. (I put [staff] in brackets because this could also include FDC support that are not staff. Indeed some aspects of COI suggest that any evaluation group should include non-staff as well.) On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 8:24 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.pl wrote: On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 1:37 PM, Manuel Merz manuel.m...@wikimedia.de wrote: [focusing on] quantitative metrics over everything else... may have the unfortunate side-effect of encouraging entities to go after easily measurable activities rather than the most effective and worthwhile activities. instead of setting the focus on easily measurable means, I would personally prefer a focus on building up the movement's knowledge about sustainable outcomes and on how to get there. I agree with Manuel here: we should focus on how to build the movement's knowledge about the most helpful, generative, and sustainable outcomes. And how to expand this knowledge: experiments that will help us learn more about what is possible. (This is important exploration, even if the result of an experiment is not immediately impactful) Dariusz is also right to note that most ideas have some outcomes that can be quantified, and some that cannot: and it is useful to identify each group of outcome. I personally believe that there may be some confusion about the goals here. What is important is to seek quantitative metrics WHEN APPLICABLE... Typically, all good ideas have some outcomes that can be quantified, as well as some that can't (or shouldn't). Regards, Sam ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia in jail!
This is a really wonderful project, I am a big believer in producing educational opportunities to gaoled prisoners so that they can lead more productive lives upon their release, and hopefully this project goes a little way towards making that happen. Bravo, Wikimedia CH! Cheers, Craig Franklin On 18 June 2013 00:15, Charles Andrès charles.andres.w...@gmail.com wrote: Wikipedia for prisoners – an unexpected partnership between a swiss prison and Wikimedia CH Following an initiative from Emmanuel Engelhart, with the support of Wikimedia CH CAO, Chantal Ebongué, since March 2013, prisoners who request can have an access to Wikipedia offline (Kiwix project). The idea is to stimulate or to support the interest for education of prisoners who were, for a large majority, condemned to long-time sentences. After three months of pilot phasis, the project is successful : Among the 36 prisoners of the Bellevue’s prison in Gorgier, 18 possess or rent a computer. All of them requested the upload of Wikipedia offline on their PC. For security reasons, swiss prisoners have a very restricted access to internet. More informations in the press releases (ENG, DE, FR, IT) that was sent today to the swiss media Regards, Charles ___ Charles ANDRES, Chairman Wikimedia CH – Association for the advancement of free knowledge – www.wikimedia.ch Office +41 (0)21 340 66 20 Skype: charles.andres.wmch IRC://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-ch ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Staff Images
I think what's really offensive here is the implication that having a tat means that you're not professional. I don't have any ink myself, but I respect the choice of those who do. To be honest, I like the occasionally goofy pictures and profiles on the WMF staff page; it shows that there are real people (and a tiger!) working there and not just corporate drones. Cheers, Craig On 12 July 2013 18:18, Eddy Paine bloggin...@outlook.com wrote: Dan, A placeholder for people without pictures shouldn't be a problem. Thats common use. And they are all the same so thats a OK thing. The picture of Rory is a picture of Rory. It even says its a mascot and I agree with Erik we need Tux for Engineering. And no, we are not in the 1950's but as a international organisation we should still keep in mind that tattoos aren't accepted world wide. Placing your tattoo on a staff page and your face faded away is provocating the fact that he has tattoo's and not proffesional. Secondly all staff pictures are made by a professional photographer? Or kind of in the same setting. That will keep the page uniform also. Ed From: swatjes...@gmail.com Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 04:02:56 -0400 To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Staff Images I don't see any problem with it. I'm not sure how it is somehow more unprofessional than absentee (for lack of a better term) pictures being labeled Cloak of invisibility? Or the picture of Rory as mascot? Further, what does all but neutral mean? Really, aren't there better things to do than play morality police because someone might be upset about some ink? This isn't the 1950's. Who is upset, and why? -Dan Dan Rosenthal On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 3:16 AM, Eddy Paine bloggin...@outlook.com wrote: Hi, While its maybe not something for the whole community. Since only Staff can edit Wikimedia Foundation website I believe this will be the correct place to post this. I feel that the staff images on the Foundation site should show the staff in a good way where nobody can have a problem with it. The images being made by professionals for that. I believe the image Brandon Harris is using since this night is not suitable for a staff picture. The ink he is showing can discourage people and the picture is all but neutral. Secondly he isn't even really on the picture his is faded out. I would strongly advice to keep the images there proffesional. Ed ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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 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 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] 2013-14 Annual Plan of the Wikimedia Foundation
As SJ and John have pointed out, there are many good reasons to wikify documents like this, not in the least to allow deep linking, and make reading more convenient on mediums that don't play nicely with PDF (like smartphones). So long as the wikified version is protected so as to maintain its integrity, I don't think there'll be any serious problems. Cheers, Craig On 14 July 2013 04:39, Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2013, Tomasz W. Kozlowski wrote: John Vandenberg wrote: I have converted it to wiki text. I wonder why it requires a volunteer to pick up a task that WMF employees should have done in the first place... -- Tomasz The Annual Plan is not really meant to be freely editable. The people building the plan didn't just forget to make it in to a wiki page, they no doubt chose not to. If John or someone wants to convert it they're free to do so naturally, but it's unlikely it will be treated as a canonical version. As people edit it, it's going to lead to discrepancies with the original, which no doubt will confuse and annoy people looking for its contents. __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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] Staff Images
Did she get permission to use the trademark in that way by WMF legal? :-) On 17/07/2013 1:41 AM, Steffen Prößdorf steffen.proessd...@wikimedia.de wrote: Hi there, 2013/7/15 Melanie Brown mbr...@wikimedia.org Hello Everyone, As for the insights on staff photos, thank you for your feedback. Yes, we are in the process of creating some more consistency in our staff photos for the Wikimedia Foundation Absolutely, more consistency is important. I think everyone has to have the same tattoo as Juliana to be allowed to work for WMF. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WIKIPEDIA-Tattoo.JPG Happy inking, Steffen -- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Stepro ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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] Feedback for the Wikimedia Foundation
Hi Erik, On 23 July 2013 17:01, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: But as I've noted in [1], I do not think a compromise on the preference question is necessarily out of reach. I've asked James and team to deliberate on some of the possibilities here, and offered the same suggestion I noted in [1]. Erik [1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-July/070643.html A warm and genuine thankyou for this. I just want to basically endorse some of the other comments being made here, which I think are quite insightful. If the goal of this project was to get the Visual Editor deployed on time and on budget, then the goal has been achieved. But if the goal was to gain acceptance from the community, then I think that the polls on enwiki and nlwiki show that it has been quite a failure. And if the goal was to make it easier for newbies to edit, which I believe was the whole point of the VE in the first place, then the statistically significant decline in edits from new users discussed in the other thread would indicate that VE has failed to meet that goal. Ultimately in its current state it's a tool that very few people, whether newcomers or power users, seem to like very much. As is usually the case, I'm not saying this to have a go at the developers or anyone else involved (who are obviously doing their best), but I think that some of the communication on this topic has been a bit clumsy and has caused a lot of unnecessary angst that could probably have been avoided if it had been planned for in advance. Does the Foundation have formal communication plans for things like this that focus on gaining community buy-in? If not, then you probably should. Obviously more testing and specifically more user acceptance testing would have been helpful in this case, although I understand the political pressures in getting the product shipped on time. Cheers, Craig Franklin ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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] About the concentration of resources in SF (it was: Communication plans for community engagement
Hi Erik (and whomever from WMDE), For the benefit of chapters that are interested in this space, can you offer any examples of projects that are of an appropriate size and type for a chapter to take on? I think that most chapters* would be willing to help out in the software development space if we got a bit of direction on how we could be the most useful. Cheers, Craig Franklin * Keeping in mind that my chapter probably wouldn't have the capacity to start anything in this space for at least another twelve months. On 27 July 2013 09:57, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 2:39 PM, rupert THURNER rupert.thur...@gmail.com wrote: If WMF is serious about letting development activities grow in other countries this might be taken into account in FDCs allocation policy. For my part, I'm happy to offer feedback to the FDC on plans related to the development of engineering capacity in FDC-funded organizations. I'm sure Wikimedia Germany, too, would be happy to share its experiences growing the Wikidata development team. I'd love to find ways to bootstrap more engineering capacity across the movement, as so many of our shared challenges have a software engineering component. If any folks on-list want to touch base on these questions at Wikimania, drop me a note. :) Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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] Let's have the courage to sit down and talk about VisualEditor
Erik, I don't agree with everything you're saying here, but I for one appreciate the candour and openness you're displaying in this discussion, not to mention a willingness to act on ideas from the community. You've already implemented what my suggestion was going to be (sticking the word Beta in the tab so people know what they're getting), so there's not much left except to say thanks and I appreciate it. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 2 August 2013 03:05, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 9:36 AM, Kevin Wayne Williams kwwilli...@kwwilliams.com wrote: The editor was able to change a 4 to a 5 in an existing table, that's true. Could that editor add a row? No. Add a column? No. Delete a row or a column? No. Are all of those operations part of the bare minimum feature set for table editing? Absolutely. No, I don't agree -- it's actually totally fine to say for now if you want to add rows etc., use the source editor. And as you know, once you start going into complex table manipulations, the product becomes a _lot_ more complex, because you need to be able to do so in a way that matches existing expectations of how a table should be structured, which vary by page (some augmented by templates, some using various inline CSS approaches, etc.). However, I do agree that we should do a better job communicating VE's limitations (they are listed pretty clearly in a bunch of places, but obviously you're not going to look if you're a new editor). This is why I think the approach of adding VE as a second tab with a clear beta label and an explanation when you open it is a reasonable way forward. It's not dirty diffs: the articles get converted to gibberish on saves: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Big_Time_Rush_episodesdiff=565906957oldid=565898974 Wholesale destruction of articles is *not* a dirty diff. The use of dirty diff was not intended to minimize that - we've seen destructive changes with VE, and we take them very seriously. Like I said, cleanly roundtripping has always been a top priority. The way we've prioritized them is by handcoding actual diffs we see in the real world and fixing things that occur frequently first. I also like the approach of shielding page content if needed. I just don't agree that providing a clean experience for _editing_ that type of masterfully template-constructed table is a fair expectation for a first release. You're right that copy/paste is badly broken across tabs, and still pretty broken even inside tabs, and we should have tried harder for the first release. But if I have time later today, I'll make you a video of how badly broken and slow copy/paste is in Google Docs across tabs, which has been around for many years now and seen a huge amount of world-wide usage -- not to even mention other less widely used web-based RTEs. Again, I'm not minimizing it -- just saying that what look like obvious easy issues often turns out to be a very complex problem that you end up being better served iterating on in the real world. What I do agree with is that we need to now make a change to the user experience to acknowledge the legitimate issues with the current experience, dial back the firehose, and more prominently inform users about VE's limitations. Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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] Mobile image upload
If we make it easier for people to contribute, we're also making it easier for people to contribute stuff we don't want. The tradeoff is definitely worth it though. Cheers, Craig On 26/08/2013 10:56 AM, Kevin Wayne Williams kwwilli...@kwwilliams.com wrote: It does, however, get its share of exactly what one would expect: http://commons.wikimedia.org/**wiki/File:Lil_brownie_2013-08-** 19_19-33.jpghttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lil_brownie_2013-08-19_19-33.jpg KWW Op 2013/08/25 17:08, Sue Gardner schreef: Wow, that *is* great. Thank you for showing us, James :-) On Aug 25, 2013 5:14 AM, James Heilman jmh...@gmail.com wrote: Mobile image upload is a huge plus thus thanks to all who made it happen. It is allowing those who might not otherwise have be able to get involved to do so. Just saw this image come in through the mobile site http://commons.wikimedia.org/**wiki/File:Dirty_white_** pseudomembrane_classically_**seen_in_diptheria_2013-07-06_**11-07.jpghttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dirty_white_pseudomembrane_classically_seen_in_diptheria_2013-07-06_11-07.jpg I have never seen diphtheria as it is exceedingly rare in my area of the world. And technically this image is very hard to take. Look forwards to mobile editing arriving. -- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l , mailto:wikimedia-l-request@**lists.wikimedia.orgwikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org ?subject=**unsubscribe __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@**lists.wikimedia.orgwikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org ?subject=**unsubscribe __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@**lists.wikimedia.orgwikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org ?subject=**unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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] Who will host Wikimedia Conference 2014? Bidding process is open!
Hi, A few people asked me with varying degrees of seriousness about this in Hong Kong, so I'll just put this out there and say that Wikimedia Australia will not be in a position to host this event in 2014. Regards, Craig Franklin President - Wikimedia Australia On 16 September 2013 22:11, Nicole Ebber nicole.eb...@wikimedia.de wrote: Dear Wikimedia friends, following up on the emails Asaf and I sent a few weeks ago, I have now drafted the bidding process to decide upon the location for next year’s Wikimedia Conference. This event will not only host the annual Chapters’/Affiliates’ conference, but also the WMF board, FDC and AffCom meetings and is meant to take place in April 2014 (tbc). https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Future_of_the_Wikimedia_Conference#Bidding_process_for_hosting_the_next_Wikimedia_Conference == LOCATION COMMITTEE == I would like to see a small location committee (3 representatives of affiliates, 1 AffCom and 1 WMF) to decide about the hosting chapter. Asaf and Bence already agreed upon joining the committee, and it would be nice to see someone from WMIT there, as they have the freshest experience. So if you have severe experience with conference organisation, please consider joining the committee now! == WANNA HOST WMCON 2014? == All chapters who are interested in organising the conference in 2014 are invited to place a short bid on Meta. The bids should be made until 30 September, a decision should be available before 15 October. The winning organisation will be responsible for all the logistics, as in: venue, catering, travel and visa arrangements, accommodation, technical equipment, social events, communication with and support for the participants, coordination with the programme committee and the facilitators. I hope that if we can take the logistics and location for granted, this will help us focus on the content and sustainability of the event. I have written more about the programme part on Meta. Thanks to Asaf and Bence for giving their valuable input to the set-up of this process. Since WMDE has kind of a traditional interest in having a good conference, I am happy to take a leading role in organising this process. Any help is highly appreciated! I am looking forward to an exciting Wikimedia Conference 2014. \o/ Nicole -- Nicole Ebber International Affairs Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin Tel. +49 30 219158 26-0 http://wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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] Fwd: Pitch In! Oral History transcription pilot
Hi All, Folk interested in Wikisource and/or libraries might be interested in this update from an interesting project being run with WMAU at the moment. Cheers, Craig Franklin -- Forwarded message -- From: John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com Date: 21 September 2013 20:09 Subject: [wmau:members] Pitch In! Oral History transcription pilot To: Wikimedia-au wikimediaa...@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Pip Kelly philippa.ke...@slq.qld.gov.au Hi, The State Library of Queensland (SLQ) Pitch In! project has three more weeks to go. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:WikiProject_SLQ New users and anons are still appearing whenever the SLQ promote the project on social media. e.g. https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChangesLinkeddays=30from=target=Index%3AAustralian_enquiry_book_of_household_and_general_information.djvu SLQ has added an oral history to be transcribed, and after a bit of fiddling we have the transcription project ready. It is a 1h20m interview of Ian Charlton, a retired Queensland architect. SLQ has a large collection of similar interviews of significant architects, and hope this pilot will clear the way for more similar uploads. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Ian_Charlton.ogg The Proofread Page software doesnt have any special support for ogg files, however each page has a player preset to the desired starting point for transcription. The player should jump forward without needing to download the 80meg audio file. e.g. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Ian_Charlton.ogg/17 This transcription can then be 'incorporated' into the ogg file using the new Timed Media Handler. I've done a quick demo here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/TimedText:Ian_Charlton.ogg.en.srt This is new territory for Wikisource, and the Commons timedtext feature is also fairly new to most of us. It would be great if a few members of this list can play around with this ogg project a little and report problems. Next week newbies will be asked to contribute to this transcription. There is a centralised discussion at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Scriptorium#Transcribing_audio -- John Vandenberg ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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] It's time to reclaim the community logo
Hi All, Just a quick thought: I'm disappointed by the way that both sides in this dispute seem to have resorted to conducting a debate via press release. I think the community expectation would be that rather than this weird passive-aggressive way of communicating, that all parties would arrange a phone hookup, and sit down to work out any common ground, and go forward from there. I think the community's clear expectation is that this should be settled if possible without the assistance of lawyers, and all that requires is for everyone to step back, be reasonable, and consider that the other side might just have a legitimate reason for what they're doing beyond causing trouble for the other. Cheers, Craig (personal opinion only) On 9 October 2013 16:13, James Alexander jalexan...@wikimedia.org wrote: The legal team have provided some background on the hiring on Jones Day in this action. Here is their comment: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo/Request_for_consultation#Legal_representation James Alexander Legal and Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 3:56 PM, tom...@twkozlowski.net wrote: Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote on September 26, 2013, 15:22 UTC: Trademark don't self-enforce, they are enforceable as long as someone believes to you when you use them as threat tools. So yes, I suppose they might. ... and given that the WMF just hired the infamous Jones Day bullies as their representative before the OHIM to fight an opposition filled by their own volunteers (me and Federico), I don't think it's an unfair view. I suggest that everyone interested in the subject read http://www.dmlp.org/blog/**2009/sam-bayard/thoughts-** jones-day-blockshopper-**settlement http://www.dmlp.org/blog/2009/sam-bayard/thoughts-jones-day-blockshopper-settlement and related links for an overview of a 2009 Jones Day lawsuit against a start-up company Blockshopper.com which Paul Levy called a new a new entry in the contest for grossest abuse of trademark law to suppress speech the plaintiff doesn’t like. I'm aware that, being a party of the opposition, I shouldn't really comment on the WMF's litigation tactics, but it still leaves me wonder about the point of hiring, as some say, one of the worst trademark abusers in history, as their representative in this case. Tomasz __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@**lists.wikimedia.org wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org ?subject=**unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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] letter from the FDC to the WMF
Well, this change won't make things perfect - there is still something of a conflict of interest there and obviously the WMF board can choose to ignore the FDC's recommendation altogether and award itself an unreasonably generous budget. However, from last year's experience, where the WMF plan was apparently discussed in depth and opposed by at least one FDC member, I'd say that it doesn't look at all like it's a rubber stamp so far. We should encourage each step forward rather than moan that there are many steps yet to take. Perfection is the enemy of the good., and all that. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 22 October 2013 22:52, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 8:27 AM, Craig Franklin cfrank...@halonetwork.net wrote: Hi, I've been aware of this brewing, but can only say that I'm pleased to finally reach the surface. There is no good reason for part of the WMF's budget to be privileged or quarantined from the same scrutiny that the rest of movement spending is subjected to. I therefore urge Sue and the WMF to accept the FDC's proposal in full. Regards, Craig Franklin (personal view only) Except that from both a practical and legal perspective the authority of the FDC comes from the WMF; this is the fundamental problem with having it purport to review the Foundation's spending and activity. If the Foundation's Board disagrees with the FDC decision on funding the WMF, it has not just the option but the legal duty to overrule it. The most likely outcome, then, is that the FDC functions as a rubber stamp for the WMF - perhaps with cosmetic adjustments or changes for appearances sake. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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] Which Wikipedias have had large scale bot creation of articles this year?
On Irish language Wikipedia, we have had a bot which is creating articles based on the text of Fréamh an Eolais, a freely licenced scientific encyclopaedia. https://ga.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speisialta:Contributions/HusseyBot ga.wp is not quite large enough to be included in the automated reporting, unfortunately. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 26 November 2013 07:50, Steven Walling swall...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi all, My team is doing some background research in to Wikipedia article creation right now.[1] One question I'd like answer is which Wikipedias are currently (i.e. this year) running bots to create many articles. I know that Lsjbot has run (or is running) on Swedish (sv), Cebuano (ceb), and Waray-Waray (war). It seems to me that, by looking at the stats for new articles per day,[2] Dutch (nl) and Vietnamese (vi) Wikipedias might have also been running bots? Am I wrong? I'll be posting more about our article creation research work soon. We'll need feedback from non-English Wikipedians in particular, since as a team we only have extensive experience creating articles on enwiki. Many thanks, -- Steven Walling, Product Manager https://wikimediafoundation.org/ 1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_article_creation 2. http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesArticlesNewPerDay.htm ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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] Closure of Community Logo Consultation
Hi Geoff, I'm delighted and pleasantly surprised to see that the Foundation staff has listened to the community and changed course on this important issue. My commendations for this, and I urge the Board of Trustees to accept this recommendation quickly so that this issue can finally be put to bed. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 8 December 2013 11:05, Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi all, The consultation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Logo/Request_for_consultation has been closed on the question about the community logo registration. Many thanks to everyone who provided their comments. Based on the consultation, we will be recommending to the Board that we withdraw WMFtrademark registration and protection of the Community logo. Many thanks to all, Geoff and Yana [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Logo/Request_for_consultation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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] Resolution: Media about living people
Hi Jane, I am concerned about the issue surrounding the comment the real BLP problems happen when heavyweight (in edit count terms) Wikipedia users swing their weight around I think the problem is that if you ask ten different people about the reason why we have BLP problems, you'll get ten different answers. All ten would probably have some truth in them, but any one in isolation would be inadequate. My own point of view is that our policies and procedures are actually pretty good on paper, but they're just very unevenly and inconsistently applied in the real world. The Tier 1 biographies, such as those of Messrs Obama, Cameron, and Abbott are pretty safe from BLP hijinx, but there is a massive underbelly of poorly defended BLPs on minor celebrities, local politicians, and the like, which are not watched consistently and where hagiography or defamation can take root. This is why, while things like the BoT's declaration are not unwelcome, I feel that they don't have any practical effect in fixing the problem. All it takes is for one negatively written bio to slip through the net to do real harm to someone in the real world. My preferred way of dealing with this on en.wp would be to massively tighten the notability criteria where they related to biographies of living or possibly living people, but this would no doubt be met with cries of deletionism!. Indeed, I don't think it's possible to adequately address the issue on large projects like en.wp or commons without a massive cultural shift and sweeping changes to policy that would cause immense disruption in the community; something the BoT is understandably reluctant to do. Cheers, Craig ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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] Resolution: Media about living people
On 15 December 2013 02:54, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 6:08 PM, Craig Franklin cfrank...@halonetwork.net wrote: Hi Jane, I am concerned about the issue surrounding the comment the real BLP problems happen when heavyweight (in edit count terms) Wikipedia users swing their weight around I think the problem is that if you ask ten different people about the reason why we have BLP problems, you'll get ten different answers. All ten would probably have some truth in them, but any one in isolation would be inadequate. The list of problems becomes even longer for images. The 2009 resolution on biographies of living people was about identifiable people, given they were the subject of a biography. This new 'media about living people' resolution doesn't make any such distinction for media, which I guess will result in lots of confusion about whether the scope includes images of unidentifiable people. It should, but ... Part of the problem in my view is that there is no notability requirements for identifiable persons appearing in images. While in the great majority of cases this is not really a problem, it does lead to very problematic things like pictures of people in states of undress, engaging in sexual activity, or doing something else their employer, family or local community might not be okay with, without any evidence of ongoing consent for that image to remain available. The only mechanism for getting rid of these is effectively for the subject of the image to email a stranger, provide evidence that they're the person in the image, ask nicely for it to be taken down, and hope to hell that the person is reasonable and doesn't play the It's educational and under a free licence, sorry! card. This is an issue that needs to be addressed because the status quo is entirely unsatisfactory. Of course, the immediate reaction on Commons to this seems to be Wikilawyering as to whether the resolution applies to galleries or not. Given that the BoT's intent is clearly that this should apply to everything, everywhere on all Wikimedia projects, this doesn't fill me with a great deal of hope that the Commons community as a whole is capable of adequately dealing with this. Cheers, Craig ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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] Dells are backdoored
Jasper has tried to give you honest, useful information based on his actual experience and expertise in the matter, without drawing too much attention to your clear lack of knowledge on this topic. He deserves better than sarcasm and insults from you. Regards, Craig On 30 December 2013 17:53, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Jasper, if you can't write an email or pick up the phone asking for a hardware quote without supporting the status quo of the Foundation datacenter being a monument to the poster boy of corporate tax abuses, Microsoft OEM bundling abuses, and NSA collaboration, I really can't help you. If you're interested in what the long term savings can look like, see: http://www.cnx-software.com/2010/11/16/arm-based-embedded-servers-marvell-armada-xp/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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] WMF employee writing articles for $300
There seems to be some pretty heavy assumptions in Odder's article - it all just seems to be speculation based upon one very vague comment in her work history. Was she contacted before the blog post was made and brought to this list to ask for clarification? Cheers, Craig On 6 January 2014 09:42, Russavia russavia.wikipe...@gmail.com wrote: Odder has published a fantastic blog piece at http://twkozlowski.net/paid-editing-thrives-in-the-heart-of-wikipedia/ in which it is revealed that a WMF employee is engaged in undeclared paid editing on English Wikipedia, and charging what it appears to be $300 per article. I have cc'ed both Sue and Jimmy in on this email, but also sending to this list as I know they, and other WMF employees, do use this list, and I think it would be pertinent that they respond publicly to the issues raised here. It is ever so more important given that the undeclared paid editing occurred AFTER the whole Wiki-PR debacle (Sue's press release, WMF's cease-and-desist, and of course the resultant media attention). What do Jimmy and Sue believe should occur given that such editing violates Wikipedia policies and also Jimmy's so-called Bright Line Rule. In relation to Jimmy's line, many are still clueless as to what exactly this Bright Line is (it's not very bright), and how it should be applied in practice, so Jimmy, if you are out there, your comment is requested on that. Cheers, Russavia ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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] Paid editing v. paid advocacy (editing)
On 12 January 2014 02:58, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Craig Franklin wrote: I think it's actually foolish to try and split hairs over what is acceptable paid editing and what is unacceptable paid editing. The facts of the matter are that paid editing is taking place right now, and it will continue to take place regardless of whatever bright lines are drawn in the sand. The only question is whether it's done in a covert manner, or a transparent manner. Rather than arguing over the irrelevant question of whether it is desirable to have paid editing or not, we need instead to be talking about how we are going to handle it. To my view, that should be requiring that anyone editing for money be upfront about their intentions and their edits, and letting the community scrutinise those edits and deal with them just like they'd deal with them if they came from any other editor. Perhaps you're correct, though I'll note that in the recent oDesk case, you had both a real name and photo attached to the activities, along with a public profile describing (and rating!) the activities. That seems fairly transparent to me, yet it still resulted in an immediate departure. I was thinking more along the lines of a centralised disclosure list where people can say My name is X, my user account is Y, and I am doing paid editing on article Z. Such a thing would of course invite a lot more scrutiny on the articles in question, which would mean that they're less likely to devolve into hagiography. From what I can see this is already working quite well and without controversy at places like dewp. We already have rules (on enwp at least) about promotional language, spam, sockpuppeting, and the like; I don't see any compelling reason we need another separate bunch of rules to deal with these situations in the special case where someone is being paid to edit. Cheers, Craig ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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] Paid editing v. paid advocacy (editing)
Detail ;-). Probably the language of the project that the paid edits are occurring on, I'd imagine. Cheers, Craig On 12 January 2014 21:58, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, In what language does this disclosure have to be ?? Thanks, Gerard On 12 January 2014 12:29, Craig Franklin cfrank...@halonetwork.netwrote: On 12 January 2014 02:58, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Craig Franklin wrote: I think it's actually foolish to try and split hairs over what is acceptable paid editing and what is unacceptable paid editing. The facts of the matter are that paid editing is taking place right now, and it will continue to take place regardless of whatever bright lines are drawn in the sand. The only question is whether it's done in a covert manner, or a transparent manner. Rather than arguing over the irrelevant question of whether it is desirable to have paid editing or not, we need instead to be talking about how we are going to handle it. To my view, that should be requiring that anyone editing for money be upfront about their intentions and their edits, and letting the community scrutinise those edits and deal with them just like they'd deal with them if they came from any other editor. Perhaps you're correct, though I'll note that in the recent oDesk case, you had both a real name and photo attached to the activities, along with a public profile describing (and rating!) the activities. That seems fairly transparent to me, yet it still resulted in an immediate departure. I was thinking more along the lines of a centralised disclosure list where people can say My name is X, my user account is Y, and I am doing paid editing on article Z. Such a thing would of course invite a lot more scrutiny on the articles in question, which would mean that they're less likely to devolve into hagiography. From what I can see this is already working quite well and without controversy at places like dewp. We already have rules (on enwp at least) about promotional language, spam, sockpuppeting, and the like; I don't see any compelling reason we need another separate bunch of rules to deal with these situations in the special case where someone is being paid to edit. Cheers, Craig ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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] Community consultation + Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director selection process
Hi Jan-Bart, I was unaware that the panel had gone back to the drawing board with looking at new candidates. I gather from the tenor of Sue's original posting that she was planning to have moved on by now, has she committed to continuing to work on for the forseeable future while you continue to look for a replacement? Does the BoT have a contingency plan in case Sue does decide to leave before a permanent replacement is found? Cheers, Craig Franklin On 21 January 2014 21:09, Jan-Bart de Vreede jdevre...@wikimedia.orgwrote: Hey Frederico I will write an update for the meta page in the coming week or so but just to give you a general sense of where we are at: we are trying to reach potential candidates in a different way, and so far that looks like a good strategy. This means more direct contact between the Foundation and candidates and more pro-actively reaching out to people who initially showed no interest. There is no scientific way to make the trade-off between characteristics/skills of candidates. We might very well choose to ignore an important characteristic if all the others fall into place. And it is of course easier to make a trade-off on less significant characteristics and skills. The decision to look for more candidates rather than make a choice in December was not an easy one, but we were not willing to go for a candidate who was missing too many of our desired characteristics/skills. This is something that the transition team does, and its not something that translates well to a table on meta. I am not sure what you are referring to as “avoid another fiasco”, but as far as I am concerned we are simply in a stage of finding new candidates and trying to surface the candidate that is up to the challenge and opportunity that we as a unique movement have to offer. This was always an option, and we would have liked to have found someone in the first round, but it wasn’t to be. Jan-Bart de Vreede On 18 Jan 2014, at 11:08, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: I don't know what to think about a final community consultation on a specific name. Personally I suspect that I wouldn't be able to say anything about it, as with https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Executive_Director_Transition_Team/Update_9_December . Speaking of which, I wonder how the problems there were addressed: apparently they just expanded the search and reduced the number of people participating, but I see no answers to the question: «Have we been looking for a unicorn -- somebody who doesn't exist in the real world? [...] too insular? [...] unfairly comparing [...]?». If an answer was found, I'd like to know it. To me that only looked like a rhetorical question, because of course I have no idea what exact criteria/questions/interview practices are being applied or if unfair comparisons were made. To avoid another fiasco, it would probably be useful to publish on Meta an anonymised table of candidates, pointing out strengths and weaknesses in a single line for each. Then one could say «oh, look, criterion 175 made 12 otherwise awesome candidates fail, do we really need it?». Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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 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] Community consultation + Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director selection process
James, I believe they were talking about the cloning/death star discussion. Not everything is about you, mate. In regards to the relative merits of the candidates, it would be grossly unprofessional for Erik, Jan-Bart, or anyone else to publicly discuss the relative merits of people who may or may not be involved in a confidential hiring process in a public forum such as this. I suspect you're wasting your metaphorical breath in continually asking for these sorts of details. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 31 January 2014 16:08, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: My suggestion of Leonie Haimson as co-director was most certainly not frivolous, and concern trolling on comments made in the spirit of fun to try to sideline consideration of her is offensive. Erik and others, what has Ting accomplished that would make him a better Director or Co-director than a parent advocate in the education field whose Foundation and goals have been seriously impacted by paid advocacy editing abuses on Wikipedia? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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] Statement for the police about the fundraising?
The Foundation. Which is why WMFI shouldn't try to reply to this except to refer them on. Cheers, Craig On 08/02/2014 11:11 AM, Isarra Yos zhoris...@gmail.com wrote: Who exactly would the webmaster of fi.wikipedia.org even be? On 08/02/14 00:24, Kevin Gorman wrote: My Finnish is hardly perfect, but the letter essentially outlines the Finnish law regarding what is and what isn't money collection activities, and then compares what goes on with fi.wikipedia.org with the relevant Finnish statutes, concluding that the fundraising campaign is in fact a money collection activity and thus needs a permit from the Finnish police. They request that the webmaster of fi.wikipedia.org explains the purpose of the fundraising text, and also furnishes the Finnish National Police Board with information regarding the total sum of money that has been raised through the text, at a date no later than the 21st of February. They also say that additional details may be required. They indicate that it is currently an administrative issue, but that the Police Board has the authority to initiate investigations of criminal wrongdoing if the answers of the webmaster of fi.wikipedia.org are unsatisfactory. Best, Kevin Gorman On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 2:54 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/1889/18890039001#L17P16b Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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 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 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 Ukraine -- is everyone safe?
Awful, awful news. My condolences to his family, friends, and the WMUA community =(. On 24 February 2014 09:01, Maryana Pinchuk mpinc...@wikimedia.org wrote: For those of you who don't read Ukrainian, a quick ad-hoc translation of the blog post. So sorry for the loss of a fellow Ukrainian and such a bright young member of the Wikimedia movement :( * * * Wikipedian Igor Kostenko dies on the Maidan. February 20, 2014, during the protests in Kiev, Igor Kostenko – an active contributor to the Ukrainian Wikipedia, journalist and geography student – died tragically. Igor Kostenko was born December 31, 1991, in the village of Zubrets in the Buchach region of Ternopil. After graduating from high school, he attended Ivan Franko University in Lviv, where he was in his fifth year of study in the department of geography, majoring in Organizational Management. In addition to his studies, he worked as a journalist for the publication Sports Analysis. Igor was an active contributor to the Ukrainian Wikipedia, writing under the username Ig2000.[1] Igor registered an account on July 23, 2011, and in just that month began writing his first articles. In two and a half years, he wrote over 280 articles and made over 1,600 edits. He had a wide range of encyclopedic interests – he wrote articles on sports topics (soccer, Formula One), geography, economics, and the history of the Ukrainian military. His article on the Nezamozhnyk destroyer of the Ukrainian and Soviet fleet in the first half of the 20th century[2] was acknowledged for its quality by the community and achieved the status of Good article. Additionally, he contributed many updates on sports events to Wikinews. Igor was also active in promoting Ukrainian Wikipedia on social media, through which he sought to gain more contributors. He was an administrator of the Ukrainian Wikipedians Facebook page,[3] where he regularly posted interesting facts from Wikipedia. In August 2013 he proposed hosting a Wiki Flashmob – inviting a large group of Ukrainians to participate in a day of article-writing on Wikipedia. The Wiki Flashmob was planned for January 20, 2014, the 10-year anniversary of Ukrainian Wikipedia, but due to the tragic events in the country, the event was cancelled. Igor believed that the flashmob would help fill Wikipedia with thousands of new articles in the course of a day and proposed a strategy to realize his dream, but unfortunately, he did not live to see it become a reality. On February 18, 2014, along with other students from Lviv, Igor came to Kiev to the Euromaidan, because he wanted Ukraine to be led by people with a patriotic spirit. On February 20th, during a protest on Instytutskaya Street, Igor died tragically: he bravely went ahead with a shield, but he was shot by two bullets, one of which struck him in the head... Today, February 23, Igor was buried in his home town of Buchach. Thousands of people accompanied him on his final journey – both students from Lviv and residents of Ternopil. In honor of Igor and the tens of others who died on the Euromaidan,[4] on February 21, the community decided to modify the logo of the Ukrainian Wikipedia with a black ribbon as a symbol of mourning. The editors of Ukrainian Wikipedia and Wikimedia Ukraine offer their condolences to the friends and family of Igor Kostenko. A page has been created on Wikipedia where you can leave your condolences.[5] Memory eternal... 1. https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D1%83%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%87:Ig2000 2. https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA_(%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BC%D1%96%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%86%D1%8C) 3. https://www.facebook.com/groups/ukwiki/ 4. https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%BA_%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%85_%D1%83%D1%87%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA%D1%96%D0%B2_%D0%84%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%83 5. https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%B1%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8F_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D1%83%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B0:Ig2000/%D0%9F%D0%B0%D0%BC%27%D1%8F%D1%82%D1%8C On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 1:16 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Big sigh. According to Wikimedia Ukraine blog, one Wikimedian was killed: Ihor Kostenko, a student of Geography born in 1991. http://wikimediaukraine.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/in-memoriam-of-ihor-kostenko/ You can express condolences here: https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ig2000/Пам'ять -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore 2014-02-20 17:25 GMT+04:00 Tomasz W. Kozlowski tom...@twkozlowski.net: The BBC reports that at least 22 people have died today in Kiev, Ukraine, as result of the violent
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia-l archives
Hear that sound? That's the sound of a million data miners working to figure out what juicy bit of info has been redacted. Cheers, Craig On 25 February 2014 09:48, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: The archives were rebuilt (and then restored up to January) under request of a user who shared private information in February. Old links are not broken and you can normally access the specific volumes: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-February/thread.html Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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] draft revised volunteer community survey
In addition to Risker's comments, which I agree with 100%, I would further request that any future survey of users be designed and supervised only by someone with extensive expertise and experience in the field of survey methodology. Many previous surveys that have been done by the Foundation have, despite a lot of hard work and effort put into them, suffered from methodological flaws, either in the form of the questions asked or the way that the user sample was selected. The results have therefore not only been useless in some cases, but in some cases actually misleading and thus potentially damaging to the movement. This is something that the Foundation has gotten better at over the years, and since we're on the topic it's something I'd like them to stick to! Cheers, Craig On 13 March 2014 21:32, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: On 13 March 2014 05:13, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Is there ... an explanation which explains what it all means? It's an attempted improvement on the policy survey at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Survey A survey about the importance of various policy issues ... given the highest priority by our community. If you are having trouble working the preference ballot at http://demochoice.org/dcballot.php?poll=wmfcsdraft then please try the demonstration, instructions, and background material at http://demochoice.org/ The ranked-preference ballot makes respondents consider choices pairwise, which has an accuracy advantage over approval (yes or no to each) or Likert scale (e.g. 1 strongly agree to 5 strongly disagree) responses when respondents are not familiar with all the options. Approval on an issues survey can have problems with relatively disproportionate numbers of responses with only a few options or all or almost all options selected, and the Likert scale gets fewer responses on issues less familiar to respondents than ranking. Best regards, James ___ I don't think this would be a very useful survey, and I would not participate in it. The shopping list of causes - many of which have little or no correlation with anything even vaguely related to the operation of the WMF, its core philosophies, or its purpose - is very americo-centric. Just as importantly, it says that 12 topics will be elected. Elected for what? Why 12 of them? What about if lots of people think one of these topics is really important, but for different reasons? Mostly, thoughthis just really feels like it is trying to take the Wikimedia community down a path that has nothing to do with our core objectives, and to turn us into just another advocacy group. I'm not interested in that. Risker/Anne ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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] Goodbye as the German president of the Dutch chapter
Ziko, Although as Presidents of chapters located on the opposite sides of the world I never had that much to do with you, when I *did* have cause to interact I always found you unfailingly polite, approachable, and unfailingly dedicated to our shared mission. Thankyou for your service, and I wish you all the very best in your future endeavours. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 31 March 2014 03:59, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nl wrote: Dear colleagues, collaborators and friends of free knowledge, After three eventful years I left the board of Wikimedia Nederland; yesterday was the General Assembly in Utrecht. This means a 'goodbye'. In this time, I had the privilege and pleasure to work with many great people in many different organisations. We saw a lot of small steps and some bigger ones directed to our common goal, the support of free knowledge. Certainly, not everything we as a movement or parts of the movement was achieved, though. Between many WMNL members and me, there were two grades of separation: coming from the humanities, my geekiness differs a little from the average Wikipedianess; having the German Wikipedia as my home wiki, I was never a very active or 'true' part of the Dutch editing community. And when I quoted in my speeches from medieval quests or Prussian literary realism, I received therefore some strange looks from some members. But I remain firmly convinced that good governance and respect have no nationality. Indeed, stroopwafels do have, and so I adopted the Dutch custom to bring them with me to Wikimedian meetings abroad. Wikimedia Nederland has experienced and overcome a difficult period of transition. Office space and employees, more members including more members without Wikipedia background, more activities, more money, more responsibility; more need for an association to mature and focus on what is necessary (and not always easy, cool or fun). We achieved that as a collective, slower than previously expected, but with the appropriate pride and good feelings about the future. Goodbye - and Hello: I am looking forward to see many of you again at whatever wiki, chat or real life meeting. Kind regards Ziko https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Nederland Dr. Ziko van Dijk Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht http://wikimedia.nl ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53, 690 of WMF funding
Thankyou from me as well, it's refreshing to see such a candid summary of the failings that occurred in this case, and to see the Foundation taking responsibility for those. I hope that the opportunity can be taken for all of us to learn from this so that it does not happen with future projects. Cheers, Craig On 1 April 2014 15:27, Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com wrote: On 1 April 2014 16:22, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Sue Gardner wrote: For everyone: following up on Erik's e-mail, the WMF has done a postmortem of the Belfer situation, which I've just posted at the link from Erik above. Suffice to say here that we implemented the Belfer Wikipedian-in-Residence project with editing as a core activity of the WIR role, despite internal and external voices strongly advising us not to. That was a mistake, and we shouldn't have done it. Thank you for taking the time to put the postmortem together. I've been very impressed with and appreciate the candor and thoughtfulness that have gone into the responses to this discussion. Growing pains are still pains, of course, but I'm hopefully optimistic that the Wikimedia Foundation is learning from its experiences, good and bad, as it matures. MZMcBride Let me second that sentiment. Thank you Sue, Erik et al. at the WMF. While I'm sure there will be ongoing discussions about this topic on the mailing lists and on-wiki, I too am heartened by the genuine concern, non-defensiveness (in the face of criticism - including mine), and willingness to investigate this issue. Sincerely, -Liam / Wittylama wittylama.com Peace, love metadata ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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] Fuck the community, who cares
I agree with Ziko's point entirely here. The two people who have taken part in this discussion so far who were present at the time have not given anything to indicate it was more than a flippant remark made in a stressful situation. Not that I agree with the sentiment of course, but I'm glad that at this meeting a wide variety of views were obviously put forward and robustly discussed. I really have to wonder, do we want a community where the leaders have to be so anodyne, colourless, and always on message that the occasional spirited remark results in the Spanish Inquisition? Certainly, I would understand why the person that make the remark might decline to come forward given the relentless hounding that will inevitably occur. It seems to me that what is being asked for by some is more than can be reasonably expected from a human being. Personally, speaking as a Wikimedia donor and a member of the community, I prefer to be lead by fallible human beings rather than robots. Cheers, Craig On 7 April 2014 19:46, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nl wrote: Hello, I think that a single quote by a unnamed female Wikimedian, said in public or in private, is a very small basis for any substantiate criticism... Kind regards Ziko Am Montag, 7. April 2014 schrieb Fred Bauder : Once the money an organization obtain from grants out matches anything they get from anywhere else they become autonomous. Community support just becomes a box to check. Fred This week's issue of the English Wikipedia Signpost delivers mildly shocking news about the opinion of a prominent female Wikimedian (...) about the meaning of the movement and the role of the chapters as expressed during the Boards training workshop that took place between March 1-2 in London. The Wikimedian is quoted by the treasurer of Wikimedia Deutschland, Steffen Prößdorf, as saying: if we can buy free knowledge, we should do that [and] just forget about the communities and Fuck the community, who cares. I understand that the identity of the person will remain secret, given that there is no public list of attendees of the workshop, so let me just say that the idea that chapters can fuck the community is absolutely unacceptable and should by rejected by all chapters immediately. Read more at: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-04-02/News_and_notes * http://steproe.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/die-sinnfrage-was-ist-der-zweck-von-wikimedia-deutschland/ Tomasz ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; ?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; ?subject=unsubscribe -- Dr. Ziko van Dijk Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht http://wikimedia.nl ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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] Sponsorship/donations to other organizations
I find myself in furious agreement with Charles here. For years the Foundation has been insisting (and quite rightly so) that allied organisations consider only the stark benefit-per-dollar that they can extract for each piece of movement funding, as measured by KPIs and metrics. Handing out money to fellow travellers, no matter how well intentioned, and expecting only warm fuzzies in return seems to be to fly in the face of that. Grants directed to the development specific functionality that Wikimedia can use and which can later be included in other project's core offerings? Sure, I don't think anyone has a problem with that. But I think that handing out unrestricted grants and giving back just because we're nice people and they're nice people strays too far from the Foundation's mission and contradicts the message about budgetary discipline that has been hammered into chapters over the years. Cheers, Craig On 16 April 2014 07:34, Charles Andrès charles.andres.w...@gmail.comwrote: In a period where all the fund dissemination of the movement is driven by the question what's the impact on wikimedia project and a community-driven process, I would suggest that any redistribution of the funds done by the WMF would follow the same rules. Charles Le 15 avr. 2014 à 21:57, Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net a écrit : Hi Erik, I'd say 'maybe'. I think this sort of work is worth supporting in general, but the question should be whether providing the support would improve the content and/or provision of the Wikimedia projects. I'd like to see a good community-driven process that would determine whether such sponsorship would be helpful or whether it would be a waste of money. Thanks, Mike On 15 Apr 2014, at 20:50, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, I'd be interested in hearing broader community opinions about the extent to which WMF should sponsor non-profits purely to support work that Wikimedia benefits from, even if it's not directed towards a specific goal established in a grant agreement. This comes up from time to time. One of the few historic precedents I'm aware of is the $5,000 donation that WMF made to FreeNode in 2006 [1]. But there are of course many other organizations/communities that the Wikimedia movement is indebted to. On the software side, we have Ubuntu Linux (itself highly indebted to Debian) / Apache / MariaDB / PHP / Varnish / ElasticSearch / memcached / Puppet / OpenStack / various libraries and many other dependencies [2], infrastructure tools like ganglia, observium, icinga, etc. Some of these projects have nonprofits that accept and seek sponsorship and support, some don't. One could easily expand well beyond the software we depend on server-side to client-side open source applications used by our community to create content: stuff like Inkscape, GIMP and LibreOffice (used for diagrams). And there are other communities we depend on, like OpenStreetMap. So, should we steer clear of this type of sponsorship altogether because it's a slippery slope, or should we try to come up with evaluation criteria to consider it on a case-by-case basis (e.g. is there a trustworthy non-profit that has a track record of accomplishment and is in actual need of financial support)? I could imagine a process with a fixed giving back annual budget and a community nominations/review workflow. It'd be work to create and I don't want to commit to that yet, but I would be interested to hear opinions. MariaDB specifically invited WMF to become a sponsor, and we're clearly highly dependent on them. But I don't think it makes sense for us to just write checks if there's someone who asks for support and there's a justifiable need. However, if there's broad agreement that this is something Wikimedia should do more of, then I think it's worth developing more consistent sponsorship criteria. Thanks, Erik [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Freenode_Donation [2] Cf. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Upstream_projects -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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 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] Sponsorship/donations to other organizations
I don't think the message of having a bit of discipline in your budget and making value-for-money a prime consideration is at all a bad thing for chapters to be doing. The way that the message was hammered in was at times arrogant, aggressive, or plain out insulting, but the message itself was a good one. Large cash gifts made to third parties, in my view, rarely represent good value-for-money. All I ask for is a little consistency. I would also posit that if WMF donors wanted to donate to a worthy project like MariaDB, they'd donate to that rather than to the Foundation. I don't think targeted grants to reach some particular goal that can be shown to directly benefit the Foundation are at all a problem, and if we're going to walk down this road that's probably the better road to take, rather than acting as a charitable middleman, redistributing donor funds to other nonprofits that don't share our particular mission. Cheers, Craig On 16 April 2014 22:05, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 16 April 2014 13:03, Craig Franklin cfrank...@halonetwork.net wrote: Grants directed to the development specific functionality that Wikimedia can use and which can later be included in other project's core offerings? Sure, I don't think anyone has a problem with that. But I think that handing out unrestricted grants and giving back just because we're nice people and they're nice people strays too far from the Foundation's mission and contradicts the message about budgetary discipline that has been hammered into chapters over the years. The solution would then appear to be to treat the chapters better, rather than others worse. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list 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] Commons' frontpage probably shouldn't prominently feature a decontextualised stack of corpses.
On 16 May 2014 15:09, Russavia russavia.wikipe...@gmail.com wrote: But of course, you, with a grand total of 303 edits on Commons going back to 2007 (most of which comprises of voting on Picture of the Year) are speaking from a position of experience when you say you understand Commons and its culture. So you'll excuse me, but it is a bit rich you saying that, and see your comments as insanely out of touch with the reality. Out of curiosity, how many edits to Commons must one have for their opinion to be valid? Cheers, Craig ___ 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] Participating on Wikipediocracy
Look, we have quite enough non-constructive passive-aggressive stuff going on here without it being added to with thinly veiled threats like this. Please stop. I think the main issue that people have here is that Sue was very private about her private life, at least in public. Now we have the polar opposite of the ED's significant other showing up and, in the eyes of some, 'consorting with the enemy'. This is a pretty opinionated community and this sort of thing will raise eyebrows. Quite a lot of regulars on this list have a troubled and lengthy history with some of the WO regulars, and so you're probably going to get more criticism than plaudits for publicly engaging with them, regardless of how good your intentions are. To be honest, more than Wil's hanging out with Greg Kohs and the like, I'm a little more disappointed that there hasn't been much interaction as far as I can see between Lila and the rank and file volunteers. The relationship between volunteers and Sue was stretched at times, and it hurt the movement, so I hope that Lila is just testing the waters before rolling up her sleeves and jumping into the sharkpool to meet us :-) Cheers, Craig On 24 May 2014 17:24, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote: Hi Pete, you do realize that Lila reads this list, right? That seems rather candid for someone who works so closely with the WMF. If that was not for public eyes, you might consider a public apology. Not for your own professional interests, mind you, but because Lila's a person like the rest of us and she has feelings. Best. ,Wil ___ 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] Child Protection and Harassment Policy
On 29 May 2014 07:13, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: Child Protection- I'd like to hear about ways that policy might be changed here to better protect children, especially given some of the content on Commons. I'd also like to hear about specific examples of content on Commons that a parent might not find appropriate for their children. Note that this is not a repeat of the discussion to understand what policies are in place, as I have already opened a specific thread for that. You seem to have conflated two items here... one is the idea of child protection, and the other is of objectionable items on commons. I don't think that in any way works. Indeed, and the unexpected search results on Commons matter has been discussed at length here and on the projects, and at length, and recently. I don't think there's any reluctance to discuss this, there is a general consensus that there's a problem, but different folks offer different solutions. On the other hand, coming out with ways to protect minors from predators on our projects, without throwing out the bathwater as well, would probably be an interesting discussion that I don't recall being raised here recently. Cheers, Craig ___ 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] A personal note.
Hi Wil, I think the advice in this thread from John and Dariusz is excellent, and well worth taking on board. Energy is good, and disruption to shake us out of our status quo is good. But at the moment, your communication style is swamping this list and that's getting people's backs up. The issues that you are raising, like child protection, are important issues that need to be discussed, but they're not going to get the attention they deserve if you come rampaging in like a bull trying to solve all of our problems at once. I'm sorry if this sounds blunt, but I'd much rather see your time here be spent positively and productively, rather than wasted with bickering and recrimination. Cheers, Craig On 29 May 2014 17:19, Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.pl wrote: hi Wil, reading through this thread is already a challenge :) I want to write that I really appreciate your enthusiasm and energy. It is really awesome that you care about Wikimedia and that you do not shy away from a discussion. As several participants have pointed out, some of the veterans may find it slightly amusing when a newcomer starts with a critique, before learning about how (and that) the community has worked out a given problem before. Moreover, getting your understanding of Wikimedia movement from Wikipediocracy mainly (rather than from different project's Village Pumps, AfDs, RFCs, RfAs, and actual editing and discussing with other editors) skews your view. I don't think anyone is suggesting you should stop reading critical views on Wikimedia, but you simply may choose to make your own opinion after you've taken part in the movement, too. I do not think anyone is proposing banning you from the list. People are, in my view, politely suggesting that you just slow down a little, take a breath, and use your energy (which, again, is awesome and precious!) to participate on Wikimedia projects. Just to get the feel of it, or to be able to more fully pinpoint the areas, where we so deeply need to change for the better (and, with no irony, there are many). If you choose to gather more material for reflection, and post less frequently, your voice may actually be heard better. best, dariusz pundit On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 3:05 AM, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote: As I mentioned to Sam, I have just one more thing to say here before I let you guys deliberate on whether to block me. I've been getting tons of private emails from people who say that they don't want to see me blocked, but that they are afraid to say that on the list, because they feel like they might be intimidated or ostracized. That's right: *afraid* I think we should all let that sink in for a moment. . . . . . Now, is that OK? Is that how we want our community to function? I'm talking to each and every one of you out there, not the few dozen that seem to be only people posting here (and I seem to have a strong lead at the moment ;) ). If you are tired of being afraid or worn out by the rough and tumble discourse here, then keep your chin up. There are a lot more of you out there than you might think; I'm hearing from many of them now. Wikipedia can change- but only with your help. ,Wil On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 5:46 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Hello all, Lila: Thank you kindly for these recent notes. It is wonderful to hear your thoughts on your first weeks. Wil: Working through public, logged forums is a fine principle; one that I try to follow myself. It helps avoid misunderstandings. Pete Forsyth writes: I'd like to suggest that Wil's access to this email list be blocked, at least as a temporary measure... I suspect that consensus among active Wikimedians would be pretty strong at this point. Pete: That is a wholly uncalled for suggestion; reckless, if you would. Please be kind. As you can see from the comments of others, there is no such consensus, mainly just requests to slow down. Erik Moeller writes: As a reminder, this list has an official soft limit of 30 posts per [month] Wil Sinclair writes: just for guidance here- should I not publicly respond to those who have publicly address me or talked about my actions or words I find it helpful to quote and briefly respond to many posts of interest in a thread, in a single reply (as I did here). And I try to make 5 edits to a project for every post, to keep a balanced perspective... Sam (PS: Victor, the A. Dewey Wikireader Project always makes me smile. Thank you for mentioning it here. :-) ___ 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] ASBS results
A big congratulations to Patricio and Frieda, I know it's been a long time between drinks for Frieda in particular but I'm very comfortable and confident that both of you will do an excellent job. A massive thanks is also due to Alice Wiegand; around about the time that you joined the BoT it started to become more responsive to community expectations, more transparent, and all around effective as a governance group. I am sure that this is not a coincidence. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 4 June 2014 02:17, Alice Wiegand me.ly...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks to the organizers and facilitators for setting up the process. And congratulations to Frieda and Patricio. I wish both of you every success, strength and support for your work on the Board! Alice. On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 3:03 PM, Frieda Brioschi ubifri...@gmail.com wrote: Wow, I'm breathless :- ..I've many to thank: * thank you voters for your choice, I'll do my best * thank you Wikimedia Italia for your support, it was really important to me * thank you Patricio, Alice and Anders, it was great sharing this experience with you * thank you Chris, Lorenzo and James for your work I'm looking forward to begin and I'll need your feedback, input and idea to make this adventure perfect. Frieda ___ 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 ___ 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] Wikiconference USA in the media
As someone who usually wears a suit and tie to Wikimedia events when I go (Hong Kong last year was the exception to that for the most part, way too humid), my advice to people would be to wear whatever the hell you feel comfortable in, subject to the normal standards of decency and the local climate. If you feel comfortable in a hoodie, then wear one. If you feel comfortable in a tie and monocle, then go right ahead. Picking on people for their choice of clothes at a conference seems awfully petty to me. Ultimately, you'll contribute more and be able to absorb more from others if you're not worrying about how tight your tie is or fretting over whether you'll be asked to leave for violating a dress code. Cheers, Craig That Guy In A Suit Franklin On 8 June 2014 15:50, Peter Southwood peter.southw...@telkomsa.net wrote: And I associate hoodies with people wanting to keep their heads warm. -Original Message- From: wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto: wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of edward Sent: 07 June 2014 04:37 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikiconference USA in the media On 07/06/2014 15:18, Fæ wrote: So good luck to pizza stained t-shirts, wear them with pride. See my previous post. I thought the point was not that they had pizza stained t-shirts, but rather that the Wikipedian who was interviewed (Kevin) was explicitly dividing his kin into those who wear such stained shorts, and those who dress in a 'chill' way, which as Mr McBride explains, means 'cool and hip'. these [i.e. volunteers wearing hoodies] are the people most likely to make a meaningful difference to open knowledge within the Wikimedia movement. I don't see what the 'hoodie' bit has to do with it. I associate 'hoodies' with people who want to remain anonymous, possibly to escape the attention of police, government agents or other responsible members of the enforcement community charged with keeping the world safe from terrorism or violence. Why would such people make a meaningful difference to open knowledge within the Wikimedia movement? I'm puzzled. , E ___ 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 - No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4592 / Virus Database: 3955/7638 - Release Date: 06/07/14 ___ 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] Statement on Wikipedia from participating communications firms
Indeed. The thing that I like about this is that it shows these PR firms are aware of our rules and the controversy around paid editing. If they now get busted, they can hardly say that they didn't know. Regards, Craig Franklin On 13 June 2014 00:17, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 10:11 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Re: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PRSTATEMENT The statement is a nice read and it's hardly objectionable. I'd expect nothing less from a group of public relations folks, all of whom have a very vested interest in presenting themselves as good guys. However, my gut feeling here is that this statement is a sham. My (cynical) read of this statement is basically agencies such as ours keep getting caught editing on behalf of clients and it turns into a real shit-storm, so we'll say we'll play by the rules now, even though we'll really just hire contractors and subcontractors to do our dirty work. These public relations firms are paid millions of dollars to ensure that their clients look good on the Internet. Wikipedia is a major player on the Internet, but Wikipedia's purpose is not to make these clients look good, it's to have objective and neutral educational content about notable entities. Both public relations firms and Wikipedia are served by better, more accurate articles, but only one side is being paid millions of dollars each year to ensure that the information makes clients look good. It also seems a bit strange that these companies feel it appropriate to use the English Wikipedia as their hosting platform for this statement. This probably needs further thought and consideration. It isn't as though any of these companies would have difficulty buying hosting elsewhere to post their essays and statements about how they're now reformed. About the general trend, this practice is not novel. As I wrote in May 2012, the current approach by (particular) paid editors is a radical transparency approach, it seems. The idea is that if you do everything out in the open, you can't later be punished because everyone was aware of what you were doing and who you were doing it for. It remains an open question whether this approach is working well or benefitting Wikipedia. MZMcBride One reason to think its legit and not a smokescreen? Signing on to the statement substantially increases the potential costs of being caught violating WP policies. Clients hiring bare knuckles PR experts may not have a high regard for the importance of our site policies. If news gets blasted out that a firm said We'll abide by these principles, we promise! and then publicly fails to do so, clients might care about that more. ___ 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] Please rename this list to shitfight-l, and give us a list where civil discussion about wikimedia can take place
I must agree with the frustration over the quality of discussion on this mailing list lately, but I did want to make clear my appreciation to the list admins, who have decided to avoid playing semantic word games over what is and is not appropriate, and started moderating people who want to use this list for personal abuse, trolling, and other inappropriate discussions. This list has an unfortunate but not undeserved reputation as a bit of a sewer, but that doesn't mean we should lower our expectations on user conduct. From this subscriber at least, your attempts to clean up this place are very much appreciated, and I hope they continue. Cheers, Craig On 16 June 2014 15:43, Dennis Pierri dennis6...@gmail.com wrote: Buddy I would support more common sense, some people on the list just don't think twice before hitting send, that's the way you start a wildfire. This has become an unmoderated forum full of people who seemingly doesn't remember that there are better ways or places to say to another I hate you. Really everyone should ask themselves before hitting send some of this questions: Does this serves a good purpose? Is it going to do any good? Will it cause unnecessary conflict? It is written in a proper and polite way? Being emotional and eager to say something is not so good here, it's a mail list, you can take your time, be as polite as possible, and use your common sense, or else this will get worse. Dennis Pierri On 16/06/2014, at 00:01, Jasper Deng jas...@jasperswebsite.com wrote: I would support increased moderation too, except that sockpuppetry on email lists is trivial (do we really want to go into the mess of implementing CheckUser for email headers?). On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 9:24 PM, Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton rodrigo.argen...@gmail.com wrote: But this behaviour that you are saying is so Wikimedia Movement, the name is totally correct. And expect a block, because they are free, but they need to act in the name of the community, to stop 'trolls'. ;) On 16 June 2014 00:51, Dennis Pierri dennis6...@gmail.com wrote: Agreed, this list has seen too much personal confrontation, fights and general shit and nothing really productive lately, by the way, be ready for the shit storm from those who feel alluded. On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 10:33 PM, billinghurst billinghu...@gmail.com wrote: I am looking for a productive mailing list that discusses matters of importance to the Wikimedia community. That the people on such a list can have these discussions politely, respectfully, and with concern for others in that the words that say, and attitudes taken. I want to see announcements, I want to see a higher quality of conversation on what should be a flaglist in the mailing list space of Wikimedia. We don't have it. One gets to the point of utter frustration with this list, and it is time that the backstabbers, frontstabbers, bitchfighters, venal, conceited, etc. need a place to kill each other with as much venom as possible, but not under the more impressive and specific name of wikimedia-l. So please rename this list, and take all its people to something befitting the behaviour seen. Then please produce a clean list for those who don't have to have the antics of these unbearable, egotistical, and apparently intolerant and chauvinistic people, and please don't let them join that list. They can have their shithole and revel in it. They know who they are and they would feel ashamed if they had a modicum of interest outside of themselves. If that is not possible, then those of who us who want a higher quality discussion will unsubscribe, and be unrepresented and unheard. Another win for the trolls, and a sad reflection on the direction. Regards, Billinghurst ___ 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 -- Dennis Pierri ___ 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 -- Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton rodrigo.argen...@gmail.com +55 11 979 718 884 ___ 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] Moderation of messages sent to this list
On 22 June 2014 09:53, Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com wrote: I might point out that I've perhaps needled GerardM more than most people on this list (and even been moderated for it once years ago), but I find his posts about WikiData interesting and I read them when I can. I think Thomas Morton has a very good point though -- so if I may make a request: Whether the topic is Wikidata, or Wil, or Wikipediocracy, or pedophilia, or whatever the drama was with Russavia, or Commons admins, or whatever it is that raises hackles; can we all just be real for a second, and stop feigning innocence/ignorance when we're trolling, being snarky, or posting innocent questions that just so happen to cover a controversial topic, or using misleading/distorted data to ask a pointed question? Seriously, this list is becoming less like foundation-l and more like foxnews-l. (To clarify this is not directed at Tomasz -- I'm just taking advantage of his post to GerardM as being tangentially related.) Dan Dan Rosenthal Agreed. The who, me? level of passive-aggressive snark on the list is way out of hand. I'm glad the list moderators are taking a hard line against it, and hopefully it will result in some useful communication happening on this list again. If you don't want to be moderated, then cut the sarcasm and the personal attacks, it's not hard. Regards, Craig ___ 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] Lets delete everything from commons (was The tragedy of Commons)
Pardon me if this has already been covered, but as I understand it the problem is not the legal status of the files in Israel, the problem is with the legal status of the files in the United States, where the Israeli Government may still have some copyright protections. So while the contents of the letter are nice, they don't address the problem. It seems to me that rather than insisting that the files are permitted to remain, a more fruitful avenue might be to use WMIL's contacts with the Israeli Government to licence these images anywhere where copyright might still exist under a very free licence like CC-0. That way even if URAA or some future copyright shenanigans places these images back under copyright, they're usable by anyone. This ought to satisfy even the most dogmatic Commons admin that the images are indeed free. Cheers, Craig On 22 June 2014 17:30, Itzik Edri it...@infra.co.il wrote: The story continues. WMIL uploaded a letter from the Ministry of Justice, addressed to the Commons Community, which confirm that the government don't have interest on this photos. And not surprising, he was deleted from Commoms by the same person who deleted all the photos so far: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ministry_of_Justice%27s_of_Israel_response_to_copyrights_issue.jpg Hard not to feel that the reason to this massive deletions and this kind of behavior does not cross the boundaries of URAA enforcement to probably more personal views... The original letter can be found on Hebrew Wikipedia: https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%91%D7%A5:%D7%AA%D7%92%D7%95%D7%91%D7%AA_%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%93_%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%A4%D7%98%D7%99%D7%9D_%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9F_%D7%96%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%99%D7%95%D7%A6%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D.jpg Itzik https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ministry_of_Justice%27s_of_Israel_response_to_copyrights_issue.jpg On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 2:34 AM, Yann Forget yan...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Some Commons contributors like to ask impossible requirements, and threaten to delete files if these are not met. We have now a case of famous pictures from the government of Israel and Israel Defense Forces. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Matanya#Files_and_pages_that_were_deleted_by_User:Fastily_that_I_am_aware_of_them https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Beba_Idelson_Ada_Maimon1952.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Abba_Hushi_1956.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Aharon_Meskin_-_Ben_Gurion_-_Israel_Prize1960.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Avraham_Shlonsky_1952.jpg These are famous and valuable pictures, including two featured pictures on the Hebrew Wikipedia. These files have already been deleted and restored 3 times. When the URAA issue was not convincing enough, a new reson for deletion was advanced: that publication details were not given. Anyone with 2 bits of common sense can understand that these famous pictures were published soon after they were taken. There is no reasonable doubt about that. In addition, publication is not a requirement for being in the public domain in Israel. After I restored these images, I was threatem by LGA, who is a delete-only account: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/User_problems#User:Yann There, more contributors argue on this issue. By asking absurb requirements about publication details, these contributors threaten the project as a whole. If insisting, it will lead people to upload pictures like these locally instead of Commons. Then the idea of a central repository for all Wikimedia projects is gone. Instead of looking for a reason to destroy these files, they should try to find a reason to keep them. Regards, Yann ___ 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 ___ 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] Lets delete everything from commons (was The tragedy of Commons)
Russavia, I am aware that that is the issue (and I was talking about the original problem images, not this letter). I'm a bit confused though about the parody/satire angle, my understanding is that a CC licence does not extinguish things such as moral rights that are not related to copyright. Also, I do find it a bit odd that the Israeli Ministry of Justice would be comfortable disclaiming any copyright to the image within Israel per their letter, but would be uncomfortable licencing them in other jurisdictions under a licence that does essentially the same thing. We can but only ask, and see what they say; if they say no for the reasons you outline then nothing has been lost. I do agree that the Australian Commonwealth is behind the curve as well here, but in my experience and with some honourable exceptions, most federal bureaucrats still conflate these issues with the unrelated matter of FOI law. But, I guess what I'm trying to get at, is that if these images *are* useful, a more productive course of action than arguing about it on a mailing list would probably be to identify what steps can be taken in good faith to move them from a disputed copyright situation to a situation where everyone is comfortable that there are no problems with re-use. If all the energy that had gone into these threads and the various tit-for-tat nominations on Commons had gone into that instead, we'd probably already be halfway there. Cheers, Craig On 22 June 2014 20:26, Russavia russavia.wikipe...@gmail.com wrote: Craig, et al On Sun, Jun 22, 2014 at 5:56 PM, Craig Franklin cfrank...@halonetwork.net wrote: Pardon me if this has already been covered, but as I understand it the problem is not the legal status of the files in Israel, the problem is with the legal status of the files in the United States, where the Israeli Government may still have some copyright protections. You are misunderstanding completely the issue. There is no evidence that Israel has a PD exemption for such government works, as we see for say, Russia,[1] which allows for letters such as this to exist on Commons.[2] It seems to me that rather than insisting that the files are permitted to remain, a more fruitful avenue might be to use WMIL's contacts with the Israeli Government to licence these images anywhere where copyright might still exist under a very free licence like CC-0. That way even if URAA or some future copyright shenanigans places these images back under copyright, they're usable by anyone. This ought to satisfy even the most dogmatic Commons admin that the images are indeed free. I have told someone that what needs to occur is for the GPO to release their claims over copyright worldwide in relation to URAA. The reason for this, is the same reason that the Israeli Government would NEVER CC-0 licence their materials -- because it opens them up to parody, satire and other uses that they might not agree with -- and we need to protect re-users who wish to use materials for such purposes. That's the same reason that the Australian Commonwealth Parliament refuses to CC photos of MPs, in case you weren't aware. Cheers Russavia [1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-RU-exempt [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russian_letter_to_FIFA.jpg ___ 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] Research Committee
I've spent a half hour or so going through this, and it looks like Nathan is on the money here. If RCOM is as inactive as it seems (except where it concerns the research of RCOM members) then it is no great surprise that external parties eventually try to do an end-run around it. Unless an explanation for this inactivity can be provided, I think that in its current form RCOM should be disbanded or at least radically retooled, because clearly it's not only ineffective, it's also preventing potentially legitimate research from going ahead. Cheers, Craig On 17 July 2014 11:06, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: And... unsurprisingly, Aaron has reverted the changes I referred to above. Not with any explanation, of course, other than not true. Looking at the list of reviewed projects (where the review appears to constitute a small handful of questions on the talkpage), the RCOM has reviewed a total of 10 projects in its history. I'm excluding the one where Aaron himself is a co-investigator. That might sound like a substantial amount, but in 2013 and 2014 the rate so far is 1 (one) per *year*. Meanwhile, the AfD request languished for 7 months without a peep from Aaron or someone on RCOM. Since we're on the subject, let's look at the research index and see what we can see. # There is a Gender Inequality Index that has no comments from RCOM, posted a month ago. # We have Modeling monthly active editors submitted by Aaron himself. This is worth looking at[1] as evidently an example of what an RCOM member considers sufficient description of a research project. Specifically, nothing at all. # Number of books read by WikiWriters a page written by a high school student that should have been deleted but hasn't been, suggesting the submissions may not be closely monitored... # Use of Wikipedia by doctors submitted both to RCOM and to IEG in March, no comment by RCOM. # Chinese Wikivoyage, created in January, no comment by RCOM. # SSAJRP program - extensively documented, posted in October 2013, no comment from RCOM and no RCOM liaison. This research is ongoing. # Gender assymetry, posted in September 2013, no comment from RCOM. # Dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, August 2013, no comment or participation from RCOM. I'm sure the list could go on, because the pattern is perfect - virtually the only projects to get participation from either Dario or Aaron are those managed by WMF staff members (and most often, Aaron himself is the investigator). But the inactivity of RCOM is not news to the WMF. In December of last year, Dario posted to rcom-l [2] that The Research Committee as a group with a fixed membership and a regular meeting schedule has been inactive for a very long time. He then stated that ...the existence of a fixed-membership group with a recognized authority on any possible matter related to Wikimedia research and associated policies has ceased to be a priority. Another member of RCOM, WMF employee Jonathan Morgan, said in June on meta I'm not sure what RCOM's mandate is these days. When asked in March how many projects RCOM had actually approved, it took Aaron four months to reply.[3] So it is factually incorrect to suggest in documentation that RCOM approval is required for anything; it's clear that RCOM as a body does not actually exist. It may be argued that the approval of one of the two involved WMF employees is required. If that's the case, then at least based on public evidence they have been doing an absolutely woeful job of keeping up with this labor. I'll admit it's possible that all of the communication has been via e-mail, and in actuality Aaron and Dario have been very busy providing feedback to non-WMF researchers. If that's the case, or of I'm missing some other function that RCOM fulfills, I'd love to hear about it. Otherwise it appears that RCOM is primarily an obstacle to prevent non-WMF researchers from conducting research, a strange policy indeed. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Modeling_monthly_active_editors [2] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/rcom-l/2013-December/000600.html [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research_talk%3ASubject_recruitmentdiff=9220467oldid=9220082 ___ 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] [Wikitech-l] Superprotect user right, Comming to a wiki near you
Erik, I'll be writing a longer post on the Meta RFC later, but can you confirm whether the idea is to superprotect key interface pages like [[Mediawiki:common.js]] on a permanent basis, or will this feature only be used to lock pages temporarily in the case of wheel warring or other circumstances like what happened on de.wp? Thanks, Craig Franklin On 10 August 2014 23:27, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, Admins are currently given broad leeway to customize the user experience for all users, including addition of site-wide JS, CSS, etc. These are important capabilities of the wiki that have been used for many clearly beneficial purposes. In the long run, we will want to apply a code review process to these changes as with any other deployed code, but for now the system works as it is and we have no intent to remove this capability. However, we've clarified in a number of venues that use of the MediaWiki: namespace to disable site features is unacceptable. If such a conflict arises, we're prepared to revoke permissions if required. This protection level provides an additional path to manage these situations by preventing edits to the relevant pages (we're happy to help apply any urgent edits) until a particular situation has calmed down. Thanks, Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ 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] editor retention initiatives
I agree with this wholeheartedly. When I think back to when I was new on Wikipedia, pretty early on I got an honest-to-god personal message from someone to thank me for correcting a typo ( https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Lankiveildiff=5647166oldid=5629943 ). It made me feel like this was a community of nice people that I wanted to collaborate on things with, and was probably instrumental in me sticking around. The editor retention problem will not be solved with technological gizmos and doodads, nor with top-down solutions imposed from above. It will be solved with positive human contact and creating a collaborative community that people actually want to be a part of, rather than one that they put up with. Template welcomes and messages that have all the warmth of a form letter enclosed in a utility bill won't make a lasting improvement in the long run. The intention behind things like the thank button are great, but they should be seen as at most an enabler, rather than as the actual solution to our problems. Cheers, Craig On 26 August 2014 10:09, David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com wrote: Perhaps the best way of doing this is the admittedly laborious method of personally communicating with new editors who seem promising and encouraging them and offering to help them continue. The key word in this is personally. It cannot be effectively done with wikilove messages , and certainly not with anything that looks like a template. Template welcomes are essentially in the same class as mail or web personalizedadvertisements. What works is to show that you actually read and appreciated what they are doing, to the extent you wanted to write something specific. On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 2:19 PM, Ilario Valdelli valde...@gmail.com wrote: Wikimedia ch is doing a big investment in supporting communities. There are three community liaisons (a third hired recently) to support the three national languages which are also within the biggest linguistic communities. Anyway there is not a unique solution to be adapted easily in user retention and recruiting because the world is varioius as it is the life. Regards Il 24/ago/2014 03:56 James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com ha scritto: Is there a list somewhere of all currently active Foundation initiatives for attracting and retaining active editors? I am only aware of the one project, Task Recommendations, to try to encourage editors who have made a few edits to make more, described starting at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JbZ1uWoKEgt=60m20s I am not worried about pageviews at all, given that the trend is as constant as it has ever been when mobile users are added in to the total. Sadly, the greater number of mobile users appears to be harming active editor numbers beyond their already dismal trend, so it would be nice to have an idea of exactly how much effort the Foundation is applying to its only strategic goal which it is not achieved, and has not ever achieved. I am amazed that so much more effort continues to be applied to the other goals, all of which have always been met through to the present. What does this state of affairs say about the Foundation leadership's ability to prioritize? Is there any evidence at all that anyone in the Foundation is interested in any kind of change which would make non-editors more inclined to edit, or empower editors with social factors which might provide more time, economic power, or other means to enable them to edit more? ___ 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 -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ 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,
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Next steps regarding WMF-community disputes about deployments
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. It's not about MediaViewer at all, it's about two things: #1: The frustration of some volunteers that they feel their views are not being adequately considered in major deployments of new software. #2: A lack of confidence and faith in the WMF Engineering team to deliver quality software. The second is the more dangerous one at this point. After the catastrophic aborted launch of the Visual Editor, complete with numerous bugs that should have been picked up in even a cursory unit testing scheme or regression testing scheme prior to being deployed to a productive environment, there's not a good deal of faith left. The technical problems with MediaViewer were not as serious, but since a significant portion of the power user base was expecting a failure, they jumped on the flaws that it did have, and here we are. To be honest, if Erik were to turn water into wine at this point, people would still complain, and loudly, that he had provided them with red when they wanted white. I'm not sure that the solutions that have been offered; a new deployment process, or a tech council, are going to be sufficient to correct the real problem, which at this point is largely one of perception. Similarly, I don't think that the WMF adopting a complete hands-off approach as some seem to be demanding is going to lead to anything other than stagnation as individual communities squabble indecisively over what changes should be made. I do know that if it's not fixed, that pretty much every major deployment of new features is going to follow this same pattern, which is obviously highly undesirable. What I'd suggest is that we leave the emotional hostility at the door and try to be reasonable. Neither side is going to get exactly what they want, and that is to be expected. To be honest, some of the invective that has been directed at Foundation staff has been completely over the top; phrases like Taliban diplomacy or honest-to-god comparisons to the Nazis don't move us towards a solution or make one seem like someone that can be intelligently reasoned with, they only harden feelings on both sides and make a suitable arrangement being found less likely. No employee should be made to receive that sort of harassment in the course of their job, no matter how much you disagree with them. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 1 September 2014 16:31, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, The argument is not at all about the MediaViewer. It is only the latest flash point. Consequently the notion of how hard it is to set a default on or off is not relevant really. When you read the Wikipedia Signpost you read about one of the major German players and it is found necessary to mention that his tools environment was ended and it became WMF labs. For me it gives the impression of sour grapes and a sense of failure because volunteers do not decide the agenda and feel angry/frustrated about that. Consequently my conclusion that it is not about the MediaViewer at all. The next thing that comes along will be the next flash point. This is because it is emotions that speak and not arguments. Thanks, GerardM On 1 September 2014 08:11, Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoeks...@gmail.com wrote: On Aug 31, 2014 11:46 PM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Just in terms of the amount of everyone's time that MediaViewer, Superprotect and related issues are absorbing, this situation is a net negative for the projects. Also, the amount of emotional hostility that this situation involves is disheartening. Personally, I would like to see us building on each other's work instead of feuding, and I'm getting MediaViewer issue fatigue. WMF's principal argument against letting projects make local decisions about configurations of MediaViewer seems to be that having a multitude of site configurations is impractical for site maintainability and development of new features. The Technical Committee would be in a good position to make global decisions on a consensus basis. Pine I've heard the argument that it is difficult to maintain and develop for having different default states of this setting across different projects, and frankly, I'm not buying it, unless the setting is intended to be removed completely. Could someone explain to me how having a different default state for the setting has much, or any, impact? - Martijn ___ 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
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections
I think the issue is that the employee vote is now a significant proportion of the electorate. When this was originally set up, nobody complained too loudly about giving WMF staff the vote simply because their numbers were small and they were too small a constituency to sway the result on their own. The number of voters choosing to exercise their suffrage is decreasing, while the number of staff are increasing. While this illustrates a problem all on its own, it also means that WMF staff who may not be participants on the projects may now have enough pull to decide a closely fought election. I know it's too late to change the rules for this year, but I'd really recommend getting rid of the complex criteria for the next election, and dialing it back to a simple X number of edits, or Y number of patches rule. Not only would this be simpler to administer and easier to understand, but I would imagine most of the WMF staff who care enough to actually vote would probably qualify through those criteria anyway. A few worthy folk might miss out on the chance to lodge a ballot, but then that's going to be the case in any situation other than complete and universal suffrage. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 5 October 2014 18:04, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Itzik, If I understand you correctly, you are asking about whether WMF and thematic organization bylaws should allow employees to vote in trustee elections for their own orgs. I can see how this could create interesting conflict-of-interest problems. However, in all non-autocratic republics that I know about, government employees can vote as any other citizens can. I'm also of the view that WMF operates like a university, and a modest amount of staff involvement in selecting their supervisors in that environment is ok. Pine On Oct 5, 2014 12:41 AM, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel it...@wikimedia.org.il wrote: Hey, Don't worry, we indeed have a lot of time till the next elections, but as this issue had been raised during the last elections - and we decided that we can't change the rules few weeks before the elections, now I want to raise the discussion enough time before. According to the current rules [1], in order to influence and vote in the elections, you need to be active editor, developer or WMF staff/contractor. Last year this issue concern some of us. The foundation is not small organizations as it been before, and by comparison, the number of people participating in the elections every year is not high. For example, last elections there were 1809 valid votes. By comparison, the number of WMF staff this days is 218, what makes there voting power 12% of the total voters last year. This consider to be a great amount of power when we are talking about elections (In the last election you would have around 650 votes in order to be elected...) Wikimedia thematic organizations staff and contractors for example don't have the same privilege to vote only because they are employees of the movement, only if they are editors as well. The question - what make the WMF staff different, and if this is not a little bit problematic that the staff have such power to decide on their direct board, but in general - the board of the whole movement. Do we need to give the same privilege also to all the staff in our movement? Should we limited the elections to staff (both WMF and chapters) that are active editors or developers as additional to their work in the movement? I'll be happy to hear yours input. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Vote_Questions [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Results *Regards,Itzik Edri* Chairperson, Wikimedia Israel +972-(0)-54-5878078 | http://www.wikimedia.org.il Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment! ___ 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 ___ 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] Call to Action
I think the first lesson here is: if you're going to talk about a harmonious community, don't quote divisive political figures in support of your argument :-) That said, welcome Damon! Certainly, it's a pretty tough job that you've stepped into, but I'm optimistic that a fresh approach and fresh eyes will assist the engineering team in pushing through the present difficulties with software deployments. Regards, Craig Franklin On 7 October 2014 11:02, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: Hello and welcome, Damon. One thing I've long appreciated about the Wikimedia movement is that it is not political, and indeed the flagship project is explicitly neutral. This distinction has become a little more nuanced as the movement has taken political positions that are congruent with the overall mission, but I think it remains the case that Wikimedians have been able to avoid entanglements with general political issues. This has been especially the case with most deeply controversial and current political debates. So while I agree with your sentiment, that leaders must model values such as courage and integrity, I think it would have been better expressed without the ringing endorsement of Che Guevara. As you say, we should choose our words carefully and ensure that our language is positive and inclusive. This is obviously an area where we can all make progress. ~Nathan ___ 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] [Fundraiser] fundraising blocked in Russia
I'm sure that you're correct here Joseph, but this is another example I think where the Foundation should have notified the relevant chapter *before* taking the action, so that they would be ready when the questions started rolling in. Unfortunately, I think we're getting back to the bad old days of chapter and user group press contacts being the last people to find out about potentially controversial issues like this. Regards, Craig Franklin (personal view only) On 13 November 2014 10:07, Joseph Seddon josephsed...@gmail.com wrote: I would hate to preclude any answer from the foundation. However the laws that govern the foundation are that of the US. Given the previous and renewed ongoing palaver with Ukraine and the presence of economic sanctions and the increasing likelihood of on top of what is already present, I imagine this related to that. Im not sure of what legal risks accepting such donations would expose the foundation to. However such precautions have been made in the past relating to unrest. Its no slight on the country or its individuals, just a precautionary measure. Seddon On 12 Nov 2014 19:48, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: rubin.happy, 12/11/2014 18:48: We received some alerts from our users that donations are now blocked when user is from Russia: http://habrastorage.org/files/31b/b1f/ec9/31bb1fec9b9e45abb6ac4babcc2371 84.png Thanks for the information. Everyone can see the same warning by clicking the Russia link in https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give Through what channels are donations blocked? Did anyone try sending a wire to the EU (SEPA) account (IBAN GB54CHAS60924241034640), or a PayPal donation? Nemo P.s.: ROTFLOL Please email don...@wikimedia.org for more information on how to make a bank transfer to the Wikimedia Foundation. In case someone forgets there is an ocean between Europe and USA. ___ Fundraiser mailing list fundrai...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/fundraiser ___ Fundraiser mailing list fundrai...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/fundraiser ___ 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] [Fundraiser] fundraising blocked in Russia
I do agree with MZMcBride here. I can understand being cautious, and I can understand not having time to put out a detailed message in advance. But I simply cannot understand not being bothered to send off even a brief note after the fact, explaining why. What should have taken all of two minutes to do was not done, with the result of a great deal of needless hassle for our colleagues in Russia. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that at least a notification would be made. A great deal of progress has been made on repairing the difficult relationship between the Foundation and the community, and it would be a shame if that was undone through more moments of carelessness like this one. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 14 November 2014 11:16, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Geoff Brigham wrote: In that context, we feel that laws in Russia offer a number of possible interpretations. So, out of an abundance of caution, we are not taking donations from Russia right now. If we feel the situation changes, we'll let people know. As Lisa also said, this does and will not have any impact at all on how the WMF continues to support the Russian language Wikipedia, and its sister projects. We pool our funding and make our budget decisions independently from the geographical source, if any, of the funding. Right, you (or Lisa) could've said these paragraphs on the Wikimedia blog or this mailing list or Meta-Wiki or anywhere really and I think you would've saved yourself trouble. Transparency is an inherent part of Wikimedia and community members appropriately place great value in it. We hear your point on transparency and advance notice, and it is a fair one. That said, sometimes we will need to quickly pause fundraising operations in different places while we gain clarity around how best to operate. We are making numerous decisions every day to respond to a wide variety of issues and considerations. I would like to commit to advance notice, but I don't think that will always be possible given the need for flexibility and speed at times. Nevertheless, I am reflecting on how to better address an issue like this in the future. I have to imagine that you discuss these types of issues among Wikimedia Foundation employees using e-mail. I don't really accept the need for flexibility and speed at times. You're not faster than e-mail; you can shoot a note to a mailing list. There's even a dedicated fundrai...@lists.wikimedia.org mailing list. :-) 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, 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] FDC funds allocation recommendation is up
On 23 November 2014 at 22:30, pajz pajzm...@gmail.com wrote: On 23 November 2014 at 11:25, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote: Having carefully read through some of the FDC rationales I thought they were appropriately strategic and made it pretty obvious exactly what those chapters that did not get what they were hoping for, need to change in order to bid more successfully. I am not entirely sure about this. My concern is essentially that it is unclear to me how the FDC determines the extent of the cuts it makes and which item(s) of the budget get(s) cut by what amount of money. For instance, when to Committee suggests to reduce the allocation to WMDE by EUR 360,000 vis-à-vis what they requested (-30%), it is not clear to me how the Committee arrived at that amount of money. Just noting here that I think this is an excellent point. It's not entirely clear in some cases why the allocation has been cut by a specific amount. I can appreciate that the FDC has good reasons for not giving an entity what it has asked for, but at the same time it should be able to explain clearly how they arrived at the reduced figure. The other danger of across the board cuts like this, especially where the rationale is not clear, is that entities may start to inflate their requests, factoring an expected 10% or 20% to be shaved off the top by the FDC, thus leaving them with the figure that they *really *want. If the rationale is clearly explained, this will probably be less of a factor. Cheers, Craig Franklin ___ 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 France] WikiCheese crowdfunding - Let's photograph 'em all
Forget that, I'd like WMUK to fly me to Scotland so that I can, uh, research and write about various types of whisky. Cheers, Craig On 25 November 2014 at 18:59, Jon Davies jon.dav...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: And next the wine project? Count me in. On 24 November 2014 at 18:22, Christophe Henner christophe.hen...@gmail.com wrote: Good news everyone, Cheese articles are gonna get improved! As french, it was dreadful for us to see so few illustrations of cheese on Wikipedia. This is about to change. A group of french Wikimedians, lead by Pierre-Yves Beaudouin, designed a project to photograph many cheeses, up to 200 for the moment. This project is perticular as we aim to have it found through a french crowdfunding platform, KissKissBankBank. Of course Wikimedia France could have funded it itself, but we wanted to use the project as a way to get the larger audience aware of their ability to contribute and to give a fun image of contributing. The project in few words iss follow : * 10 cheeses per session * During the session the cheeses are photographed and their articles improved * During the sessions experimented wikimedian would train new editors * At every session every participant would enjoy eating good cheese too If you want to read more, or even contribute, about the project you can go on KissKissBankBank : http://www.kisskissbankbank.com/fr/projects/wikicheese If you have any questions, please feel free to shoot them on or off list. All the best, -- Christophe ___ 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 -- *Jon Davies - Consultant to Wikimedia UK*. Mobile (0044) 7803 505 169 tweet @jonatreesdavies Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). Telephone (0044) 207 065 0990. Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk ___ 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] Fundraising banners (again)
I'm going to second Liam's comment here, it is disappointing that we're discussing this here but the Foundation is not coming to the party and explaining why they are doing these things. They're creating an information void, and a void *will* be filled somehow; if the WMF is not proactive in filling it with the real story, it'll be filled with rumours and misinformation, the sort of stuff that inhibits the movement from achieving its goals. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a reasonably prompt answer to the sort of questions being posed here in a respectful fashion. I've copied in Megan Hernandez, the Director of Online Fundraising in the hope of getting a comment, just in case she's not aware of this discussion. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 27 November 2014 at 21:44, Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com wrote: This notwithstanding, I think the issue *yet again*, is a lack of communication with the relevant community members when a decision is taken that affects them. In this case, at minimum, the French OTRS team - who are apparently receiving complaints that Wikipedia is affected by a virus! So can I reiterate my reqeust from the other day: If you're going to change something, tell the affected people before you change it (or as soon as possible afterwards). Please don't wait for the public to raise concerns with volunteers, who then complain to the WMF, before offering an explanation. And on that note, regarding the fundraising concerns from last week, have the Dutch or Russian communities received responses to their questions yet? -Liam On 27 November 2014 at 11:35, Delphine Ménard notafi...@gmail.com wrote: You know, I think I'll pass on the actual content of the message that talks about Commercial not being a Monster and The Bad. (and yes I know, these are in a negative sentence but... seriously?). This banner looks like an obituary I find. Where are the cool banners on green leafy foresty background? Those were the days ;) I know that a lot of thought goes into crafting the best messages for fundraising banners, I also know that the testing is thorough, and decisions are made with real data. But sometimes I find we might be forgetting the number of people we actually scare *away* with things like this. Not sure that's data we can acquire, but looking at this banner I am losing faith in my fellow French if they really respond to something like this more than they do to positive and cheerful looking messages). *sigh* Delphine On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 11:44 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: David Gerard wrote: Didn't we have the lightbox argument last year? Probably. Or the year before. Or the year before that. I did say (again) in the subject line. ;-) There are various discussions popping up across Wikimedia about these banners. It didn't help that a bug earlier this week caused logged-in users to be hit with them as well. Talk about eating your own dog food. The French Wikipedia held what appears to be a straw poll with overwhelming denouncement of the banner. It's also been repeatedly described as a phishing attempt. Complaints and confusion aren't uncommon during any annual fundraiser, but I think we can and should hold ourselves to a higher standard when begging people for money. As pointed out on Meta-Wiki's Wikimedia Forum by Jules78120, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Usage_guidelines is pretty clear that the (primary) goal is that banners be as unobtrusive as possible. I wrote this in May 2011, I believe deliberately outside of the annual fundraising that takes place in December so that we could have a calm and reasonable discussion about appropriate CentralNotice usage. Sigh. 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- @notafish NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails will get lost. Intercultural musings: Ceci n'est pas une endive - http://blog.notanendive.org Photos with simple eyes: notaphoto - http://photo.notafish.org ___ 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
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons copyright extremism
Am I the only one that sees the irony in asking folks not to pick on the Commons community, then immediately asserting that enwp is the source of all drama? Cheers, Craig Franklin On 12/12/2014 4:56 PM, Pipo Le Clown plecl...@gmail.com wrote: As you said, the first issue of Commons is demotivating contributors. And this thread is actually doing a good job at it... STOP the Commons bashing. Stop calling Commons contributors anal retentive or fussy neckbeards. I'm an european. In Europe, one does not call another nazi, as Americans do. It's insulting. Do you see people coming to Wikimedia-l when an american contributor calls someone a nazi (because they do) ? No. There are places on projects to deal with those kind of situations (even if they do not work properly imo). As there are places on Commons to discuss about the scope, the way we should handle copyright, etc. Nobody is preventing you to go to this places and start a discussion, share your thoughts and your wishes. To be clear: Wikimedia is not only ENWP. Other wikipedias and projects are using Commons every day. But the drama always come from ENWP... On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 12:47 AM, Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu Dec 11 2014 at 12:40:09 PM Pipo Le Clown plecl...@gmail.com wrote: I'm on the road every two weekends, and processing pictures the rest of the time on my free time. I've provided around 8000 pictures to Commons, and helped to have pictures for articles like Cristiano Ronaldo, Roy Hogdson or Greig Laidlaw... Just to read that I'm a fascist and an anal retentive because someone proposed a fucking picture of KitKat for deletion ? It was not even deleted, the discussion is still going on. And even if it was, the right place to go would have been COM:UDR, with a strong rationale, where people would have discuss it in a civilised manner. Not in this echo chamber... So yes, one could say that the thread was accusatory from the start, and quickly went to vicious. One could also say that this is a fucking disgrace. Pleclown To be crystal clear: I didn't link to the DR or mention the nominator because I don't actually care much about the individual instance. Commons is going to do what it's going to do, and whomever nominated it or comments in support of deletion is just doing what the policies of Commons is telling them to do. The problem is a general one with the goals of Commons, what the community focuses (and doesn't focus on), as I said. I think it should be clear that the purpose of discussing it on Wikimedia-l as opposed to Commons is talk about whether Commons is doing a good job of serving as the media repository for other projects. Not about whether the nominator was correct in this individual case or something like that. On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 7:51 PM, Austin Hair adh...@gmail.com wrote: Okay, guys, let's all take a step back and remember [[WP:Civility]]. (Yeah, I know that's a Wikipedia pillar, but can't we all at least get on board with that one?) The tone of this thread was accusatory from the start, and quickly went to vicious. Maybe everyone can try it again with a bit of AGF. Austin On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 7:30 PM, James Alexander jameso...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 10:14 AM, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote: P.S. Stephen, you are young and handsome, in fact rather dishy to my ageing eyes. Good for you. Keep in mind that your fellow volunteers might not have been born so lucky, and that being young and pretty all too soon passes into memory, sigh. Fæ, this is not acceptable for the list (or for that matter on wiki). Stephen's neckbeard comment certainly wasn't helpful either but it's no excuse. James ___ 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 ___ 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
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Our final email
On 19 December 2014 at 10:12, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: The fundraising rules also need to make explicit that lying is flatly unacceptable. Having the first rule be don't lie might be the easiest solution here, though it's shocking that this needs to be written down. The fundraising teams, past and present, regularly lie to our readers in an effort to extract donations. Specific examples of lying include calling Sue Gardner the Wikipedia Executive Director, calling Brandon Harris a Wikipedia programmer, and repeatedly making manipulative and misleading suggestions that continued donations keep the projects online. The Wikimedia Foundation recently raised $20 million. Assuming a generous $3 million to keep the projects online per year, that's over six _years_ that the projects could continue operating before needing to ask for money again. Contrast with e-mails and in-site donation advertising that suggest that the lights will go off soon if readers don't donate today. Please add my name to the list of people who are troubled by what's been said and done in the latest round of fundraising. I think that most of us, even if we feel some distaste for begging for money, realise the importance and necessity of engaging in fundraising. The fact that we're asking for money is not the problem. The problem is that in order to maximise the amount of revenue gained, the Fundraising team has engaged in a misleading scare campaign. In the short term, that means that a few more dollars will flow into the Foundation's coffers, but in the long term it just damages the brand and the entire movement. It is very disappointing that the responses from the WMF to these entirely reasonable concerns so far have been either: a) Silence b) Completely ignoring the point (The fundraiser has been very successful because we've received more money, and those who are not aware that they've been mislead are not upset!) c) Semantic word games (Well, in a technical sense what we've said is not a lie, depending on how you look at it) The solution that I'd like to see for next time is less focus on A/B testing that has its sole purpose of maximising the amount of revenue raised, and more of a view to alternative ways to raise money. Imagine a world in which we gave our readers a positive message that we already had enough money to keep the lights on thanks very much, but needed more to build cool new tools, improve the quality of the project content, and implement more innovative projects to meet our movement's goals. Regards, Craig Franklin ___ 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] Is there some Wikimedia project to host contents based on original research?
Wikisource should only be used for material that has already been published elsewhere, it sounds like what's being attempted here is original publishing. One option may be simply to set up your own MediaWiki installation and host such material there. You can therefore set your own licencing rules for the content, and make your own rules about what is and is not allowed. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 5 January 2015 at 23:42, Richard Symonds richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: This sounds like a Wikisource idea - do we have any wikisourcerers who can give their thoughts? Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.* On 5 January 2015 at 13:30, Sucheta Ghoshal sucheta.ghos...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, A few of my friends and I have been planning to document the history of counterculture in Bengali art and literature. These friends are also working in that domain professionally, and have access to a huge repository of texts, images, and other relevant details that they are willing to make available digitally in the form of free contents. We wish to have the contents as wikis, and, pictures and video snippets that might be involved - as properly licensed free materials. Now, the concern is if there is some Wikimedia Project that would host contents that are based on such an enormous amount of original research. Wikipedia is certainly not the appropriate place. And, as there exist no earlier works on this particular domain on the internet, references would be negligible. I was thinking about Wikibooks, instead. I am not entirely sure if that fits either, but I assume it fits better than Wikipedia, at least. The last option is to host it ourselves with the MediaWiki setup, and I am considering it very much. But, the idea essentially is to make people edit and enrich it with as much inputs as possible. It would be really helpful, in that case, if it could be placed in one of the Wikimedia projects. Suggestions, of every kind, would be deeply appreciated. Best, Sucheta ___ 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 ___ 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] [treasurers] Accounting software for thematic orgs
Hi Pine, That's great to hear, I was really pleased with how Xero worked for our organisation and I hope it's just as good for you. If you (or any other user group) need a hand with it, please feel free to drop me a line as I've a few years experience with it now. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 16 February 2015 at 15:59, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Treasurers and other finance people, I realize that we had this discussion some months ago about accounting software. I just wanted to follow up by letting you know that Cascadia decided to go with Xero as we start. Your advice was helpful and I greatly appreciate it. I hope to meet many of you at the Wikimedia Conference in Germany this year. Regards, Pine (now Executive Director for Cascadia Wikimedians User Group) On Aug 20, 2014 4:12 AM, Richard Symonds richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: Hi Pine, I started off doing the accounts at WMUK several years ago and looked at a fair few different systems, including open source. Initially we used Gnucash, I believe, but because no-one else used it - including our auditors - it was not very useful when we needed to create year end accounts. I also considered CiviCRM after viewing a talk from the Swedish chapter in 2012. However, the talk was not encouraging - CiviCRM needs a *lot *of work to be useable as an accounting system. I would not therefore recommend Gnucash or CiviCRM or any other open source system: you will find it almost impossible to find an accountant who uses them, and also almost impossible to find a CiviCRM developer who is also an accountant! Your auditors will not know how to use the data and will not have the programs to access it, so in the end you will have to pay extra for the free software. In short: open source programs are good for small charity accounts, but the moment you start hiring staff (of any sort), or have fixed assets or non-cash donations, the system does not scale and as a result you will incur large overheads trying to get it to work. You might run into a problem with CiviCRM if you need to generate invoices for a conference you run in three or four years time - will your system be able to handle it, or will you need to upgrade everything at much greater cost? We also looked at Quickbooks, Sage, and a few others. In the end, we picked Sage - not because it was cheap, or because it was ethical - but because it is the UK standard and practically all UK accountants know how to use it. It has a huge support network, and it is scalable from a self-employed person up to an organisation with many thousands of employees. Sage is not used much in the USA though, so Quickbooks may be a better idea for you. My advice to you would be: - Plan for the future - ten year's time. Your solution needs to be scalable with little fuss. - Use something that has a proven track record - don't got for anything like a startup, because you need it supported in future and you can't take the risk. - Cloud-based is good, but the Treasurer really needs to understand what's happening - things should go through him where possible. - Don't be afraid to spend money if money needs to be spent. - Don't be afraid to ask the WMF directly for their advice. They know their stuff and it'd be good if your accounts were run on a similar system to theirs - cheaper in the long run, and you've got someone to turn to if it all breaks. I hope this helps! Feel free to drop me an email if you have any more specific questions. Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.* On 20 August 2014 10:57, Manuel Schneider manuel.schnei...@wikimedia.ch wrote: Hi Pine, you may want to evaluate CiviCRM. It is not perfect but supports accounting (rather than just recording donations as before) about a year. The advantage of CiviCRM is the fact that it integrates membership management, mailings, donors management and that it can be used centrally by all the committee members. The setup and customization is not so easy with CiviCRM but there are plenty of people in the movement who gathered some experience with that. /Manuel -- Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Lausanne, +41 (21) 34066-22 - www.wikimedia.ch ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Join the Wikimedia strategy consultation
On 24 February 2015 at 09:40, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Philippe Beaudette wrote: Five years ago, I was part of the work on a strategic plan for the Wikimedia movement. Much has changed since then. Now, I’m back...and we’re working on strategic direction again. :-) Hi. I distinctly remember you swearing not to be involved in the next strategic plan. I may even have logs of such statements. What has changed? I'm guessing that Philippe's boss has informed him that he's going to be working on it whether he likes it or not ;-) Cheers, Craig ___ 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] Wiki Towns
Indeed. Unfortunately I'm just heading out so i can't waffle at length, but there are two active projects in Australia in Fremantle and Toodyay. Cheers, Craig On 01/05/2015 7:45 AM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: I believe Wikimedia AU did some work with this type of stuff… On Friday, May 1, 2015, d...@bisharat.net wrote: What is the status of the Wiki Towns effort? I first heard of it at Wikimania 2012, but looking at the list of actual projects, it appears to have had limited appeal. Noting also that in a couple of cases there were controversies. I tracked down a Wikitown email list, but no reply to an inquiry there. TIA for any info, Don Osborn Sent via BlackBerry by ATT ___ 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 javascript:; ?subject=unsubscribe -- Sent from Gmail Mobile on my iPod. ___ 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] WMF office location and remodel
I do think that it's doesn't particularly match up for the Foundation to base itself in one of the most expensive cities in the world, citing the local talent pool, when a lot of the tech staff are being recruited elsewhere and are working remotely. I did feel that a lot of the motivation to moving to SF in the first place was because for some high level staff, leading a tech-based organisation in SF looked better on the old CV than leading a tech-based organisation in Flint, Gary, or East St. Louis would. With that said, I concede that it's probably much too late to unscramble this particular egg, as relocating now would probably end up costing more than would be saved by moving to a lower cost centre, which is unfortunate. Regards, Craig Franklin On 10 April 2015 at 01:47, Garfield Byrd gb...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi Fae, We have 215 staff in total, with a hub of activity in San Francisco and other staff in several other states and 18 countries. So I agree talented people can be found globally and WMF does hire the best talent it can find wherever they are located. At this point adding offices in other locations add cost without any benefits to the community or the Wikimedia Foundation. We also do not have the luxury of Mozilla's $300 million budget that can support a London office or Microsoft's billions to have a globally distributed workforce with offices. So we are not closing the door to anything. Based on our test project of trying to develop centers of activity in other parts of the United States there is no need for additional offices. We do need and will continue to hire a globally distributed staff of talented people to support our global community of talented volunteers. Regards, Garfield On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 2:19 AM, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote: On 9 April 2015 at 01:16, Garfield Byrd gb...@wikimedia.org wrote: ... The advantages of having good access to talented people and organizations WMF interacts with far outweigh any advantages to moving to a lower cost location outside of the San Francisco market area. I find the world-view expressed here slightly odd to read, perhaps because I am more European than American in background. My background includes working for long periods with many companies in the U.S. (such as Microsoft) and we managed to do that perfectly with a handful of employees in a Seattle office, and most developers and internal operations such as HR, finance etc. in Europe (very few of these people ever had a need or desire to talk directly with customers or partner organizations). It was easy enough for me to visit the U.S. a couple of times a year when there was a lot going on there, and work on a daily basis within a lively virtual team spread out in offices across London, Paris and New York. Talented people can be found in many places including San Francisco, and though Google is incredibly important, there many other critically important potential open knowledge partners without headquarters in SF (Europeana springs to mind). Even Mozilla has a very nice office to work with here in London. The idea that having all functions in SF has advantages that far outweigh all other considerations seems to over-egg the case, perhaps it would be a good thing to leave the door open a crack for alternative ways of working to be possible in a far future. 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Garfield Byrd Chief of Finance and Administration Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext 6787 415.882.0495 (fax) www.wikimediafoundation.org Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! *https://donate.wikimedia.org https://donate.wikimedia.org/* ___ 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] Fwd: Introducing Kourosh Karimkhany, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships
Hello, Might I suggest that if folks want to continue talking about this, they rename this thread, as it is no longer about Kourosh Karimkhany, and it is just creating background noise for those of us who have no desire to discuss the whole Wikipedia Zero freedom thing yet again? Cheers, Craig On 5 April 2015 at 21:07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, Research is not what we compete with. Research is not encyclopaedic either. The research I refer to compared a set of subjects and compared those in several sources... Then again why bore you with information you already could know.. Cherry picking an article from Brittanica is wonderful, it proves your point, it however fails to convince. Your God or mine, the fact is that Wikipedia is a most relevant source. Given your complaint about the John Dee article, there is an opportunity for you. You claim to know the subject matter. Thanks, GerardM On 5 April 2015 at 12:06, Lilburne lilbu...@tygers-of-wrath.net wrote: On 05/04/2015 06:36, Gerard Meijssen wrote: Hoi, Reliable is not an absolute. Wikipedia is in the final analysis an encyclopaedia. It is not original research. One can indeed engage in original research by cherry picking the sources. Studies have indicated that Wikipedia is as reliable as its competitors. Nonsense. Reliability has only ever been checked in the case of well established scientific knowledge (where it was found to have 30% more errors), and highly disputed content. It has not been checked over the millions of articles that are neither of the above. Take the WP article on John Dee and compare it to the Britannica article. The Britannica article is both readable and well rounded. The WP article is a rambling mess that tries to present Dee the Mathematician, Scientist and natural philospher, but is thwarted at every turn by those that want John Dee to be foremost the magician and conjuror. Perhaps in the end Dee the mathematician wins out, but it is a close run thing, and one has to pour over the stilted language and mish mash of thought processes to get there. Ironically enough many of the sources used to promote Dee the magician are instead promoting Dee the mathematician. I think you have it backward. Given that Wikipedia is best of breed, people do care about Wikipedia Zero. God help us if that is the case. Fortunately there are far more informative and reliable sites about then wikipedia. Unfortunately they tend not to be on the first page of a search engine's results. ___ 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 ___ 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 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] [Wiki Loves Monuments] Wiki Loves Monuments in Italy largely blocked by WMF fundraising
It has been my experience that site banners are the best way to reach casual readers who are not already integrated into the projects and existing communication channels. This is why the Fundraising team run banners, rather than begging for money through Facebook and targeted talk page messages, I would imagine. The communications channels you're referring to are excellent for reaching existing contributors, but when you're trying to reach new or casual contributors, a big banner at the top of articles can't be beat. Cheers, Craig On 19 August 2015 at 05:18, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 2:59 PM, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Antanana, And I forgot to mention, this same issue existed in 2014 as well, with also there the downside effects. This subject is of banners has been discussed internally with the local Wiki Loves Monuments team, after I tried to gave some insights in the matter. I think this is done so because me and others have always thought and assumed that it is possible to find a solution with understanding of both sides. With these outcomes I think I can safely say that that assumption and thought can't be considered realistic. I think it would be better in future to have the community decide somehow how they perceive this matter. After all, they create the content of Wikipedia and bear the bunt as result of it. Romaine It seems like there are other communication channels you could take advantage of - other types of banners, bot-distributed talk page messages, WMF-assisted mass e-mail campaigns, social networking messages (FB, Twitter, etc.) and so on. Is it really true that having to share banners with fundraising will result in an unavoidable loss of 90% of contributors? ___ 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] Superprotect's first birthday
On 12 August 2015 at 14:41, Bohdan Melnychuk bas...@yandex.ru wrote: ... It has a trail of bad usage it is connected with. ... I'm not sure I agree with that. There are two known uses. The first one, where a software tool was locked in over the consensus of the community was a bad usage I'll agree; if anything the hamfisted way that the whole situation was handled just made matters much worse. The second use, locking a page on Wikidata where serious outages were being caused to another project, strikes me as a far more reasonable use of the tool. The fact that that usage seems to have been largely unknown until today, and didn't garner any controversy, seems to indicate to me that the community doesn't find it to be a troubling case. I'm all for having a discussion over the community's expectations on when this tool will be used, but let us not walk down a path of hyperbole and exaggeration. Cheers, Craig ___ 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 Foundation quarterly reviews for April-June 2015
Indeed, as Kirill says, the grants process is owned by the WMF (albeit one hosted on Meta), not by the community, so I'm not sure why the Meta community needs to get involved. It actually seems to me that the foundation wiki would be a better home for processes like this so that community bureaucracy can be avoided, but since the events of a couple of years ago that seems like it's not a plausible option in the short term. I do have to say I'm a bit disappointed that a lot of the negative feedback that certain aspects of the friendly space policy got from the GAC seem to have been handwaved away; with its feeble provisions for enforcement, it seems like the sort of policy you have when you want to look like you're doing something about a problem, without actually taking responsibility, or addressing the difficult root causes that caused the issue in the first place. If saying no to harassment in WMF processes isn't worth upturning a few apple carts over, then what is? I do hope that the Community department will have a change of heart and take a much harder line against offwiki harassment, starting from here. On a completely different note, I do hope that the legal team will share their protocol for appearance (or threat of it) at events by banned users. I've been given softly-softly unofficial advice before on the expectations if globally banned users show up at a community event, but it would be good if this could be made available for everyone that wants to hold an event where there is a chance that banned or otherwise problematic individuals might show up, so as to ensure a consistent approach. Cheers, Craig On 20 July 2015 at 07:15, Kirill Lokshin kirill.loks...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 3:42 PM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: 1. Will the friendly-space expectations (policy?) for grants spaces on Meta be proposed as an RfC on Meta? The documentation on the rollout plan doesn't mention and RfC. My understanding is that the right way to implement a policy change like this on Meta is for it to go through an open and transparent RfC process, and that the implementation decision is ultimately the community's to make. The experience would inform further discussions about (1) a project-wide friendly space policy on Meta, and (2) a wider consultation on a friendly space amendment to the ToS that the WMF Board may eventually ratify. I don't see any reason why an RFC would be required (or appropriate) here. The grantmaking process is a WMF function, and the associated pages on meta are managed by the WMF grantmaking team; they are free to impose requirements (such as compliance with a friendly space standard) on anyone participating in that process (whether as an applicant or as a commenter or reviewer). Kirill ___ 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
