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

[Fæ]

On 01/09/2014, Marc A. Pelletier  wrote:
...
> metadata.  It's not an argument against MV, it's an argument for getting
> rid of the horrid way we handle File: pages with ad-hoc workarounds.
> The *correct* solution is to fix the damn image pages, not to remove MV.
...

So, can you link me to a positive proposal to do the elemental
foundation of this, and point to a realistic (and Foundation
supported) proposal to the community to standardize licence templates
on Commons?

Do this and you are most of the way there.

As someone who has uploaded 400,000 images to Commons with a variety
of licences, I would welcome this proposal rather than doing it the
wrong way around. Right now a rationale of blaming underpinning
infrastructure not being ready for MV, after rolling it out, looks
like setting your house on fire in order to give your husband
sufficient motivation to check the smoke alarm.

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

[Fæ]

On 30/08/2014, Mark  wrote:
> On 8/28/14, 2:55 PM, Jane Darnell wrote:
>> You can start by asking around in your own circle of aquaintance, and I'll
>> bet that such research will make you quickly realize that hard stats will
>> be very hard to discover, since in my circle, most of the women I know are
>> married and though their household contains a desktop, the desktop is
>> owned
>> and operated by their husband, not them.
>
> This kind of analysis varies quite widely by country and community, so I
> would be wary of making wide generalizations. You say that "most of the
> women I know are married", but your experience would be unusual here
> (Denmark), because the hard statistics show that most adult women (and
> men) in the country are not married. Clearly other countries' statistics
> (and statistics for demographic subsets of the same) will show other
> numbers.
>
> Best,
> Mark

I know widowers, unmarried people and same-sex married couples and
almost no heterosexual married couples; hetero marriage seems a lot
less popular these days. All the women I know either have their own
machine or are uninterested in accessing the internet.

I honestly cannot think of any women in my circle of friends and
acquaintances that rely on a husband or partner to access the
internet, it is something I would find truly weird and would worry
that the husband was being over-controlling. Though I have one friend
that relies on free public internet for his access for cost reasons.

I have a relative stuck long term in a London hospital where they
charge her 7 quid a day for internet access, which she cannot afford
so she relies on visitors to do stuff on the internet and will spend
her days reading books instead; I find that particularly shocking and
I have never heard of Wikimedia being a champion for the right to free
internet in hospitals - in the 1st world, that should be a lot easier
to negotiate than the internet zero stuff in the developing world.

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

[Fæ]

On 28 August 2014 12:56, Jane Darnell  wrote:
> I agree with Gerard, and would add that a good portion of the new readers and 
> "missing female editors" do not own or operate a desktop and are only 
> available on mobile and tablet, so this is not only where the new readers 
> are, but also where the "first edit" experience is for most women (and sadly, 
> a corollary to that is that they don't try again after their first edit 
> failure).
mechanics of how this would work. We could do it, but reforming WMF is

Every year we see many expensive surveys and funded research on women
and Wikipedia, so presumably there are some verifiable statistics to
support Jane's assertion that a significant difference between readers
of Wikipedia is that men are significantly more likely to own or have
access to a desktop compared to women that they might edit from.

Can someone provide a link to the research that demonstrates this is
more than apocryphal?

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

[Fæ]

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

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

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

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

[Fæ]

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

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

Thanks,
Fae

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

Dear Lila,

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

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

I will be active in both the Wikimania hackerthon and conference in
the coming week, should you or an employee wish to informally review
this request with me in person, along with my reasons for making the
request at this time.
...
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Options for the German Wikipedia

[Fæ]

The page is already overly long and in places impenetrable, and I speak as
a systems analyst with Agile development experience. A shift to plain
English might be useful and more care to avoid dropping in fringe jargon
like "Wiki markup is not Turing complete".
On 22 Aug 2014 01:39, "svetlana"  wrote:

> BTW you should all love this idea:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement_%28Product%29/Process_ideas#Get_local_consencus_for_your_changes
>
> svetlana
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Flogging dead horses (was Re: Superprotect user right, Coming to a wiki near you)

[Fæ]

What is the benefit of creating yet another thread on this?

Fae

On 18 August 2014 04:13, Wiki Billinghurst  wrote:
> Are we there yet? This subject has been so done to death, that the corpse
> of the dead horse that has been flogged is going to rise as a zombie and
> eat out your brains. There is next to no original thought coming through
> just verbiage, and it is time that people subjecting the whole list to the
> continued indigence.
>
> There is an RFC, there is a process being followed, I invite those who wish
> to now comment to use those vehicles and be considerate to those who have
> had enough of the subject matter.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A bunch of nobodies

[Fæ]

Let's not encourage using meta like it was Facebook. However, meh, looking
at the important names listing themselves, I can't get very excited about
pursuing the point. I'd rather not get even more black listed than I
already am.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Odder on moderation?!

[Fæ]

Hi Austin,

My wording was carefully chosen, but probably not obvious enough. I
used "working practices on lists", I was not actually referring to
*this* list where working practices are now, in my opinion, better
than many others.

In fact, it would be great if you could spend time on the meta page
previously linked, suggesting what good practices you use here that
might help run other lists in a more mellow fashion.

Thanks,
Fae

On 12/08/2014, Austin Hair  wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 12:48 PM, Fæ  wrote:
>> Current working practices on lists include never being informed that
>> it happened and never getting a reply to a polite request of why the
>> moderation is in place, along with there being no possibility of
>> appeal or timely review. More complex issues, such as moderators
>> taking action on participants with whom they are actively involved in
>> disputes, are not covered by any current guideline.
>
> I do have to dispute this. While I did not explicitly say "I have set
> your moderation bit," and in retrospect should have, I believe that
> there's a fairly obvious conclusion to be drawn when a list
> administrator tells you that your behavior is unacceptable and your
> next message is not immediately posted.
>
> What I take the most issue with is that, contrary to what John has
> said, I did not receive a single request—polite or otherwise—from
> Tomasz directly, or (so far as gmail's search function can determine)
> any inquiry at all regarding moderation prior to John's e-mail to the
> list.
>
> The matter was clarified within minutes of it being brought to my
> attention. I don't know what, if not that, constitutes "timely review"
> for you, Fae.
>
> Austin
>
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Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Odder on moderation?!

[Fæ]

On 12/08/2014, John Mark Vandenberg  wrote:
...
> I'm informed his emails sent to this list havent come through to the
> list for nearly 24 hrs, and he has not been notified of having been
> put on any moderation, and the moderators havent responded to queries
> sent directly, and havent actioned these moderated emails (deny or
> approve, doesnt matter) for almost a day.

For those interested defining best practices for our email list
moderators, there is an open discussion about the options at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mailing_lists/Guidelines#Second_attempt_at_Moderation_guideline_.28July_2014.29
Please do contribute.

Current working practices on lists include never being informed that
it happened and never getting a reply to a polite request of why the
moderation is in place, along with there being no possibility of
appeal or timely review. More complex issues, such as moderators
taking action on participants with whom they are actively involved in
disputes, are not covered by any current guideline.

Fae
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[Wikimedia-l] Wikimania 2014 Feedback

[Fæ]

I thought a thread on Wikimedia-l might be useful for folks to share
feedback and their experiences, good or bad. I understand there is a
survey which we should remember to complete, and there has been a lot
of chat on Facebook, but I have a natural aversion to that space. :-)

My tuppence worth of feedback is that volunteering is fun, I encourage
others to offer to help out with future Wikimanias.

I was on helpdesk at the start of the hackerthon, meaning that for
around 5 hours I sat in the main foyer at a well signed desk wearing a
red volunteer shirt and helping people find things (a great way to say
hello to many old friends arriving at the event), answering all sorts
of questions. This ranged from helping BBC journalists meet up with
their team and work out where best to go to find the action (this
turned into the Newsnight feature that evening), to helping older
ladies find out about the Barbican fashion exhibition. At the same
time I was logged in to the official help desk phone number through
Skype, and keeping an eye on the official twitter, email and IRC
channels to be able to respond to questions from attendees (my puny
netbook was struggling). 5 hours was a long time, but by the end of
lunchtime I had helped a lot of people, which is immensely rewarding.

Tip for the Mexico conference team - I was *very* impressed at how the
conference staff changed processes on the fly (great Agile processes
Ed), so based on me mentioning that people were finding it hard to
find free drinking water, a massive supply of water bottles were
ordered and appeared in the main hackerthon space that afternoon, and
a casual mention that helpdesk folks had varied technical experience
so many would find IRC etc. a struggle, resulted in a change to who
was placed where, so there was always a "brain" handy on each
helpdesk. I guess I was the default brain on the main helpdesk. :-)

All Saturday morning I was officially the "host" for the GLAM stream
of presentations. It was a great excuse to met my friends on the GLAM
network, and having someone with a GLAM background was appreciated, as
this helped me negotiate slight changes to the schedule and put
presenters at their ease, even when we were scrabbling about getting
laptops to display properly on the main screen. The wifi had some
problems late morning, so the IRC channel where volunteers were
coordinating was dropping out, however the "control room" was
responsive to the problem and my "team leader" was physically checking
in with me to make sure I had everything I needed.

On Sunday I was on the other side of things, giving a presentation on
the GLAMwiki Toolset, and the volunteer hosting my session was on the
ball, spotting that my netbook was running out of battery during my
presentation and sorting out the power supply before I had even
noticed myself. What an impressive service!

I was invited to join in with a volunteers party at the end of Sunday,
but after a late Saturday night with the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group on
a gay pub crawl in Soho, I was totally exhausted from several long
days and short nights, so getting home and crashing out on the sofa
with my husband was a treat.

I like to personally thank Ed for pushing and staying incredibly
positive for so long. Back in 2012 Ed was enthusiastically approaching
the Wikimedia UK board when I was a trustee, and I was one of those
giving him a hard grilling on plans and financial controls. I think
the governance structure that resulted from those discussions, along
with feedback from earlier proposals from the Wikimania bid review
team helped to ensure everyone was confident and well prepared for the
2014 Wikimania. It worked, it was a brilliant experience, and when the
final statistics get published, I expect it to be a case study of good
value that we can all learn from.

Thanks,
Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Superprotect user right, Comming to a wiki near you

[Fæ]

On 11 August 2014 03:19, Pine W  wrote:
> Lila,
>
> I hope you are aware of the issues being described in this thread. Would
> you please state your views on this situation?
>
> Pine

+1 It would be great to hear from Lila on the current decisions being
taken by her employees.

The discussion on this has now involved threats to take serious action
on both "sides". I find the idea of blocking dissenting voices
repugnant and fundamentally against the Community value of openness
and transparency. Dissent is not the same thing as disruption or being
uncivil, I think the lines are becoming dangerously blurred in this
area and we are in danger of seeing a super stupid dramafest being
fuelled.

For what it's worth, anyone with admin powers that starts blocking
people would be a major wally, and might take care to consider the
potential "boomerang" effects that are likely to undo anything
positive they hope to achieve. On my favourite friendly Wikimedia
project, Commons, we have the concept of staying mellow, even when
dealing with seriously difficult discussion, so keep it mellow. I will
skip reading emails here that look ranty, life's too short.

Cheers,
Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Effective censorship of Wikipedia by Google

[Fæ]

On 05/08/2014, John Mark Vandenberg  wrote:
...
> We have a reply:
> https://twitter.com/JulietteGarside/status/496644233580003328
>
> "@jayvdb @guardian @Wikipedia @wikisignpost We won't know unless
> Wikipedia chooses to make that information public"

Unless I'm missing something, this means that WMF senior management
can tell us exactly which Wikipedia articles are "suppressed" after
RTV requests to Google.

What do we (the unpaid volunteer community) want to do with this
information? Ethically this is difficult territory, but openness is
one of our core values, so this should not all be stitched up in
back-rooms without explaining what is going on to the whole community
and aiming for a consensus on action.

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "let's elect people to serve on the wikimedia engineering "community" team!" (brainstorming)

[Fæ]

On 5 August 2014 11:33, Gryllida  wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> WMF Engineering is currently composed of individual teams as documented at 
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering . These teams look after 
> the software that faces us everyday, and often work together.
>
> Could we please have some more people (potentially a dedicated ‘community’ 
> team) who could do these things:
> - encourage feedback by absolutely /anyone/ about the next features they'd 
> like,
> - run programming and documentation activities requested (or started) by 
> community [there would be a lot of small projects, unlike the big ones the 
> current Teams are working on],
> - encourage localising documentation for, and centralising the location of, 
> all community-developed programming work,
> - raise awareness of community development efforts across all Wikimedia 
> projects,
> - actively encourage members of community become MediaWiki and Gadgets 
> hackers in the Free Software philosophy?
>
> This would be, in my view, a relatively small, collaboration-type team (with 
> just half a handful of people for timezone coverage for IRC support).
>
> Open to brainstorming and suggestions. I would compile thoughts into a wiki 
> page afterwards to continue thinking on the idea.

The roles you describe seem to have a lot of overlap with what we
might expect WMF volunteer coordinators / WMF community liaison
employees to be busy with. Compare with:
* 
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Volunteer_Development_Coordinator
* http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Community_Liaison

Do you intend this to be an unpaid team of volunteers doing these
tasks, or a end user group (in the Agile sense) that would be
supported by employees and may themselves be paid for some activities?

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Asking Google to output Wikipedia citation format in Scholar

[Fæ]

On 04/08/2014, Liam Wyatt  wrote:
...
> I wonder if this is something that Wikidata could (eventually) handle?
> I have been hoping that one day all books (at least those with ISBNs) could
> have a Wikidata entry. This would mean that all of the bibliographic

There is no point in duplicating other free databases which are
already excellent. http://worldcat.org (by OCLC) has a free to use
API, I've played around with it a little, and it can be integrated in
with any tool. As well as all ISBNs, this includes OCLC numbers (duh)
and other interesting bits and bobs like LCCN numbers that the Library
of Congress uses.

Yonks ago I wrote a greasemonkey script to scrape WorldCat entries
which I used to insert or tidy up complex references in Wikipedia
articles (this was before I hounded to death and resigned as an
admin). The current editing interface on the English Wikipedia has the
cite tool which effectively does the same thing if you put in the
ISBN, so I have never been motivated to promote my script or repackage
it as a user script. If someone wants to look at a copy during the
hackerthon, I'll pass it on, though I'd recommend reading the WorldCat
API documentation instead.
http://www.oclc.org/developer/develop/web-services/worldcat-search-api.en.html

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Effective censorship of Wikipedia by Google

[Fæ]

On 04/08/2014, Andy Mabbett  wrote:
> On 4 August 2014 10:49, David Gerard  wrote:
>> Possibly, if/when the Foundation finds out, it should first pass the
>> issue to the OTRS volunteers who handle BLP problems to examine.
>
> Why would that need to be dealt with by OTRS volunteers, and not the
> community at large?

The Streisand effect and just plain old "oh, be nice" which is much
easier to manage in a non-public discussion (albeit on the record).
For notable people this is a tricky balance, one of public interest
versus intrusion. We are not journalists (exempting Wikinews for a
moment) and so I would much rather see a lean towards avoiding
intrusion into personal lives wherever reasonable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

As an OTRS volunteer I am especially sympathetic for subjects of
photography that have been accidentally compromised in public places.
We are not *always* talking about nudity - two memorable cases were
when someone was worried that their image was being used as an
illustration of racism, and another for an illustration of
homosexuality; both were identifiable in the photographs and neither
apparently gave specific permission for their photograph to be freely
released and so were surprised to see their face being used on
Wikipedia. Even when copyright is fine, and the material has great
educational value, our projects need to be sympathetic to the
accidental damage or distress that repeating personal data or
propagating photographs might have.

Postscript: In the case of Wikinews, this boils down to local policies
which reflect best practice for journalists. In general we still avoid
intrusion and should take care to set very high standards for ethical
treatment of biographical material about living people. That's which
writing about historic figures rather than "celebrities" tends to be
so much easier. :-)

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Unacceptable -- CheckUser abuse gone uninvestigated

[Fæ]

On 03/08/2014, Richard Farmbrough  wrote:
> I have to say that there is an unnecessary lack of transparency which seems
> to get worse.  In or around May 2012 I emailed the audit committee on EN:WP
> to ask about checkuser run on my account and got a polite and informative
> reply.   In or around May 2014 an identically worded query got a polite
> refusal.
...

Thanks for sharing this Richard. This compares with my experience only
ten days ago on Commons asking for basic transparency for CUs that may
have been run against me

- I have yet to receive any information.

As mentioned there, Wikimania will justifiably be absorbing many
active volunteers' positive energies in the coming week, including
mine, as I'll be wearing a red shirt too; so I will be taking this up
again for the benefit of Commons contributors only after the
conference. Perhaps we should compare notes at that time so that we
take similar actions to help capture a wider community consensus for
what is required in terms of transparency when CU rights are exercised
on our main projects.

PS Wikipedians may not have noticed my question to all AUSC candidates
about this, there were pretty positive noises in favour of improved
transparency. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Audit_Subcommittee/2014_appointments

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Effective censorship of Wikipedia by Google

[Fæ]

On 3 August 2014 06:27, John Mark Vandenberg  wrote:
> Anyway, I've asked in the off-chance they can give clues.
> https://twitter.com/jayvdb/status/495802112429682688

Retweeted! We might get an answer with enough re-tweets. :-)

It seems logical to suppose that there are senior managers in the WMF,
or at least WMF Legal, that know which Wikipedia article(s) is being
subject to Google's suppression in search engines. It seems also
reasonable to supposed it is about a notable person rather than, say,
some random school teacher, as in the latter case we would fix that
through sensible discussion via OTRS and there would be a natural
fairness in making person material either less visible in an article,
or getting removed in compliance with project guidelines.

Would any WMF Trustee or senior manager like to illuminate the
community on this? Obviously Jimmy Wales has commented generally, but
not explained what the WMF do about these RTV Google requests. As I
understanding there is no legal requirement on the WMF to suppress
itself when talking about Google's actions. Indeed there is nothing to
stop a bot-writer like myself to craftily slowly sniff through results
and pop out a public list of suppressed articles, it is public data by
definition...

Fae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Effective censorship of Wikipedia by Google

[Fæ]

On 2 August 2014 23:49, Risker  wrote:
> I'm not sure you're correct about what is being "disappeared", Fae.  I
> believe that the Guardian is referring to an article of theirs that is now
> not seen in Google search results for certain terms.  The article makes it
> pretty clear that The Guardian does not known which article is involved.
>
> Risker/Anne

The Guardian states in the first paragraph that:
"Google is set to restrict search terms to a link to a Wikipedia
article, in the first request under Europe's controversial new "right
to be forgotten" legislation to affect the 110m-page encyclopaedia."

"Wikipedia" cannot be misread as the "Guardian newspaper".

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[Wikimedia-l] Effective censorship of Wikipedia by Google

[Fæ]

Re: 
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/02/wikipedia-page-google-link-hidden-right-to-be-forgotten

If Google "disappearing" a Wikipedia article is a notable news event,
wouldn't that meet the Wikipedia notability requirements to make an
article about it?

The information being disappeared is the 2009 Muslim conversion of
Adam Osborne, brother of the chancellor, George Osborne.

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Review of grantmaking costs and outcomes for APG, PEG, and IEG

[Fæ]

On 1 August 2014 17:01, Asaf Bartov  wrote:
> If people are interested in the background to Gerard's rant, the grant he
> is talking about is [1], and the incomplete report he has been "hassled"
> about is [2].  I don't want to hijack this thread to discuss this specific
> example, but I welcome discussion on that grant report's talk page, and
> encourage anyone inclined to take Gerard at his word to look into the
> report in question and draw their own conclusions.

Wow. After reading this, I don't think I will go near it.

Fae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMCON14 - Feedback evaluation & financial overview

[Fæ]

Re: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2014/Budget_and_finances

Thank you for publishing these details.

For those who cannot face looking at a spreadsheet, the headline figures are:
* The overall conference cost € 94,977 ($ 127,623)
* The equivalent cost per attendee was € 674 ($ 906)

As it was not recorded, it remains unknown how many of the 141
registered attendees were employees, employees or contractors
attending as volunteers, unpaid volunteers, or what the total in
expenses were for WMF employees not represented in the published
summary. Were this factored in, then the equivalent cost per attendee
would increase. The number of attendees claiming accommodation costs
was 58 out of the 141 attendees.

Fae
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[Wikimedia-l] Europeana post on Wikimedia Commons large batch upload projects

[Fæ]

Re: 
http://pro.europeana.eu/pro-blog/-/blogs/sharing-multimedia-on-wikipedia-now-easier-with-new-tool

Liam has just published this Europeana blog post about the first big
projects using the new GLAMwiki Toolset uploader (GWT). The main image
is one of the unusual "photochrom" prints from the 1890s that I
uploaded as a Wikimedia UK sponsored project - these hand coloured
prints feature locations from around the world and were incredibly
popular to send as gifts in that period, a time when colour
photography was still experimental; this high quality
chromolithographic process was to virtually vanish within a few years.

We are hoping that there will be a lot of interest in new GWT projects
at Wikimania (and the hackerthon beforehand) both from GLAM
professionals and keen volunteers. It's certainly worth browsing some
of the projects delivered so far that the tool has made possible,
especially if you think you might reuse some of the images. Those of
us who helped create the tool are looking forward to this transforming
Wikimedia Commons into a standard home on the internet for the public
to find high quality GLAM materials.

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Research Committee

[Fæ]

On 17/07/2014, Craig Franklin  wrote:
> I've spent a half hour or so going through this, and it looks like Nathan
> is on the money here...

+1

I admit to being embarrassed over believing that RCom is the process
we should officially recommend to research projects. It appears
effectively non-existent and as far as I am aware Wikimedia related
research that includes surveys of our users has no enforceable best
practice.

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] AFD survey

[Fæ]

On 16 July 2014 12:39, Lane Rasberry  wrote:
...
> I asked this researcher to discontinue the survey pending a check on the
> impact of it on the Wikipedia community. I said this because I feel they
> are out of compliance with even the soft suggestions in research that are
> available, and they know this.

Good point. If anyone wanted to research deletion discussion patterns
and outcomes on the English Wikipedia or other projects, I could knock
out a nice analysis using a little passive but intelligent bot work
depending on their requirements. I'm easy to find.

I'm pretty sure this would be a lot cheaper in volunteer time or
research time than creating surveys to answer very similar questions,
particularly if the resulting report were freely published so that
volunteers could give their "subjective value responses" to that
instead.

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] AFD survey

[Fæ]

Dear UWO Wikipedia Research Team,

Your survey does not appear to have been approved by the Wikimedia
Research Committee (RCom). You can find contact details at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee.

Due to concerns with regard to privacy, such as recording their IP
address against statements of their Wikipedia activities, Wikimedians
are not encouraged to participate in unapproved surveys.

I doubt that many Wikipedians would want to separately find and
analyse the UWO Code of Conduct to check what is tracked or not, and
they would need to do this before opening the fluidsurveys.com
website. I note that this website is not apparently owned by the UWO,
but is a private site that is unlikely to be legally bound by UWO
codes of conduct.

Fae

On 16/07/2014, Thyge  wrote:
> the http:// part has been left out.
> Correct link is
>
> http://fluidsurveys.com/s/WikipediaSurvey/
>
> Regards
> Sir48/Thyge
>
>
>
> 2014-07-16 8:29 GMT+02:00 Peter Southwood :
>
>> Link does not work.
>> Cheers,
>> Peter
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:
>> wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Nicole Askin
>> Sent: 16 July 2014 04:00 AM
>> To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] AFD survey
>>
>> We are looking for Wikipedians to participate in a survey. The survey is
>> designed to help us understand group decision-making and Wikipedia’s
>> Articles for Deletion (AfD) process. The research is being carried out
>> under the terms of the University of Western Ontario - Code of Conduct; it
>> will not lead to any sales follow up; no individual (or organization) will
>> be identified in our reporting.
>>
>> If you are an adult Wikipedian, we would be grateful if you could spare
>> approximately 10-15 minutes to complete this survey.
>>
>> As a token of our gratitude, for each completed survey we will make a
>> charitable donation of CAD$2 to the Wikimedia Foundation. If you have any
>> questions, please contact Lu Xiao at lxiao24 (at) uwo.ca.
>>
>> To start the survey please click ONCE on the link below: http://
>> fluidsurveys.com/s/WikipediaSurvey/
>>
>> Please try to complete the survey by August 1, 2014.
>>
>> Thank you very much for your time, we really value your input.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> UWO Wikipedia Research Team
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Interest in a community strategic planning meeting?

[Fæ]

On 14/07/2014, Jane Darnell  wrote:
> Well maybe all of you are independently wealthy, have laptop and and will
> travel, but as I see it, for the rest of us, without travel budget
> facilitated by WMF and chapters, I don't see how we can achieve meetups to
> do any brainstorming at all. And poring over lists of ideas tucked away in
> the recesses of the deep dark Meta is not my idea of a good time (but as
> ever, thanks for the links Nemo)

We have very different views of the world. I have no expectation that
Wikimedia donations should pay for me to go to local
Wikimeets/meet-ups (which cost me about £3 in bus travel). Similarly,
as a member of the Steering Group for the GWToolset, I was happy to
have several significant strategy meetings via Google Hangout, which
cost the participants precisely nothing and Wikimedia nothing in
expenses, even though we were deciding how to invest a few hundred
thousand euros.

Yes, some people may get scholarships to travel to Wikimania or other
conferences, however my understanding is that this would be limited to
those presenting.

A lot can be done using virtual tools, and we should all be experts in
making this work well. I would much rather virtual discussion be used
for maximum effect and the default choice, so that flying people
around the planet is kept for special events with high measurable
returns for the money spent. I still regret that for every Wikimania
so far, we have not cracked the virtual participation problem by
live-streaming and accepting questions via live-chat or similar.
Anyway, this is a bit tangential...

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Interest in a community strategic planning meeting?

[Fæ]

On 14/07/2014, Jane Darnell  wrote:
> Balazs,
> It's interesting that you feel that way, because I disagree entirely. Out
> of curiosity, have you ever met another Wikipedian in real life, and do you
> feel that meet-ups are beneficial to the movement?
> Jane

Jane,

"Without a single person involved (ever) from WMF or any of the
chapters" has nothing to do with meeting other Wikimedians in real
life (or Wikipedians for that matter). The comment was about whether
strategic discussion automatically means the WMF or Chapters need to
be in the middle of it. They don't, even at real life meetings.

As an example, in the UK our Wiki-meets are not the domain of
Wikimedia UK, they are independent. Keeping them that way ensures that
if the community of UK Wikimedians have issues with their local
Chapter or WMF funding, then we are not in the bizarre position of
only being able to talk to each other at chapter/WMF sponsored and
controlled events or in chapter/WMF controlled forums. If this were
the case then it would rapidly only become possible to talk about
"Public Relations positive" affairs.

Volunteer community independence and associated free speech are
generally thought to be a good thing for the purposes of governance,
though not everyone agrees, or at least, by their actions support this
philosophy when faced with "Public Relations non-positive" subjects.

Fae
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[Wikimedia-l] Staff accounts and rights management

[Fæ]

As a parallel to the motion for management of staff rights on
projects, and staff account naming, proposed in the Arbcom case below,
a request for comments for the Wikimedia Commons community has been
raised today at:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Distinguishing_Wikimedia_Foundation_staff_accounts_for_official_actions_and_personal_use

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community RfCs about MediaViewer
On 11 July 2014 17:12, Fæ  wrote:
...
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#MediaViewer_RfC

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Proposal: List administration policy

[Fæ]

On 12/07/2014, Russavia  wrote:
...
> the door completely with their backdoor continued accusations which are
> made without a shred of proof.

Referring to Richard's post, the general list guidelines apply[1] and
there is an explanation of the admin role[2]. However neither of these
documents sets a policy for whether administrators on this list have a
duty to reply to emails from a participant when they ask why they have
been moderated or blocked, nor whether they have to give an
explanation when action is taken so that the person being moderated or
blocked can have the opportunity to understand the issue, change their
behaviour and have a path to get unblocked or unmoderated.

As with Russavia's case above, there may be people who are thought to
be problematic due to a history on Wikimedia projects, perhaps they
will always be unwelcome on this list, however the vast majority of
bans or moderated accounts ought to be based solely on evidence of
posts to this list. However, there is no downside to letting people
ask the question "why was I moderated?" or go on to appeal moderation
or a ban if they wish, preferably as a public process so that others
affected are free to comment with evidence. It may be beneficial to
consider adding a project whereby moderation or banning can be
requested publicly, rather than by closed emails.

I still hold the view that a policy beyond the standard general
nuts-and-bolts guidelines which ensures a greater level of
transparency compared to the de facto closeted and apparently
sometimes silent process we have settled for, would be of benefit to
all contributors of this list.

Links
1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Administration

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community RfCs about MediaViewer

[Fæ]

On 10/07/2014, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 10:03 PM, Pine W  wrote:
>
>> Will WMF deactivate MediaViewer on English Wikipedia
>
> No. Detailed explanation:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Media_Viewer/June_2014_RfC&diff=616407785&oldid=616294249

Folks following this discussion, and the problematic "tone" we have
seen from some parties, may want to chip in with their views for the
English Wikipedia Arbcom to consider:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#MediaViewer_RfC

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[Wikimedia-l] Proposal: List administration policy

[Fæ]

Hi,

I would like to propose that this list have a published process for
post moderation, banning and appeals. Perhaps a page on meta would be
a good way to propose and discuss a policy? I would be happy to kick
off a draft.

This list has a defined scope at
 which
explains who the 3 list admins are, but no more than that. There is no
system of appeals, no expected time limits on bans or moderation, nor
an explanation of the 30 posts per month "behavioural norm" that
sometimes applies to this list. Neither is there any explanation of
what is expected of list admins, such as whether there is an
obligation to explain to someone who finds themselves subject to
moderation or a ban, as to why this has happened and what they ought
to do in order to become un-banned or un-moderated.

I believe this would help list users better understand what is
expected of them when they post here and it may give an opportunity to
review the transparency of list administration, such as the option of
publishing a list of active moderated accounts and possibly a list of
indefinitely banned accounts where these were for behaviour on the
list (as opposed to content-free spamming etc.)

I see no down side to explaining policy as openly as possible. Thoughts?

Fae
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go, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fae. Sorry to disappoint,
but reports of my retirement are premature.)

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community RfCs about MediaViewer

[Fæ]

On 10/07/2014, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 10 July 2014 23:46, Fæ  wrote:
>
>> However the WMF's "no" position has been made extremely clear to all
>> of us unpaid volunteers.
>
>
> You're not on en:wp, so are not part of the "us" in question.
>
>
> - d.

Dear David,

Get off my back please.

I suggest you get your facts straight before making false allegations.

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community RfCs about MediaViewer

[Fæ]

On 10/07/2014, Todd Allen  wrote:
> This was clarified as an office action under threat of desysop here:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Peteforsyth&diff=616427707&oldid=615757838

Wow. This has fallen apart quickly.

However the WMF's "no" position has been made extremely clear to all
of us unpaid volunteers. That's a good thing I guess, as there is no
point in us volunteers wasting more of our time having an opinion, or
expressing our opinion.

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community RfCs about MediaViewer

[Fæ]

On 10/07/2014, Brion Vibber  wrote:
> Perhaps it's time to stop calling self-selected surveys of a tiny subset of
> our user base "community consensus".
>
> The vast majority of our user base never logs in, never edits, and never
> even hears about these RfC pages. Those are the people we're making an
> encyclopedia for.

Whole heartedly agree that this is a known and recognized limitation
of the RfC process, apart from where we are talking about Wikimedia
Commons, not the English Wikipedia. Of course it does not invalidate
the RfC as a survey of users that do log in, edit and hear about RfC
pages.

Was there a report from a survey that supported having a MediaViewer
specified as rolled-out and better represents the majority "user base"
rather than the volunteer community of contributors?

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Offwiki

[Fæ]

On 10/07/2014, Wil Sinclair  wrote:
...
> So, if you're concerned about your username being phished out, then
> consider creating an account at http://offwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page.
> Maybe you'll even stick around for a few minutes to see what we've
> been up to. :)

I have been informed that someone has set up an account under my
account name on your 'offwiki' website. I presume it's one of the long
term fruitcakes obsessed with my personal life. Please block any
account that claims to be me, unless I email you otherwise.

I am copying to the public list, so that everyone is aware that should
anything defamatory have been written publicly under my name on your
website, I officially wash my hands of it.

By the way, the same goes for the Wikimedia UK website, which has had
some rather stupid systematic abuse recently, which has been deleted
without me seeing it. As I was falsely accused only recently of abuse
over the internet, I would like to reiterate that this crap has
nothing to do with me. I suggest if anyone is harassed by someone
claiming to be me, either ignore it, or if the abuse is criminal in
nature, do not hesitate to report it to the police, along with any IP
addresses or header information you can get hold of.

I would be *delighted* to hear of someone being prosecuted, as I
suspect these are the same people that have harassed me in the past,
and have moved on to systematically attempting to discredit or cause
me damage, by being abusive in ways that may be interpreted to be me.

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Offwiki

[Fæ]

What do users of this list feel about it being used to discuss issues,
or attract more members, to non-Wikimedia websites?

Checking the definition at
 it's
ambiguous as really almost anything that mentions Wikimedia could be
in scope. I'm slightly concerned that if the 'offwiki' website is free
to use this list membership to attract greater participation by
Wikimedians, then to be fair and equitable, the same courtesy should
be allowed to any other website or forum which may be expected to have
a number of Wikimedians as participants. Obvious examples are
wikia.org, wikipediocracy.com and facebook.com.

Fae

On 10/07/2014, Newyorkbrad  wrote:
> Wil, thank you for the announcement of your site. Although things
> there were in a bit of a chaotic state the last time I looked at it
> and there are clearly some bugs to be worked out, we will see whether
> it can ultimately emerge as a fruitful discussion forum.
>
> With regard to potential impersonation user registrations, including
> users registering in the names of "prominent Wikipedians," or for that
> matter of prominent Wikipedia critics, it is essential that you take
> steps to verify the identity of registrants using such usernames.
> Existing criticism sites such as Wikipediocracy and previously
> Wikipedia Review have consistently checked such registrations before
> allowing postings, and it is good practice that they do so, to avoid
> potential negative impacts not only on the persons potentially
> impersonated but on the reputations of their sites as well. (There are
> other issues as to which those sites do not epitomize good practice in
> my view, but this one they get right.) Similarly, I assume that such
> checks are performed on Wikimedia mailing lists such as this one.
> There is every reason that offwiki can do so as well and I hope you
> intend to.
>
> Regards,
> Newyorkbrad
>
> On 7/9/14, Wil Sinclair  wrote:
>> Hi all, I've started a new wiki called Offwiki: http://offwiki.org.
>> Our community discusses potential changes to Wikipedia and its
>> Wikimedia sister projects that aren't easily discussed in forums like
>> this mailing list. We also try new ideas that we hope will be adopted
>> on-wiki- both social and technical in nature.
>>
>> But that's not the primary reason I'm writing all of you. I've noticed
>> that many prominent Wikipedians have created accounts to avoid
>> impostors claiming their very public usernames for themselves. My
>> apologies, but Wikimedia doesn't run an OpenID server, and there's
>> really no other way for me to confirm identities before a user has
>> created a username. The problem is technical, and AFAIK there is
>> nothing I can do about it.
>>
>> So, if you're concerned about your username being phished out, then
>> consider creating an account at http://offwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page.
>> Maybe you'll even stick around for a few minutes to see what we've
>> been up to. :)
>>
>> Thanks.
>> ,Wil
>>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Board skill grid 2014

[Fæ]

On 09/07/2014, Pine W  wrote:
> I find the terminology and scoring here to be pretty obscure. Can someone
> explain in detail what the definitions of each criterion are and what the
> different scores mean applied to each criterion? For example, what does
> "Geographic diversity for the board as a whole" mean as a skill?

+1

Can it be in plain English please, rather than weird jargon?

Examples include:

* "Gender diversity for the board as a whole" - this might mean
counting how many women are on the board (so why not say that?), or
maybe it includes other dimensions, like a count of LGBT identifying
people. The "board as a whole" might mean that the count is of people
who are not actually board members, it is very unclear.

* "Geographic diversity for the board as a whole" - this might mean
counting the number of countries where board members reside, or how
many different countries they have resided in, or how much they
travel, or several other things. It may or may not be a part of
"Ethnic / multi-lingual diversity for the board as a whole" which is
counted as a second thingy.

* "Visionary creative drive" - this appears to be classic management
speak rather than English. I hope that the board has very few
"visionaries", it sounds like having several might become disruptive.
Boards benefit from having several people who are not "creative" (that
can be a good thing when you want basic stuff actually done, like
giving some oversight for the annual accounts).

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimediach-l] red cross

[Fæ]

On 06/07/2014, Lilburne  wrote:
> Not so Andy. Over on Commons last year someone had taken a photo of a
> woman and a horse from flickr cropped it and tagged it as Bestiality. As
> per usual the Commons porn patrol fought like cornered rats to keep it.
...

I'd like to see who are the members of the Commons porn patrol and if
they are still active. Can someone provide a link, or is it an
anti-Commons myth?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] red cross

[Fæ]

On 03/07/2014, rupert THURNER  wrote:
> hi,
>
> did anybody of you already have contact with the red cross or the icrc?
> concerning wikipedia, offline, commons, maps, wikinews? would there be any
> topic interesting for a cooperation?
>
> rupert

As a case study, you may want to look at this Wikimedia Commons thread
where I emailed the ICRC photolibrary:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2014/02#The_images_taken_by_employees_of_the_ICRC_of_captives_held_at_Guantanamo

They were quite responsive on clarifying the copyright of the highly
useful photographs of Guantanamo prisoners.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] 24 TB for User:Dispenser on Tool Labs please

[Fæ]

On 3 July 2014 19:16, Gregory Varnum  wrote:
> That all seems logical, appropriate, and aligned with our current
> procedures. So..what's the problem?

Left hand not talking to the right hand I think.

I was gobsmacked to find that the reflinks tool had not been carefully
transitioned and no plan for it was in place, considering how much
time was available to discuss this. It is one of the more brilliant
tools for productive Wikipedians. I used to use it all the time and
without it will happily leave bare URLs in references as these used to
be handled rather well without wasting my volunteer time hacking
around filling in parameters of the template and my assumption is that
one way, or another, this sort of service will become available again.
The ball was definitely dropped on this one.

The way forward is clearly to identify the requirements for the
specific tools. Hosting on WMFlabs can have any rules that the WMF
thinks are sensible, but this is not the only way of hosting a tool if
the policies don't fit, especially if the intention is to get
something back up and working in an interim state, while people debate
its future in the background.

The concepts are not that complex that volunteers or paid developers
could not put together an open source alternative fairly quickly,
given sufficient motivation. A discussion that could have been had a
year ago with the user community.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Lets delete everything from commons (was The tragedy of Commons)

[Fæ]

On 23 June 2014 13:42, Lodewijk  wrote:
> The question is whether that is implicit, and whether that is necessary at
> all. I find the argument that for government works we only have to bother
> about the law of the source country, very persuasive.

I can see no point in this discussion. Folks had every opportunity to
give viewpoints during the RFC on Commons in April. No opinion in this
list makes any tangible difference to the existing on-Commons RFC,
on-Commons policies or published U.S. copyright law, even though it
may be a good way of blowing off steam.

GUIDE TO PLACES TO COMPLAIN ON COMMONS AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE:

A. If anyone thinks that the April RFC was unclear as to the process
that administrators should follow, they can create another.[1]

B. If anyone feels that a particular admin is misusing their powers,
then AN/U is a good place to complain, where it might make a
difference or ensure that admin publicly justifies their
actions.[2][3]

C. A useful place to discuss copyright is the noticeboard on Commons
for copyright, the advantage being that the same things do not get
said several times over and where it is possible to correct something
you write after you press 'send'.[4]

D. Become an admin and do it yourself, or de-sysop an admin you feel
has misused their powers, using simple standard processes.[2][5]

Links
1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment
2. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-June/072926.html
3. 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/User_problems
4. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright
5. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Lets delete everything from commons (was The tragedy of Commons)

[Fæ]

On 23 June 2014 09:48, Steffen Prößdorf  wrote:
> I am absolutely agree with that (also as my personal opinion).
>
> The government allows the very free use of it, the WMF legal staff and the
> BOT don't think the URAA should be used to delete photos on Commons without
> office action, but the Commons admins do so. This is a big frustration for
> all who spend stuff to Commons and their work and time for our projects.

As one of the more experienced Commons contributors, I'm going to
spell out a hint. I attempted to highlight this in a more subtle way,
before this email discussion went off on various tangents, I guess I
was being too British.

FACTS

A. The April 2014 RFC[2] was closed with the firm statement "URAA
cannot be used as the sole reason for deletion. Deleted files can be
restored after a discussion in COM:UDR."

B. An RFC does not overrule policy, however the RFC does provide a
specific community consensus as to the preferred process that must be
followed to comply with policy.

C. Admins do not have free reign on Commons to delete whatever they
fancy, they can *easily and speedily* (compared to other Wikimedia
projects) be de-sysopped if they fail to follow policy or the
community (not just other admins) feel they are abusing their
powers.[1] Desysop requests can be raised by anyone, anyone can vote
in them and a *majority consensus* rules, so "about 50% is sufficient
to remove the admin". A preliminary discussion before creating the
de-sysop request should be created at AN/U - which gives the admin
fingered for disruption an opportunity to walk away or explain how
they intent to comply with policy or offer a more harmonious
approach.[3]

CONCLUSION

If substantial numbers of Commons community members feel that admins
are failing to implement the RFC as stated, possibly by ignoring
successful undeletion requests (a community consensus process) and
ignoring the specific process agreed in the April RFC, then a single
member of the same community (both admins and non-admins, and most
readers of this email) can start the de-sysop process for any
administrator on the grounds that they are abusing their powers.

Now, rather than moaning on this list, you can stick you head out of
the window and start shouting,[4] or you can go to Commons and
contribute to this great project.

Links
1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators/De-adminship
2. 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Massive_restoration_of_deleted_images_by_the_URAA#Close
3. 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/User_problems
4. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Network_%28film%29

PS Nobody can de-sysop me, just you try to create a de-sysop request
and see what happens. :-)

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Lets delete everything from commons (was The tragedy of Commons)

[Fæ]

On 22 June 2014 12:08, Craig Franklin  wrote:
...
> parody/satire angle, my understanding is that a CC licence does not
> extinguish things such as moral rights that are not related to copyright.

This is fundamentally misleading. Please refer to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights_%28copyright_law%29

If you have not read up on IP law, or are confused about copyright
terms, I suggest having the discussion on-wiki rather than on an email
list, where corrections like this either get skipped, leading to later
readers thinking that these are factual statements, or we end up
repeating basic copyright law endlessly.

Thanks,
Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Moderation (was Wikiconference USA in the media)

[Fæ]

On 14 June 2014 15:08, Fæ  wrote:
...
> Hi Richard, thanks for specifying a reason for moderation. Could you
> define what you intend "limited time" to be, particularly as I believe
> there is no public appeals process. A month of moderation given
> "acceptable use"?
...
> that from *my human memory*, some current or past English Wikipedia
> Arbcom members have used the word "butthurt" to describe other
> editors. In comparison the far more disruptive and offensive word
...
> for civility, it would seem odd to moderate Russavia's access to this
> list for using a word that the most trusted of Wikipedia contributors
> use themselves, and defend the use by others, when they interpret the
> civility guidelines. Perhaps you might think of re-stating the
> rationale?

I have taken a moment to find a relevant reference to back up my
memory, see [1] which shows Salvio giuliano vigorously defending his
use of the word "butthurt". Salvio giulano is a current English
Wikipedia Arbcom member. I have not bothered to research further use
of this word by other current or past Arbcom members.

I think most readers of this list will find it odd to see that
"butthurt" used in a mild and colourful context on this list by
Russavia, gets highlighted and becomes a matter of objection by
Newyorkbrad, a current Arbcom member, resulting in Russavia being
moderated for an unspecified duration, while another Arbcom member has
previously stated that his use of the same rude word is perfectly
appropriate and legitimate public behaviour for himself in the rough
and tumble of frank discussion.

Could the rationale for moderation be restated please, so that
Russavia better understands what was unacceptable about his post here,
and could we please have an idea as to what duration moderation is
expected?

Links
1. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/CheckUser_and_Oversight/2012_CUOS_appointments/OS/Salvio_giuliano&diff=499668471&oldid=499659747

PS I have not discussed this email with Russavia, nor has Russavia
canvassed me about it.

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikidata // was The tragedy of Commons

[Fæ]

On 18/06/2014, Lydia Pintscher  wrote:
> I understand you've not seen much until now. But look at it from the
> other side. Over the last two years we've created the base with
> Wikidata. Over the next year we'll be expanding it to Commons. There
> is still a lot of groundwork to do over the next months for us before
> you can see something visible. But the point is you will.
> Over the next week the Wikidata and the Multimedia team will publish
> more plans. What is published so far has already been linked in this
> thread by David.

Cool, I look forward to hearing about it at Wikimania and reflecting
on a committed plan with dates and outcomes defined from the end user
perspective. Hopefully some of the outcomes can be implemented on
Commons in late 2014 rather than in 2015.

In the meantime, it might be an idea for folks to avoid claiming that
any issue that pops up on Commons can be solved in Wikidata, unless
they can produce a working case study rather than discussion about
proposals.

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikidata // was The tragedy of Commons

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On 18 June 2014 16:16, Magnus Manske  wrote:
> It would just have to be ported to Commons once there's a native WIkiBase
> installation. If it will be ported at all.
>
> Is it really worth the fuss, so we can tinker for a few months? (I would
> genuinely like to know!)

Only if the end result is usable for the *majority* of active
Commonsists without having to break new ice all the time.[1]

If the workflow is:
1. Become a Wikidata volunteer, have long debates with other Wikidata
volunteers and fix missing "big stuff" such as mapping to OTRS
tickets, licence types or working out from scratch the differences
between Wikimedia Commons categories for UK counties, historic county
boundaries, UK vs. EU vs. unitary authority defined county boundaries
... and that's just the "level 2" location boundaries,
2. Learn to create Lua templates from scratch,
3. Get the WMF to fix some fundamental blocking bugs,
4. While you are there, gain a consensus on Commons for translation
formats across all categories, templates and image pages,
5. Probably several other stumbling blocks I have not thought of,
having never done this before and having no real case studies to
compare to...

Then this looks like a lot of barriers to success, considering that I
believe this has had significant/serious funding, and been intensively
discussed at many international conferences and on email lists for a
period of years now, without these barriers being removed.

Every time I read these discussions (I tend to save time by doing
something more productive) they seem to be talking hypothetically
about future plans which are always a year or two away, before we can
see anything I could realistically and systematically incorporate into
a batch upload, without it being considered highly experimental. I
think it's already too late to do anything meaningful to bring
Wikidata to Commons in 2014, as I don't even see a community agreed
plan being presented at Wikimania rather than more of the same
promotional and hypothetical presentations about what Wikidata might
be able to do; if I have missed a plan with committed dates, perhaps
someone could provide a link in this thread.

Links
1. Which I tend to define minimally as this list
, perhaps
unfairly as it excludes folks like admins with fewer than 10,000
edits. ;-)

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[Wikimedia-l] Wikidata // was The tragedy of Commons

[Fæ]

On 18/06/2014, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:
...
> A single editor in Commons can tweaks license information as much as it
> might be in Wikidata. Remember both Commons and Wikidata are wikis. It is
> likely that a property will be needed to reference an OTRS instance.
> Reasons why a file has issues will be as much be defined by properties and
> qualifiers. Really Fae, not much will change except that a Russian may view
> all this in Russian and a Brazilian in Portuguese.
>
> Effectively the number of people who will be able to understand what is
> expressed will increase. More people will be able to find media files...
> Remember, that IS the objective isn't it?

With regard to your specific mention of OTRS tickets and identifying
different licences for the same image (or derivatives) across
projects, can you point to an example, or an agreed plan with a date
for implementation on Wikidata? I know that Jarekt has worked hard on
Commons licence identification, to my knowledge it is a far more
complex issue than people might expect.

At the current time, I have yet to see how the Wikidata theoretical
use improves finding images on Commons today. After regularly getting
emails over the past two years raising expectations of how these
problems will be solved through Wikidata, I have yet to be involved or
invited to join any Commons based Wikidata project, despite being
currently the most active unpaid volunteer uploader for Commons.

One of my particular interests was sorting out the Geograph project
where I added meaningful place categories to images (around a million
images). Last year I deliberately deferred continuing improvements and
new uploads based on suggestions of how Wikidata was going to
revolutionise the way this worked. As far as I am aware, there is
still no published plan to help with identifying Commons categories
with places using Wikidata; indeed for projects like our Avionics
batch uploads (which rely on Airport categories and their locations) I
have been told the opposite, to no longer expect, nor wait, for this
to be sorted out and I am likely to revise my Geograph work without
any plans to incorporate Wikidata, or work with Wikidata.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The tragedy of Commons

[Fæ]

On 18/06/2014, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:
> Hoi,
> Arguably when all repositories of media-files are Wikidatified, general
> availability could be as difficult as selecting the appropriate license.
>
> To do this no new project is needed as the Wikidata team has started work.
> All that is needed is to have one database to know about all media files.
> Thanks,
>  Gerard

Not every thread on this list needs to be about Wikidata, or used as a
platform to promote it.

The vision that a single editor in Wikidata tweaking a licence field,
effectively overrules detailed assessments of copyright, RFCs, or
deletions of media for good reasons such as OTRS request, courtesy
deletions and so forth, is not one I recognize as being within the
original intended scope of Wikidata.

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The tragedy of Commons

[Fæ]

On 18/06/2014, Peter Southwood  wrote:
> This is a strong argument for locating Uncommons outside the USA. Somewhere
> where the copyright laws allow the widest range of images to be kept. Images
> can be tagged for where they are free and where they are not free.

I have now uploaded nearly 400,000 public domain and other freely
released images to Wikimedia Commons. Every week there are times I
break into a sweat wondering if one of the many institutions I have
taken the original images from, will attempt to prosecute me
personally under 'sweat of the brow', conflicting international law,
database rights, misuse of a website under a tacit contract, etc. Even
though I am careful to ensure I have made "reasonable efforts" to
ascertain that the images are free to reuse, mistakes happen and I am
subject to UK law, along with the long reach of US law and the
Wikimedia Foundation has made it clear that there is no guarantee that
any legal costs as a direct result of my volunteer work would be
covered by them.

Deliberately setting out to avoid copyright law and uploading material
to an aggregating website that you know for certain is "non-free" and
supplying it so that others may avoid copyright, is a far riskier
thing to do. If a civil action against a volunteer were taken, I doubt
there could be a defence in court based on "good faith" or "reasonable
effort".

I note that a WMF trustee has made a supportive comment in this
thread, however before Wikimedia starts officially encouraging and
promoting sharing non-free media using donated charitable funds
intended for free works, any "uncommons" proposal should be carefully
advised on by lawyers. At an individual level, I would recommend that
volunteers protect themselves with anonymity using technical means to
ensure their contributions were untraceable, so that only the website
host could ever be prosecuted in relevant jurisdictions. Note that
just because your server is in Peru, does not mean that works
protected under US or EU law may not be vigorously defended in local
courts. Legally, this may well be treated as an internet piracy
website, they tend to not end well.

Commons has 21,500,000 files, the unnecessary drama created
(literally) by a couple of admins who should be able to talk to each
other rather than wheel-warring, and then forum shopping, over some
works suffering under the consequences of the rather daft URAA,
represent a pin-drop in that ocean of freely reusable media. This does
not make Commons "tragic", indeed it feels like a mellow place 99% of
the time as nobody really notices the committed content contributors.

Links
* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics
* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Staying_mellow
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WW#Wheel_war

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The tragedy of Commons

[Fæ]

On 17/06/2014, George William Herbert  wrote:
> We need an Uncommons, where the strict open license / PD rules are
> abandoned and we accept images as long as their fair use can be
> established.  And don't delete unless that fair use is credibly
> questioned.

There is no such thing as Fair Use copyright in most of the world. I
suggest we save the movement's money, by focusing on *freely reusable*
educational material. This is specified as part of the mission of the
Wikimedia Foundation.[1][2]

If you want to donate material to an "uncommons", many websites
without a strong concern for copyright already exist, there is no need
to create another. They remain unusable for serious educators, writers
or publishers.

Links
1. "The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage
people around the world to collect and develop educational content
under a free content license"
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy
2. However, the FDC may be more flexible in allowing Wikimedia
chapters to use their significant funds to pay for non-free projects.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round1/WMUK/Progress_report_form/Q1#Request_to_make_changes

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The tragedy of Commons

[Fæ]

On 17/06/2014, Tomasz Ganicz  wrote:
> with final consensus that "URAA cannot be used as the sole reason for
> deletion"...

This is a selective quote, missing the explicit caveat that:
"Deleted files can be restored after a discussion in COM:UDR."

If the process is being followed correctly, there should be an
established specific consensus via an undeletion request, *before* an
administrator action can or should be taken.

Links:
1. 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Massive_restoration_of_deleted_images_by_the_URAA#Close
2. 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Undeletion_requests/Current_requests

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimediauk-l] Idea: Let's have a 3D printer at Wikimania

[Fæ]

On 15 June 2014 02:57, Deryck Chan  wrote:
> Just make a RepRap ourselves. Materials typically cost ~£300-400 these days.
> http://www.reprap.org/wiki/RepRap
>
> The 3D printer itself is libre hardware and is capable of manufacturing most
> parts of itself!

RepRap looks like a potential hackerthon project[1] - so long as as
few volunteers commit to actually finishing putting it together! The
last time I tried fixing my washing machine, there were several bits
left over.

What would be really cool would be to set up a stop-motion webcam on
the table where it was being assembled, so we can release a video
before the end of the hackerthon; you may recall Liam doing something
similar for an early editathon at the British Museum (in the days
before we started using the word "editathon").[2] Having the new
printer then buzzing away creating some "merchandise" during Wikimania
would be a great output from the Hackerthon, I'm sure several chapters
would be interested in borrowing it for experiments, so the few
hundred quid in cost should be easy to justify against resulting
collaborative open knowledge projects, especially stimulating
discussion and policies around 3D model files.

Links
1. https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hackathon August 6-10
2. 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editing_Hoxne_Hoard_at_the_British_Museum.ogv

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[Wikimedia-l] Idea: 3D printer for experiments at Wikimania

[Fæ]

This has been bounced around before, but I think it would be pretty
excellent to have a 3D printer available for experiments during the
the pre-Wikimania hackerthon and during Wikimania.

Does anyone have contacts within the industry to pull on to see if we
can get one for a week on demonstration? It would actually be smart
marketing as many chapters are probably thinking of getting kit like
this in the next year or two, in order to support open source 3D
designs (which we have yet to crack on Wikimedia Commons). Perhaps
the food printers (I have seen videos of sugar and chocolate
sculptures being printed) might be a lot of fun?

Associated discussion at:
* https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Water_cooler#3D_printing.3F (recent)
* 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2009/11#3D_models_in_scope.3F
(old)

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Moderation (was Wikiconference USA in the media)

[Fæ]

On 14 June 2014 14:22, Richard Ames  wrote:
> I have set the moderation bit on Russavia's address for a limited time.
> I've asked Russavia to focus on issues only; in the spirit of
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility

Hi Richard, thanks for specifying a reason for moderation. Could you
define what you intend "limited time" to be, particularly as I believe
there is no public appeals process. A month of moderation given
"acceptable use"?

I do NOT find the word "butthurt" in any discussion acceptable, it
would be a reason for me to stop reading. However this is my "thin
skin" which I have been subject to robust public criticism for. Were
Russavia to ask me for advice on these things, I would ask that he
avoid vulgarity, it only distracts from the real points he wants to
make, which on the whole I find benefit the Wikimedia movement,
especially when we compare Russavia's dynamic actions to support
meaningful free speech, which based on recent press interviews is
exactly the same goal as Jimmy Wales.

With regard to the rationale for moderation, I would like to point out
that from *my human memory*, some current or past English Wikipedia
Arbcom members have used the word "butthurt" to describe other
editors. In comparison the far more disruptive and offensive word
"fuck" or telling editors to "fuck off" seems supported as appropriate
by the community of editors, based on discussions this year as well as
in the past (I'm recalling a discussion that was on Jimbo's talk page
and a thread on ANI when an editor used these words against Russavia).
Perhaps someone could track down an example(s) of current or past
Arbcom members using "butthurt", as it will take me a few days to get
around to running a search from scratch to provide a diff? Anyway, I'm
certain that although the civility policy mentions "rudeness", if
asked, Arbcom would not object to "butthurt" as a colloquialism in
discussion.

As this moderation appears based on the English Wikipedia's guideline
for civility, it would seem odd to moderate Russavia's access to this
list for using a word that the most trusted of Wikipedia contributors
use themselves, and defend the use by others, when they interpret the
civility guidelines. Perhaps you might think of re-stating the
rationale?

Thanks,
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] GLAM track, wikimania 2014: 11 US/UK, 2 DE, 2 cooperation, 2 rest of the world

[Fæ]

On 9 June 2014 10:28, rupert THURNER  wrote:
> hi,
>
> fyi, a statistical analysis about the GLAM track and where the
...
> as a summary, 11 US/UK, 2 DE, 2 cooperation, 2 rest of the world. 2
> persons give 2 presentations (both UK)...

Could someone check the last couple of Wikimanias and provide figures
for the quantities of GLAM related presentations so that we can
compare 2014 to, say, 2013 and 2012?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons and OCILLA

[Fæ]

On 8 June 2014 12:21, matanya  wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Commons licensing policy determines media should be free in source
> country and in US. I want to propose We change the policy to be: "free
> in source country" only, and to cope with US laws where the servers are
> hosted found a "DMCA take down notice" Team in OTRS, that will handle
> requests to remove Items that are non-free in the US after verifying
> proper grounds for the claim.
>
> This approach to copyright will prevent issues like URAA issues, shorter
> term issues and restored copyright issues.
>
> It will enrich commons with many files that are FREE (mostly PD) in
> source country, but not on commons due to US laws. Unless the copyright
> holder (mostly Gov's and archives) will not request removal, and they
> won't since they released the media, we will be using those files.
>
> I'm not a lawyer, so I probably missed most of the legal implication,
> But I do volunteer to found and lead the team, if this idea is accepted
> and commons community would want this policy change. I'm seeking input
> from copyright experienced users and lawyers, before i start an official
> policy change on commons.
>
> Thanks
>
> Matanya Moses

Hi Matanya,

From your history on Commons, I am sure you know as well as I, where
to make a proposal on the project and that this list is not a good
place to start an educational/lobbying campaign.

Michael Maggs' proposal in this area seems to have got stuck in
quicksand and dried up. To be honest, as an experienced Commons
contributor, I would tend to avoid helping with yet another URAA based
proposal/bun fight, unless there was a groundswell of opinion in
favour of change; it just is not a good investment of volunteer time.
Despite your recent comments on Commons, I don't see it happening.

In the long term, if you want to shift this reluctant elephant, I
suggest you concentrate on specific project areas (like early Japanese
public domain film posters...) and build those up into an excellent
case book. Nobody has even tried building their case book up using the
differing PD licence interpretation on the English Wikipedia yet. This
at least would have the advantage that anyone could see exciting
educational images that were not on Commons but could see (and use)
images on Wikipedia, and this might motivate them to review and have
an opinion on this contentious area of how we interpret and apply
international copyright law.

Please remember that 95%+ of Commons contributors are not going to
bother even attempting to understand the URAA, DMCA etc. Keeping it
simple and easy to understand in a multilingual environment is
essential.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikiconference USA in the media

[Fæ]

On 7 June 2014 18:40, Risker  wrote:
> On 7 June 2014 13:27, Fæ  wrote:
> Hold onso now you are saying that someone employed by a WMF chapter or
> the WMF itself will never be allowed to be considered anything other than
> an employee?  Fae, if they're paying their own way, they are there as
> volunteers, not employees.  If they have not been directed to attend by
> their employer, they are volunteers.  Not everyone does everything for
> work-related purposes, and a very significant proportion of Wikimedians who
> work for a chapter or the WMF also make volunteer contributions in many
> ways to WMF projects.  This is a good thing, and shouldn't result in them
> being slammed for attending Wikimedia-related events on their own time
> spending their own money, as the nature of the question implies.  If they
> didn't register as "employee of Chapter xx" or "employee of WMF", and their
> employer hasn't paid for their registration, there is absolutely no reason
> for them to be considered "employees" during their attendance.

Being an employee or contractor for the Foundation or a Chapter is not
a crime, nor something that needs to be a shameful secret. You appear
determined to parody my question.

Simply asking for numbers of unpaid volunteers taking part and numbers
of women taking part, without numbers being biased by however many
Foundation or Chapter employees and contractors attend (a greater
proportion of whom are women compared to the general unpaid volunteer
population) is a perfectly good question, and I should be free to ask
it without endless bad faith accusations and slurs.

> I do not believe that gender is a mandatory question on any registrations
> for any WMF projects, and I question whether or not it's an appropriate one
> unless there is some specific reason to ask (e.g., accommodation
> arrangements).  Therefore, there is no accurate method to assess the number
> of women who attended.

The Wikimedia movement is perceived both inside and out as having a
problem attracting and retaining women volunteers, especially *unpaid*
women volunteers.

If leading members of our movement are going to adamantly refuse to
even count the numbers of women participating at events and so fail to
openly and transparently report the statistics, then I guess the only
defence we have when criticised by journalists is to close our eyes
and plug our ears until they go away.

To all feminists reading this, do you want to be counted or not?

The answer to how many women attended this conference officially
appears to be "we don't know, we don't want to know, we will never
tell you."

Fae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikiconference USA in the media

[Fæ]

On 07/06/2014, Pharos  wrote:
...
> This was an entirely volunteer-run conference.

Thanks Pharos. My question was about proportions of attendees being
women or employees, rather than who organized it. I should have
avoided the subsequent comment, as that appears to have taken us on a
tangent (by the way, I think paying someone to help project manage
conferences is an excellent use of donated funds, it is the sort of
thing that is likely to cause volunteer stress and burn-out).

Aude's email (Sat Jun 7 16:12:35 UTC 2014) has confirmed that at least
one attendee was an employee, so the answer to that question cannot be
zero.

To avoid confusion, please refer to my email where I explain what was
being asked: 


Thanks,
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikiconference USA in the media

[Fæ]

On 07/06/2014, aude  wrote:
> (for the record, i attended the conference as a volunteer and 100% paid for
> myself ... no scholarship, nothing,  and think that's the case for most
> attendees)

Could one of the conference organizers provide the totals for two
measures to avoid speculation and hearsay:

1. The proportion of women attendees.

2. The total number of unpaid volunteers taking part AND The total
number of employees attending as volunteers AND The total number of
employees being paid to support the conference.

My original question seemed simple to me. These are basic statistics
that any Wikimedia conference registration process should be able to
provide without compromising anyone's privacy.

As has been raised before, giving a figure of "50 volunteers attended
this conference" looks peculiar, and potentially misleadingly
political, when someone can afterwards point out that 15 out of the 50
were Chapter and Foundation employees or contractors whether they were
being paid for their time to attend or not.

Thanks,
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikiconference USA in the media

[Fæ]

Could we have some facts please?

* What proportion of attendees at the conference were women? *
- Several emails in this thread have claimed it was high, nobody has
provided evidence. As Wikimedia funded conferences measure diversity,
publicly reporting this figure should be *a good thing*.

* What proportion of attendees were Wikimedia Chapter or Foundation
contractors or employees and attending the conference could be
considered part of their employment? *
- At least one email here claimed that volunteers broke their backs
running the conference, which seems to overlook that a high proportion
of registered attendees were employees and probably did most of the
preparation. I asked this question last year about another conference,
it was never answered properly, as it was never measured. Again, this
ought to be *a good thing* to report on, as our values are to keep the
volunteer at the centre of everything we do and driving our movement
rather than paying Executives six-figure sums to tell us what we
should believe in.

Lastly, this appears a yellow journalism fluff-piece. I prefer to see
volunteers wearing hoodies rather than corporate black suits,
regardless of their gender or orientation, these are the people most
likely to make a meaningful difference to open knowledge within the
Wikimedia movement. So good luck to pizza stained t-shirts, wear them
with pride.

Let's not fall into the trap of indulging corporate style PR paranoia,
let's stick to the *facts* of what gets measured and reported. Of
course, if you are responsible for publicly reporting and measuring,
then /shame/ on you if you are failing to do so in a mistaken belief
that this is a way to manipulate public perception, or our perception.

Fae

On 07/06/2014, MZMcBride  wrote:
> Craig Franklin wrote:
>>I think there's something of a lesson here for people: don't trust the
>>press.
>
> The part of the piece I found most striking was that the author readily,
> and almost boastfully, admits to speaking to "a minority of the minority
> of the minority," but she seems to have no issue using this very limited
> sample size to evaluate Wikipedia on the whole. Even if we assumed that
> there are 22,000 registered Wikipedians, is a sample size of five or six
> appropriate? If she meant 22,000,000, it seems like an even crazier leap.
>
> After re-reading the piece, I'd probably stand by a lot of it. It's not a
> great reflection of Wikipedia, but I also wouldn't call at least many
> parts of it inaccurate, per se, just crudely distorted and manipulated.
>
> The author used the tactic where you mention that Mandela was a convicted
> criminal that spent 27 years in prison, but fail to mention that he won
> the Nobel Peace Prize and was the revered president of South Africa.
>
> This tactic is an easy way to create a distorted, but technically
> accurate, impression. Some of the fine folks at Wikipediocracy are very
> good at employing this tactic as well. :-)
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Stop the New Privacy Policy until Lila is Thoroughly Briefed on It, Countdown 14 Hours

[Fæ]

On 5 June 2014 18:33, Luis Villa  wrote:
...
> If you still have concerns, please put them on the talk page. Just like we
> did this time around, we'll review all those comments and incorporate them
> when we next revise the policy, or, if appropriate, incorporate it into the
> FAQ. We're also still welcoming questions about the data retention
> guidelines, and will continue to revise that as a living document that
> reflects our current best practices:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_retention_guidelines
>
> Hope that helps clarify.

It does clarify.

The thinking behind Nemo's irony in response to Nathan's statement, is
probably in part due to the fact that some concerns were ignored (i.e.
no reply of any sort from legal) and then archived as addressed
without comment, while other concerns were debated at length, some
volunteers dropping out probably due to volunteer fatigue during that
process, but with little or no end impact on the policy. The statement
on this email list was:
"As a result, the finished policy has rightly garnered a lot of
support and approval"

This is true, however it is more accurate to say:
"As a result, the policy has rightly garnered a lot of debate."

Reflecting the tone of your email, you may prefer a more politic but
still accurate statement of:
"As a result, the policy has benefited from an extensive process of
consultation, resulting in several changes being included by WMF
Legal."

At the end of the day, the websites are owned by the Foundation, and
it is WMF Legal that advises the Foundation board of trustees on these
aspects and proposes policy documents. I am grateful that even though
you could go away into a back-room and come out with Vatican style
proclamations of policy, instead you make attempts to consult with
those members of the community interested in participating on meta. At
times this is time consuming, however even when done, this is not
evidence of "support and approval". Perhaps such a claim could be made
if the process included an extensive !vote on the outcome with
overwhelming support, however this would be a dodgy proposition if WMF
legal were unable to recommend the result.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Cost of Wikimedia Conference 2014

[Fæ]

On 1 June 2014 10:53, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:
> charge and let others get on where you stopped being the "big" man ?

I was never the "big man". I have only ever been an unpaid volunteer
like everyone else.

> is a Dutch proverb.. "you attempt to rule from the grave" and people think

I am not going to go away and die because you keep saying I should
drop dead. This may be a Dutch proverb, in my eyes it is highly
offensive and appears deliberately intended to be so here.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]

[Fæ]

On 1 June 2014 04:26, James Salsman  wrote:
...
>>... selects strongly against women.
>
> Where is the evidence that women have more difficulty understanding
> wikitext than men?

(Probably drifting to "Increase participation by women")

As someone who has run editathons on women focused topics, I found
this an odd comment that does not match anecdotal experience. New
women users seem little different to men in the issues that arise, and
though I have found myself apologising for the slightly odd syntax,
given the standard crib-sheet most users get on with basic article
creation quite happily.

There are far more commonly raised issues such as the complex issues
associated with image upload (copyright!), or the conceptual
difficulty of "namespaces" which mean that some webpages behave
differently to others. None is something that appears to "select
strongly against women", though the encyclopedia's way of defining
notability can make it harder to create articles about pre-1970s
professional women, purely because sources from earlier periods tend
to be biased towards men.

If there are surveys that wiki-syntax is more of a barrier for women
than men (after discounting out other factors), perhaps someone could
provide a link?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Cost of Wikimedia Conference 2014

[Fæ]

On 2 April 2014 16:12, Jon Davies  wrote:
...
> This could help reduce costs and avoid any duplication?

I can now confirm that Wikimedia UK is not going to make a public
report of the total costs of sending 8 people to the Wikimedia
Conference 2014. I doubt that Jon Davies' wish to reduce costs can be
considered a commitment if as the Chief Executive, he has chosen to
not report on them.

Discussion on the UK wiki on this topic started on 27 March, and I
waited for 5 weeks for an answer to the direct question of costs
(raised 24 April), in which time the original discussion thread on the
chapter wiki was manually archived and I had to create a second
discussion in an attempt to pursue an answer. This wasted volunteer
time, employee time and goodwill, if the answer could have been "no,
we have no plan to report on these costs" with a rationale as to why.

Perhaps other chapters have reported on costs and can offer links for
Jon, in order to show how this can be achieved in a non-bureaucratic,
open and transparent fashion for the benefit of chapter members?

Links:
1. 
https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Engine_room/2014#Attendees_at_the_Wikimedia_Conference_2014.3F
2. https://wikimedia.org.uk/w/index.php?title=Engine_room&diff=57343&oldid=57305

Thanks,
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Input needed: Cooperation with zoos?

[Fæ]

On 30 May 2014 16:29, Jon Davies  wrote:
> Roger Bamkin has done some QR work with Sofaia zoo I think.

No need to speculate, a full report is available at
.
It was a Bulgarian Wikipedian project with a WMF supporting grant of
$3,600.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]

[Fæ]

n 29 May 2014 15:43, Lila Tretikov  wrote:
> We have deeper graphs. I want to be sensitive to our product team's time,
> but I am sure they will share when they can.

Hi Lila,

As well as WMF teams, there are quite a few volunteers about who pull
reports from the database or through the API and generate interesting
reports, tables and charts to support projects they are interested in.
For a bit of fun I manually generate this report of active Commons
contributors with more than 10,000 edits
.

It might be an idea to think of how you can encourage unpaid
volunteers to try playing around with generating reports and creating
bots to maintain them so that, as a community, more volunteers can do
it themselves and produce test examples in an agile fashion, and
reduce the burden on WMF teams to respond to requests.

I find the labs, API and database user guides okay, but not easy, for
a non-technical person to work out what they need to do to get
started. Noting that the the API sandbox was a *great* well designed
feature to add to the wikis. In practice, as an older guy with a
technical but non-internet background, it took me nearly a year to
become not-too-terrible at doing bot-stuff (and I still have not got
around to working out how to run SQL queries via Python to the
Wikimedia database), for the very few contributors that are interested
in what happens behind the scenes, this is a tough barrier to
overcome. I have been asked to help with a workshop on GLAM related
automated uploading at Wikimania. I'm dreading it, as having tried
several times, I find it really hard to explain to another Wikimedia
how to go about this stuff in an understandable step by step fashion,
without listening to myself and realising how it awkwardly sounds like
explaining how to do a DNA analysis using kitchen tools from someone
who watches CSI but cannot remember the periodic table.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]

[Fæ]

On 29 May 2014 15:31, Rui Correia  wrote:
> Neither of those answers my question. I doesn't tell me whether we are
> bleeding new or old members. The reason for an editor of either group to
> leave are different. All that that graph shows is that there has been a
> frightful drop since 2007.

The reports do include things like "recently absent wikipedians".
Perhaps you would like to write down a few criteria for the ideal
report you would like to see, and then those more aware of what
statistics are available could then either point to something
equivalent, or knock out a quick report for it?

My assumption is that you would like to see something like a monthly
snapshot of stats for all accounts that (a) have ceased making
contributions in the last {1 to 6} months (b) tabulated by whether
they were 'newbies' or not. I am unsure if there is an agreed way of
measuring newbies, but something like "with fewer than {10, 100, 1000}
total contributions" might be meaningful.

A more general question - Is there an on-wiki page for folks to
suggest and discuss additional reports like this, email being a
non-good way of discussing this sort of thing? I can see
 might be an
appropriate place, but it seems a very quiet page and the majority of
Wikimedians would probably be happier talking on meta or similar.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]

[Fæ]

On 29/05/2014, Federico Leva (Nemo)  wrote:
...
> In the end what retention matters for is
> http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt5.htm

That is an incredibly useful report.

If like me, most people find this a hard table to remember how to
locate, a link to a project-specific version can be found at the
bottom of the Special:Statistics page, for example:
* English Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics
* Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics

You can navigate around the statistics report to find report cards and
graphs of many handy types, for example


Perhaps we should have some more memorable on-wiki short-cuts to link
and find these reports?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A personal note.

[Fæ]

On 29/05/2014, Austin Hair  wrote:
> ́Fae,
>
> You just did. Arguably, you did even worse by throwing the allegation
> out there without substantiation. Nobody's asking you to be friends
> with Greg Kohs—it's no secret that I'm not—but you're dredging up
> off-list history for no productive reason I can discern.
>
> Since I'm responsible for seeing to it that he's not able to defend
> himself here, I feel compelled to ask that you at least keep the
> mudslinging off this list.
>
> Austin

Thanks Austin.

As Austin is a list moderator, I take this as an official public
warning to me, from the list moderators, that my way of highlighting
to Wil of the nature of who he was actively promoting on this list,
was not acceptable behaviour by me on this list.

My email was not intended as an allegation nor mudslinging, but as an
assertion of publicly documented fact. It should be noted that Andreas
Kolbe provided links and extracts of the evidence on this list at
.
Kohs' use of a word that demeans and derides all gay people was not
acceptable on Wikipediocracy, the website that Kohs owns, and after
some discussion there, was removed from public view under the site
terms of use(*). I am certain that Andreas would be happy to address
further questions by direct email to him as a Wikipediocracy moderator
with access to the original material, rather than continuing to
correspond about it on this public forum with only links available of
partial representations of it.

* - Wikipediocracy's terms include "You agree not to post any abusive,
obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-orientated
or any other material that may violate any laws be it of your country,
the country where “Wikipediocracy” is hosted or International Law."

Wil remains free to post exactly how he pleases on any forum, this is
up to his discretion, I hope he continues to enjoy and respect the
freedom to do so.

My apologies to readers of this list for any misunderstanding that my
taking part might have caused. It was not my intention to abuse any
free speech rights for anyone else, but to fairly exercise my own with
regard to a serious incident of LGBT interest.

Thanks,
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A personal note.

[Fæ]

Wil, ask Kohs to repeat his filth. I'm not going to do it for him.

Fae

On 28 May 2014 23:37, Wil Sinclair  wrote:
> I didn't know that he called you a "faggot." Could you please show me where?
>
> I mentioned I didn't agree with him on everything. I certainly would
> *never* agree that a slur like that is justified, if he did make it.
> In any case, the quote stands. Maybe we should start a separate thread
> on the quote itself?
>
> ,Wil
>
> On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 3:31 PM, Fæ  wrote:
>> Wil, you are supporting a man that thought it was a hilarious joke to
>> call me a faggot. Not something that I am prepared to overlook, ever.
>>
>> I now have serious reservations about Lila's good judgement in failing
>> to ensure you were appropriately advised, considering her critical
>> role in the Wikimedia movement.
>>
>> Fae
>>
>> On 28 May 2014 23:18, Wil Sinclair  wrote:
>>> First off, I said that about Greg, and I firmly believe it. He's
>>> uncovered many controversies at Wikipedia. In fact, his article was
>>> the first to be critical of Lila's appointment, and- save the rather
>>> petty comment about airline fees at the end- was pretty on-point. That
>>> doesn't mean that I agree with everything Greg says, just that I
>>> personally am glad someone is saying it. He added *Wil Sinclair*,
>>> Partner of Lila Tretikov (Wikimedia Foundation executive director);
>>> I'd prefer he just leave it at "Wil Sinclair," but it's really his
>>> call on what he puts on his own site.
>>>
>>> Now, I don't know what Lila thinks of this- and I don't want to know-
>>> but I would really like to understand if there is a chance for any
>>> leader to change the concerning aspects of the WP community at this
>>> point. I know that if there is, it's likely to be a very strong,
>>> charismatic leader like Lila. But if there isn't, then so be it and
>>> it's better to know now. And I'm pretty sure that if the community
>>> here wants positive change, it has to be ready to talk about the hard
>>> problems- no matter who brings them up. Whatever happens, Lila is
>>> going to land on her feet; no one need worry about her. But, again,
>>> that's all just my opinion.
>>>
>>> I know you didn't ask me for a response, but this mail is all about me
>>> so I felt justified chiming in. Thanks for (intentionally) taking it
>>> to the list this time. :)
>>>
>>> ,Wil
>>
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>>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A personal note.

[Fæ]

Wil, you are supporting a man that thought it was a hilarious joke to
call me a faggot. Not something that I am prepared to overlook, ever.

I now have serious reservations about Lila's good judgement in failing
to ensure you were appropriately advised, considering her critical
role in the Wikimedia movement.

Fae

On 28 May 2014 23:18, Wil Sinclair  wrote:
> First off, I said that about Greg, and I firmly believe it. He's
> uncovered many controversies at Wikipedia. In fact, his article was
> the first to be critical of Lila's appointment, and- save the rather
> petty comment about airline fees at the end- was pretty on-point. That
> doesn't mean that I agree with everything Greg says, just that I
> personally am glad someone is saying it. He added *Wil Sinclair*,
> Partner of Lila Tretikov (Wikimedia Foundation executive director);
> I'd prefer he just leave it at "Wil Sinclair," but it's really his
> call on what he puts on his own site.
>
> Now, I don't know what Lila thinks of this- and I don't want to know-
> but I would really like to understand if there is a chance for any
> leader to change the concerning aspects of the WP community at this
> point. I know that if there is, it's likely to be a very strong,
> charismatic leader like Lila. But if there isn't, then so be it and
> it's better to know now. And I'm pretty sure that if the community
> here wants positive change, it has to be ready to talk about the hard
> problems- no matter who brings them up. Whatever happens, Lila is
> going to land on her feet; no one need worry about her. But, again,
> that's all just my opinion.
>
> I know you didn't ask me for a response, but this mail is all about me
> so I felt justified chiming in. Thanks for (intentionally) taking it
> to the list this time. :)
>
> ,Wil

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A personal note.

[Fæ]

On 28 May 2014 22:57, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
...
> Is this really the best way for the new Executive Director to be introduced
> to the Wikimedia community and the world?
>
>- * is lucky to have people like Greg [Kohs]; even if he
>never directly contributes to WP going forward, we're all well aware that
>he's a very intelligent and eloquent individual with a knack for
>investigative reporting. He holds WP and the WMF to their word, and I
>personally thank him for that.* - *Wil Sinclair*, Partner of Lila
>Tretikov (Wikimedia Foundation executive director) - May 22, 2014

Thanks for highlighting this Pete, I had no idea that Wil wrote this
(unless someone is spoofing him).

Lila, you need to explain what game is being played here. Perhaps you
intend to shock the established community? You succeeded.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A personal note.

[Fæ]

On 28 May 2014 16:55, Michael Snow  wrote:
> On 5/28/2014 5:59 AM, Fæ wrote:
...
>> I do not really understand the point being made about not "engaging"
...
> I believe the point is that Wil, in particular, will not interfere with
> Wikimedia staff in carrying out their duties, assign them specific tasks, or
> otherwise attempt to supervise and direct their work. These functions
> properly belong to the employee's supervisor, so it's good for community
> members to keep this in mind generally, but especially important for Wil
> because otherwise his connection to Lila might create concern or confusion
> for the staff (as in the recent GitHub situation, which I believe was
> already mentioned). If those guidelines are respected, there should be no
> problem about Wil interacting with staff in an ordinary fashion. I'm sure
> Wil understands this and will be careful about it, and it's also good that
> Lila has said this publicly so that people have something to point to, in
> case anything is uncertain about whether Wil has some sort of special
> authority.

Thanks, that is a nice interpretation, it would be useful to have a
confirmation that this was the intention of Lila's email.

It will be interesting to see whether in practice Wil has special
authority, or not. It is quite hard to judge right now, having made so
few contributions to Wikimedia projects, and as in the majority of
discussions in various places (including Wil's English Wikipedia user
page) his preferred form of first introduction is as "Lila Tretikov's
significant other", which colours everyone's perception of how he
should be treated.

Thanks,
Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A personal note.

[Fæ]

Hi Victor,

That's great. I can't see any complaints about WMF employees in the
links you provided.

I am sure that we could find 100 examples of the partners of
Wikimedians doing something on Wikimedia projects, it would be a great
topic for "reasons why I love Wikimedia"... That is not the issue
here, in fact I encouraged Wil to get experience contributing to the
projects *before* using highly public platforms to complain about
Wikimedia and Lila's new employees.

Thanks,
Fae

On 28 May 2014 16:49, Victor Grigas  wrote:
> My significant other applied for a grant and got 500 Wikireaders
> distributed to 3 schools:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Aislinn_Dewey/Distribute_WikiReaders_to_Schools/Report
>
> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-distribute-wikireaders-and-provide-an-opportunity-for-kids-to-learn
>
>
> On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Fæ  wrote:
>
>> On 28 May 2014 15:04, Marc A. Pelletier  wrote:
>> ...
>> > So that Wil's interest manifested around the time Lila was announced as
>> > the next ED seems to me to be perfectly natural, even if I have
>> > expressed serious concerns about *how* that interest was expressed.
>> > -- Marc
>>
>> There is a big difference between your partner having an interest in
>> your organization, and going on to publish public complaints about the
>> staff that you have complete authority and responsibility for
>> employing.
>>
>> I may be wrong, perhaps someone has some examples of where this worked
>> out well? The only examples from history and the political world I can
>> recall, did not.
>>
>> Fae
>> --
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>>
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>
>
>
> --
>
> *Victor Grigas*
> Storyteller <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Knv6D6Thi0>
> Wikimedia Foundation
> vgri...@wikimedia.org
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A personal note.

[Fæ]

On 28 May 2014 15:04, Marc A. Pelletier  wrote:
...
> So that Wil's interest manifested around the time Lila was announced as
> the next ED seems to me to be perfectly natural, even if I have
> expressed serious concerns about *how* that interest was expressed.
> -- Marc

There is a big difference between your partner having an interest in
your organization, and going on to publish public complaints about the
staff that you have complete authority and responsibility for
employing.

I may be wrong, perhaps someone has some examples of where this worked
out well? The only examples from history and the political world I can
recall, did not.

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A personal note.

[Fæ]

On 28/05/2014, Lila Tretikov  wrote:
...
> independent individual
> able to speak with his own voice and ask his own questions. He does not
> take direction from me. He will not work for the WMF or engage with the WMF
> employees.

Thanks for making these distinctions. It is sad to see that your time
and energy is being used so early on in your introduction to the
Wikimedia community, in creating a political distance between yourself
and the public actions of your life partner, due to his casual
curiosity about Wikimedia projects. A curiosity that only manifested
itself shortly after the public announcement of your employment by the
Foundation board.

I do not really understand the point being made about not "engaging"
with WMF employees, any active volunteer on Wikimedia projects should
and must be free to engage with WMF employees. The statement does not
appear to match actions over the last 24 hours, with Wil freely making
public comments about his dissatisfaction after conversations
(emails?) with some WMF employees.

Thanks again for clarifying your position during this difficult start
to your engagement.

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Participating on Wikipediocracy

[Fæ]

On 25 May 2014 17:04, Wil Sinclair  wrote:
> Besides knowing for a fact that we're not discussing anything like
> this in our family for obvious reasons, I don't know whether they are
> being discussed on Facebook or elsewhere. But I do know that they are
> being discussed quite rigorously on Wikipediocracy.
>
> People can even check for themselves, if they'd like: 
> http://wikipediocracy.com
>
> Please send me any links you have to Facebook pages, etc.
>
> Thanks!
> ,Wil

Seeing the partner of the WMF ED going out of his way actively to run
about on multiple public channels to support and promote
Wikipediocracy, a website owned by Gregory Kohs and which is used by
him to lobby his obsessive anti-Wikimedia yellow journalism, is
increasingly disturbing and worrying.

It would have been great had Wil taken the advice from the most
experienced long term Wikimedia volunteers and re-focused for a month
or two on gaining practical experience at volunteering on Wikimedia
projects, and in turn gaining the trust of fellow volunteers, before
attempting to single-handedly attempt to take a lead on community
politics by using the name of his parter as his calling card. Were he
writing on Wikipediocracy using the benefit of that experience, then
this would feel rather less like Wil taking his views from that site
and immediately promoting them on Wikimedia channels.

Lila Tretikov will need to work extremely hard with the (productive)
volunteer community to gain confidence in her personal judgement when
it comes to holding the future strategy for the Wikimedia Community
and remove the bad taste this political gaming is leaving behind.
Along with the inevitable suspicion that this has been a
not-very-covert ploy by Lila to jumpstart re-engineering our
community.

Do any WMF Trustees have an opinion about these shenanigans by Wil, or
even better, Lila?

Wil - take a break away from the keyboard, and seek some sensible
advice before going yet further along the public path you are
committing yourself and Lila to. At this point, I find it had to
imagine any scenario where your actions this week turn out to have
been a clever and wise strategy for Wikimedia.

Fae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Participating on Wikipediocracy

[Fæ]

On 24/05/2014, Wil Sinclair  wrote:
...
> Others are uncomfortable because the incoming ED has a
> partner who is active in the community, and that is a new thing.

No, churning politics off-wiki and then bringing issues raised
off-wiki on-wiki, is not being active in the community, presuming you
mean the community who actually enjoy contributing to Wikimedia
projects.

> I suggest we set the words aside for the time being and start letting
> our actions speak for themselves.

Yes, good strategy, let's do it.

Apart from a few minutes responding on this email thread, yesterday I
sorted out some "missing" very large images of 19th C. cartoons[1]
which have been part of a pattern of problematic tiffs under
discussion on bugzilla, and today I have been checking up on some
tricky conflicting sources for the Warren Cup article in the hope to
eventually get it to Good Article status regardless of it including a
depiction of anal sex.[2] These are the sort of content based mildly
contentious, but positive, action that everyone likes to see. I'll get
on with them.

Links
1. 
http://tools.wmflabs.org/catscan2/quick_intersection.php?lang=commons&project=wikimedia&cats=British+Cartoon+Prints+Collection%0D%0AGWToolset+Batch+Upload&ns=6&depth=12&max=3&start=0&format=html&redirects=&callback=
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Cup

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Participating on Wikipediocracy

[Fæ]

On 24/05/2014, Wil Sinclair  wrote:
> OK, excellent. I will do my best and get back to you. Is it cool with
> you if I do audio instead of photos or videos?

Certainly, Commons is massively under-represented with audio files.
Check out my audio projects at

as a comparison.

For Commons issues I suggest first sounding them out with regular
contributors on the Commons Village pump before jumping to "wider"
forums such as this email list.

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Participating on Wikipediocracy

[Fæ]

On 24/05/2014, Wil Sinclair  wrote:
...
> I just ask for a chance to
> show you guys that I can be a productive member of the WP community in
> my own way as myself and nobody else. Fae, will you please give me
> that chance?
...

Sure. Give me a link to some articles on the English Wikipedia you
have created, at least one being a biography of a living person, and a
collection of your educational photos or videos on Wikimedia Commons,
and then we can talk against the backdrop of your positive or negative
experiences with the community on our projects, when actually trying
to help achieve the aims of our projects.

At least then we can talk from your personal experience as a volunteer
rather than a professional politician. Being seen to hastily and
publicly jump on the most contentious and divisive bandwagon/policy
issues only days after your partner is announced as the new CEO of the
Foundation, does give an impression, probably not the one you or Lila
were hoping for.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Participating on Wikipediocracy

[Fæ]

On 24/05/2014, Wil Sinclair  wrote:
> Hi Nathan, like I said, I am not Lila, and I am in no way associated
> with the WMF. Also, Lila is not technically my wife. :) I honestly
> don't see what my personal relationships have to do with these issues
...

If this were true, then Wil could have taken part in discussion on
Wikipediocracy with a throw-away anonymous account to educate himself
on the culture there. I am sure that Wil and Lila know how to keep an
internet account anonymous, or they can ask someone on their personal
network who does know.

To parody a little, but not much, "Hello, I'm the partner of the new
CEO of the WMF and I would like to ask you about what you think of the
WMF projects... Oh, please pretend that I have nothing to do with the
CEO of the WMF." No, that just does not add up.

As someone partial, due to the actions of some participants of 'that
website' to deride my life as a gay man, my view is that Lila is
actively losing good faith, before she has managed to deliver anything
for our movement, by not having a word with her partner to stop him
playing silly and potentially destructive games using her name as if
he were the charitable "First husband" playing ambassador.

Wil has a right to free speech (in the UK we have similar law, it
amounts to "meh, you are free to make an arse out yourself"). This
ensures his right to be free to irretrievably cock up Lila's
reputation in the eyes of the Wikimedia community's most active and
productive volunteers.

If Lila is going to be good at managing politics within our movement,
now would be an excellent time to start demonstrating it, rather than
pretending she does not know about the games Wil is playing within the
Wikimedia movement that she is being handsomely paid to support.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Child Protection Policy

[Fæ]

On 23 May 2014 19:23, Wil Sinclair  wrote:
> Is it correct that each project/subdomain of Wikipedia and Wikimedia
> has its own, potentially unique Child Protection Policy?

No. The meta policy at

applies to all projects and so where a local policy may exist, it must
implement the meta policy.

> How many of those policies are marked as "Proposed"?

It varies by project, where they exist.

> Are the "Proposed" policies enforced?

No. Some may be in effect due to the existence of prior policies and
working practices, often to comply with legal requirements.

> Are there projects/subdomains of Wikipedia and Wikimedia that have no
> Child Protection Policy at all?

No. The policy at meta applies across all projects.

If you intend to focus discussion in one place, rather than on
multiple projects, email lists and on non-wikimedia managed websites
at the same time, then meta would probably be a sensible place to
summarize or ask for a community consensus. As has been explained,
this has been done before, and one learning point was that by having
multiple channels, drama or even excitement may be created, but any
potentially good ideas for improvement are *far* more likely to drain
away in the sand and result in continued general dissatisfaction and
frustration.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Affiliation in username

[Fæ]

On 10 May 2014 19:02, Fæ  wrote:
> ... I'll take a look at Faebot keeping
> a table regularly synchronized on meta using the Google spreadsheets
> API.

For anyone that may be interested in seeing which WMF employees have
what advanced permissions, there is now a wikitable on meta
automatically generated from the Google spreadsheet that the WMF
maintains.

The table is at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Advanced_Permissions

I don't want to encourage folks to start relying on Google
spreadsheets(!), however keeping spreadsheets like this in-sync with
on-wiki tables is not a new issue. Anyone interested in how I did it
can find a copy of the Python script at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Faebot/code/advanced_permissions

I have also asked for a meta bot flag, as I'm planning for Faebot to
check/update the table once a week:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Requests_for_bot_status#Faebot

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Non-renewal of Wikimedia UK fundraiser agreement

[Fæ]

On 21 May 2014 13:19, Richard Symonds  wrote:
...
>2. Probably not. See
>
> http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/frequently-asked-questions/faqs-about-registering-a-charity/can-i-register-the-uk-branch-of-an-overseas-charity/

This means that the WMF would need to establish an independent
fundraising institution in the UK in order for it to be a registered
charity. This would be in exactly the same ways as other global
charities successfully manage it under UK law.

>3. I'm not sure where the 50% figure came from, but it is incorrect. The
>correct figure for that year is 69%. For this past quarter, the correct
>figure is even better, at 80.24%. In addition, our fundraising costs as a
>percentage of total spend have dropped from 22% to 10%. If anyone wants
>more information on this, our treasurer is happy to discuss it with them by
>email.

A strange response from WMUK as Russavia included a link to the
analysis in his email, so this seems to be a tangent to the issue of
the most recent accepted and analysed financial report, showing that
more than 50% of funds are spent on non-project activities. Just in
case people missed it, the link was
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:FDC_portal/Proposals/2013-2014_round1/WMUK/Proposal_form#Programme_5.E2.80.94Finance

The technical way of redefining English words in such a way so that
the significant expenses of running trustee board meetings with staff
support, or paying for highly expensive lawyers and management
consultants as part of governance issues, gets reported as a
deliverable open knowledge Wikimedia project, is unhelpful as a way to
convince the Wikimedia community, or the WMF, that the UK charity is
efficient compared to WMDE or the WMF. Using words this way undermines
the value of the reports.

As a bizarre example the SORP way of conveniently redefining English
words, I could re-employ Jon Davies as a temporary "management
consultant" rather than a "permanent employee", even giving him twice
the income to take home, and yet this could be reported as a
significant increase in the efficiency of the charity, as an expensive
line item would move from administration to programme costs. I doubt
that many Wikimedians are taken in by this management jargon, as
opposed to common sense or plain English use of words.

>4. As for the planes - it is indeed fantastic and a good example of how,
>even where we may disagree, we can still all pull together to do great work
>for the movement. Speaking personally, it's a shame we don't have something
>similar for ships!
...

On this, we can agree. The Avionics Project represents less than 0.1%
of funds handled by the UK charity, yet these volunteer centric and
cheap-as-chips projects now represent the significant majority of
tangible outcomes for Wikimedia Commons, if one, say, counts the
actual number of media files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, rather
than soft (so-called "narrative") measures, or internal facing
measures of success like supporting the Wikimania conference. As for
ships, I have uploaded many thousands of historic images of ships to
Commons which are highly valued by other unpaid Wikimedia volunteers,
however these were not supported by Wikimedia UK due to previous
concerns raised about my volunteer uploads from a potential partner
institution that might have employed a WIR and might have done
something similar. If the charity wishes to extend the project to
media such as this, the trustees know how to find me.

PS For those unfamiliar with my background, I was previously a trustee
of Wikimedia UK and even served time as the Chairman, until I resigned
after lots of political unpleasantness. My awareness of WMUK figures
comes from that hands-on experience, not so long ago.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimediauk-l] Non-renewal of Wikimedia UK fundraiser agreement

[Fæ]

> We have written an open letter to Sue about this decision. A copy of our
> letter to Sue can be found here on the Wikimedia UK wiki.

This open letter may have some emotive reason for being produced, but
after reviewing it carefully, I can see no strategic value for WMUK by
publishing it.

It comes as no surprise for anyone with a reasonable understanding of
WMF politics that Sue Gardner has made this decision. The surprise
here is that Jon Davies (WMUK CEO) thought he had invested his time
over the last two years forming a relationship with the right person
within the WMF hierarchy that would take different action, or that he
was following effective tactics by using appeasing politics, in order
to achieve a different outcome in time for 2014/15.

This official letter criticises the outgoing CEO's judgement
(exceedingly pointless), and I read nothing in its content to address
how WMUK is making the significant management changes that would
convince those that think along Sue's lines to make a difference for
coming years. How Jon Davies believes this will impress the new WMF
CEO is beyond me.

Hopefully the superb exemplars of WMFR and WMDE in how they have, and
continue to, radically change their course is something that the
current WMUK board of trustees are taking to heart behind closed
doors. Certainly, *they* have said little in public.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to Criticize with Kindness

[Fæ]

On 15 May 2014 09:20, Asaf Bartov  wrote:
> This seems like very good advice, Tom.  Have you tried it?

I agree, it sure is great advice. A shorter version is the "management
classic" good news sandwich. Here's a version similar to those you
might see used in emails:

1. Your email was illuminating, we have no doubt that you great
passion and commitment as a Wikimedian.
2. Based on what some might see as disruptive comments, you have been
blocked from the list. There is no appeal process but you can try
writing to the moderators if you wish. I suggest trying in six months
time to expect a reply.
3. The contributions you make to our projects are great. I look
forward to seeing the time you save, being used to be even more
productive!

It's a great technique, nobody can claim that an email structured this
way is unpolite or intended as personal. It could be a bit obvious for
anyone familiar with the classics though...

Thanks everyone for chipping in with their views, nice to see such
varied perspectives.

Related blog: 
http://alexrichardson.co.uk/thoughts-from-the-non-pro-screenwriter-how-to-give-feedback/

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Affiliation in username

[Fæ]

On 10 May 2014 19:02, Fæ  wrote:
> On 21/04/2014, James Alexander  wrote:
> ...
>> we ask for a use case for every rights request, you can see most of them
>> here
>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AvhjkTJIpW2zdDl1bVBuOU1jQUJwOHd5YmhmSzFaZHc&single=true&gid=5&output=htmlsysadmin
>
> James, if you open this spreadsheet and switch on publishing (go to
> File / Publish to the web...) then I'll take a look at Faebot keeping
> a table regularly synchronized on meta using the Google spreadsheets
> API.

Ping.

I would like to repeat my offer to add this extra level of openness to
this information, my email might have been lost in the long thread. Is
there a reason for not switching on publishing to the public
spreadsheet so that the community can refer to a maintained wiki-table
of the same data on meta rather than relying entirely on Google's
excellent but closed-source collaboration tools?

Thanks,
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons' frontpage probably shouldn't prominently feature a decontextualised stack of corpses.

[Fæ]

On 13 May 2014 21:21, Pierre-Selim  wrote:
> How about you shut your mouth and stop insulting volunteer from other
> projects that you just don't know. Really that would spare a lot of time to
> everyone here on this mailing list.

You had me laughing with this one, it was so out of character.

I think this thread ended a while back.

PS Wil - there are some very, very nasty people on Wikipediocracy, who
do not appear to know where the boundaries of normal human decency
are. Comparing this list to that place is ... unhelpful. No doubt you
will discover that for yourself.

Fae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons' frontpage probably shouldn't prominently feature a decontextualised stack of corpses.

[Fæ]

On 13 May 2014 07:27, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
> On May 12, 2014 9:10 PM, "Kevin Gorman"  wrote:
>
>> the fact Commons' has a history of not wanting to comply with WMF board
>> resolutions
>>
> Whoa there, I'm going to have to reach for my biggest [citation needed]
> flag.
>
> Commons isn't a thing that speaks with a single voice, and -- more
> importantly -- with literally hundreds of files proposed for deletion every
> day, there are bound to be plenty of decisions that are either wrong, or
> debatable. Whatever experience you're generalizing on to make this sweeping
> statement of an entire project "not wanting to comply," I am pretty
> confident you are making a leap of logic or two in there.

+1 I have no recollection of becoming part of a Borg collective.

...
> We can go back and forth as long as you want -- I'd suggest you start off
> with maybe 5 examples, and if you do I'll find 25. But do as many as you'd
> like.

Let's not go there. This email thread is TLDR, hard to follow, and (as
has been said by several others already) would be much better as an
on-wiki narrative thread in one of the many places on Commons where
discuss policies and issues of interest to Commons contributors; most
of us are not subscribed to this email list.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Affiliation in username

[Fæ]

On 21/04/2014, James Alexander  wrote:
...
> we ask for a use case for every rights request, you can see most of them
> here
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AvhjkTJIpW2zdDl1bVBuOU1jQUJwOHd5YmhmSzFaZHc&single=true&gid=5&output=htmlsysadmin

James, if you open this spreadsheet and switch on publishing (go to
File / Publish to the web...) then I'll take a look at Faebot keeping
a table regularly synchronized on meta using the Google spreadsheets
API.

Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia and Universities

[Fæ]

On 6 May 2014 16:53, Risker  wrote:
> On 6 May 2014 11:45, Fæ  wrote:
>> https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter.
...
> I think Newyorbrad's point is that this is sectioned off into a distant
> project that few people know about - as I recall, it's not even part of the
> SUL so one has to log in separately there - and it seems not to be
> mentioned very often anywhere else.
>
> Risker/Anne

Fortunately https://outreach.wikimedia.org is included in the unified login.

On meta, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM directs you to it. On
the English Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM
directs you to it as well.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia and Universities

[Fæ]

On 6 May 2014 15:28, Newyorkbrad  wrote:
> Is there one place, perhaps on Meta, where a Wikipedian/Wikimedian could
> find a summary/briefing on the various different programs that exist?
>
> Newyorkbrad

Hi Brad,

Yes, this is the purpose of https://outreach.wikimedia.org. Admittedly
it always needs updating, however Romaine's excellent work keeping the
GLAM newsletter going should provide everything you would like to know
about what is happening -
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter.

Anyone can edit the outreach wiki, and people running education or
GLAM projects should make a point of adding their projects to the
site, it is our long term central repository of knowledge and should
be the reference point for communications about our projects.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia and Universities

[Fæ]

If Universities or GLAMs want to talk about our best practices for
running open knowledge projects that include Wikimedia projects, they
ought to be asking some of the many people who have successfully
delivered these projects.

Tip: ** Always recommend they visit https://outreach.wikimedia.org **
plenty of contacts and useful case studies are maintained there, both
for GLAMs and education.

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[Wikimedia-l] Cracking Wikipedia

[Fæ]

There seem to be emails going around about possible misuse of images
to covertly promote a brand on Wikipedia. As far as I can tell, it is
a hoax, perhaps to throw mud at a well known company.

Discussion at 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost#Cracking_Wikipedia

If anyone has real evidence of misuse, it would be useful to share a
real example rather than pointing to hoax videos off-wiki. It would
have made a good April Fool.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Assessing this round of FDC proposals, including the WMF's proposal

[Fæ]

On 30/04/2014, Bence Damokos  wrote:
> While this is a compelling interpretation - for the sake of argument -
> I am not sure the words of the ED of the WMF can bind the Board of the
> WMF in the decisions they make. I could imagine situations where they
> could, and normally the ED advises the Board on what direction to
> take, but normally it should be the other way around when it comes to
> binding statements.

The ED may not "bind the board", trustees have legal independence for
governance reasons such as whistle-blowing. However the ED does
officially speak for the WMF and legally commits the organization when
making or authorizing statements and reports. The board of trustees
should be seen to support her statements or take positive action to
correct her if they do not.

This is a significant part of the duties Sue is paid to take on for us

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Organizational development for the Wikimedia movement

[Fæ]

Thanks Chris.

Interesting you chose to link to my unfinished peer review with WMEE,
considering you asked me to halt my inter-chapter governance
activities when you were the Chair of WMUK. If you think it is a good
idea to allow me to finish the peer reviews I started, perhaps you
should check with the board of WMUK so that I am can "officially"
approach those involved to see if they think it would be worthwhile.

Fae

On 27/04/2014, Chris Keating  wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've started a page on Meta which I hope will act as a hub for
> documentation and ideas around the training and development needs of
> Wikimedia movement organisations:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Organisational_development
>
> I'd ask anyone who's interested in this kind of thing to have a look and
> add examples and thoughts for the future.
>
> As many people will know from my contributions to this year's and last
> year's Wikimedia conference, or from the training workshop we held in
> London in early March, this is an issue where I feel the movement (or, at
> least, the part of the movement that is involved in movement
> organisations!) can and should do better.
>
> I was interested to read the Signpost coverage of the Wikimedia
> Conference(1) which evidently comes from a similar point of view!
>
> We are slightly hampered by the fact that there is no single body
> responsible for doing this kind of training and development work, so I
> would invite everyone with a stake in this (WMF, FDC, AffCom, Chapters,
> Thorgs, User Groups, interested individuals) to treat this as something
> where everyone can play a role in sharing experience, scoping out the way
> forward, and building a better way of doing this for the future!
>
> Regards,
>
> Chris
>
>
> (1)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-04-23

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] COI editing by WMF staff

[Fæ]

On 17 April 2014 12:49, Erlend Bjørtvedt  wrote:
> Same practice here, through spontneous reflection independent of wmfr.
> Seemes that this is at least natural for a chapter. I believe wmf employees
> should also be encouraged to contribute to the projects.

There seems some confusion. There are two real recommendations here,
none involves stopping employees of any Wikimedia organization from
being editors.

1. The examples Russavia has identified show instances of outright
conflict of interest. Some edits state they are editing knowing they
have a conflict of interest but have not bothered to propose changes
so that others without a conflict can chose to implement them. It is
recommended that the Foundation direct its employees to never edit
where there is a conflict of interest relating to their employment.

2. Using pseudonyms or anonymous accounts which obscure that the
editor is an employee, and may be making edits related to their
employment, is bad practice as it goes against our movement's
commitment to simple transparency and openness. It is recommended that
the Foundation direct its employees and contractors to ensure their
interest is declared clearly and consistently so that the Wikimedia
Community is never seen to be misled.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] COI editing by WMF staff

[Fæ]

David, I am not a "creature", nor am I am a part of a conspiracy with Russavia.

Your actions against both Russavia and myself, with no process for
appeal, say more about the direction our open movement is taking in
putting up barriers to whistle-blowing rather than accepting this is
part of a healthy and transparent open culture.

My response on this thread for Erik's unacceptable public behaviour as
a Foundation senior manager have nothing whatsoever to do with
Wikimedia UK or the wikimediauk-l list, so your using your authority
on a different list to punish me is bizarre.

Fae

On 17 April 2014 09:58, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 17 April 2014 09:46, Fæ  wrote:
>
>
> Every time I see "Fae" or "Russavia" in a from: line, I dread opening
> the email. Fae, posts like this, where any actual point you have is
> buried under a mountain of your overwhelming bitterness, with you
> tag-teaming with Russavia on *his* overwhelming bitterness, are
> precisely what we were discussing earlier this week on wikimediauk-l,
> and why you're moderated on that list, and why Russavia's moderated on
> wikimediaau-l. Please, stop. Just stop. Look at your life and what
> sort of benighted creature you're turning into. Ask yourself (don't
> tell us, we really, really don't care any more) how you got here.
>
>
> - d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] COI editing by WMF staff

[Fæ]

On 17 April 2014 09:40, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 1:08 AM, Fæ  wrote:
>
>> This is not the first time that Erik has been sarcastic and rude in an
>> apparent attempt to close down discussion in public responses to
>> whistle-blowers.
>
> Please. You are making a mockery of every whistleblower on the planet;
> it's disgraceful. Russavia's original post cites examples such as
> editing about a coffeeshop or a school. They're frivolous examples,
> pointless, trollish, part of a sequence of behavior to mix the
> occasional legitimate concern with wild insinuations and conjecture.
> You tend to join these types of threads with cheerful and seemingly
> limitless energy to attempt to whip up tiny shitstorms. This has
> turned far too many conversations into the Fae/Russavia traveling
> circus, with both of you demanding individual explanations from the
> Board for why someone pooped.

Erik, you are not helping anyone by writing derisory nonsense and
continuing to attack long term Wikimedians in this thread. Nobody has
made "wild insinuations", nobody has demanded explanations from the
board for "why someone pooped".

I expect Foundation senior managers to  behave in a civil and
respectful way when writing on governance failures and representing
the Foundation and our movement. Senior managers are paid to do
precisely this. I am paid precisely nothing to read the nonsense you
are now spouting.

If you cannot behave yourself, please leave responses to other
managers in the Foundation or check with Sue before pressing "send".

Thanks,
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