[Wikimedia-l] Re: Encyclopedic Coverage of American Elections

[Jane Darnell]

I do feel US elections and their coverage is an international issue, especially 
in light of recent events that threaten democracy and could indirectly affect 
things like copyright on the internet. I do share concerns about “social media 
events” and it would be helpful to spell out how these could be covered in an 
encyclopedia when social media is not considered a reliable source for an 
article. Add to that a decline in subscriptions to local newspapers (I believe 
this is not only a US issue but an international problem) as well as 
geoblocking content of national newspapers and you have major issues with 
updates to Wikipedia election articles anywhere. I have no idea how to tackle 
these issues but have complete confidence in the various election-related 
WikiProjects so if there’s such a project on meta maybe they have already 
joined forces on this.
Jane

Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 21, 2021, at 1:36 PM, Gerard Meijssen  
> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hoi,
> What is painfully obvious is the bias that exists. For countries in Africa we 
> do not even know all the government ministers past and present for the last 
> 70 years let alone that we know about past elections. At that, it is fine 
> with me that subjects like this are raised.
> Thanks,
>  GerardM
> 
>> On Tue, 21 Sept 2021 at 09:19, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga 
>>  wrote:
>> I would add to the idea that this is an international mailing list where 
>> most of the users are not from the US the idea that there are other 
>> Wikipedias around that are not in English, so the coverage of details of the 
>> US elections at the English Wikipedia should be discussed... at the English 
>> Wikipedia.
>> 
>> Thanks for your understanding.
>> 
>> Galder
>> From: Risker 
>> Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2021 8:14 AM
>> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
>> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Encyclopedic Coverage of American Elections
>>  
>> There are already wikiprojects on English Wikipedia that work on 
>> elections.[1][2]  I suggest you might want to continue this conversation 
>> there, with people who have a strong interest in US elections, and a good 
>> grasp on what is and is not likely to make a successful article. As noted 
>> before, this is an international mailing list, and there are better places 
>> to talk about American politics.  
>> 
>> Oh...incidentally. That photo had no impact at all. The election was 
>> yesterday, and the results were pretty much as predicted at least a week 
>> ago; there were no surprises. 
>> 
>> Risker/Anne
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/History_and_society#Politics_and_government
>> [2] 
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_presidential_elections
>> 
>> On Tue, 21 Sept 2021 at 01:45, Adam Sobieski  
>> wrote:
>> Thank you.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> In the recent Canadian federal election [1], there was a last-minute 
>> happening [2] in the news and on social media [3] which seems difficult to 
>> precisely attribute to a responsible party. It appears that one or more 
>> photographs were leaked to a news organization which probably does not want 
>> to reveal their source. I am thinking about how best to include such complex 
>> events and happenings in encyclopedia articles about election-related 
>> strategies, tactics, events, and happenings.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> On the topic of US election-related encyclopedia articles, I think that it 
>> will be easier and that there will be more interested Wikimedians as the 
>> next election season approaches (2022) or, perhaps, as the next Presidential 
>> election season approaches (2024). Then, instead of exploring news archives, 
>> interested Wikimedians could add relevant events and happenings to 
>> encyclopedia articles as they occur.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> My current plan for improving Wikipedia’s overall election coverage includes 
>> participating, alongside interested others, in US 2024 Presidential 
>> election-related encyclopedia articles so that the quality of these 
>> prominent encyclopedia articles might inspire the broader community with 
>> regard to covering subsequent elections. If anyone has a better plan, please 
>> let me know.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> If there is interest, perhaps we could organize a community project, a 
>> Wikiproject [4] or a Task Force [5], to think about and to discuss these 
>> topics – and, perhaps, to collaborate to build templates or prototypes of 
>> enhanced election coverage – en route to 2024.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> In the interim, I can see whether I can find enough content to create and 
>> structure articles about these topics pertaining to recent US Presidential 
>> elections (2016 and 2020).
>> 
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> 
>> Adam
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Canadian_federal_election
>> 
>> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise
>> 
>> [3] 
>> https://torontosun.com/news/election-2021/lilley-another-blackface-photo-embar

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Concerns by local (Hong Kong) movement affiliate regarding free speech and access to Wikipedia in Hong Kong

[Jane Darnell]

Scary! Is there any way Wikimedians can help to get the message out to
people?

On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 5:31 PM William Chan  wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> There is now a bill in the "deliberation" process of the Chinese People's
> Political Consultative Conference ("CPPCC"). This bill is named as "Hong
> Kong Special Administrative Region of People's Republic of China National
> Security Law" (the "Bill"). This bill will probably be handed to the
> People's Congress ("PC") after the process.
>
> If passed in the PC, it will be added into the Annex III of the Basic Law.
> At the same time, local approval will not be needed and will be applied in
> Hong Kong. This seems to be a Beijing response to the near year-long
> protests in Hong Kong.
>
> The Board of Wikimedia Hong Kong User Group (the "Board") made a statement
> hereinafter regarding the current developments regarding such a bill, as
> this may possibly undermine the capability for Wikipedia to be accessed
> unrestrictedly in Hong Kong.
>
> Below is the statement issued by the Board :
>
> //
> We are currently very aware of Beijing authorities and local pro-Beijing
> party members pushing for a bill which may limit the freedom of speech
> within Hong Kong.
>
> We are monitoring this issue closely, as it may affect the capability of
> the User Group to carry out its mission for ensuring uncensored and
> unrestricted access to Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia and
> Wikinews.
>
> - The Board, Wikimedia Community User Group Hong Kong
> //
>
> About the Protests:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_Hong_Kong_protests
> About the User Group:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Hong_Kong
>
> Regards,
> William Chan (User:1233)
> Board Member, Wikimedia Community User Group Hong Kong
> *issued on behalf of the board*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Comment Open on U.S. Open Access Policy

[Jane Darnell]

Yes this remains a problem. The only thing I can think of is that in our 
current gig economy reputation is everything and timeliness of information 
feedback is more and more important. I think publicly funded research deserves 
both public access and proper attribution throughout the whole process and not 
just for the final publication.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 20, 2020, at 10:52 PM, Yaroslav Blanter  wrote:
> 
> As an actively publishing researcher, I just know that mandating open
> access publishing would mean that the author pays the (huge) publication
> fee rather than the library pays the subscription. In an ideal world, the
> universities would refund the fees, and will get subsidy from the
> governments, In our real world, the researchers will have to pay everything
> out of their own pocket, with some of them losing all possibilities to
> publish, for the lack of funds. I tried to raise this before, and the
> universal reply was that this is my problem, not the problem of the
> society. I do not expect anything else this time.
> 
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
> 
>> On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 10:34 PM Shani Evenstein 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> Jake, well written and nicely put.
>> Is this online somewhere, where we can share it further?
>> 
>> Best,
>> Shani.
>> 
>> 
>> ---
>> *Shani Evenstein Sigalov*
>> 
>> * Lecturer, Tel Aviv University.
>> * EdTech Innovation Strategist, NY/American Medical Program, Sackler School
>> of Medicine, Tel Aviv University.
>> 
>> * PhD Candidate, School of Education, Tel Aviv University.
>> * Azrieli Foundation Research Fellow.
>> * OER & Emerging Technologies Coordinator, UNESCO Chair
>>  on Technology,
>> Internationalization
>> and Education, School of Education, Tel Aviv University
>> .
>> 
>> * Member of the Board of Trustees
>> ,
>> Wikimedia
>> Foundation .
>> * Chairperson, The Hebrew Literature Digitization Society
>> .
>> * Chief Editor, Project Ben-Yehuda .
>> 
>> +972-525640648
>> 
>> 
>> On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 11:27 PM Pete Forsyth 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Jake,
>>> 
>>> How can we most effectively support your excellent effort with this?
>>> 
>>> -Pete
>>> --
>>> Pete Forsyth
>>> User:Peteforsyth on Meta, English Wikisource, English Wikipedia, etc.
>>> 
 On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 1:22 PM Tito Dutta  wrote:
>>> 
 Hello,
 Very well-written and well-supported by statistics. Thanks for sharing.
 Regards.
 User:Titodutta
 
 
 On Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 1:41 AM Jake Orlowitz 
>> wrote:
 
> My Letter to the U.S. Office for Science and Technology Policy
>>> regarding
 a
> proposal for federally mandate open access to publicly-funded
>>> research...
> 
> ---
> 
> Wikipedia is one of the ten most popular websites in the world. Each
 month
> 200,000 editors improve over 6 million articles. This vital public
> information is viewed on 1 billion unique devices as our pages are
>>> loaded
> by people around the globe 7,000 times per second.
> 
> Wikipedia is the "free encyclopedia", both in its open CC-BY-SA
>>> licensing
> as well as the unpaid contributions of its volunteer editors. Yet
> Wikipedia's hundreds of thousands of editors struggle to access
>>> scholarly
> research. And, if they are able to read and cite it, then hundreds of
> millions of readers cannot verify or explore it for deeper research.
> 
> Citations are the bridge between Wikipedia articles and a broader
 landscape
> of reliable, secondary sources. Citations not only allow readers to
 verify
> the reliability of the facts they find in Wikipedia; through
>> citations
> readers can also deep-dive into any given topic by exploring the
>> books,
> scholarly publications, and news stories referenced in an article.
> 
> A recently released dataset of all citations with identifiers in
 Wikipedia
> found that less than half of the official versions of scholarly
> publications cited with an identifier in Wikipedia are freely
>> available
 on
> the web. This chasm of for editors and for readers is a tragedy of
>>> public
> education and digital literacy.
> 
> Just look at the most recent global catastrophe with Coronavirus. By
 April
> 2020 the main articles on COVID-19 had received 50 million views.
> Wikipedia's medical content--made up of more than 155,000 articles
>> and
>>> 1
> billion bytes of text across more than 255 languages--has been ranked
>>> as
> one of the top-3 most viewed sources for medical information on the
 entire
> internet.
> 
> References are essential to the public's trust in Wikipedia. Indeed,
> Wikipedia's 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia was edited from the ISS

[Jane Darnell]

I believe Andy arranged for this to happen and there is a blog out there 
somewhere

Sent from my iPad

> On Dec 28, 2019, at 11:37 PM, Pine W  wrote:
> 
> Hi Yury,
> 
> I saw some excitement from people regarding this edit. However, I for one
> have been hesitant to make wider announcements about this. My personal
> concern is that, although I have every reason to believe that the
> contributor is who others claim that she is, the contributor did not self
> publish information that unambiguously communicated her identity in a
> public space in the Wikiverse.
> 
> ENWP can be highly protective of contributors' off wiki identities when
> contributors have not self published that information. ENWP can be so
> protective that there is friction within the community about whether paid
> conflict of interest editors are getting an unreasonable degree of
> protection. In this case, the contributor's username is highly suggestive
> of her identity. I regret if the caution seems to be excessive, but there
> are reasons to be cautious about announcing information about other
> Wikimedia contributors who have implied and not outright stated information
> about their identities.
> 
> I hope that in the near future this contributor will provide a small amount
> of further self disclosure about her off wiki identity, such as by simply
> writing her name on her userpage, and at that time I would be much more
> comfortable celebrating this edit. Again, I regret if this approach feels
> excessively cautious.
> 
> Respectfully,
> Pine
> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "The Foundation does not care so much of the French-speaking contributors"

[Jane Darnell]

Thanks for your clarification! Yes of course it is difficult to keep up
with changing WMF rules regarding funding (or reporting). I know in the
past we have run into problems trying to stay aware of all the ins-and-outs
of these things in the Netherlands chapter and for chapters with
sub-sections distributed far apart it must be very hard to do. Your
question seems to be why these WMF funding/reporting changes are made, and
though I don't know the details I assume from past experience that this is
all done to simplify the work done by the WMF in such a way that they can
better support the chapter work by simplifying and streamlining their
workflow. It's nice to read that the most common grant requests are still
flexible and can be requested each month: editathons, photo walks, etc.

It's a good idea to have an Outreach person appointed at the WMF for
diversity and I think we have all been happy with the work done by Alex
Stinson for GLAM. I don't think we have ever had a person for the
Gendergap, but there is a diversity project out on Meta now with a very
long title for this (sorry, can't remember it and I am not a Meta person)
and this is probably where a WMF appointment should be. I am not up to date
with the whole Meta-Outreach discussion and as far as I can tell Outreach
is nowadays mostly just for "This Month in GLAM". Maybe we need a "This
Month in Diversity" or something like that, with input from all workgroups!

On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 7:02 AM Natacha Rault via Wikimedia-l <
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Hi Jane,
> Thank you for your answer, but I think I did not make my point clear
> enough given the answer you made.
> On the francophone wiki there is not “local WIR”. There are a few sister
> projects like les sans pages of which I am the founder (so people might
> turn to me  for questions) or ateliers femmes et féminismes, Wikimatrimoine
> ect. I think we view WIR as a sister project, not as an umbrella. We would
> like equal access to ressources, finance and management, which is why it is
> important for us to have WMF reps at our regional events. Local chapters
> are great, but it’s not the same. I have tried to go to as many
> international events as possible, because this is where you learn about the
> politics and new tools and financing possibilities. I could not go most of
> the time because our project was very successful. and nearly every two week
> two there are events and because I have a family too, and limited finances.
> So yes, having a person representing outreach would have been great. I
> think we need T&S and Outreach to be there, with the possibility of booking
> appointments.
>
> I was writing about rapid grants not questions about wikipedia, saying
> that local reps are worried about the way rapid grants have been designed
> with timing to apply according to themes.
> See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Rapid/Learn
> What was great about rapid grants was:
> -flexibility : you could ask for funding anytime and receive it within 3
> weeks (now you have to apply between the 1rst and 15th of each month and
> decision is made one month after)
> - for certain themes you can only apply at certain time in the year making
> it very rigid. No doubt volunteers will miss lots of opportunities because
> of this.
> IMO the major asset of the rapid grants, flexibiiity and speed to adapt to
> volunteers fluctuating engagement is now gone. Why?
>
> I copy and paste below the new rules. I was wondering why this new ruling
> is in place as it seems to some volunteers very complicated and rigid as
> opposed to the last system.
> I was wondering if the advice of volunteers was taken into account.
>
> You must submit your application between the 1st and 15th of each month.
> Please plan to make your applications accordingly, so you will have a
> decision about your grant within the timeframe you need to plan your event.
> Decisions will be made by the 15th of the following month.
> In the months specified below, we will prioritize support to contests and
> campaigns. These months will be solely dedicated to different contests
> throughout the year:
> August: only receiving proposals for Wiki Loves Monuments
> September: only receiving proposals for Awareness Grants(campaign)
> December: only receiving proposals for Wiki Loves Africa
> January: only receiving proposals for Art + Feminism (campaign)
> March: only receiving proposals for Wiki Loves Earth
> Outside the months specified above, proposals are welcomed in all other
> categories: edit-a-thons, contests, photowalks, general promotion
> campaigns, and video campaigns. We will also consider proposals outside of
> these categories, such as software development.
> I hope I have clarified a lit

Re: [Wikimedia-l] "The Foundation does not care so much of the French-speaking contributors"

[Jane Darnell]

As far as Art+Feminism goes, this project concentrates on biographies of
female artists. The English Wikipedia project "Women in Red" is open 24x7
all year round and concentrates on biographies of women on English
Wikipedia, period. So you can take all of your local Wikipedia questions
about A+F to your local WiR women for each non-English Wikipedia, and if
there is no overlap yet, I suggest starting your own local A+F/WiR in your
local Wikipedia. We should probably start a multi-lingual one for Commons,
since it has proven so difficult to get pictures of female artists to
illustrate articles about them.

On Sun, Sep 15, 2019 at 8:27 PM Natacha Rault via Wikimedia-l <
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Thank you Thierry. To be honnest a few of us were really waiting for
> Valerie D'Costa, the new Chief of Community Engagement because we had
> questions for her about the new rapid grant funding agenda which seems
> totally inadapted to volunteer’s need in terms of flexibility. One has to
> wait a soecific month for Art+feminism and very often the timing has not
> been adapted to when the events are actually taking place. For a volunteer
> this is way too procedural. We need more flexibility.
> We had other questions regarding the departure of several people which
> were very important for the gender gap.
> So ... Some of us were disappointed indeed.
> Kind regards,
> Natacha
>
>
>
> > Le 15 sept. 2019 à 20:02, Thierry Coudray  a écrit :
> >
> > Valerie D'Costa, the new Chief of Community Engagement,
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Be the change you want to see (was: WMF commitment for a Wikimedia projects archive)

[Jane Darnell]

Asaf, I have wondered at times whether you were ever scolded for some of
the things you wrote on this list. I, for one, have always appreciated your
comments and so I thank you for taking the time to craft your responses
despite any WMF objections. I also would like to thank you for any
moderation work you have done that I may not have seen.
Jane

On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 9:17 PM Asaf Bartov  wrote:

> Speaking as a (very) longtime member of this mailing list, and one who is
> carefully observing it for a few years now as a volunteer list
> co-administrator:
>
> On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 3:56 AM Joseph Seddon 
> wrote:
>
> > I, like many others, wish to see this list become a crucible of good
> > suggestions, healthy and critical debate about ideas and as a sound
> > mechanism for oversight and account . A huge amount of staff time and
> > movement resources is taken up by the consumption of its content. And yet
> > it remains the greatest shame that much of the best most worthwhile
> > constructive discussions have moved to platforms like Facebook because
> this
> > list is viewed as hosting such an unhealthy atmosphere when emails are
> > written with such overt passive aggression.
> >
> > I call it out because if we want people to participate on this list, the
> > unhealthy way in which this list gets treated by some of its most active
> > participants needs to be dealt with. Otherwise valid points will not get
> > acknowledged or answered.
> >
>
> I am not sure the causality here runs in the direction you describe.  It's
> true that this list had some aggressive, even vulgar participants in the
> past, and that some senior staff members, as well as board members, have
> left the list in protest.  Personally, I think that was a mistake on their
> part: to improve the list atmosphere, you model good behavior yourself, and
> you call upon the rest of the list -- the "silent majority" -- to call out
> bad behavior and enforce some participation standards (as, indeed, I and my
> co-moderators have been doing since we took over).
>
> By senior people's departing this list, and no longer requiring staff to be
> on this list, a strong signal was sent that this is not a venue crucial to
> listen to, and that, coupled with the decreasing frequency of WMF responses
> to legitimate volunteer inquiries and suggestions, had a *powerful*
> chilling effect on the willingness of most volunteers to engage here.
> Especially when, as you say, they were able to get better engagement on
> Facebook and other channels, despite the serious shortcomings of
> accountability on those channels (immutable archiving, searchability,
> access to anonymous volunteers, etc.)
>
> Yes, this list has also seen some pseudonymous critics whose questions may
> have been inconvenient or troublesome to address.  Yet I think the
> accountable thing to do would have been to respond, however briefly, to
> prevent the sealioning and sanctimonious posts that filled the list -- and,
> I am sure, greatly annoyed and demotivated many subscribers.  Even a
> response stating WMF chooses not to respond to a certain question, or not
> to dig up certain data, would have been better than the stony silence that
> has become the all-too-common stance for WMF on this list.
>
> As you know, I also work for WMF (though I am writing this in my volunteer
> capacity, and out of my care for the well-being of this list).  While I
> have never shied away from responding on this list, I have on occasion been
> scolded (internally) for attempting to answer volunteer queries to the best
> of my knowledge, for "outstepping my remit" or interfering in someone
> else's remit.  I have taken this to heart, and accordingly no longer try to
> respond to queries such as Fae's (which in this case I find a perfectly
> reasonable question, meriting an answer).  Several past attempts by me to
> ping appropriate senior staff on questions on this list (or on talk pages)
> have also met with rebuke, so I have ceased those as well.
>
> For these reasons I do not accept this wholesale blaming of this list's
> subscribers on the difficulty having meaningful conversations here:
>
> But if we want to see staff members more actively
> > participating here then those long standing individuals need to really
> > thing about the tone in which they engage here, particularly those who do
> > so most often. If that does not change, this list will continue to
> languish
> > and those few staff members who continue to engage here will slowly
> > disappear. This now increasingly perennial topic keeps coming up and my
> > fear is that it will on go away through the increasing abandonment this
> > list faces.
> >
>
> It is WMF that is not behaving collaboratively here.  And it is within
> WMF's power to change it.  C-levels, the ED, and other managers at WMF
> could all decide to participate more actively in this list; to respond to
> questions or delegate the answering to their subordinates, who are awai

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[Jane Darnell]

Thanks Andrew! Let me repeat here my vote for “Wikidata” as the brand name, too

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 10, 2019, at 9:05 PM, Andrew Lih  wrote:
> 
> I agree with Galder's and Camelia's thoughts and believe we should slow
> down to think about this issue as a whole. We cannot, and should not,
> consider this purely a "branding" exercise because the internal and
> external risks go well beyond this. We need to carefully take them into
> consideration.
> 
> At the Berlin Wikimedia Summit, I was asked by Zack McCune and Heather
> Walls about the branding issue. We talked about this at length so here is a
> summary of what I expressed to them:
> 
> - Outside view: I respect the work the comms/branding team has done, but
> let's remember that the recommendations are from an outside consultancy
> that focuses on only one dimension of this issue. Their work does not
> consider our internal community and movement dynamics as a whole. So the
> recommendation should be seen as just one data point.
> 
> - Unproven causality: While it's true that familiarity of the "Wikimedia"
> brand is low, the case has not been made that unifying our identity under
> "Wikipedia" is a solution for the particular markets in question. There are
> many other factors regarding adoption and recognition of any brand, not
> just Wikimedia, including the commercial context of mobile/Internet users
> and default consumer entry points to the information landscape (ie. search
> engine settings, starting home page, financial incentives and
> partnerships). Other factors are: first mover advantages (e.g. Korea, with
> Naver.com's dominance over Wikipedia), or government regulation (e.g.
> China, Turkey censorship) that affect any brand footprint. Remaking our
> whole identity for the possibility that we *might* get better recognition
> in certain markets needs much more careful study.
> 
> - That was then, this is now: If this was 10 years ago, I would
> enthusiastically embrace the idea of putting everything under the Wikipedia
> umbrella. In 2003, before the WMF had staff and resources, I was one of the
> primary volunteer contacts for almost all press inquiries about Wikipedia.
> I know the headaches of having to explain what "Wikimedia" is to
> journalists and the public. The book I wrote in 2009 was titled "The
> Wikipedia Revolution" for name recognition, even though I knew "Wikimedia"
> would be more accurate. But that was then. We are a whole lot more than
> Wikipedia today.
> 
> - We stand on three legs (and more): If there was ever a time that
> Wikimedia was more than Wikipedia, it is now. The trio of Wikipedia,
> Commons and Wikidata is the bedrock of open knowledge sharing in a way that
> was not true even 3 years ago. Wikimedia Commons is a community of its own
> with users of its content who never touch Wikipedia. See the many news
> outlets and publications that use now use CC licensed Commons images to use
> as visuals for their stories and products. Wikidata has quickly emerged as
> the de facto way for libraries, archives and museums to connect their
> metadata to each other. They are adopting it as their global crosswalk
> database that has been proven to be more scalable and highly available than
> anything in the information landscape. Wikidata is now regularly
> incorporated into conferences outside of our own Wikimedia community, and
> has the largest museum and library groups (Europeana, AAC, OCLC, IFLA-WLIC,
> et al) working with it.
> 
> Many times, I've had librarians and curators tell me the equivalent of: "I
> never engaged with Wikipedia, because 'article writing' is not what we do.
> But metadata and authority control records on Wikidata coincide with what I
> do every day." I just had a phone call with a prominent museum collections
> manager who said her goal was to eliminate their own local metadata
> vocabulary in favor of using all Wikidata Q numbers instead. We are
> reaching a new public with Commons and Wikidata that many Wikipedians, and
> WMF employees, may not be aware of.
> 
> - Wikipedia has a systemic bias: The biggest problem with Wikipedia is that
> you have to know how to read. This sounds ridiculously obvious but
> consider: in developing countries, we're often looking at a maximum 70%
> literacy rate. That's a big hurdle for our strategic goal of knowledge
> equity. We have yet to tap into video, multimedia, interactive and audio
> content as a major mode of knowledge sharing. What of oral histories or
> nontraditional/non-academic forms of human knowledge? The Wikipedia
> community has been neglectful or outright hostile to the addition and use
> of video and multimedia content in these areas. (I know this first-hand,
> having headed video initiatives or having students consistently reverted
> when adding multimedia.) Like it or not, there is an ingrained culture of
> text-heavy articles being the dominant mode for acceptable encyclopedic
> content which stands as a blocker for our evolu

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Jane Darnell]

No, because no one has invented it yet. An example of what I mean by a
"pipeline nugget" is "The necktie was invented in Croatia". This quote is
mentioned in various language Wikipedias and is 1) a publicity stunt, 2) an
example of intangible national heritage, 3) a poorly sourced statement in a
list. Maybe with an example like this you can grasp the concept a bit
better.

On Wed, Jan 2, 2019 at 8:01 PM Peter Southwood 
wrote:

> Interesting, but I don't really understand the implications. Is there an
> example of how such an article might be represented?
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Amir E. Aharoni
> Sent: 31 December 2018 21:56
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?
>
> ‫בתאריך יום ב׳, 31 בדצמ׳ 2018 ב-10:14 מאת ‪Peter Southwood‬‏ <‪
> peter.southw...@telkomsa.net‬‏>:‬
>
> Does the technology exist? Is it available?
> How does this splitting make maintenance easier?
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
>
> Not exactly, but it's doable and it's desirable.
>
> There are two relatively recently developed components in MediaWiki that
> are important for developers: Content Model and Multi-Content Revisions.
> They are not discussed very much among the less technical editors because
> they are pretty internal, and I'm really not an expert on what they do
> myself, but as far as I understand them, they can serve as steps to
> implementing Jane's suggestion.
>
> This suggestion is not even very new. In a way, the extremely old bug
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T2167 , originally filed in 2004 (!)
> suggests pretty much the same thing: separate interlanguage links and other
> metadata from the page content. Interlanguage links were mostly separated
> from pages thanks to Wikidata, but categories still aren't, and a lot of
> other kinds of metadata appeared since then: DEFAULTSORT, newsectionlink,
> notoc, and many others. Authority control, navbox, and infobox templates,
> as well as links to disambiguation pages, can probably be converted to
> separately-stored metadata as well.
>
> Wikidata can probably play a major role in getting this done, but it's not
> the only factor, and a lot of development is needed to better integrate
> Wikidata with other projects.
>
> But yes—I generally agree with Jane that better modularization of wiki
> pages' content components can go a long to making them easier to edit,
> easier to search, easier to query, etc. It's not the only major change that
> our technical infrastructure needs, but it's among the more important ones.
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ‪“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
>
>
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> > Behalf Of Jane Darnell
> > Sent: 30 December 2018 15:42
> > To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?
> >
> > Well it is not difficult to imagine when you consider for example line
> > items in the case of list articles. Many lists could be split into such
> > line items and kept in a static assembled form by some sort of "assembly
> > template". Many of these line items are either articles or parts of
> > articles. Such "line items" may or may not have Wikidata items, may or
> may
> > not be suitable for Wikidata items, and may or may not be able to be
> > structured in any way, shape or form than the one they currently have. I
> > would like to be able to address these "line items" as "findable editing
> > snippets" in the wikiverse, possibly curatable by voice activation,
> > reversing the way we can sometimes get them read to us by Siri/Lexa.
> >
> > On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 1:48 PM Peter Southwood <
> > peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Jane,
> > > I do not understand what parts you would split these things into, or
> how
> > > they would make Wikipedia easier to curate and edit. Could you link to
> an
> > > explanation or clarify the concept?
> > > Cheers,
> > > Peter
> > >
> > >
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikim

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Jane Darnell]

Thanks to Yaroslav who started this interesting conversation, and thanks
for all the comments. I agree with lots of them, but especially this: Happy
Public Domain Day!

On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 7:15 AM Amir E. Aharoni 
wrote:

> בתאריך יום א׳, 30 בדצמ׳ 2018, 15:55, מאת Yaroslav Blanter <
> ymb...@gmail.com
> >:
>
> >
> >
> > Re main point: People, let us be serious. We missed mobile editing (well,
> > at least this has been identified as a problem, and something is being
> done
> > about it). We missed voice interfaces. We are now missing neural
> networks.
> > We should have been discussing by now what neural networks are allowed to
> > do in the projects and what they are not allowed to do. And instead we
> are
> > discussing (and edit-warring) whether the Crimean bridge is the longest
> in
> > Europe or not because different sources place the border between Europe
> and
> > Asia differently, and, according to some sources, the bridge is not in
> > Europe. Why do you think that if we keep missing all technological
> > development relevant in the field we are still going to survive?
> >
>
> False dichotomy.
>
> Wide participation in big strategic discussion is a Good Thing, but it
> doesn't mean that it's the only thing all the Wikimedians should be talking
> about. There are people who are less interested in strategic discussions
> and more interested in on-wiki fact-checking. Wikipedia editors' obsession
> for fact-checking is its strength—our strength. It's sometimes frustrating
> because it can go into silly technicalities or political ax-grinding, but
> for the most part it's the main thing that keeps Wikipedia relevant,
> trustworthy, and popular.
>
> How can these fact-checking practices be harmonized with current technology
> and media culture is the right question to ask. If the people who often do
> this can *also* occasionally participate in strategic development
> discussions, there's a chance it will be answered. Invite them.
>
> Happy public domain day and happy new year! :)
> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Jane Darnell]

Well of course it is impossible for me to peek in the kitchens of all other
Wikipedia article creators, but speaking for myself, I don't blindly type
into a blank editing window but prepare the way forward by knitting a
sweater of edits, generally across various projects, including other
language Wikipedias. I of course use Google to do the heavy lifting, often
triggered by some annoying incorrect thing I heard from Siri/Alexa, but it
could also be something inspiring I got off social media that made me
curious. I rarely go from inspiration to page creation in one go, and the
whole process sometimes takes me years. In the course of my tenure as a
Wikipedia editor, I have built up quite a library of random articles,
though most of them are related in some way to Dutch 17th century art.
Since becoming active on Wikidata, I have also built quite a library of
listeria lists in my userspace and elsewhere to check related edits across
projects and these sort of drown out everything else in my watchlists
unless I select a specific namespace only. In general, an article in my
process moves from "quote in Wikitext somewhere" to "quote+cited source(s)
in Wikitext somewhere" to  "quote+cited source(s)+media file in Wikitext
somewhere",  to  "quote+cited source(s)+Commons category for media file(s)
in Wikitext somewhere" before it ever sees the light of day as a
stand-alone article. These "pipeline nuggets" are often also line items in
lists (thus my first explanation), but most of them are not. Once created,
my articles are not orphans, but have a select number of incoming links
that I also try to keep track of. Aside from my own personal "article
pipeline", I also spend time de-orphanizing and interlinking such nuggets
in existing articles and I would love to be able to watch them all in
two-way linked stereo, but that is impossible today.

On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 9:57 AM Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

> I would see more items to watchlist, as in place of one large item you
> would have all the components to worry about.
> I don't follow the easier to de-orphanise aspect.
> Also don’t see how having to have the reference section on half a dozen
> sub-articles is simpler than having the whole list on one. In the extreme
> case where no reference is used in multiple sections, it would be roughly
> the same, where a reference is used across several sections, which is
> common, it looks like more work: from a little more, to a lot more.
> Unless I misunderstand your meaning...
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Jane Darnell
> Sent: 31 December 2018 10:41
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?
>
> 1) Not that I know of, 2) not that I know of, 3) fewer items to watchlist
> and maintain (if one creates them), easier to de-orphanize articles, and
> easier to curate pieces of large wikipages where it's hard to check the
> relevant used references.
>
> On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 9:14 AM Peter Southwood <
> peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
>
> > Does the technology exist? Is it available?
> > How does this splitting make maintenance easier?
> > Cheers,
> > Peter
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> > Behalf Of Jane Darnell
> > Sent: 30 December 2018 15:42
> > To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?
> >
> > Well it is not difficult to imagine when you consider for example line
> > items in the case of list articles. Many lists could be split into such
> > line items and kept in a static assembled form by some sort of "assembly
> > template". Many of these line items are either articles or parts of
> > articles. Such "line items" may or may not have Wikidata items, may or
> may
> > not be suitable for Wikidata items, and may or may not be able to be
> > structured in any way, shape or form than the one they currently have. I
> > would like to be able to address these "line items" as "findable editing
> > snippets" in the wikiverse, possibly curatable by voice activation,
> > reversing the way we can sometimes get them read to us by Siri/Lexa.
> >
> > On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 1:48 PM Peter Southwood <
> > peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Jane,
> > > I do not understand what parts you would split these things into, or
> how
> > > they would make Wikipedia easier to curate and edit. Could you link to
> an
> > 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Jane Darnell]

1) Not that I know of, 2) not that I know of, 3) fewer items to watchlist
and maintain (if one creates them), easier to de-orphanize articles, and
easier to curate pieces of large wikipages where it's hard to check the
relevant used references.

On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 9:14 AM Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

> Does the technology exist? Is it available?
> How does this splitting make maintenance easier?
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Jane Darnell
> Sent: 30 December 2018 15:42
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?
>
> Well it is not difficult to imagine when you consider for example line
> items in the case of list articles. Many lists could be split into such
> line items and kept in a static assembled form by some sort of "assembly
> template". Many of these line items are either articles or parts of
> articles. Such "line items" may or may not have Wikidata items, may or may
> not be suitable for Wikidata items, and may or may not be able to be
> structured in any way, shape or form than the one they currently have. I
> would like to be able to address these "line items" as "findable editing
> snippets" in the wikiverse, possibly curatable by voice activation,
> reversing the way we can sometimes get them read to us by Siri/Lexa.
>
> On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 1:48 PM Peter Southwood <
> peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
>
> > Jane,
> > I do not understand what parts you would split these things into, or how
> > they would make Wikipedia easier to curate and edit. Could you link to an
> > explanation or clarify the concept?
> > Cheers,
> > Peter
> >
> >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Jane Darnell]

Well it is not difficult to imagine when you consider for example line
items in the case of list articles. Many lists could be split into such
line items and kept in a static assembled form by some sort of "assembly
template". Many of these line items are either articles or parts of
articles. Such "line items" may or may not have Wikidata items, may or may
not be suitable for Wikidata items, and may or may not be able to be
structured in any way, shape or form than the one they currently have. I
would like to be able to address these "line items" as "findable editing
snippets" in the wikiverse, possibly curatable by voice activation,
reversing the way we can sometimes get them read to us by Siri/Lexa.

On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 1:48 PM Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

> Jane,
> I do not understand what parts you would split these things into, or how
> they would make Wikipedia easier to curate and edit. Could you link to an
> explanation or clarify the concept?
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Jane Darnell]

I still believe we need to "explode Wikipedia", by which I mean split
curation templates, categories, lists and all other articles into more
easily editable and curatable parts. This enables better linking to
discrete Wikidata items while reducing the tedious task of curation for
extremely long articles. Your comments, Peter, are still based on the
18-year-old idea of "it's the info that matters". It's no longer just the
content that matters. Content curation, once advertised as being super
simple (and still in the byline as "everybody can edit"), has become a
tedious and complicated task, and efforts to make it easier have resulted
with the visual editor for mobile, which still doesn't work for uploading
to Commons. We need better upload interfaces for fixing spelling mistakes,
adding blue links, categories, media, and all other common tasks. We should
not let Google decide which sentences to index first, but we should be
enabling those decisions to be made by human editors. Findability should
reflect editability and it doesn't.

On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 9:18 AM Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

> Hi Yaroslav,
> Several recent developments relate to this situation which I think you
> have described reasonably well.
> Short descriptions help a bit. But they are too short to help much
> Simple Wikipedia tries to keep things simple and easily understood, but
> perhaps concentrates too much on a small vocabulary.
> I do see a real need and a use for a "Readers Digest" or "executive
> summary" version of long and complex articles for people who don’t have a
> need for the full story, but as a complementary version, possibly linked
> from the top of a desktop view, and possibly the primary target in mobile.
> This would not be needed for all articles.
> Cheers,
> Peter Southwood
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Yaroslav Blanter
> Sent: 29 December 2018 23:34
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?
>
> I have written a long text today (posted in my FB) which the readers of
> this mailing list might find interesting. I copy it below. I understand
> that it is very easy to critisize me for side issues, but if you want to
> comment/reply I would appreciate if you address the main issue. The target
> audience I was thinking about was general (not necessarily
> Wikimedia-oriented), and for the readers from this mailing list the first
> several paragraphs can sound trivial (or even trivial and wrong). I
> apologize in advance.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
> _
> I currently have a bit of time and can write on the future of Wikipedia.
> Similarly to much of what I write it is probably going to be useless, but
> someone may find it interesting. For simplicity, I will be explicitly
> talking about the English Wikipedia (referring to it as Wikipedia). I am
> active in other projects as well, and some of them have similar issues, but
> there are typically many other things going on there which make the picture
> more complicated.
>
> Let us first look at the current situation. Wikipedia exists since 2001,
> and in a couple of weeks will turn 18. Currently, it has 5.77 million
> articles. I often hear an opinion that all important articles have already
> been created. This is incorrect, and I am often the first person to point
> out that this is not correct. For example, today I created an article on an
> urban locality in Russia with the population of 15 thousands. Many articles
> are indeed too short, badly written, or suffer from other issues, and they
> need to be improved. There are new topics which appear on a regular basis:
> new music performers, new winners of sports competitions or prizes, and so
> on. As any Web 2.0 project, Wikipedia requires a regular cleanup, since
> there are many people happy to vandalize the 5th website in the world in
> terms of the number of views. However, as a general guideline, it is not so
> much incorrect to state that all important things in Wikipedia have been
> already written. Indeed, if someone looks for information in Wikipedia -
> or, more precisely, uses search engines and gets Wikipedia as the first hit
> — they are likely to find what they need with more than 99% chance.
>
> In this sense, Wikipedia now is very different from Wikipedia in 2008 or
> Wikipedia in 2004. Ten and especially fifteen years ago, everybody could
> contribute something important. For example, the article on the 1951 film
> "A Streetcar Named Desire", which won four Academy Awards, was started in
> 2005, as well as an article on Cy Twombly, at the time probably the most
> famous living artist. This is not possible anymore. This is why the number
> of active editors is currently dropping - to contribute to the content in a
> meaningful way, one now has to be an advanced amateur - to master some
> field of knowledge much better than most others 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Contents of annual reports from Wikimedia affiliate organizations

[Jane Darnell]

As a learning organization, it is already the case that the reporting
burden is often higher than the invested resources. It's been that way for
years. Fortunately, we have had the luck over the years to attract
dedicated volunteers all over the world to help out with the burden or give
feedback and tips how to cope, and most hired hands by now are used to the
WMF changing the reporting rules with each passing year. I think that is
inherent in a mostly volunteer-staffed worldwide multi-lingual network of
people trying to comply both with local community needs/desires, local tax
authorities, and the WMF.

On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 8:40 AM Bence Damokos  wrote:

> Dear Pine,
>
> Just as a thought experiment try to think through how your proposal would
> work for an all-volunteer organisation:
> A small group of volunteers starts some programme, and at the same time
> they hire a contractor (issue an ad, check CVs, hold interviews, draw up a
> contract, monitor and pay invoices, pay any applicable taxes and social
> security contributions) whose job it is to keep track of the hours and
> money the volunteers spend on the programme and on the administration of it
> (including the resources spent on hiring, managing and overseeing the
> contractor), plus the global metrics. (The situation is not much better if
> the contractor is hired at the end of the project and his job is to
> interview everyone, and for the volunteers they need to keep records in
> order to be able to reply to the questions.)
>
> In the end, you have to retain proportionality of invested resources vs.
> level of reporting burden.
>
> Best regards,
> Bence
>
> On Fri, 30 Nov 2018, 01:12 Pine W 
> > I'm going to respond to both Chris and Gerard in one email.
> >
> > Gerard:
> >
> > * I agree that it's possible to over-bureaucratize projects, including
> > small projects. This is one of the reasons that I think that performance
> > analysis should mostly be done with staff or contractor time rather than
> > volunteer time. I don't want small projects to get exempted from
> > accountability, but I also don't want small projects to be weighed down
> > with unreasonable administrative overhead.
> >
> > * I agree that WMF Community Resources has room for improvement. I may
> have
> > accidentally implied that I think that WMF always does things well and
> > always makes good decisions. I too have had experiences of WMF Community
> > Resources staff taking far too long to respond to inquiries. However, WMF
> > has the money for grants for Wikimedia activities, and there are few
> > alternatives to WMF for financial support of Wikimedia affiliate and
> > individual projects. If WMF Community Resources' level of responsiveness
> is
> > going to improve then WMF will need to choose to make changes.
> >
> > Chris:
> >
> > * I make a distinction between the formation of a user group, and that
> user
> > group running programs. If a user group runs a single small program, and
> > correspondingly has little money, then there should be little to report.
> A
> > user group which runs multiple programs and is handling many thousands of
> > dollars' worth of funds will have more extensive reporting requirements.
> I
> > think that staff or contractors should complete most of the reporting and
> > analysis so that volunteers are not burdened with that work. I would like
> > volunteers to be able to focus on mission, on the creation and execution
> of
> > programs, on developing supportive relationships, and on the strategic
> > decision-making for their user group, rather than spending significant
> time
> > and effort on administrative activities like writing reports.
> >
> > * I don't see a way to get out of having multiple reporting systems, such
> > as for national tax authorities and for grantmakers such as WMF. Many
> > charities deal with this. I think that most of the reporting work can be
> > done with staff or contractor time rather than volunteer time.
> >
> > * Regarding "There is no consensus around what metrics actually matter.
> > Global Metrics were only ever presented as a first draft of an answer,
> and
> > for many projects they are simply poor metrics. The movement's focus for
> > the last 3-4 years has been on movement entities developing their own
> > metrics that are relevant to their own activities. Standardising on naive
> > metrics would be a step backwards.", I partly agree and partly disagree.
> I
> > think that we should have ways to compare performance of programs
> > affiliates, so that everyone can learn which affiliates and programs tend
> > to be especially good or problematic. Over time, as affiliates learn from
> > each other, ideally this should lead to more efficient uses of resources,
> > and to more effective programs and affiliates. Having common metrics
> goes a
> > long way toward determining which practices are most effective and which
> > should be changed or discontinued. I agree that custom metrics may in
> > vario

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Contents of annual reports from Wikimedia affiliate organizations

[Jane Darnell]

Pine,
I totally agree with "I would like to see more peer leadership
from affiliates and less reliance on WMF for both grantmaking and
trademarks." I would hope that this type of thing is starting to show up in
the larger chapter/thorg/user group plans. I like the idea of custom
metrics, especially in light of this statement. An org the size of WMF is
not likely to be leading in this respect. The smaller groups are where you
would expect leadership in this aspect too. I also agree that custom
metrics should not be instead of the WMF metrics requirements - the one is
more for global reporting, and the other is more for local reporting.

Jane

On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 1:12 AM Pine W  wrote:

> I'm going to respond to both Chris and Gerard in one email.
>
> Gerard:
>
> * I agree that it's possible to over-bureaucratize projects, including
> small projects. This is one of the reasons that I think that performance
> analysis should mostly be done with staff or contractor time rather than
> volunteer time. I don't want small projects to get exempted from
> accountability, but I also don't want small projects to be weighed down
> with unreasonable administrative overhead.
>
> * I agree that WMF Community Resources has room for improvement. I may have
> accidentally implied that I think that WMF always does things well and
> always makes good decisions. I too have had experiences of WMF Community
> Resources staff taking far too long to respond to inquiries. However, WMF
> has the money for grants for Wikimedia activities, and there are few
> alternatives to WMF for financial support of Wikimedia affiliate and
> individual projects. If WMF Community Resources' level of responsiveness is
> going to improve then WMF will need to choose to make changes.
>
> Chris:
>
> * I make a distinction between the formation of a user group, and that user
> group running programs. If a user group runs a single small program, and
> correspondingly has little money, then there should be little to report. A
> user group which runs multiple programs and is handling many thousands of
> dollars' worth of funds will have more extensive reporting requirements. I
> think that staff or contractors should complete most of the reporting and
> analysis so that volunteers are not burdened with that work. I would like
> volunteers to be able to focus on mission, on the creation and execution of
> programs, on developing supportive relationships, and on the strategic
> decision-making for their user group, rather than spending significant time
> and effort on administrative activities like writing reports.
>
> * I don't see a way to get out of having multiple reporting systems, such
> as for national tax authorities and for grantmakers such as WMF. Many
> charities deal with this. I think that most of the reporting work can be
> done with staff or contractor time rather than volunteer time.
>
> * Regarding "There is no consensus around what metrics actually matter.
> Global Metrics were only ever presented as a first draft of an answer, and
> for many projects they are simply poor metrics. The movement's focus for
> the last 3-4 years has been on movement entities developing their own
> metrics that are relevant to their own activities. Standardising on naive
> metrics would be a step backwards.", I partly agree and partly disagree. I
> think that we should have ways to compare performance of programs
> affiliates, so that everyone can learn which affiliates and programs tend
> to be especially good or problematic. Over time, as affiliates learn from
> each other, ideally this should lead to more efficient uses of resources,
> and to more effective programs and affiliates. Having common metrics goes a
> long way toward determining which practices are most effective and which
> should be changed or discontinued. I agree that custom metrics may in
> various cases be good to have in addition to Global Metrics. Maybe a way to
> think about this is that Global Metrics are necessary but not always
> sufficient.
>
> * I have very mixed feelings about WMF and Affcom issuing edicts to
> affiliates. I want affiliates and WMF to make good use of money and
> volunteers' time. For better and for worse WMF owns the trademarks and is
> the most significant source of funds for Wikimedia affiliates. Also, Affcom
> currently sets the reporting requirements for affiliates' annual reports.
> So WMF and Affcom have significant ability to use their authorities for
> good purposes. In the longer term, I would like to see more peer leadership
> from affiliates and less reliance on WMF for both grantmaking and
> trademarks. Perhaps in the course of the strategy work there will be some
> good developments. But I don't think that the ongoing development of
> long-term strategy is a reason to wait to require standardized financial
> and performance information in affiliates' annual reports, or to wait to
> provide staff or contractor time to produce and analyze financial an

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Jamal Khashoggi's call to action

[Jane Darnell]

Apparently his editor Karen Attiah at WaPo has already made Khashoggi's
works available in Arabic (I assume everything was published originally in
English, but not sure)
https://twitter.com/KarenAttiah/status/1052150458960281600

On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 2:50 AM Samuel Klein  wrote:

> The Global Voices translation team
>  may have
> thoughts.   Syndication services may help use of the translations begets
> interest.
> Perhaps process insight from the AP?
>
> On Wed, Oct 17, 2018 at 10:52 PM Erik Moeller  wrote:
>
> > Up until recently, Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi worked for
> > the Washington Post. What happened to him? I couldn't say it better
> > than Wikipedia: [1]
> >
> > (begin quote)
> >
> >   On 2 October 2018, Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in
> >   Istanbul to obtain documents related to his marriage; he never left the
> >   building and was subsequently declared a missing person.
> >   Anonymous Turkish police sources have alleged that he was murdered
> >   and dismembered inside the consulate.
> >
> > (end quote)
> >
> > The Washington Post has now published Khashoggi's last column, titled
> > appropriately, "What the Arab world needs most is free expression".
> > [2] In it, he writes of the need for translation efforts and platforms
> > for free expression:
> >
> > (begin quote)
> >
> >   Arabs need to read in their own language so they can understand
> >   and discuss the various aspects and complications of democracy
> >   in the United States and the West. If an Egyptian reads an article
> >   exposing the actual cost of a construction project in Washington,
> >   then he or she would be able to better understand the implications
> >   of similar projects in his or her community.
> >
> >   The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational
> >   media so citizens can be informed about global events. More
> >   important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We
> >   suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education.
> >   Through the creation of an independent international forum,
> >   isolated from the influence of nationalist governments
> >   spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the
> >   Arab world would be able to address the structural problems
> >   their societies face.
> >
> > (end quote)
> >
> > I'm wondering what folks in the Wikimedia community and movement make
> > of this call to action. Is there more that Wikimedia can do, for
> > example, to support translation of news articles into many languages?
> >
> > There is nothing in Jamal's own op-ed that indicates that it would be
> > legally permissible to translate it. This is, unfortunately, the norm
> > for news; there are few outlets that use a Creative Commons license,
> > and those that do, typically tend to choose the most restrictive
> > variants.
> >
> > Perhaps there would be value in an organized community effort that
> > would pick up news articles [3] that _are_ licensed under free
> > licenses, and translate them into as many languages as possible. If
> > launched under a prominent umbrella -- e.g., Wikimedia --, this might
> > then also help incentivize more outlets to selectively license content
> > openly, permitting translation. Beyond its intrinsic value, such an
> > effort would also help the Wikimedia projects by expanding the reach
> > of impacted citations into more languages.
> >
> > Thoughts? Does Jamal's call to action resonate in other ways with
> > Wikimedia's mission?
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Erik
> >
> > [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal_Khashoggi -- written by
> > multiple authors and distributed under Creative Commons Attribution
> > ShareAlike-License 3.0 Unported
> >
> > [2]
> >
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/jamal-khashoggi-what-the-arab-world-needs-most-is-free-expression/2018/10/17/adfc8c44-d21d-11e8-8c22-fa2ef74bd6d6_story.html
> > -- quoted as fair use
> >
> > [3] Likely restricted to some subset of outlets, e.g., sources most
> > Wikipedia editions would accept as citations
> >
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
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> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
>
>
>
> --
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Conference 2019: New name, new concept, eligbility criteria

[Jane Darnell]

Yes, +1 to "This move means we have more leverage to organize
thematic-based or
regional-based events, with open participation. We should make sure that
all those events involve "learning" elements. And we need more support
from WMF (other any affiliates) to organise the other events."

I did attend the Berlin conference in 2017 for the strategy sessions and
even there you tend to get overloaded with information while concentrating
on specific tasks. I think it's a good idea to split out gatherings into
specific elements and then spread them around the world, because it gets
exhausting to try to do everything everywhere and at the same time at these
multi-purpose events. Alternatively, perhaps some of the key players could
be asked to answer short interviews on specific topics, which would greatly
reduce the need to fly around all the time. I know from experience that the
quickest way to learn stuff is to sit at a computer next to someone in the
know. However you can only ask people to do that a limited number of times.
It gets to the point where one only wants to help the people who one is
100% certain are going to use what one teaches them...short videos on
Commons might help with that problem.

On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 9:07 AM Devouard (gmail) 
wrote:

> I think it is a very good move.
>
> Berlin conference has a big default, which is that, contrariwise to our
> mouvement, it is not inclusive. This is a closed conference where only
> specific people may go. That naturally let out a whole lot of people.
> All those who do great things, but who are not representative of an
> affiliate. Berlin has become so big that increasingly, many decisions
> are made over there, in a closed environment. And those who are not part
> it are missing opportunities to weight in. And with the increasing
> number of affiliates, making this closed conference a central point for
> thinking, sharing, learning, is likely to create a *huge* monster very
> difficult to organise and very costly.
>
> I hear you when you say "it was a great opportunity to share knowledge
> and train people". This is true. But there is no reason not to provide
> this opportunity in more venues or more regularly.
>
> This move means we have more leverage to organize thematic-based or
> regional-based events, with open participation. We should make sure that
> all those events involve "learning" elements. And we need more support
> from WMF (other any affiliates) to organise the other events.
>
> Florence
>
>
> Le 25/09/2018 à 23:28, Shani Evenstein a écrit :
> > Dear Cornelius,
> >
> > Could you please elaborate re the decision to not include learning and
> > capacity building?
> > Events where Wikimedians from around the world gather together do not
> > happen every day, and especially as there will be representatives from
> most
> > affiliates, this is a great opportunity to share knowledge and train
> people
> > so they can go back to their local communities and spread that knowledge.
> > Besides Wikimania, which not everyone can attend, this is the other
> biggest
> > event we have to do just that. Shouldn't we seize this opportunity,
> > considering that it takes so much time, effort and money to bring
> everyone
> > together?
> >
> > Thanks for shedding some light on this issue.
> >
> > Best,
> > Shani.
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 12:20 AM, Cornelius Kibelka <
> > cornelius.kibe...@wikimedia.de> wrote:
> >
> >> Dear Pine,
> >>
> >> yes, "the organized part of the movement" is another term to describe
> the
> >> part of the Wikimedia movement that includes the WMF, its committees and
> >> the affiliates.
> >>
> >> Best regards
> >> Cornelius
> >>
> >> On Tue, 25 Sep 2018 at 22:23, Pine W  wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hello Daniela and Cornelius,
> >>>
> >>> Thank you for this update.
> >>>
> >>> Can you clarify what you mean by "The next conference will focus on the
> >>> Movement Strategy process and
> >>> movement governance for the organized part of the movement in general"?
> >> Are
> >>> you referring to governance for the WMF and affiliates? Online
> Wikimedia
> >>> activities are organized in varying degrees, but many of those
> activities
> >>> are not included in the scope of affiliates or represented by
> affiliates.
> >>>
> >>> Pine
> >>> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
> >>> ___
> >>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> >>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> >>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> >>> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> >>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> >>> 
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Cornelius Kibelka
> >> Program and Engagement Coordinator (PEC)
> >> for the Wikimedia Conference
> >>
> >> Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
> >> Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0
> >> http://wiki

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New Wikimedia Foundation has soft launched!

[Jane Darnell]

Wow. Just...wow.

On Wed, Aug 22, 2018 at 10:24 AM Antoine Musso  wrote:

> On 21/08/2018 21:01, Andy Mabbett wrote:
> >> The text I cited has now been changed to "All text on Wikimedia sites
> >> is available as Creative Commons material".
> >>
> >> This does not resolve the issue I raised above; as my first bullet
> >> point applies not only to media files, but also to numerous texts on
> >> Wikimedia sites; not least a large part of Wikisource.
> > This is still the case. When will it be fixed? Will it?
> >
> >>> Furthermore, the "Sesame Street" image used on the site's home page
> >>> and the linked article, is labelled on Commons: "This work might not
> >>> be available under a free license in the United States because it is
> >>> based on an artwork or sculpture that may be protected by copyright
> >>> under U.S. law."
> >> This image is still on the pages I mentioned.
> > And still is; over two weeks after I first pointed it out. No-one at
> > WMF has even acknowledged my comment.
>
> Hello,
>
> As several people pointed out, the issues should be reported on
> Phabricator. As "a b" stated on August 12th:
>
> >
> > Please file the relevant tasks in phabricator to enable better tracking
> of
> > issues compared to on the mailing list:
> >
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/edit/form/1/?tags=wikimediafoundation.org
>
> To which you kindly replied:
>
> > Thank you; no.
>
> So your concerns will be acknowledged once they make their way to
> Phabricator. You can login there with your wiki account.
>
> Until you do so, your concerns will stay under the radar on this list.
>
>
> --
> Antoine "hashar" Musso
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: First round of Working Group members

[Jane Darnell]

Well just speaking from my experience with the nlwiki community, there is
often a tendency to e.g. delete Belgian versions of local folklore or
cuisine, or merge these into Dutch local folklore or cuisine articles. I
think in general, you could say that most mono-lingualists are fairly
certain their country and by association, their language is the best, and
any other speakers of their language should either conform or start their
own wiki, never mind local grammar rules, etc. I am surprised you haven't
come across this at all - consider yourself lucky!

On Fri, Jul 27, 2018 at 1:35 PM, Paulo Santos Perneta <
paulospern...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello Jane,
>
> >
> ​
> I think that we are in fact split down the middle into parties that believe
> "some languages are better than others" and "let's save all existing
> languages on the planet, including all of their fonts ever used on- and
> offline".
>
> ​I don't know why do you wrote this, as I never had this impression, at
> all. We are split by languages since ​the Babel Tower was embargoed by God,
> but I never, ever remember hearing someone saying or even hinting that
> "some languages are better than others".
>
> All the best,
>
> Paulo
>
>
> 2018-07-25 8:28 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell :
>
> > Hmm. Yes and no. Yes the May 2017 conference suffered from some
> interesting
> > selection bias, but no the people there were not all brainwashed into
> > forgetting their "wildness". We are all still wild wild Wikipedians at
> > heart, speaking for the 2006 cohort in its entirety. I really doubt
> whether
> > the WMF is trying to shove us all in a direction of their choosing.
> > ​​
> > I think
> > that we are in fact split down the middle into parties that believe "some
> > languages are better than others" and "let's save all existing languages
> on
> > the planet, including all of their fonts ever used on- and offline". Then
> > there is a huge discrepancy in workflow for these people and the folks
> who
> > work in just one language and never think of language as a movement topic
> > at all. Among this monolingual crowd (many of whom do not subscribe to
> any
> > mailing list or other communication outlets) are the overlapping groups
> > between the "field workers" and the "library workers". The field workers
> > tend to operate more by a "drive-by" methodology, and the "library
> workers"
> > tend to operate more by a "step-by-step" methodology. I respectfully
> submit
> > that we have all dabbled in all of these worlds and therefore we all have
> > enough common sense to shout "Whoa!" if something really really wrong
> gets
> > proposed. But in the past I have felt quite strongly that something was
> > really really wrong, but it turned out it was just a factor of me being
> > unaware of workflow difficulties experienced by others. So e.g.
> personally
> > I was against the idea of "protected pages" but have come around to
> seeing
> > they are useful - even on Wikidata.
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 24, 2018 at 10:12 PM, Anders Wennersten <
> > m...@anderswennersten.se> wrote:
> >
> > > As I see it the strategy process is run for the functionaries in the
> > > movement and by them. People with focus on contributing to the projects
> > are
> > > not involved, when volunteers is mentioned it is mostly people running
> > > worskhops for beginners etc, a kind of semi functionaries, not the hard
> > > core contributes.
> > >
> > > This could be a good thing and foster a new set of moment leaders,
> fully
> > > in agreement with goals and strategy. It could also be seen as a
> > weakness,
> > > as we do not recognize the more "wild" (but creative)y culture in our
> > > communities and only have the "nice" and obedient culture being
> accepted.
> > >
> > > Facts
> > >
> > > The vision  was really created in Wikiconf 2017 by functionaries
> > >
> > > The way forward was defined by Wikiconf 2017 by functionaries
> > >
> > > The set up of work groups was from the beginning set up  to include
> > (only)
> > > functionaries (time requirement, and first it was also talked of
> > candidates
> > > should be endorsed by local chapters). And the actual selection was not
> > > done transparent as is the culture of the communities but by "boss"
> > > selection (I only feel the movement is starting to resemble a big
&

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: First round of Working Group members

[Jane Darnell]

Hmm. Yes and no. Yes the May 2017 conference suffered from some interesting
selection bias, but no the people there were not all brainwashed into
forgetting their "wildness". We are all still wild wild Wikipedians at
heart, speaking for the 2006 cohort in its entirety. I really doubt whether
the WMF is trying to shove us all in a direction of their choosing. I think
that we are in fact split down the middle into parties that believe "some
languages are better than others" and "let's save all existing languages on
the planet, including all of their fonts ever used on- and offline". Then
there is a huge discrepancy in workflow for these people and the folks who
work in just one language and never think of language as a movement topic
at all. Among this monolingual crowd (many of whom do not subscribe to any
mailing list or other communication outlets) are the overlapping groups
between the "field workers" and the "library workers". The field workers
tend to operate more by a "drive-by" methodology, and the "library workers"
tend to operate more by a "step-by-step" methodology. I respectfully submit
that we have all dabbled in all of these worlds and therefore we all have
enough common sense to shout "Whoa!" if something really really wrong gets
proposed. But in the past I have felt quite strongly that something was
really really wrong, but it turned out it was just a factor of me being
unaware of workflow difficulties experienced by others. So e.g. personally
I was against the idea of "protected pages" but have come around to seeing
they are useful - even on Wikidata.

On Tue, Jul 24, 2018 at 10:12 PM, Anders Wennersten <
m...@anderswennersten.se> wrote:

> As I see it the strategy process is run for the functionaries in the
> movement and by them. People with focus on contributing to the projects are
> not involved, when volunteers is mentioned it is mostly people running
> worskhops for beginners etc, a kind of semi functionaries, not the hard
> core contributes.
>
> This could be a good thing and foster a new set of moment leaders, fully
> in agreement with goals and strategy. It could also be seen as a weakness,
> as we do not recognize the more "wild" (but creative)y culture in our
> communities and only have the "nice" and obedient culture being accepted.
>
> Facts
>
> The vision  was really created in Wikiconf 2017 by functionaries
>
> The way forward was defined by Wikiconf 2017 by functionaries
>
> The set up of work groups was from the beginning set up  to include (only)
> functionaries (time requirement, and first it was also talked of candidates
> should be endorsed by local chapters). And the actual selection was not
> done transparent as is the culture of the communities but by "boss"
> selection (I only feel the movement is starting to resemble a big company,
> not the vibrant communities)
>
> Anders
>
>
>
> Den 2018-07-24 kl. 21:29, skrev Yaroslav Blanter:
>
>> On Tue, Jul 24, 2018 at 9:16 PM, David Cuenca Tudela 
>> wrote:
>>
>> I do not know what really happened but if I listen to what has been said
>> here and earlier on similar occasions, my conclusion is that for the
>> Strategy Team we - volunteers who are working on the projects but are not
>> associated with the chapters, do not show up at Wikimania, do not attend
>> real-life tutorials organized by WMF - just do not exist.
>>
>> If this is the case, this is a serious gap to be bridged. So far I have
>> net
>> see even an acknowledgement of its existence.
>>
>> Cheers
>> Yaroslav
>> ___
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>>
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gendergap approach causing problems

[Jane Darnell]

Fae,
No, I have come to disagree that "The Wikipedia community has the most
success at correcting gender bias by encouraging interested volunteers of
any gender to create articles which help correct that bias, in all
subjects." This is simply because of our rules regarding references. Oddly,
Wikipedia can at best only echo the systemic bias, but will never be able
to correct it. To see what I mean, have a look at the percentage female per
occupation over at the dicare project. Traditional female professions such
as "nurse" or even "nun" have lower percentages female than traditional
male professions such as football players have percentages male. Wikipedia
currently amplifies systemic bias, and that is not Wikipedia's fault. If
you pick up any newspaper and count the gender per obituary you will never
approach 50% female (at least not in my lifetime). Of course if you mean by
"correct it" to increase efforts like "Women in Red" to inch our percentage
of 17% overal to 18% then yes, I do believe that is feasible.

Yesterday I attended a Pieter Pourbus painting exhibition in Gouda and the
booklet states in the opening paragraph "He married the daughter of the
famous painter Lancelot Blondeel". My companion drily remarked "Didn't she
have a name?". I think you will find that such sentences are all over
Wikipedia, in all sorts of biography leads. The women are mentioned
implicitly more often for their wombs than anything else. Almost like
fauna! Here in the Netherlands, the Dutch Wikipedia chased off an editor
who was trying to correct systemic bias in the country's archives
databases. She ended up publishing a book of female biographies called
"1001 Vrouwen" that resurrected the overlooked biographies of notable Dutch
women up to 1900. The next one for women of the 20th-century  is coming out
this year. Now we have references, so we have those 1001 women in Wikidata
and lots of new articles about Dutch women in various language Wikipedias.
To really help "correct" the gender bias, we need to do much more outreach,
because we will never get there with the academic aggregate databases
available to us today.
Jane

On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 11:31 AM, Fæ  wrote:

> On 7 May 2018 at 10:01, FRED BAUDER  wrote:
> > Women editors might have something to add about nursing and the history
> of nursing that adds gender-specific value, increasing our coverage of the
> subject. So a workshop at a nursing convention might be valuable.
> >
> > Fred
> >
> > - Original Message -
> > From: Amir E. Aharoni 
> > To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> > Sent: Mon, 07 May 2018 04:52:31 -0400 (EDT)
> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gendergap approach causing problems
> >
> > 2018-05-07 9:55 GMT+03:00 Jane Darnell :
> >
> >> Amir,
> >> It's funny - after reading your mail I wondered if I had read Romaine's
> >> mail correctly.
> >
> >
> > You had probably read it correctly.
> >
> > Generally, I'm wondering whether direct invitations to women or people of
> > color (or women of color, etc.) work as they should. Many people say that
> > they work. They may be right, at least in part. If I understand
> correctly,
> > Romaine says that he has doubts about it, and he's probably right, too,
> at
> > least for some people.
> >
> > I'm just trying to say that diversity is important. How do we reach it? I
> > don't have very good answers. Probably not "one size fits all".
> >
> > I mean, I want that woman about whom Romaine was speaking to contribute
> her
> > knowledge. I want everybody to contribute their knowledge. Unless I
> missed
> > it, Romaine didn't write what is her expertise, but just for the sake of
> > the example, let's make something up and say that it's Astronomy.
> >
> > Do I want her to contribute her knowledge about Astronomy? Of course I
> do.
> > Should I tell her that I hope that she contributes her knowledge about
> > Astronomy? I probably should. (Do correct me if I'm wrong.)
> >
> > Do I think that she has something to say about Astronomy that men don't?
> > Yes, it's quite possible. Should I tell her that? Hmm, I don't know.
> Maybe,
> > maybe not. I think that this is the question that Romaine is trying to
> > raise. And again, please correct me if I'm wrong.
> > ___
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> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
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> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: ht

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gendergap approach causing problems

[Jane Darnell]

erently bias system that
> favours those of colonial heritage with colonial records over those who
> dont have that historical privilege, we encourage this as Romaine put its
> with a tokenism of participation and expectation of contributions
> conforming to maintain that bias.  While we do that we dont actually value
> the contributor or the contributions nor what else can be brought to the
> community.
>
>
> On 7 May 2018 at 17:31, Fæ  wrote:
>
> > On 7 May 2018 at 10:01, FRED BAUDER  wrote:
> > > Women editors might have something to add about nursing and the history
> > of nursing that adds gender-specific value, increasing our coverage of
> the
> > subject. So a workshop at a nursing convention might be valuable.
> > >
> > > Fred
> > >
> > > - Original Message -
> > > From: Amir E. Aharoni 
> > > To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> > > Sent: Mon, 07 May 2018 04:52:31 -0400 (EDT)
> > > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gendergap approach causing problems
> > >
> > > 2018-05-07 9:55 GMT+03:00 Jane Darnell :
> > >
> > >> Amir,
> > >> It's funny - after reading your mail I wondered if I had read
> Romaine's
> > >> mail correctly.
> > >
> > >
> > > You had probably read it correctly.
> > >
> > > Generally, I'm wondering whether direct invitations to women or people
> of
> > > color (or women of color, etc.) work as they should. Many people say
> that
> > > they work. They may be right, at least in part. If I understand
> > correctly,
> > > Romaine says that he has doubts about it, and he's probably right, too,
> > at
> > > least for some people.
> > >
> > > I'm just trying to say that diversity is important. How do we reach
> it? I
> > > don't have very good answers. Probably not "one size fits all".
> > >
> > > I mean, I want that woman about whom Romaine was speaking to contribute
> > her
> > > knowledge. I want everybody to contribute their knowledge. Unless I
> > missed
> > > it, Romaine didn't write what is her expertise, but just for the sake
> of
> > > the example, let's make something up and say that it's Astronomy.
> > >
> > > Do I want her to contribute her knowledge about Astronomy? Of course I
> > do.
> > > Should I tell her that I hope that she contributes her knowledge about
> > > Astronomy? I probably should. (Do correct me if I'm wrong.)
> > >
> > > Do I think that she has something to say about Astronomy that men
> don't?
> > > Yes, it's quite possible. Should I tell her that? Hmm, I don't know.
> > Maybe,
> > > maybe not. I think that this is the question that Romaine is trying to
> > > raise. And again, please correct me if I'm wrong.
> > > ___
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
> > >
> > >
> > > ___
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> > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
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> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
> >
> > Thanks for reminding everyone that we live in the 21st Century, where
> > there are plenty of women role models at the top of previously male
> > dominated professions, not just nursing.
> >
> > The Wikipedia community has the most success at correcting gender bias
> > by encouraging interested volunteers of any gender to create articles
> > which help correct that bias, in all subjects.
> >
> > Fae
> > --
> > fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
> >
> > ___
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> > wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikime

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gendergap approach causing problems

[Jane Darnell]

Amir,
It's funny - after reading your mail I wondered if I had read Romaine's
mail correctly. Rereading both it seems that is exactly what you were
trying to say - we all carry our own little bundle of biases with us
whereever we go and whatever we read. When I read Romaine's mail I stopped
cold at "tokenism" - for me tokenism is when you count the paintings by
women in any museum and you find none of the women have more than one
painting in the collection, though they have lots and lots of male artists
with more than 20 works in the collection.

When it comes to Wiki meetups, everyone has their own reasons for wanting
to come or not. I have a feeling at edit-a-thons open to the general public
that it's a bit like being in a cage or aquarium where you yourself are the
attraction. Instead of meeting people who want to contribute I tend to get
questioned about my own motivations. I agree that as a member of this list
I am already a hard-core insider of this movement and can no longer think
about these things in a "normal" way (i.e. as a reader). What I do know
from talking to lots of family and friends is that most people have
absolutely no clue about our gaps in knowledge or have even heard of the
gendergap at all. When I say gendergap, they think gender pay gap and I
have to start explaining that no one is paid for their edits (which always
leads the conversation into a whole new tangent).

When it comes to the women, thankfully the word "nonbinary" is relatively
new and we can easily measure the binary gender with Wikidata queries to
see how we are doing. This is still sketchy and problematic, because lots
of historical women and men still do not have their gender assigned at all
on Wikidata - binary or not. We still can't measure gendergap per
occupation, language, or citizenship however, because those statements are
also still mostly lacking for most historical people. Citizenship is
actually quite comical when you start drilling into the data on Wikidata.
Some people want to be extremely specific about borders, which makes some
towns flip all around in terms of citizenship for people who don't have
precise birthdates - did I mention that women don't like to disclose their
birthdates? I would LOVE to be able to count brown and black women, but
this is of course completely off limits to us due to ethical concerns.

Here in the Netherlands we are going to hold a hackathon for women. I will
talk about Wikidata and hope to recruit a few women to help out with the
maintenance lists on women, such as this one:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Women/Wiki_monitor/lawiki

My hopes based on previous events, are not high.
Best,
Jane

On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 8:03 AM, Amir E. Aharoni <
amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:

> This is a sensitive topic, and I'm a white man myself, so please slap me if
> I say something dumb.
>
> 2018-05-07 7:10 GMT+03:00 Romaine Wiki :
>
> >
> > What has happened?
> >
> > She was invited to participate in a Wikimedia activity, because:
> > 1. she is a woman
> > 2. she is from a minority
> > 3. she is from an area in the world with much less editors (compared to
> > Europe/US)
> >
> > and perhaps also because her colour of her skin is a bit different then
> > mine (Caucasian).
> >
> > At the same time she has the impression that the work she does on the
> > Wikimedia wiki('s) is not valued, nor taken into account.
> >
>
> By whom?
>
> By the people who invited her?
>
> By other participants in the event?
>
> By other editors in the same wiki site?
>
> By the readers?
>
>
>
> > She does not want to be invited because she is a woman, nor because she
> is
> > from a minority, nor ... etc. This is offensive.
> > She only wants to be invited because of the work she contributes on
> > Wikipedia/etc.
> >
>
> This makes a lot of sense to me, but that's just me and attitudes are
> different for each person.
>
>
> > Besides the many good initiatives and intentions, this kind of approaches
> > to our contributors is demotivating them, please be aware of this.
>
>
> Again, it's probably demotivating to some. Maybe to 98%, maybe to 30%,
> maybe to 5%. I honestly don't know.
>
> I believe demotivation/frustration is the largest problem we face as
> > movement.
> >
>
> I don't know if its the biggest problem. On this mailing list we are a
> small group of meta-active Wikimedians, and we are the minority among
> editors. We don't actually represent all the editors. And of course the
> editors are a tiny minority compared to the readers.
>
> I'd argue that the hard time that some editors are giving newcomers is a
> bigger problem. Gender is certainly a part of that, and there are many
> other parts.
>
> We meta-wikimedians can find a better way to invite people to events, and
> we can change ourselves. That doesn't sound too hard. Changing the wider
> editor culture is harder.
>
> I heard from people that the problem described is called tokenism
> > 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] The fact-checked encyclopedia

[Jane Darnell]

I just tried googling Wikipedia and am not seeing that result at all. I see
" *Wikipedia* is a free online encyclopedia, created and edited by
volunteers around the world and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation."

When I do the same search on mobile, I see the same thing, except this time
it is accompanied by the Dutch version, which I personally find very cute,
and very Dutch.  Consider it the "Eeyore version of explaining free
knowlege".

On Sun, Apr 15, 2018 at 6:42 PM, Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

> I would like to try that but could not work out what to do from the link
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of James Salsman
> Sent: 15 April 2018 18:11
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] The fact-checked encyclopedia
>
> If we want to do fact checking, which we do whether Congress has
> decided publishers are responsible for the content of their
> publications or not, the way to automate it is shown at
> https://priyankamandikal.github.io/posts/gsoc-2016-project-overview/
>
> Best regards,
> Jim
>
> On Sun, Apr 15, 2018 at 9:35 AM, Amir E. Aharoni
>  wrote:
> > I'd just stick to "The Free Encyclopedia". It's a thing we can really
> agree
> > upon. (We can, right? Please tell me we can.)
> >
> > But I am curious - who made this ad?
> >
> > בתאריך יום א׳, 15 באפר׳ 2018, 15:54, מאת Anthony Cole ‏<
> ahcole...@gmail.com
> >>:
> >
> >> I just googled “wikipedia” and the first result was a Google ad linking
> to
> >> wikipedia.org.[1] It calls Wikipedia the fact-checked encyclopedia. We
> used
> >> to call it the encyclopedia anyone can edit. The latter seems more
> honest
> >> than this new formulation which to me implies a degree of reliability
> and
> >> oversight I'm not sure we can ethically assert. I missed the discussion
> >> about this new self-description. Did it happen on meta? Is anyone else
> >> uncomfortabe with this?
> >> --
> >> Anthony Cole
> >> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] BLP and the Wikidata / Wikipedia controversy

[Jane Darnell]

We don't need to ban statements when we can just deprecate them with a
reason. I think the whole point is to allow differing views equal weight,
based on sourced statements. By allowing statements to reside side-by-side
like this, it will be easy to see which Wikipedia projects (or sub-areas of
interest on Wikipedia projects) have the most disputed statements on
Wikidata. Right now that would be English Wikipedia overall of course, just
by sheer numbers of pages. However, we are already at a point where you can
look at specific sub-areas (players of certain national sports for example)
and look at the controversial statements per Wikipedia. It could be quite
interesting.

On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 9:26 AM, Yaroslav Blanter  wrote:

> Actually, I believe that at some point Wikidata will be ready to ban
> unsourced statements (including sources to other Wikimedia projects unless
> appropriate), which will automatically solve the BLP issue.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
> On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 8:37 AM, Peter Southwood <
> peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
>
> > Yes, this is one of the reasons why data from Wikidata must only be
> > included in a Wikipedia at the discretion of users of that specific
> > Wikipedia, like images from Commons.
> > Cheers,
> > Peter
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> > Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen
> > Sent: Sunday, 17 September 2017 10:14 AM
> > To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> > Subject: [Wikimedia-l] BLP and the Wikidata / Wikipedia controversy
> >
> > Hoi,
> > There is a lot to do about the current absence of a BLP policy at
> Wikidata.
> > Many people, particularly those involved in Wikipedia, insist on one and
> a
> > policy that is a mirror image of their policy.
> >
> > I am opposed to such an approach because it will be detrimental to the
> > best practices in Wikidata and it will stifle the inclusion of data.
> > Nevertheless there is a need for better quality particularly where it
> > concerns BLP.
> >
> > Only being against is a bad position so I have laid out the arguments for
> > a more inclusive BLP and quality approach [1]. It does bring many of the
> > relevant questions together.
> >
> > What this approach accomplishes is:
> > * better quality in both Wikipedia and Wikidata
> > * an opt in change in the Wikipedia environment that links blue and red
> > links to Wikidata items
> > * it allows for the Wikidata best practices
> > * it invites any Wikimedia collaborator to make a positive difference for
> > our overall BLP.
> >
> > What it does not provide is an instant BLP solution for Wikidata, this is
> > not realistic given the huge number of items involved, people often
> > specific to one or no Wikipedia. It will not convince everyone and that
> too
> > is to be expected. After all the proof of the pudding is in the eating
> and
> > not so much in the endless bickering.
> > Thanks,
> >   GerardM
> >
> > [1]
> > https://ultimategerardm.blogspot.nl/2017/09/wikimedia-
> > and-its-blp-approach.html
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Women through the glass ceiling: gender asymmetries in Wikipedia

[Jane Darnell]

I don't think so, but this has interested me. The problem is how to look at
the data in such a way that it is meaningful. I tried to break it down a
bit and I have presented about the differences in women's occupations
across language wikis and gender here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gendergap_-_female_percentage_per_occupation_en_nl_ja.png

Because of receiving timeouts I couldn't get all the data on the largest
wikis to do more work on the dataset, but this year I started tracking the
occupations linked to women in Wikidata per sitelinked language wiki using
Magnus's Listeria tool here:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Jane023/Number_of_women_per_occupation

Since I noticed lots of women on Wikidata were either linked to extremely
obscure occupations or mostly just still missing any occupation at all, I
decided to replicate the listeria list in userspace on some Wikipedias in
order to see if that helped, and it did. You can run the same query for any
language (I recommend trying it for Japanese or as you suggest, Arabic)

After looking at the Asian languages individually I noticed there are just
huge differences in the popular womens' occupations.

On Mon, Sep 25, 2017 at 8:30 PM, Jean-Philippe Béland  wrote:

> Good day,
>
> This is not related to gender bias, but an observation I made from reading
> this paper. Table 1 shows the different percentage of overlap between
> different languistic versions of Wikipedia with the English Wikipedia. Do
> anybody know if there are studies or reports focussed on that?
>
> For example, I notice that the Wikipedia with the less overlap from the
> above-mentioned table is the Arabic Wikipedia. To me, it seems to indicate
> another sort of bias on the English Wikipedia and other "Western" language
> Wikipedias in not necessarily including biographies from those parts of the
> world. Or maybe there is another "glass ceiling" not based on gender,
> meaning that somebody from the Middle East for instance needs to be more
> notable in average to be included on the English Wikipedia comparatively of
> somebody in North America or Europe. Do we have any analysis of that? Is
> that a question that is brought up in reflexions about bias?
>
> Thank you,
>
> JP
>
> On Fri, Sep 22, 2017 at 3:55 PM, James Heilman  wrote:
>
> > The article was discussing the proportion of articles about specific
> > gender and possible reasons why this situation exists. What I
> > mentioned was simply one among many potential explanation.
> >
> > James
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 22, 2017 at 12:53 PM, Eduardo Testart 
> > wrote:
> > > Hi again,
> > >
> > > I think the article is not related to paid editing, if you wish to
> > discuss
> > > that subject, you should probably open another thread.
> > >
> > > It would be nice if the discussion and comments can be kept on topic :)
> > >
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > >
> > > El sept. 22, 2017 3:49 PM, "James Heilman" 
> escribió:
> > >
> > > How do we know? Those who work extensively in this topic area and are
> > > good at picking up paid editing make an educated guess. There are well
> > > known patterns that represent paid editing. We could likely build a
> > > tool that could look at all BLPs and give a numerical value to the
> > > percentage that are most likely written for pay. If you look at a
> > > random group of new BLPs at WP:NPP you will also get a decent idea.
> > >
> > > James
> > >
> > > On Fri, Sep 22, 2017 at 12:22 PM, Andy Mabbett
> > >  wrote:
> > >> On 22 September 2017 at 18:24, James Heilman 
> wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> We know that a sizable proportion of articles
> > >>> about people are paid for by the individual themselves or their
> > >>> representative.
> > >>
> > >> We do? How? And what size is that "sizable proportion"?
> > >>
> > >> --
> > >> Andy Mabbett
> > >> @pigsonthewing
> > >> http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
> > >>
> > >> ___
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> > >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> ,
> > > 
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > James Heilman
> > > MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
> > >
> > > ___
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> > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Women through the glass ceiling: gender asymmetries in Wikipedia

[Jane Darnell]

Yes very interesting, if only to illustrate how difficult it is to get this
information reliably. It is also interesting to see those charts dating to
the days before Wikidata. One problem with using these stats is that pretty
much everything is a moving target. Yes there is a larger gap at the local
level for women, but what is "local"? Many women who became notable, did it
from home (e.g. writers, poets, abbesses, noblewomen). The systemic bias in
published pre-1900 sources throughout the world is also a factor, since
many encyclopedias focussed on clergy and military. The page rank is not a
reliable measure because we have no way of knowing what the gender is of
our reader base over time. When you break it down into professions, it is
also worth noting that professions that you would expect to be 99% female
(beauty pageant queen) turn out not to be. In fact, women score
systematically lower across the board, and per profession, need many more
"kudos" before becoming notable enough for an article (lots of abbesses,
but few theologians, etc)

On Fri, Sep 22, 2017 at 6:55 PM, Eduardo Testart  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>
>
> One of the members from Wikimedia Chile, independently from the chapter and
> before he became a member, was directly involved in the development of the
> following article, that adress the gender inequality (or gender bias), and
> which gives the title to the email:
>
> *https://epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10.
> 1140/epjds/s13688-016-0066-4
>  1140/epjds/s13688-016-0066-4>*
>
>
> It was published almost a year and half ago (March 1, 2016), and from an
> internal and informal conversation that occurred yesterday in the Chapter,
> he shared the link to the complete study
>  1140/epjds/s13688-016-0066-4>
> (in English). Worth to mention is that he presented preliminary results
> 
> (in Spanish) about it in the Wikimedia Chile Conference
>  from 2015.
>
>
> I read the complete article yesterday, and found it extremely interesting,
> so I took the liberty to share it here, in case you haven’t had the chance
> to read it yet.
>
>
> Also, the article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
> Attribution 4.0 International License :)
>
>
> Cheers!
> --
> Eduardo Testart
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Naive questions: what could do the movement with 1B dollars/euros?

[Jane Darnell]

I am pretty sure we already have the Bible translated in all the languages
(don't know because I didn't check). You inspired me though to think about
the benefits of interlinking it down to the word level and how that might
benefit Wikidata in achieving a level playing field in basic terminology
for everyday terms like "tree" "book" etc. We are still missing so many
labels on Wikidata. Sigh

On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 8:14 PM, Amir E. Aharoni <
amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:

> (I'm not sure I was understood correctly... I didn't mean translating the
> Bible to yet more languages, but translating an encyclopedia to more
> languages.)
>
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ‪“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
>
> 2017-05-17 21:11 GMT+03:00 Jane Darnell :
>
> > That is an interesting idea! Maybe we should be working on modelling the
> > Bible better on Wikidata and cross-referencing it to dictionaries and all
> > other religious texts. If it is so important for literacy, it may help
> > unite efforts on labelling in Wikidata. I have no idea how many words are
> > used in the Bible, but hopefully it will cover a lot of basic ground in
> any
> > language.
> > If the 2bn falls through I bet we could ask the Vatican for a grant to
> > Wikidatafy the entire Catholic encyclopedia.
> >
> > On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 7:38 PM, Amir E. Aharoni <
> > amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
> >
> > > Heh, I remember Mr Wales asking what could the movement do with a
> million
> > > dollars some time around 2006. Is anything on the horizon?
> > >
> > > What could we do? Many things; one of them would be to get our act
> > together
> > > and become a true leader in software and content localization.
> Currently
> > we
> > > are proud about maintaining MediaWiki, a piece of software that is
> > probably
> > > translated to more languages than any other, and that is great, but:
> > >
> > > 1. Our software localization tooling, excellent as it is, didn't become
> > the
> > > industry standard, even though it could with better packaging. Why is
> it
> > > important? Because a Wikipedia in a given language doesn't exist in
> > > isolation—it exists in an environment of other programs, sites,
> > platforms,
> > > and media. There was a (relatively) thriving software localization
> > > community in the Catalan language already in the 1990s (!), so it's not
> > > surprising that Catalan Wikipedia was the first to start after English,
> > and
> > > is among the most successful Wikimedia projects now. Making software
> > > localization better for everybody will bring computer usage to the
> whole
> > > world, and we can be the leaders in it, rather than leaving it to the
> > > corporations.
> > > 2. We have the theoretical ability to write articles in any language of
> > the
> > > world, but not everybody actually does it. Some language communities
> need
> > > stronger nudges than others to get going: Training about translation
> and
> > > scientific writing, developing terminology, developing spelling
> > > dictionaries, developing keyboards that allow convenient typing,
> literacy
> > > programs, etc. In a lot of languages the Bible is the only published
> > book;
> > > this happened thanks to donations from people who want to spread their
> > > religion around the world. If it can be done with the Bible, it can be
> > done
> > > with an encyclopedia.
> > > 3. We are influencing public policy in the area of copyright law, but
> we
> > > should be influencing public policy around the whole world to make
> > > localized computing and content more accessible. Lobbying needs
> > resources.
> > > See
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_
> > > movement/2017/Cycle_2/A_Truly_Global_Movement#Governments_
> > > and_computer_vendors:_Accessibility_to_localization_technology
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> > > http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> > > ‪“We're living in pieces,
> > > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
> > >
> > > 2017-05-17 20:08 GMT+03:00 David Cuenca Tudela :
> > >
> > > > Are there any activities that could have a meaningful impact if we
> ask
> > > > donors for

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Naive questions: what could do the movement with 1B dollars/euros?

[Jane Darnell]

I saw a very interesting documentary about a South American country
(Brazil? Argentina?) where they were already ignoring Western copyright law
in order to free up collaboration in science. I have no idea what the legal
repercussions are of doing something like that and from what I have seen on
English Wikipedia, it still looks like Big Pharma rules the medical world.
If we could somehow talk universities into daring to do open research,
sharing data from the beginning, then that would be key moving forward. Now
it seems to be a race in the dark to see who gets to publish first and the
data is always reverse-engineered later. Sad.

On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 8:02 PM, Andrea Zanni 
wrote:

> With that amount of money,
> we could probably put an end on closed science in less than a decade, and
> make open access and open science the new standard.
> There's already a lot of efforts going on, but incumbent publishers are
> much more rich and resourceful.
> Lobbying, advocacy, outreach could do a lot, from our part.
> We are probably better equipped to coordinate bottom-up efforts
> (hackathons, tools and whatnot), and we would be better suited for the
> whole diplomatic/political/top-down side of it.
>
> Making open science the new standard would be a goal to itself and leverage
> for other results.
> We'd end up with a lot more free content for Wikimedia projects, probably
> better advocacy and outreach for us in Universities and research centers.
> We would spread and promote the Mertonian norms of science¹, which are
> already our values.
> Also, there's a fair chance for this new open science standard to sustain
> itself, as in the current system scientists and researchers *already* do
> research, publish and review for free.²
> A new paradigm for science and research could also be very important for
> developing countries, in which
> scientists are often required to adequate to mainstream science (eg. they
> are not able to research areas which would benefit their local community,
> like local diseases).
>
> Aubrey
>
>
> ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mertonian_norms
> ² of course they are paid by their institutions, but the "act of
> publishing" and the whole scholarship workflow is "embedded" and already
> paid for.
>
> On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 7:38 PM, Amir E. Aharoni <
> amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>
> > Heh, I remember Mr Wales asking what could the movement do with a million
> > dollars some time around 2006. Is anything on the horizon?
> >
> > What could we do? Many things; one of them would be to get our act
> together
> > and become a true leader in software and content localization. Currently
> we
> > are proud about maintaining MediaWiki, a piece of software that is
> probably
> > translated to more languages than any other, and that is great, but:
> >
> > 1. Our software localization tooling, excellent as it is, didn't become
> the
> > industry standard, even though it could with better packaging. Why is it
> > important? Because a Wikipedia in a given language doesn't exist in
> > isolation—it exists in an environment of other programs, sites,
> platforms,
> > and media. There was a (relatively) thriving software localization
> > community in the Catalan language already in the 1990s (!), so it's not
> > surprising that Catalan Wikipedia was the first to start after English,
> and
> > is among the most successful Wikimedia projects now. Making software
> > localization better for everybody will bring computer usage to the whole
> > world, and we can be the leaders in it, rather than leaving it to the
> > corporations.
> > 2. We have the theoretical ability to write articles in any language of
> the
> > world, but not everybody actually does it. Some language communities need
> > stronger nudges than others to get going: Training about translation and
> > scientific writing, developing terminology, developing spelling
> > dictionaries, developing keyboards that allow convenient typing, literacy
> > programs, etc. In a lot of languages the Bible is the only published
> book;
> > this happened thanks to donations from people who want to spread their
> > religion around the world. If it can be done with the Bible, it can be
> done
> > with an encyclopedia.
> > 3. We are influencing public policy in the area of copyright law, but we
> > should be influencing public policy around the whole world to make
> > localized computing and content more accessible. Lobbying needs
> resources.
> > See
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_
> > movement/2017/Cycle_2/A_Truly_Global_Movement#Governments_
> > and_computer_vendors:_Accessibility_to_localization_technology
> >
> >
> > --
> > Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> > http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> > ‪“We're living in pieces,
> > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
> >
> > 2017-05-17 20:08 GMT+03:00 David Cuenca Tudela :
> >
> > > Are there any activities that could have a meaningful impact if we ask
> > > do

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Naive questions: what could do the movement with 1B dollars/euros?

[Jane Darnell]

That is an interesting idea! Maybe we should be working on modelling the
Bible better on Wikidata and cross-referencing it to dictionaries and all
other religious texts. If it is so important for literacy, it may help
unite efforts on labelling in Wikidata. I have no idea how many words are
used in the Bible, but hopefully it will cover a lot of basic ground in any
language.
If the 2bn falls through I bet we could ask the Vatican for a grant to
Wikidatafy the entire Catholic encyclopedia.

On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 7:38 PM, Amir E. Aharoni <
amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:

> Heh, I remember Mr Wales asking what could the movement do with a million
> dollars some time around 2006. Is anything on the horizon?
>
> What could we do? Many things; one of them would be to get our act together
> and become a true leader in software and content localization. Currently we
> are proud about maintaining MediaWiki, a piece of software that is probably
> translated to more languages than any other, and that is great, but:
>
> 1. Our software localization tooling, excellent as it is, didn't become the
> industry standard, even though it could with better packaging. Why is it
> important? Because a Wikipedia in a given language doesn't exist in
> isolation—it exists in an environment of other programs, sites, platforms,
> and media. There was a (relatively) thriving software localization
> community in the Catalan language already in the 1990s (!), so it's not
> surprising that Catalan Wikipedia was the first to start after English, and
> is among the most successful Wikimedia projects now. Making software
> localization better for everybody will bring computer usage to the whole
> world, and we can be the leaders in it, rather than leaving it to the
> corporations.
> 2. We have the theoretical ability to write articles in any language of the
> world, but not everybody actually does it. Some language communities need
> stronger nudges than others to get going: Training about translation and
> scientific writing, developing terminology, developing spelling
> dictionaries, developing keyboards that allow convenient typing, literacy
> programs, etc. In a lot of languages the Bible is the only published book;
> this happened thanks to donations from people who want to spread their
> religion around the world. If it can be done with the Bible, it can be done
> with an encyclopedia.
> 3. We are influencing public policy in the area of copyright law, but we
> should be influencing public policy around the whole world to make
> localized computing and content more accessible. Lobbying needs resources.
> See
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_
> movement/2017/Cycle_2/A_Truly_Global_Movement#Governments_
> and_computer_vendors:_Accessibility_to_localization_technology
>
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ‪“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
>
> 2017-05-17 20:08 GMT+03:00 David Cuenca Tudela :
>
> > Are there any activities that could have a meaningful impact if we ask
> > donors for such amount of seed money? Are there reasons to do so?
> >
> > Do we have the guts to do so?
> >
> > Do we have the organizational capital to handle it? Or can we get there
> > soon?
> >
> > Do we have the moral right to take a lead in the world and ask for as
> much
> > resources as needed?
> >
> > Is our leader and our members willing to take big undertakings?
> >
> > Are most of us ready to live in fear while the values that we cherry most
> > would crumble under our own eyes?
> >
> > Would it matter much if we as a movement would disappear? Or is it a
> > struggle always a positive answer against the shadows in the world?
> >
> > Can we offer anything else in this world than truth, free knowledge, and
> an
> > open inclusive environment?
> >
> > Would you take best wishes from a stranger like me?
> >
> >
> > Micru
> > ___
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> > wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Conference 2017 versus movement strategy

[Jane Darnell]

I agree with everything Gnangarra said. As I recall, previous strategy
discussions on meta involved fewer people later in the game with fewer
documents produced than what we have now. That said, I think there was a
pretty good representation of chapters at the Berlin conference and
depending on your point of view, because of or in spite of their presence
there were some really fruitful discussions. I say because of or in spite
of their presence since they were in their own "track" at the conference
and not in the "strategy track" that I was in, so I am not exactly clear on
their contribution other than to arrange local meetups.  Yaroslav, if you
want I can quickly take you through the documents that impressed me
personally the most. I know you are really busy with stuff in real life but
you care about future of the art & architecture stuff and things like
copyright issues. If you can't make the Utrecht strategy meetup on 15 April
then maybe we can do a skype call or arrange a Leiden meetup.
https://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiZaterdag

On Fri, Apr 7, 2017 at 3:20 PM, Gnangarra  wrote:

> I was in Berlin and participated in the strategy track for the three days.
> The process was very open used open space approach such that at the end of
> days 1 & 2 all I could say is that its been an interesting and thought
> provoking sessions because that was how the process was running.  At the
> end of day three the information from the first two days helped us to
> discuss a number thermatic statements.  If anyone came out of those three
> days claiming a clear strategy for the next 15 years they'd be lying, the
> process has just begun and the best thing everyone can do is get involved
> in every step along the way,. It a big task to properly undertake and it
> will take considerable  time along with lots of good faith.  See the
> attached photo thats just the notes from one 2 hours session all of which
> is being captured and will be reported on shortly.
>
> WMF, WMDE and the Strategy team worked wonders with this process in Berlin,
> the plans ahead to bring in even more input discussions will be amazing
>
> On 7 April 2017 at 20:14, Yaroslav Blanter  wrote:
>
> > Hi Guillaume,
> >
> > the conference of course does not exclude individual participants per se,
> > nor did I ever imply it was in any way planned. However, we saw that the
> > previous Strategy discussion was kept in a dedicated place (the strategy
> > wiki), which attracted everybody who wanted to participate, and created a
> > critical mass where discussions were possible and meaningful, and
> > eventually were able to produce the strategy document. Currently the
> > discussions are spread into 20+ projects (formally 300, but most of them
> > are struggling and are not able to produce any discussion documents). I
> > understand the idea, that people should be able to discuss in their own
> > language and from the perspective of their own project, but it turns out
> > that the critical mass is not assembled - the discussion is not
> happening,
> > just some users leave their more or less extended opinions. In addition,
> > since 100 the most active movement participants had a chance to discuss
> the
> > strategy questions in person, they are (most of them are) not interested
> in
> > going to the projects and writing anything there. Which means that even
> > discussion on the biggest projects, where you would normally expect the
> > critical mass to be available, is not happening either. Which means
> Track 2
> > Cycle 1 is likely to produce nothing, and I am not really looking forward
> > to Cycle 2. I might be wrong, may be there is smth which I do not see
> > (though I, being an administrator on 4 projects and speaking 7 languages,
> > would classify myself as a reasonably active Wikimedia participant), but
> > this is my current perception.
> >
> > Cheers
> > Yaroslav
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 7, 2017 at 9:20 AM, Guillaume Paumier <
> gpaum...@wikimedia.org>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hello Yaroslav,
> > >
> > > I'm not sure I understand how including affiliates excludes individual
> > > contributors. There are many avenues for people and groups across the
> > > movement to participate on wikis, in person, in video conference, in
> > > off-wiki online discussions, etc. Anyone is welcome to contribute in
> > > multiple tracks (as individual participant, affiliate member, or both)
> > > and in multiple channels.
> > >
> > > There were about 100 participants who attended the whole strategy
> > > track at the conference; surely there are more than 100 people across
> > > the projects who want to voice their opinion on the future of the
> > > movement.
> > >
> > > Also, the strategy sessions that were held in Berlin only concerned
> > > "Cycle 1" of the discussion, which will end soon. That first cycle is
> > > very open and exploratory and far from the be-all and end-all of the
> > > movement strategy process. I certainly hope that many people
> > > contribu

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Moderation notice

[Jane Darnell]

Believe me, I hear you!

On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 10:22 AM, Austin Hair  wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 8:01 AM, Jane Darnell  wrote:
> > When I first read this I didn't think twice about it, because Gerard has
> > often gone over the 30 message limit, so nothing new. But after reading
> > later comments I see that he was disrespectful? I don't think so. I
> checked
> > and indeed he didn't go over his limit in January. The only disrespectful
> > thing I could find in his recent edits was his remark that he is not a
> > collaborator because his cultural heritage assumes "collaborators" are
> > "nazis", which is offensive in English. I would like to point out here
> that
> > the word collaborator really does mean nazi in Dutch. It's one of many
> > translation challenges, so there is even a Wikipedia article that spells
> it
> > all out:
> > https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboratie
> > It's little things like this that make adding English-language Tech news
> to
> > the Dutch Village pump a bit controversial btw.
>
> Thanks for the note, Jane. Everyone should keep cultural differences
> in mind--it's a source of strife on this list, to be sure, to say
> nothing of my marriage, and I suppose the entire Internet.
>
> Austin
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Moderation notice

[Jane Darnell]

When I first read this I didn't think twice about it, because Gerard has
often gone over the 30 message limit, so nothing new. But after reading
later comments I see that he was disrespectful? I don't think so. I checked
and indeed he didn't go over his limit in January. The only disrespectful
thing I could find in his recent edits was his remark that he is not a
collaborator because his cultural heritage assumes "collaborators" are
"nazis", which is offensive in English. I would like to point out here that
the word collaborator really does mean nazi in Dutch. It's one of many
translation challenges, so there is even a Wikipedia article that spells it
all out:
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboratie
It's little things like this that make adding English-language Tech news to
the Dutch Village pump a bit controversial btw.

On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 7:49 PM, Asaf Bartov  wrote:

> Hello, everyone.
>
> I share the opinion that moderation actions should be transparent. So:
>
> I have now placed Gerard Meijssen on moderation.  He has been posting very
> frequently to the list, far exceeding the requested "soft limit" of 30
> posts per month, and has exhibited disrespectful discourse.
>
> I encourage Gerard to revise his approach to communicating on this list.
> He will be unmoderated next month.
>
>A.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [discovery] Interactive Team putting work on pause

[Jane Darnell]

To understand Hoi you first need to get yourself some stroopwafels to go
with your coffee

On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 9:50 AM, Anna Stillwell 
wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 11:52 PM, Gerard Meijssen <
> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > Anna I absolutely loved what you write.
>
>
> Gerard, I'm feeling the love, dude.
> (A fellow co-worker and I were talking the other day and she said that she
> even calls inanimate objects dude. I deeply resonated. So "dude" for us is
> not a gendered pronoun.)
>
>
> > It is very much uplifting to see
> > that you want to move forward and want to do this based on the facts on
> > the ground
>
>
> Yes. Keep in mind that *we will make mistakes*. A lot of them. I promise
> you. I'm probably making one right now.
>
>
> > and not so much on our convoluted history that is spread out so much that
> > even someone like me who has been involved for the longest time has given
> > up on yesterdays arguments.
> >
>
> I agree with this statement. We need to build relationships for the future.
>
> And, "Rogol" wasn't talking about the past. He was inquiring about a
> product roadmap, which is all about the future. And his questions were
> fair.
>
> >
> > Some will say but.. but ... and from their position they may be right.
> They
> > forget that there are over 280 languages, more in the pipe line and even
> > more projects and as it is we do not consider this at all. English
> > Wikipedia is less than 50% and as Asaf said in a recent presentation less
> > than 50% of the people in this world have English as a first or second
> > language. Arguments from the past mean that the diversity we are is less
> > important than the incumbency of the present talking heads.
> >
>
> Yes. Think of all of the places we could go and things we could do.
> Remember to offer your important ideas in the movement strategy
> conversation. It's about a strategic direction, a theme for the next 15
> years. A general layer of meaning that sits right below the vision and
> describes the theme of the next 15 years. Might that not help coalesce our
> efforts?
>
> >
> > When arguments are based in the past, the reality check if the arguments
> > still fit the present is typically left out. When arguments are of high
> > quality, they should still convince and do not need to consider their
> > legacy.
> >
>
> I often forget to reality check if an argument still fits. Good reminder
> for me. It would be so much easier if reality would just let us make up our
> minds once and for all. lol.
>
>
> Thanks,
> >GerardM
> >
>
> p.s. I know this may sound really ignorant, but what does "Hoi" mean?
> That's how you've started every email that I can ever remember.
>
>
> > On 11 February 2017 at 02:34, Anna Stillwell 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > On Sun, Feb 5, 2017 at 10:03 AM, Rogol Domedonfors <
> > domedonf...@gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Anna,
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > > As you may have noticed, threaded discussions become difficult for
> me
> > > to
> > > > > visually navigate after a while. Thus, the color.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > Sorry, colour doesn't come through on the mailing list.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Thank you for explaining that. I appreciate you teaching me the rules.
> > > After I posted, I also had a number of wiki elves simultaneously ping
> me
> > on
> > > a number of different channels to let me know the very same thing. A
> > bunch
> > > of gardeners just tending to the commons. It was delightful. It felt
> like
> > > an entrance into a different world. I was wondering when the hobbits
> > would
> > > show up with second breakfast and above all: ale. I want some ale.
> > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > > Call me naive, but I’m excited by the prospect of the movement
> > strategy
> > > > >  >.
> > I
> > > > know
> > > > > that many other things will need to happen to arrive at the state
> > that
> > > > you
> > > > > speak of, but thinking together at that scale is likely a good
> start
> > in
> > > > my
> > > > > mind.  It might even be a necessary but insufficient pre-requisite
> > for
> > > > the
> > > > > kind of collaboration you speak of.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Let us hope that it does what is both necessary and sufficient.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Yes.
> > >
> > > Sometimes I wonder if hope isn’t at the base of it all. Perhaps hope is
> > > necessary but certainly not sufficient for it all to transpire. Hope is
> > not
> > > a strategy. But maybe it's a foundation.
> > >
> > > Besides, I could use some. Hope, that is. It’s looking bleak out there.
> > > It’s tough to wake up in the middle of your life and realize that it
> > looks
> > > like most of the world thinks a regression back to nationalism and
> > > censorship and white, straight power is a good idea. Not as tough as
> > > needing knowledge and food and health every single day and not having
> > > access to it, but tough in a Maslow’s-hierarchy-kin

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Tech Talk: A Gentle Introduction to Wikidata for Absolute Beginners [including non-techies!]

[Jane Darnell]

Great job, thanks Asaf. Any chance this can be transcripted for
translation? I don't even know how. Also this should be annotated for
specific how-to pieces (or maybe someone can make derivative files for e.g.
the query editor)
From any page, someone should be able to click through to another page
(Youtube, Commons webm, Commons slides)

On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 7:32 AM, Asaf Bartov  wrote:

> Here's the (3-hour) footage of the detailed Wikidata tutorial delivered
> today:
>
> on Commons:
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Gentle_
> Introduction_to_Wikidata_for_Absolute_Beginners_(including_
> non-techies!).webm
>
> on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVrAx3AmUvA
>
> the slides:
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikidata_-_A_Gentle_
> Introduction_for_Complete_Beginners_(WMF_February_2017).pdf
>
> It covers what Wikidata is (00:00), how to contribute new data to Wikidata
> (1:09:34), how to create an entirely new item on Wikidata (1:27:07), how to
> embed data from Wikidata into pages on other wikis (1:52:54), tools like
> the Wikidata Game (1:39:20), Article Placeholder (2:01:01), Reasonator
> (2:54:15) and Mix-and-match (2:57:05), and how to query Wikidata (including
> SPARQL examples) (starting 2:05:05).
>
> Share and enjoy. :)
>
>A.
>
> On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 4:35 PM Rachel Farrand 
> wrote:
>
> > Please join for the following talk:
> >
> > *Tech Talk**:* A Gentle Introduction to Wikidata for Absolute Beginners
> > [including non-techies!]
> > *Presenter:* Asaf Bartov
> > *Date:* February 09, 2017
> > *Time: *19:00 UTC
> > <
> > https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=
> Tech+Talk%3A+A+Gentle+Introduction+to+Wikidata+for+Absolute+Beginners+%
> 5Bincluding+non-techies%21%5D+&iso=20170209T19&p1=1440&ah=3
> > >
> > Link to live YouTube stream  >
> > *IRC channel for questions/discussion:* #wikimedia-office
> >
> > *Summary: *This talk will introduce you to the Wikimedia Movement's
> latest
> > major wiki project: Wikidata. We will cover what Wikidata is, how to
> > contribute, how to embed Wikidata into articles on other wikis, tools
> like
> > the Wikidata Game, and how to query Wikidata (including SPARQL examples).
> > ___
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> > wikitec...@lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Politics

[Jane Darnell]

I agree absolutely with this. All Wikipedians are political and we
pontificate to the world quite happily while following a complex set of
agreed rules. To believe that Wikipedia has a neutral point of view is like
believing there is no systemic bias in the academic world. The gateway that
anyone must pass in order to keep their edits live on Wikipedia is
navigating the extremely complex web known in our jargon as "reliable
sources". I believe Wikipedia has done a better job overall than academia
in general of expanding this magic list by opening up our "set of rules" to
a worldwide playing field, but this magic list is uneven and a
work-in-progress. Face-to-face meetups have only cemented rankings on our
magic list, not erased them. Where does this magic list stand in the
post-truth world? If we believe in our magic list, we believe in the people
who made it and add to it every day and thus we believe in free passage for
those people to any meetup anywhere in the world. Any threat to that safe
passage is a direct threat to our community, no matter how good your irc,
google hangout, skype call, or facebook group might be.

And meanwhile, we will deal with political issues as they affect us in the
way we deal with all the other random stuff of humanity that pops up
regularly in our projects, whether it is based on "reliable sources",
religious belief, superstition, politics, fear, humor, or all of these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bowling_Green_Massacre&direction=next&oldid=763427006

On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 8:06 PM, Robert Fernandez 
wrote:

> That is an obvious false equivalence.  The issue isn't people rooting
> for the WMF to take political stances that mirror their own.  The
> issue is whether or not that the WMF should recognize that its mission
> can intersect with or conflict with political stances and then act
> appropriately.  The free dissemination of factual, neutral information
> and the ability of editors to participate in that dissemination is in
> many contexts a political act and the WMF should recognize this.  To
> contend that Wikimedia activity is, can be, or should be always
> politically neutral is naive and comes from a place of privilege where
> your personal engagement will likely never be threatened by political
> interference.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 1:59 PM, Nathan  wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 7:26 PM, Natacha Rault  wrote:
> >
> >> ...After all there is a notion called "freedom of speech"  Katherine
> >> Maher did a statement and so what? That does not prevent wikipedians
> from
> >> editing, and confronting opinions to approach NPOV (actually there is no
> >> achieved NPOV on Wikipedia in what concerns the gender biases as far as
> I
> >> see it).
> >
> >
> >
> > I imagine that your response would be different if Katherine's position
> > didn't match your own. What if she posted that she agreed that "extreme
> > vetting" was an appropriate response to the risk of terrorist attacks,
> that
> > nations with liberal refugee policies had experienced multiple attacks in
> > recent years, and that radicalism is an existential threat to free
> > societies? These are views shared by hundreds of millions of people
> > (although not you, Katherine, or me). This hopefully illustrates why
> taking
> > political positions beyond the mission is fraught with risk, and why the
> > frequent demands that the WMF (or the community) do so are misplaced.
> > ___
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> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Politics

[Jane Darnell]

Well I for one am one of those unapologetic Wikipedians who "inject their
national and identity politics into the movement". I'm a fan of the "Be
Bold" concept, bigly.

On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 1:00 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> Hi Yair,
>
> I agree with your underlying sentiment. When we look at threats facing the
> Wikimedia movement, I continue to think that the risk of people being able
> to inject their national and identity politics into the movement is pretty
> great. While I may personally agree with many of the views being put
> forward, as you note these types of actions have the very real potential
> to create an unhealthy division among contributors and others.
>
> Wikimedia is a global movement and many people in the world have strongly
> held and diametrically different views about gay rights, abortion, free
> speech, the role of women, etc. Those views should rarely be relevant to
> creating free educational content. I don't think it's appropriate for
> Wikimedia to take stands on these issues. If staff of the current
> iteration of Wikimedia Foundation Inc. want to make such statements and
> take such positions, that is technically their prerogative, absent
> intervention from the Board of Trustees, however it certainly behooves
> other Wikimedian to point out what a bad idea it is.
>
> To put it another way: there are people who work at Wikimedia Foundation
> Inc. who voted for Donald Trump for president. While you may
> disagree with his policies and these staffers' decision to support him for
> president, needlessly and divisively injecting this kind of politics into
> the workplace is neither healthy nor appropriate, in my opinion.
>
> Yair Rand wrote:
> >Three days ago, the WMF put out a statement on the Wikimedia blog
> >explicitly urging a specific country to modify its refugee policy, an area
> >that does not relate to our goals. There was no movement-wide prior
> >discussion, or any discussion at all as far as I can tell.
>
> I guess this is referring to
> .
>
> In terms of various people at Wikimedia Foundation Inc. attempting to speak
> for the Wikimedia movement, there's also .
> I've raised the lack of attribution and the "veneer of authority and
> legitimacy" issue at .
> At least the recent blog post was signed by Katherine. That's better than
> some of these other essays.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Politics

[Jane Darnell]

+1 to "writing an encyclopedia is a political act" and +1 to the notion
called "freedom of speech", and +1 to "refugee bans remind us of very dark
memories", but mostly +1 to the point about bias on Wikipedia! So I can
also only conclude "Bravo Katherine"!

On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 1:26 AM, Natacha Rault  wrote:

> Had the WMF statement been issued on Wikipedia, now that would have
> neutrality issues from a wikioedian point of view.
> The WMF is not Wikipedia, and does have a political activity: being in
> favour of sharing free knowledge is altogether a political statement, as
> freedom of sharing knowledge is not something which is accepted by all
> political regimes (please remember the globality of the movement, this is
> not just an american issue, it is a planetary one). One only needs to think
> about the influence of Diderot and the encyclopedists in the French
> revolution to understand that an encyclopedia, albeit seemingly neutral,
> has very concrete political influences in major political regime changes.
> That the WMF which relies on the free movement of people and ideas to
> fulfil its mission should be worried and issue a statement is quite normal
> - not to say courageous. After all there is a notion called "freedom of
> speech".
> A foundation has actually no obligation to be fully transparent, and WMF
> is making notable efforts in a context  where advertising, non disclosed
> paid editing and lobbying are representing (in my opinion) a much greater
> threat to neutrality than a public statement on this particular matter.
> I am personnallly pretty impressed from across the ocean: in the 30s had
> some leaders shown more courage maybe Hitler would not have been able to
> start a genocide.
> This not only political, this is common sense, and living in Switzerland
> might influence a very pragmatic and down to the roots approach.
> We are watching from over the ocean, as europeans these refugee bans
> remind us of very dark memories.
>  Katherine Maher did a statement and so what? That does not prevent
> wikipedians from editing, and confronting opinions to approach NPOV
> (actually there is no achieved NPOV on Wikipedia in what concerns the
> gender biases as far as I see it)
> Bravo Katherine this is what I say, Sandberg has not even uttered a tweet!
> Neutrality should not mean surrending to the powerful by remaining silent.
>
> Nattes à chat / Natacha
>
>
>
>
> > Le 3 févr. 2017 à 00:05, Leigh Thelmadatter  a
> écrit :
> >
> > I voiced my opposition to the statement on Facebook but Yair states the
> case far more eloquently. Many acts by many countries could be a possible
> threat to Wikimedia, where do we draw the line?
> > Why was there no community discussion prior to the statement?
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> >> On 02/02/2017, at 3:37 p.m., Yair Rand  wrote:
> >>
> >> The Wikimedia movement is both global and very ideologically diverse,
> and
> >> has many contributors who have strong opinions in one direction or
> another
> >> on certain political issues facing their area of the world. Many of
> these
> >> contributors find it difficult to avoid using Wikimedia forums and
> >> institutions to discuss or advocate for issues they feel very strongly
> >> about. Recently, political advocacy on Wikimedia forums has risen
> >> substantially, especially on this mailing list.
> >>
> >> While I sympathize with the difficulties these contributors face in
> >> remaining silent, it is important to consider the substantial damage
> such
> >> actions can cause to the movement. We will be much worse off if half of
> any
> >> given country's political spectrum can no longer cooperate in our
> mission
> >> due to compunctions against supporting a community which hosts those who
> >> use the community to advocate for positions that some may find
> >> unacceptable. The issue of inadvertently alienating participants
> because of
> >> politics has a self-reinforcing element: As we lose contributors
> >> representing ideological areas, we have fewer willing to advocate for an
> >> environment which allows them to participate without being bombarded by
> >> hostile political advocacy. We are precariously close to the point of no
> >> return on this, but I am optimistic that the situation is recoverable.
> >>
> >> As an initial measure, I propose adding the names of a certain country's
> >> top political leaders to this list's spam filter. More generally, I
> think a
> >> stricter stance on avoiding political advocacy on Wikimedia projects is
> >> warranted.
> >>
> >> We face a somewhat more difficult situation with the Wikimedia
> Foundation
> >> itself. Partly as a result of being relatively localized within a
> >> geographic area and further limited to several professions, I suspect
> the
> >> Foundation tends to be more politically/ideologically homogeneous. With
> the
> >> WMF, we risk much more than just alienating much of the world, we risk
> our
> >> Neutrality.
> >>
> >> How far we must go to m

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thinking outside the box

[Jane Darnell]

Yes to this: "the key issue is for us to build room for
people to  emerge but also to feel entitled to run for those position"

I would say this is a key issue at the very bottom as well, for example
just getting people to become a contributor to any one of our many
projects, whether it's Wikipedia, Commons, or anything else.

On Tue, Sep 6, 2016 at 4:00 AM, Christophe Henner 
wrote:

> Hi Rogol,
>
> The weird thing in this discussion is I kind of agree with everyone.
>
> Yes more diversity would be awesome. But in my opinion diversity should be
> something we achieve organicaly.
>
> So, from my biased perspective, the key issue is for us to build room for
> people to  emerge but also to feel entitled to run for those position.
>
> To also build ways to train people, to "groom" them and their potential.
> And we know that in our movement we have the smart people we will need in
> the coming years. It's up to us to help them emerge and take our seats.
>
> I gebuinely haven't a solution ready to work out of the box and there are
> people in our movement way more expert in those topics than me.
>
> And that might be something that could be adress during the strategy
> process. And the only way we will be able to tackle it properly is if first
> we can include everyone in our movement in the process, not just the "usual
> suspects".
>
> Le 6 sept. 2016 8:46 AM, "Anders Wennersten"  a
> écrit :
>
> > I am very happy how this nowadays works out.
> >
> > We have now a lot of chapters, each with a Board. And here the members
> are
> > not oldtimers and here is the appropriate first place to get into the
> > Wikmedia world.
> >
> > And there are many bodies who you can then turn to to get further into
> the
> > Wikimedia world, like Affcom or being a member of  Simple Annual Plan
> > Grants Committee or other grant committees. Also here more or less
> > newcomers are welcome.
> >
> > But for the core bodies like the Board, FDC or the BGC supporting
> > committee, I am very pleased to see that we get a lot of people with long
> > Wikimedia experience. And as they are frequently replaced, I see no
> problem
> > and only advantages
> >
> > Anders
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Den 2016-09-06 kl. 08:33, skrev Rogol Domedonfors:
> >
> >> I think Pine's message rather illustrates my point.  Pine seems to
> assume
> >> that the alternative is between people experienced in the WMF ways of
> >> doing
> >> things and novices.  Actually, there are plenty of people in the world
> >> with
> >> experience in being trustees of non-proft organisations, and technical
> >> expertise, and experience of knowledge representation and dissemination,
> >> and the robustness to hold senior employees to account, who are not
> >> closely
> >> connected with the WMF or its affiliates.  They mainly live a long way
> >> from
> >> Silicon Valley, too.
> >>
> >> For the avoidance of doubt, I have never been a candidate for, let alone
> >> held, any position, paid or voluntary, in or related to the WMF or any
> >> associated organisation.
> >>
> >> "Rogol"
> >> ___
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> >>
> >
> >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [WikimediaMobile] Mobile site is now lazy loading images

[Jane Darnell]

Yes I am talking about the wait, not the data limit. Sometimes people just
want the lead paragraph text and don't want to wait for images in the rest
of the article. We have lots of very long articles on English Wikipedia,
sometimes dotted with images as well. Wikipedians who work on them tend to
have very fast, high quality connections and never stop to think whether
their beautiful long article is making some reader wait who has a slow
connection.

On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 1:08 PM, Isarra Yos  wrote:

> On a slow desktop connection, lazy-loading is generally the opposite of
> what you want - unlike mobile, there's usually no data limit, it just takes
> awhile getting the data. A common pattern is thus to start a large page
> loading and then do something else, or just wait for it to finish then.
> It's like buffering video, so that way you have it all there when you
> actually go to it, and when it finishes, it's done. Lazy loading prevents
> such an uninterrupted experience by forcing the user to instead sit through
> every slow-loading image/section, with no way to avoid it.
>
> For mobile, though, where you need to worry about running out of data but
> generally have much faster speeds, lazy loading makes a lot more sense.
> It's great that we have it here!
>
> -I
>
> On 26/08/16 16:47, Jane Darnell wrote:
>
>> Interesting to see the drop in bytes sent to the Japan article and this
>> makes me think we should "fold up" article sections on desktop too for
>> very
>> long articles, such as the Japan article. The benefits for mobile are
>> obvious, but this may be beneficial for slow desktop connections as well.
>>
>> -- Forwarded message --
>> From: Jon Robson 
>> Date: Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 5:20 PM
>> Subject: [WikimediaMobile] Mobile site is now lazy loading images
>> To: mobile-l , Wikimedia developers <
>> wikitec...@lists.wikimedia.org>
>>
>>
>> FYI after much experimentation, research and testing the mobile site has
>> been lazy loading images [1] since Thursday 18th August. This means if you
>> do not see an image you will not download it. We have taken care to ensure
>> users without JavaScript can still view images and that most users will
>> barely notice the difference.
>>
>> We are currently crunching the data this change has made and we plan to
>> write a blog post to reporting the results.
>>
>> In our experiments on Japanese Wikipedia we saw a drop in image bytes per
>> page view by 54% On the Japanese Japan article bytes shipped to users
>> dropped from 1.443 MB to 142 kB.
>>
>> This is pretty huge since bytes equate to money [3] and we expect this to
>> be significant on wikis where mobile data is more expensive. In a nutshell
>> Wikipedia mobile is cheaper.
>>
>> As I said blog post to follow once we have more information, but please
>> report any bugs you are seeing with the implementation (we have already
>> found a few thanks to our community of editors).
>>
>> ~Jon
>>
>> [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Projects/
>> Performance/Lazy_loading_images
>> [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Lazy_loading_
>> of_images_on_Japanese_Wikipedia
>> [3] https://whatdoesmysitecost.com/
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [WikimediaMobile] Mobile site is now lazy loading images

[Jane Darnell]

Um actually I meant folding the sections up in long articles in the default
desktop version, not the "desktop" option on mobile

On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 2:08 PM, James Heilman  wrote:

> Yes reducing page weight is important work. Glad to see progress. With
> respect to "folding up" sections on desktop, how many people are using
> desktop on mobile?
>
> Might be good to have "folding up" as an option? When I travel gmail gives
> me the option to load the low bandwidth version of their email service.
> Could we do the same? Basically have two versions of the desktop version
> depending connection speeds?
>
> James
>
> On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 11:16 AM, Adele Vrana 
> wrote:
>
> > Huge congratulations to the team! I can't wait to see the data and
> blogpost
> > on this. A cheaper Wikipedia mobile will go a long way to help us address
> > the data affordability barrier, attract new Wikipedia Zero partners and
> > bring in new readers.
> >
> > On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Jane Darnell  wrote:
> >
> > > Interesting to see the drop in bytes sent to the Japan article and this
> > > makes me think we should "fold up" article sections on desktop too for
> > very
> > > long articles, such as the Japan article. The benefits for mobile are
> > > obvious, but this may be beneficial for slow desktop connections as
> well.
> > >
> > > -- Forwarded message --
> > > From: Jon Robson 
> > > Date: Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 5:20 PM
> > > Subject: [WikimediaMobile] Mobile site is now lazy loading images
> > > To: mobile-l , Wikimedia developers <
> > > wikitec...@lists.wikimedia.org>
> > >
> > >
> > > FYI after much experimentation, research and testing the mobile site
> has
> > > been lazy loading images [1] since Thursday 18th August. This means if
> > you
> > > do not see an image you will not download it. We have taken care to
> > ensure
> > > users without JavaScript can still view images and that most users will
> > > barely notice the difference.
> > >
> > > We are currently crunching the data this change has made and we plan to
> > > write a blog post to reporting the results.
> > >
> > > In our experiments on Japanese Wikipedia we saw a drop in image bytes
> per
> > > page view by 54% On the Japanese Japan article bytes shipped to users
> > > dropped from 1.443 MB to 142 kB.
> > >
> > > This is pretty huge since bytes equate to money [3] and we expect this
> to
> > > be significant on wikis where mobile data is more expensive. In a
> > nutshell
> > > Wikipedia mobile is cheaper.
> > >
> > > As I said blog post to follow once we have more information, but please
> > > report any bugs you are seeing with the implementation (we have already
> > > found a few thanks to our community of editors).
> > >
> > > ~Jon
> > >
> > > [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Projects/
> > > Performance/Lazy_loading_images
> > > [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Lazy_loading_
> > > of_images_on_Japanese_Wikipedia
> > > [3] https://whatdoesmysitecost.com/
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ___
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> > > mobil...@lists.wikimedia.org
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > *Adele Vrana*
> > *Strategic Partnerships*
> > Wikimedia Foundation
> > +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6773
> > avr...@wikimedia.org
> >
> > *Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
> the
> > sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. Donate.
> > <https://donate.wikimedia.org/>*
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[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [WikimediaMobile] Mobile site is now lazy loading images

[Jane Darnell]

Interesting to see the drop in bytes sent to the Japan article and this
makes me think we should "fold up" article sections on desktop too for very
long articles, such as the Japan article. The benefits for mobile are
obvious, but this may be beneficial for slow desktop connections as well.

-- Forwarded message --
From: Jon Robson 
Date: Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 5:20 PM
Subject: [WikimediaMobile] Mobile site is now lazy loading images
To: mobile-l , Wikimedia developers <
wikitec...@lists.wikimedia.org>


FYI after much experimentation, research and testing the mobile site has
been lazy loading images [1] since Thursday 18th August. This means if you
do not see an image you will not download it. We have taken care to ensure
users without JavaScript can still view images and that most users will
barely notice the difference.

We are currently crunching the data this change has made and we plan to
write a blog post to reporting the results.

In our experiments on Japanese Wikipedia we saw a drop in image bytes per
page view by 54% On the Japanese Japan article bytes shipped to users
dropped from 1.443 MB to 142 kB.

This is pretty huge since bytes equate to money [3] and we expect this to
be significant on wikis where mobile data is more expensive. In a nutshell
Wikipedia mobile is cheaper.

As I said blog post to follow once we have more information, but please
report any bugs you are seeing with the implementation (we have already
found a few thanks to our community of editors).

~Jon

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Projects/
Performance/Lazy_loading_images
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Lazy_loading_
of_images_on_Japanese_Wikipedia
[3] https://whatdoesmysitecost.com/



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Odia Wikimedia community documents Ratha Jatra on Wikimedia Commons.

[Jane Darnell]

What a great idea! We need this for so many recurring local festivals and
personally I think we need these pictures every single year, but that is
just my opinion. In the Netherlands we have a huge flower parade and yearly
Mardi Gras parades and these are not considered notable enough to have
photos of each city or even each year for big cities. I disagree with that.
Having one Ratha Jatra is great! Thanks for sharing.

On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 7:34 PM, Sailesh Patnaik <
sailesh.patnaik...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Wikimedians,
>
> Ratha Jatra is one of the longest running festivals of Odisha running for
> over a month. The festival starts from Akshaya Trutiya and ends after
> Bahuda Jatra.This festival dates back to more than 1000 years.
>
> This year, a few Wikimedians from Puri are documenting the process of
> building the  ratha (chariot) making . They are also uploading every phase
> of the building process on Wikimedia Common. Many of the images have been
> already uploaded and a lot more are going to uploaded in the due course of
> time.
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wiki_Loves_Ratha_Jatra
>
> You can see the pictures in the project category :
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Ratha_Jatra
>
>
> Co-ordinators:
>
> 1. Jagannath Dora
>
> 2. Dinesh Das
>
> 3. Dibyadarshi Nayak
>
> 4. Ramachandra Nayak
>
>
> Thanks and Regards
> ---
> *Sailesh Patnaik* "*ଶୈଳେଶ ପଟ୍ଟନାୟକ*"
> Programme Associate, Access To Knowledge
> Centre for Internet and Society
> Phone: +91-7537097770
> *LinkedIn* : https://www.linkedin.com/in/sailesh-patnaik-551a10b4
> *Twitter* : @saileshpat
>
> "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
> sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality"
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to communicate compassionately with non-native English speakers

[Jane Darnell]

I agree! But what what does an icy stomach mean - to be strong? There are
lots of Dutch expressions that my family has taken over and use regularly
in English now such as "Now comes the monkey out of the sleeve" (revealing
the hidden agenda), "Go your gang" (go ahead) and "That's mustard after the
meal" (too little too late)

On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Anders Wennersten  wrote:

> Very good and also very accurate.
>
> It reminds it also works the other way. When I was in Australia 1979
> discussing a delicate project proposal, I stated  "to resolve this we need
> to have ice in the stomach " and getting a big question mark on everyone's
> face as a response. Iit seemed this well used Swedish expression was not as
> international as I had taken for granted (and they still make jokes on me
> for this) .:-)
>
> Anders
>
>
> Den 2016-07-05 kl. 21:59, skrev Nick Wilson (Quiddity):
>
>>
>> https://medium.com/@mollyclare/taming-the-steamroller-how-to-communicate-compassionately-with-non-native-english-speakers-d95d8d1845a0
>> A good essay.
>>
>> TL;DR: Some detailed examples of how to improve communication and
>> interactions, for the benefit of anyone who uses English as a second
>> language.
>>
>>
>> Excerpts, to whet [sharpen or stimulate] your appetite:
>>
>> Phrasal verbs in English can be particularly hard to master. Just think
>>>
>> about “cut off” vs. “cut up” vs. “cut over” vs. “cut in” vs. “cut out” vs.
>> “cut down” vs. “cut back” and you’ll see how confusing it can be when you
>> recommend “cutting back” on something, or asking someone to “cut it out”.
>> [...]
>>
>> Make your message very clear, especially your request. This is doubly
>>>
>> true for me, because I work with Germans, who are famously direct. The
>> American habit of softening and burying a request is just confusing and
>> pointless to them.
>>
>> The last thing you and I want to do is overwhelm. We work across language
>>>
>> barriers, not because it’s glamorous or fun or easy, but because we care
>> about collaborating with people who are different from us [...]. And
>> non-native speakers are committing to this collaboration even more than we
>> are: they’re reaching out to us by working in English. [...]
>>
>> n.b. Yes, there are some over-generalizations and stereotypes in there.
>> It's still good overall, though! ;-)
>>
>>
>> I'd like to link it on Metawiki, but I'm not sure where; Any suggestions?
>> I've gotten (happily) lost in the [[Multilingual]] disambig page, and the
>> [[Grants:Learning patterns]] pages, but the only place I can find that
>> collects advice like this, is the first section at
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Manual#Guidelines - What page
>> might I have missed?
>>
>> Quiddity
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>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to get help (an essay)

[Jane Darnell]

Wow Jake, that is an amazing story, thanks for sharing.
I just watched a Dutch version of this #chicagogirl documentary last week:
http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/chicagogirl-hashtag-activism-syria-interview/

It struck me that doing this was pretty crazy, but who knew it had been
done before and by you? I think it must have been extremely difficult back
then because the Egyptian Revolution was really the first to be fought in
the media. Now the Syrian war is being fought all over Europe.

On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 8:21 PM, Jake Orlowitz  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> In light of yesterday's public call for help from one of our editors, I'd
> like to share something I wrote last winter.
>
> It's called, Journey of a Wikipedian.
>
> https://medium.com/@jakeorlowitz/journey-of-a-wikipedian-c2890e3a8d0c#.o2hypa43i
> <
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JRXqb6IcsVi3nEpXnN1FBSVLveAJgazJxPJj1tlFw30/edit?usp=sharing
> >
>
> --
> It reminds me of a few things worth stating:
>
> 1. We are a community of very real people with deep emotions and human
> complexities.
> 2. We are deeply invested in this project, so much so it hurts us at times
> even if it is also a passion or refuge for many.
> 3. You never know what someone has been through, or is going through.
> 4. We all need help at some point. There is no shame in needing help,
> asking for help, or receiving help.
> 5. If you are ever feeling completely hopeless: Wait. Things really can get
> better. Talk to someone about it.
> 6. Mental health carries a powerful stigma. The more we are open about it,
> the less that weighs all of us down.
> 7. If we listen, we can learn from each other.
> 8. We need to be kind. This is a higher calling than civility, and entirely
> compatible with rigorously sharing knowledge.
> 9. Our movement depends on its people. We are our most valuable resource.
> 10. We are not finished products. With time, space, support, and
> practice--people can, and do, grow and change.
>
> Hugs,
> Jake Orlowitz (Ocaasi)
>
> p.s. If you ever see someone in need of help, or are seeking it yourself,
> please contact emerge...@wikimedia.org.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gender gap on "classical" encyclopedias

[Jane Darnell]

Actually I would say that is not true. The success of the english
Wikipedia's "Women in Red" project shows that editors are overwhelmingly
willing to close the gap, and only need to be pointed to the proper
resources to do so. When you say "closing the gap" I assume you mean
closing the content gap, because the participation gap is much more tricky
to solve.

On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 5:04 PM, Robert Fernandez 
wrote:

> The argument that there is no demand for such articles is itself a stale
> one, used to frequently justify gender disparities in all sorts of fields
> and media.  There is a clear demand for such articles.  The media reaction
> to Emily Temple-Wood's campaign to write articles about female scientists
> is only the most recent and prominent example illustrating that the
> audience is there.  Readers want to close the gap, the media wants to close
> the gap, academia wants to close the gap, the WMF wants to close the gap,
> the only people who don't want to close the gap are stubborn volunteer
> encyclopedia editors.
>
> On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 9:27 AM, Gerard Meijssen <
> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > When it is "SOP", why is it that you hear so little about the effects of
> > policies framed in terms of the rates we had or the rates we had in a
> > previous year.
> >
> > The argument that there is a gender gap is getting tired when the
> argument
> > why it is a problem is only framed in the existence of the gap. It is
> > necessary that we learn how and what improvements are made and maybe how
> it
> > has an impact on the reader numbers. When there is a demand for articles
> > about women, it could result in more readers for articles about women..
> >
> > I do welcome a different tack on this issue. The arguments so far are
> > getting stale.
> > Thanks,
> >GerardM
> >
> > On 20 April 2016 at 13:11, John Mark Vandenberg 
> wrote:
> >
> > > Yes. That is SOP for studies about biographies and literature in
> general.
> > > On 20 Apr 2016 18:04, "Gerard Meijssen" 
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hoi,
> > > > Given the existing number of articles and the gender gap in them, it
> is
> > > > unlikely that activities make much of a difference. I think that it
> > makes
> > > > more sense to compare the new articles and see if the percentages are
> > > > different in those. Did anyone look at it in this way?
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >   GerardM
> > > >
> > > > On 20 April 2016 at 09:39,  wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Hi, as some of you may know, the Wikipedia gender indicator [1]
> tells
> > > us
> > > > > how many articles are biographies about women x
> > > language/country/culture.
> > > > >
> > > > > In order to compare these numbers...Does anyone knows if there is
> an
> > > > > existing comparison with gender balance in classical encyclopedias?
> > > > > (Britannica, Larousse...) or, if not, could someone prepare a WD
> > query
> > > > > about it?
> > > > >
> > > > > I think it could be a good argument for us to use: e.g "at cawiki
> 12%
> > > of
> > > > > bios are about women, compared to 5% in GEC, Our most famous
> > > > encyclopedia".
> > > > >
> > > > > We could compare it also for temathic encyclopedias or other
> > databases
> > > > > existing in projects like Mix and match.
> > > > >
> > > > > Can someone help? thanks in advance
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > [1]http://wigi.wmflabs.org/
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Àlex Hinojo
> > > > > User:Kippelboy
> > > > > Amical Wikimedia Programme manager
> > > > > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gender gap on "classical" encyclopedias

[Jane Darnell]

I forgot about that one and it is still interesting, so thanks for
reposting! Out of curiosity I also made some queries about the delta factor
caused by the English Wikipedia's "Women-in-Red" initiative as opposed to
our own Gendergap-in-nlwiki initiative in the Netherlands. I wrote some
findings here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Women_in_Red/Archive_9#Some_results

On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 3:48 PM, Magnus Manske 
wrote:

> I wrote about gender coverage on Wikipedia and Wikidata, including ODNB
> comparison:
> http://magnusmanske.de/wordpress/?p=250
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 8:39 AM  wrote:
>
> > Hi, as some of you may know, the Wikipedia gender indicator [1] tells us
> > how many articles are biographies about women x language/country/culture.
> >
> > In order to compare these numbers...Does anyone knows if there is an
> > existing comparison with gender balance in classical encyclopedias?
> > (Britannica, Larousse...) or, if not, could someone prepare a WD query
> > about it?
> >
> > I think it could be a good argument for us to use: e.g "at cawiki 12% of
> > bios are about women, compared to 5% in GEC, Our most famous
> encyclopedia".
> >
> > We could compare it also for temathic encyclopedias or other databases
> > existing in projects like Mix and match.
> >
> > Can someone help? thanks in advance
> >
> >
> > [1]http://wigi.wmflabs.org/
> >
> >
> > Àlex Hinojo
> > User:Kippelboy
> > Amical Wikimedia Programme manager
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wiki-research-l] Gender gap on "classical" encyclopedias

[Jane Darnell]

I have often thought we should go through at least one volume of the 1911
Encyclopedia Britannica for this purpose. The cawiki is great though. I
always check the %female factor in all completed lists I have, so I also
checked cawiki in my TED speakers list, even though ca is not one of the
languages in the TED translation team. See the overall table of results
here:
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/TED_conferences

As usual, the Swedes score the best of all the European languages, but
cawiki still beats nlwiki by quite a bit.

On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 11:23 AM, Tilman Bayer  wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 12:39 AM,   wrote:
> > Hi, as some of you may know, the Wikipedia gender indicator [1] tells us
> how many articles are biographies about women x language/country/culture.
> >
> > In order to compare these numbers...Does anyone knows if there is an
> existing comparison with gender balance in classical encyclopedias?
> (Britannica, Larousse...) or, if not, could someone prepare a WD query
> about it?
> >
> > I think it could be a good argument for us to use: e.g "at cawiki 12% of
> bios are about women, compared to 5% in GEC, Our most famous encyclopedia".
> >
> > We could compare it also for temathic encyclopedias or other databases
> existing in projects like Mix and match.
> >
> > Can someone help? thanks in advance
> >
> >
> > [1]http://wigi.wmflabs.org/
> >
> >
> > Àlex Hinojo
> > User:Kippelboy
> > Amical Wikimedia Programme manager
>
> Interesting question. There may be more suitable venues for it, e.g.
> the research mailing list (CCed). Anyway, to start with two examples:
>
>
> http://reagle.org/joseph/pelican/social/gender-bias-in-wikipedia-and-britannica.html
>
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2015/May#Notable_women_.22slightly_overrepresented.22_.28not_underrepresented.29_on_Wikipedia.2C_but_the_Smurfette_principle_still_holds
> Comparison of Wikipedia with, among other sources, "Human
> Accomplishment", a 2003 "ranking of geniuses throughout the ages and
> around the world based on their prominence in contemporary
> encyclopedias" (NYT)
>
>
> --
> Tilman Bayer
> Senior Analyst
> Wikimedia Foundation
> IRC (Freenode): HaeB
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Fwd: Hello Mr. ccc, Now you can have your own Wikipedia page

[Jane Darnell]

Oh dear, those pesky spam laws...

On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 10:06 PM, Florence Devouard 
wrote:

> A relationship of mine received the email below and forwarded it to me.
> http://yourprmanager.com/
>
> This company is known ?
>
> Flo
>
>
> =
>
> Début du message réexpédié :
>
> De: Britney Davis 
> Objet: Hello Mr. ccc, Now you can have your own Wikipedia page
> Date: 6 avril 2016 14:34:27 UTC+2
> À:
>
> Hello Mr. ccc,
>
> Wikipedia is the most trusted and preferred source of original content
> online. Therefore, it is not surprising why institutions, organizations and
> individuals opt for creating their Wikipedia page.
>
>
> To increase your popularity online, it is recommended to create a
> Wikipedia page about yourself or your company and for a new Wikipedia page
> to go up, there are certain eligibility criteria. That means not everyone
> is immediately a good candidate to feature on Wikipedia.
>
> Here are some benefits of having a Company or Personal Wikipedia Page:
>
> 1. Great exposure. Wikipedia is a heavily used web site, and having an
> article about your company means more exposure, more eyeballs, and so forth.
>
> 2. Reputation management. As I mentioned above, your Wikipedia article
> will probably rank on page one for your company name, and that helps with
> your online reputation management.
>
> 3. Increased trust. There’s no underestimating the need to earn trust,
> both from customers and search engines. A Wikipedia article can help with
> both, I believe.
>
>
>
> Get in touch with us to find out if you're eligible to feature on
> Wikipedia with our Complimentary Wikipedia Eligibility Assessment Service.
>
>
>
>
> Warm Regards
>
> Britney
> YourPRManager Team
> Email - brit...@yourprmanager.com
>
>
>
>
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> --
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WikiProject Accuracy

[Jane Darnell]

Just judging from this email, I tend to agree with Smallbones and based on
the name alone I would vote against this project. That said, I believe I
understand the motivation behind this and I would vote for a project
called  "WikiProject
Content Synchronization" which would be the (re)birth of CoSyne, a
more-or-less forgotten project once supported by WMNL, see here (Dutch
only, sorry): https://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/CoSyne

The problem with accuracy is that there is no single truth and no single
form of accuracy. Wikpedia has proven time and again that the only thing
that seems to improve accuracy over time is "more eyes". What we can do is
make it easier for casual readers to see serious discrepancies in data
across projects. The CoSyne project happened before Wikidata, but today we
can harness the power of Wikidata to make important improvements and enable
constructive edits easily. For example, work is being done to link all
images of a painting on Commons to it's Wikidata item, which enables people
who care to see more (and possibly higher quality) images of paintings they
are interested in. Making more people aware of how their statements hold up
to similar statements on other projects could be a great way forward to
attract more constructive (micro-)contributions and to improve accuracy.

On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 9:44 AM, Olatunde Isaac 
wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> We seek community input on a proposed WikiProject called "WikiProject
> Accuracy" conceptualized by Ms. Betty Wills (User:Atsme). Following a
> recent discussion with Betty, I decided to bring it here for community
> input because of the possible controversy that may arise from establishing
> a WikiProject like this.
>
> The primary goals of  WikiProject Accuracy are to:
>
> *Increase quality of Wikipedia articles
> *Increase reliability of Wikipedia articles
> *Promote/improve collaboration among experienced editors
> *Promote existing editors retention
>
> Betty's ideas are to form a team of Project Accuracy Coordinators to
> oversee the project, help establish criteria and minimum qualifications for
> fact-check teams, help with the project's page design and tasks and to form
> additional teams comprising appointed representatives from other project
> teams to help coordinate and organize a list of articles for review, and
> who will serve as members of Project Accuracy's Editorial Review Board
> (PAERB). The PAERB will be responsible for review and approval of articles
> nominated to bear the "reviewed and approved for accuracy" seal in the top
> right corner of the article. The ideas also aim to support the WMF's
> "Reach" campaign and help establish or re-establish credibility in
> Wikipedia articles that carry the RAAFA seal as a trusted source worthy of
> citing at all levels of academia, government, research, etc.
>
> This seem like a unique approach to improving the quality of articles on
> Wikipedia and increasing reliability of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. The
> idea to bring experienced editors together to serve in the editorial board
> of the project sounds like a great way to benefit from the specialized
> skills of all participants.
>
> However, an editor (User:Smallbones) raised a concern on whether this is
> in line with the spirit of Wikipedia which permit anyone to freely edit its
> content at all levels. User:Smallbones said " An Editorial Review Board
> sounds like a very interesting idea and could be fun. But actually I think
> it could easily violate Wikipedia rules, such as forming some sort of
> exclusive club that others couldn't join without an invitation. If it's
> just another rating scheme (that anybody can participate in whenever they
> want)"
>
>
> I respect Smallbones concerns but I don't see a major problem with the
> idea of establishing an Editorial Review Board (ERB) comprising of trusted
> and experienced editors as board members. From the look of things,
> WikiProject Accuracy is likely to generate controversy among Wikipedians.
> The controversy will centered on whether this idea is against the vision of
> Wikipedia or not. Thus, we seek broader community input on this proposed
> project.
>
> Best,
>
> Olatunde Isaac.
>
> Manager, Wikipedia Education Program Nigeria.
> Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Using this list to tear people down

[Jane Darnell]

I just thought Mr. Kolbe's mother didn't hug him enough as a baby.

On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 5:33 AM, Sam Klein  wrote:

> +1
>
> On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 11:11 PM, Anna Stillwell 
> wrote:
>
> > I agree to do so. I'll help you constructively remind.
> > Thank you.
> > /a
> >
> > On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 6:05 PM, Keegan Peterzell 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 7:21 PM, Chris Sherlock <
> > chris.sherloc...@gmail.com
> > > >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > I agree with this, though I wonder about what to do when people cause
> > > > events that damage the central ideas and tenants of an organization.
> > > >
> > > > Just a thought.
> > > >
> > >
> > > ​It is not hard to keep discussions involving people relevant to the
> > issues
> > > at hand, and discuss people in context of their role or influence in
> > events
> > > and decision making, and these discussions are good to have.
> > >
> > > Starting threads pointedly about individuals, with discussions about
> the
> > > issues only tangential to the point of the attack on the individual is
> a
> > > very different thing, one that I think most recognize when they see
> this,
> > > as well as other threads that are coatracks and sea lioning.[0][1] For
> > > every positive thread we're generating, we're producing at least two
> > other
> > > toxic threads. And we're tolerating it. We have to stop.
> > >
> > > 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Coatrack
> > > 1. http://wondermark.com/1k62/
> > >
> > > --
> > > ~Keegan
> > >
> > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
> > >
> > > This is my personal email address. Everything sent from this email
> > address
> > > is in a personal capacity.
> > > ___
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> > > 
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Anna Stillwell
> > Major Gifts Officer
> > Wikimedia Foundation
> > 415.806.1536
> > *www.wikimediafoundation.org *
> > ___
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> > 
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Samuel Klein  @metasj  w:user:sj  +1 617 529 4266
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

[Jane Darnell]

We could help them by making Wikipedia pages about registration agencies,
European immigration laws, and/or uploading sample forms that they could
translate into their own languages.

On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 11:16 AM, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:

> Hoi,
> If we want to make a difference, a real difference, we enable refugees in
> refugee camps to edit Wikipedia. They have nothing to do, they are often
> well educated. It is wonderful when they can because it not only gives them
> something to do, it gives them a sense of self-worth and this prevents the
> onset of a lot of mental health issues.
>
> Obviously this is not easy but we do not pay them directly but still make a
> real difference.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> On 26 February 2016 at 09:39, David Cuenca Tudela 
> wrote:
>
> > I think there are more ways of supporting volunteers than just paying
> them
> > cash. For instance another option could be to offer them a place to stay,
> > food and healthcare. That is how many volunteer programs work, like
> > workaway or woofing, and I don't see anything wrong with it.
> >
> > Would it be an acceptable compromise?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Micru
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 6:49 AM, David Goodman 
> wrote:
> >
> > > Involving the foundation as a broker would corrupt  the Foundation
> > > altogether.  It would in essence turn it into an advertising agency.
> > We're
> > > supposed to be different from Google. Google earns money by letting
> > itself
> > > be used as a medium for advertising. It at least  hopes to achieve this
> > by
> > > while not being   evil, and succeeds reasonably well at the compromise.
> > >
> > > Wikipedia fortunately does not need to earn money, as ordinary people
> > > freely give  us more than enough for our needs,  and can therefore hope
> > to
> > > achieve the positive good of providing objective information on
> > > encyclopedic topics that people want to read about, not information
> that
> > > other organizations want people to read.  We have no need to
> compromise.
> > >
> > > On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 11:15 PM, SarahSV 
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:31 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <
> > pute...@mccme.ru>
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > - Possibly POV will be compromised in paid articles.
> > > > > - Unhealthy situation within the editing community. In the debates
> > with
> > > > > WMF staff when we disagreed, I always felt awkward, because they
> were
> > > > paid
> > > > > arguing with me, and would do it until they convince me or I give
> up,
> > > > and I
> > > > > was doing this in my free time, and got tired very quickly. I also
> > had
> > > > very
> > > > > unpleasant experiences interacting with some chapter people whose
> > only
> > > > goal
> > > > > was to keep their position. They did not care about the quality,
> > > > > efficiency, anything, only about their personal good. And if
> somebody
> > > > > defends their personal good, you know, thy usually win, and the
> > quality
> > > > > loses. Now, imagine there is a content dispute between a user who
> is
> > > paid
> > > > > (and is afraid to lose the salary) and a user who is unpaid and
> have
> > to
> > > > do
> > > > > the same for free - I am sure a paid user will be way more
> > persistent.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > ​Yaroslav, we already have a lot of paid editors on the English
> > > > Wikipedia.
> > > > Some are Wikimedians in residence, and this has always been regarded
> as
> > > > okay, though I believe they're expected not to edit articles about
> the
> > > > institution that employs them.
> > > >
> > > > But we also have a lot of paid PR editing and obvious COI problems
> > > because
> > > > of that, as well as the problems you highlight (e.g. the paid editor
> > > being
> > > > more persistent).
> > > >
> > > > Introducing the Foundation as a broker between organizations that
> want
> > > > articles and editors who want to write them would not solve all the
> > > > problems you highlight, but it would remove the COI aspect. So my
> > > thinking
> > > > was that it would be better than the current situation.
> > > >
> > > > Sarah​
> > > > ___
> > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > Unsubscribe:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > > 
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > David Goodman
> > >
> > > DGG at the enWP
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
> > > ___
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> > > 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a high-tech organization

[Jane Darnell]

Healthcare!!!

On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 9:39 AM, David Cuenca Tudela 
wrote:

> I think there are more ways of supporting volunteers than just paying them
> cash. For instance another option could be to offer them a place to stay,
> food and healthcare. That is how many volunteer programs work, like
> workaway or woofing, and I don't see anything wrong with it.
>
> Would it be an acceptable compromise?
>
> Regards,
> Micru
>
> On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 6:49 AM, David Goodman  wrote:
>
> > Involving the foundation as a broker would corrupt  the Foundation
> > altogether.  It would in essence turn it into an advertising agency.
> We're
> > supposed to be different from Google. Google earns money by letting
> itself
> > be used as a medium for advertising. It at least  hopes to achieve this
> by
> > while not being   evil, and succeeds reasonably well at the compromise.
> >
> > Wikipedia fortunately does not need to earn money, as ordinary people
> > freely give  us more than enough for our needs,  and can therefore hope
> to
> > achieve the positive good of providing objective information on
> > encyclopedic topics that people want to read about, not information that
> > other organizations want people to read.  We have no need to compromise.
> >
> > On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 11:15 PM, SarahSV 
> wrote:
> >
> > > On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:31 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <
> pute...@mccme.ru>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > - Possibly POV will be compromised in paid articles.
> > > > - Unhealthy situation within the editing community. In the debates
> with
> > > > WMF staff when we disagreed, I always felt awkward, because they were
> > > paid
> > > > arguing with me, and would do it until they convince me or I give up,
> > > and I
> > > > was doing this in my free time, and got tired very quickly. I also
> had
> > > very
> > > > unpleasant experiences interacting with some chapter people whose
> only
> > > goal
> > > > was to keep their position. They did not care about the quality,
> > > > efficiency, anything, only about their personal good. And if somebody
> > > > defends their personal good, you know, thy usually win, and the
> quality
> > > > loses. Now, imagine there is a content dispute between a user who is
> > paid
> > > > (and is afraid to lose the salary) and a user who is unpaid and have
> to
> > > do
> > > > the same for free - I am sure a paid user will be way more
> persistent.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ​Yaroslav, we already have a lot of paid editors on the English
> > > Wikipedia.
> > > Some are Wikimedians in residence, and this has always been regarded as
> > > okay, though I believe they're expected not to edit articles about the
> > > institution that employs them.
> > >
> > > But we also have a lot of paid PR editing and obvious COI problems
> > because
> > > of that, as well as the problems you highlight (e.g. the paid editor
> > being
> > > more persistent).
> > >
> > > Introducing the Foundation as a broker between organizations that want
> > > articles and editors who want to write them would not solve all the
> > > problems you highlight, but it would remove the COI aspect. So my
> > thinking
> > > was that it would be better than the current situation.
> > >
> > > Sarah​
> > > ___
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > 
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > David Goodman
> >
> > DGG at the enWP
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
> > ___
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> > 
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Etiamsi omnes, ego non
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Jane Darnell]

Yes!!! This is why I haven't spent much time contributing on Meta at all
since then:
" We would say "we need pages," and they would explain why we didn't. We
would say "we need archives," and they would explain why good search was a
better idea. We would say "there's too much white space," and they would
explain that people like white space. And so on."

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 10:42 PM, SarahSV  wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 8:19 PM, Pete Forsyth 
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Is it possible to imagine an effort that would not be shot down, but
> > embraced?
> >
> > What would need to be different?
> >
> > These are the kinds of questions I wish the Wikimedia Foundation would
> get
> > better at asking and exploring.
> >
> > ​Lila is good at asking the right questions of the community, which is
> why
> (so far as I can tell) editors like her. If you look at her meta talk page,
> you can see her asking good questions about Flow and trying to find out
> what editors need.
>
> That was literally the first time we felt we were being listened to. There
> was one point when Flow was introduced – and I have been trying to find
> this diff but can't – where there was something on the talk page that
> amounted to "if you agree with us that x and y, then you're welcome to join
> the discussion."
>
> So from the start, it felt as though staffers had ruled out the community
> as people who might know something about what tools are needed to
> collaborate on an article (which is not the same as chatting). People who
> had been doing something for years were not regarded as experts in that
> thing by the Foundation.
>
> We would say "we need pages," and they would explain why we didn't. We
> would say "we need archives," and they would explain why good search was a
> better idea. We would say "there's too much white space," and they would
> explain that people like white space. And so on.
>
> Sarah
>
> ​
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Jane Darnell]

Risker thanks for this. I would add that the biggest problem for outsiders
is trying to sift through the emails in this thread, looking for valid
concerns and first-hand accounts among the cynical and/or ironic comments
only understandable to a few players. As more and more of our international
community tries to read and follow along on these developments, let's
please stick to some ground rules: no irony, no cynicism, no rehashing old
mistakes if they are irrelevant. Challenging, but necessary if you want
more foreign chapter members to hear or take part in this conversation.

For anyone who has seen the movie Spotlight, I would say this story is
currently "buried in Metro" but really needs to hit the front page.

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 9:54 PM, Risker  wrote:

> This is a difficult time for everyone.  Staff, particularly staff who work
> out of the San Francisco office, have seen and been through things that are
> not well known or understood outside of that small group; even "highly
> involved" volunteers aren't entirely in the loop.  Former staff continue to
> have a knowledge advantage over the vast majority of community members
> simply because of their continued ties to friends and former colleagues who
> remain on staff.
>
> I encourage everyone to treat each other with respect, even when
> disagreeing with the interpretations that other people have made based on
> the (often comparatively limited) information that they have available.  I
> can honestly say that I know some things that perhaps SarahSV and
> Anthonyhcole don't know, but I certainly don't know everything - and I have
> been in the SF offices twice in the last six months as a volunteer and
> regularly converse with staff in certain areas in my role as a volunteer
> working on various things.
>
> One of the major barriers is the legitimate concern that many staff have in
> trying to communicate concerns in a manner that is not destructive, either
> to the WMF as an organization, or to their own professional reputations.
> The whistleblower provisions at the WMF are very narrow (essentially only
> permitting reporting directly to the Board chair/chair of the Audit
> Committee if there is reason to believe that a law has been broken, not
> just internal policies no matter how severe), as one example.  I've been
> aware of concerns for about a year now, myself, but I've still found out
> quite a bit more over the last few weeks. For staff, a lot of those early
> concerns are practically ancient history, and that knowledge hasn't been
> disseminated to a much broader community. Not to put too fine a point on
> it, but the majority of the audience here doesn't know.
>
> Anthony, speaking for myself only, I don't think that your association with
> Wikipediocracy is particularly relevant; other active members of that site
> have expressed significantly different opinions, whether within or outside
> of "WMF-related" locations like this mailing list or Meta or The Signpost.
> I'd like to discourage anyone from assuming that there are monolithic and
> unified positions on the current situation amongst any particular group.
> That includes former and current staff, editors of particular projects,
> commenters on external blogs or through other non-WMF media or criticism
> sites, user groups, chapters, etc.  There are a lot of different points of
> view, and a lot of different levels of knowledge and information.
>
> I'm not going to say "let's assume good faith", don't worry.  I'm going to
> say "don't beat up on people who have different levels of information".
>
> Risker/Anne
>
>
>
> On 20 February 2016 at 20:31, Brandon Harris  wrote:
>
> >
> > Danny, don't kid yourself!  The folks at Wikipediocracy know
> > everything about everything that's happened at the Foundation and about
> > everything that will EVER happen.  They've never been wrong, ever!
> >
> > I don't understand why we're still talking about this!
> >
> >
> > > On Feb 20, 2016, at 5:29 PM, Danny Horn  wrote:
> > >
> > > You know, it's possible that the people who work for the Foundation
> might
> > > understand the situation in a more nuanced way than you do. I know it
> > > doesn't seem likely, but dare to dream.
> >
> > ---
> > Brandon Harris :: bhar...@gaijin.com :: made of steel wool and whiskey
> >
> >
> >
> >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Can we see the Knight grant application and grant offer?

[Jane Darnell]

Thanks for this breakdown of events/intentions/grant request. I can't help
wondering whether this grant will produce anything at all that we can use.
As I recall we talked a lot about how bad search was in general on
Wikipedia projects, and the example used to demonstrate how poor this was,
was a comparison test. Gerard mentioned how badly Wikimedia Commons
responds to the search term "horse" as compared to Google's interpretation
of "horse". I believe the conclusion was that we needed to integrate Google
search into Wikipedia, not try to compete with Google at their game.
Meanwhile, with Wikidata, we are very slowly filling the "depicts" property
with "horse"  for artwork items of horses, but it will take years probably
before all images on Commons with horses in them have found their way to
Wikidata, much less get tagged with a depicts property! Looking at "horse"
in reasonator does indicate some progress, however, note that not all
images served up by Reasonator actually show a horse:
https://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?q=Q726&lang=en

Why should we try to beat Google at search? These days, if I am looking for
an image of a horse on Wikimedia Commons, I dump this into Google: "
site.commons.wikimedia.org horse" and then I click on images. This is the
most effective way for me to find images on commons that I know are there
(inlcuding ones I uploaded myself).

On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 11:31 AM, Liam Wyatt  wrote:

> This Grant document for a “Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia” is
> *specifically and overtly stating* that its purpose is to start work
> on an search engine as a rival for Google/Yahoo. That is the end goal
> of the project. Near near the bottom of page 10 it summarises the
> whole project as:
>
> "knowledge Engine by Wikipedia will be the internet's first
> transparent search engine, and the first one originated by the
> Wikimedia Foundation". It will, "democratize the discovery of media,
> news and information – it will make the Internet's most relevant
> information more accessible and openly curated, and it will create an
> open data engine that's completely free of commercial interests.
> Today, commercial search engines dominate search engine use of the
> internet...". A separate summary on page 2 states, "The project will
> pave the way for non-commercial information to be found and utilised
> by internet users".
>
> At the bottom of page 13, the primary risk identified is "interference
> by Google, Yahoo or another big commercial search engine could
> suddenly devote resources to a similar project". As SarahSV pointed
> out above, If the "Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia" is only about
> improving the inter-connectedness of the Wikimedia sister projects by
> improving how internal systems work - which no one is disputing is a
> very useful goal - then google/yahoo releasing a new search engine
> product would not be counted as the project's "biggest challenge".
>
> - "Non commercial" -
>
> The document itself refers to "non commercial" several times, and
> seems to be using the term loosely. Nevertheless, it seems clear to me
> that any reasonable person who is not deeply-immersed in
> copyright-debates about the definition of "free" would understand the
> words "non-commercial" in the context of *this document* to mean that
> the search engine is *operated* non-commercially. Now, I do
> acknowledge that a grant-request is by definition a “sales pitch” and
> you have to write your request using the terminology and focus areas
> of the grant-giver. However, it is my understanding that Lila
> specifically wanted to build this - a competitor to Google - and that
> this is most clearly expressed in the summary on page 10. It describes
> the 6 principles through which the “Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia”
> will "upend the commercial structure [of search engines]". These are
> Public Curation, Transparency, Open Data, Privacy, No Advertising and
> 'Internalisation'. Nothing in this document talks about ways to limit
> the *content* of the search engine to only "non-commercial" stuff (and
> I if it did, then we would be talking about this:
> https://search.creativecommons.org/ ).
>
> - Lack of Strategy -
>
> Now, maybe an open-source search engine would be a good thing for the
> WMF to create! But that would be a major strategic decision. It would
> be, in effect, a new sister project to sit alongside (above?)
> Wikipedia, Commons, Wikidata etc. However, this concept appears
> *nowhere* in the current strategy consultation documents on Meta. As I
> wrote on my blog last week: "Of 18 different approaches identified in
> the...consultation process only one of them seems directly related to
> [search]: 'Explore ways to scale machine-generated, machine-verified
> and machine-assisted content'. It is also literally the last of the 18
> topics listed".
> http://wittylama.com/2016/01/30/strategy-controversy-part-2/
>
> It seems to me extremely damaging for the relationship with the Knight
> Foundation if

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Another goodbye

[Jane Darnell]

SO sorry to read this! My work with you on the IEG committee was one of the
most inspiring experiences I have had in my years as a Wikipedian. I guess
we will only learn after a few years what the effects were of some of the
decisions we made ton that committee, but I like to think that some of the
projects we funded have grown seeds of inspiration across the movement.
Thanks for your work above and beyond the call of duty while heading the
committee.

From my corner of the Wikiverse, good luck in your future endeavors

On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 8:24 PM, Siko Bouterse 
wrote:

> Dear friends and colleagues,
>
> I’ve had the amazing privilege of serving this movement in a staff capacity
> for the past 4 ½ years, but I’ve now decided to move on from my role at the
> Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> Transparency, integrity, community and free knowledge remain deeply
> important to me, and I believe I will be better placed to represent those
> values in a volunteer capacity at this time. I am and will always remain a
> Wikimedian, so you'll still see me around the projects (User:Seeeko),
> hopefully with renewed energy and joy in volunteering.
>
> This movement has become my home in so many unexpected ways, and I’m truly
> honored to have learned from so many of you. It was an amazing experience
> to have partnered with smart, bold, and dedicated community folks to
> experiment with projects like Teahouse, IdeaLab, Inspire, Individual
> Engagement Grants, and Reimagining Grants. I’ve seen you create some really
> incredible content, ideas, tools, programs, processes, committees and
> organizations, all in the service of free knowledge.
>
> I expect my last day to be Thursday, February 25th. I have full confidence
> in Maggie Dennis's abilities to lead the Community Engagement Department,
> and I trust that my team will remain available to support the community’s
> needs for grants and other resources throughout this time of transition.
>
> Much love,
> Siko
>
> --
> Siko Bouterse
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>
> *Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
> sum of all knowledge. *
> *Donate  or click the "edit" button today,
> and help us make it a reality!*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reducing the net cost of Wikimania

[Jane Darnell]

"We also do not have a strong chapter system"

This has always puzzled me, because I am a firm believer in the chapter
system, despite its faults and limitations. Isn't it time to address this
for the more active areas of the USA?

On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Andrew Lih  wrote:

> GerardM,
>
> As much as I agree with you on many things related to Wikimania, your
> statement about en.wp and USA being “over subsidized” is off base.
>
> For the last few years I’ve held my tongue as American applicants get a
> fraction of 10% of all the funding for Wikimania scholarships. That’s
> because 10% is allocated to all of North America, so US based folks compete
> with Canadians for that small slice of the pie. Indeed, key community
> members from the US could not afford to go to Wikimania, and did not,
> because of the limited funding. We also do not have a strong chapter system
> to make up for that shortcoming, where European chapters can, and do,
> underwrite their local members with other funds.
>
> I am not against the bulk of the scholarship money going to
> underrepresented developing markets and giving new voices a chance to
> attend. But I wanted to dispel the myth that Americans are always gorging
> at the trough.
>
>
> https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Scholarship_selection_process
> https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Selection_process
>
>
> -Andrew
>
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 6:49 AM, Gerard Meijssen <
> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > Pine with all due respect, the USA is not the problem and English
> Wikipedia
> > has been overly subsidised, given way too much attention. Indeed having
> > more people from the USA attend Wikimania is not a good value
> proposition.
> > The USA and Britain is overrepresented as it is.
> > Thanks,
> >  GerardM
> >
> > On 10 February 2016 at 10:13, Pine W  wrote:
> >
> > > From a US perspective, even here in the global north we have plenty of
> > > students and middle-class participants for whom $1500 in travel, food
> and
> > > lodging plus 5 days away from work, family, or school amounts to a
> > > significant or impossible sacrifice.
> > >
> > > Perhaps someone could tell us the statistics for how many people have
> > > attended Wikimania each year who were not WMF employees, FDC or WMF
> Board
> > > members, scholarship recipients, or financially sponsored by WMF
> > affiliates
> > > or WEF. Of those people who pay 100% of their own costs plus the cost
> of
> > > admission tickets, my guess is that many live within a day's travel
> time
> > by
> > > train, car, or bus.
> > >
> > > I would hypothesize that thematic conferences also have a low
> percentage
> > of
> > > people who pay 100% of their own costs, but that regional conferences
> > which
> > > have lower travel costs for the average attendee receive modestly
> higher
> > > percentages of unsubsidized attendance.
> > >
> > > It seems to me that WMF finacial support for conferences, including
> > > regional and thematic conferences, will continue to be the norm.
> > >
> > > Whether $1 million is appropriate for Wikimania and whether a more
> modest
> > > budget would be appropriate and feasable are different questions that
> > merit
> > > careful reflection.
> > >
> > > Pine
> > > ___
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> > > 
> > >
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> >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] 2015 Harassment Survey - Results Report

[Jane Darnell]

I think you meant to link this one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vito&type=revision&diff=686068089&oldid=686006551

On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 11:42 AM, Vituzzu  wrote:

> A similar situation happened to me:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vito&diff=685988175&oldid=685926527
> or just a couple of days ago most of my uploads at Commons were deleted
> because a long-term abuser filled them with crappy "{{Copyviol|request file
> delegation abusive vandalisme copyright}}" tags.
>
> I've been subjected to various forms of online harassment for years but I
> feel safe enough since I wouldn't fear any of them in RL (nor I use
> socialnetworks).
>
> Still I must confess what can become frustrating is seeing sort of
> "tolerance" towards this kind of attack. IMnsHO anything clearly aimed at
> harassing other users should trigger a wide zero-tolerance reaction,
> regardless of any "credit" owned by the perpetrator.
>
> Vito
>
> Il 30/01/2016 16:18, Jane Darnell ha scritto:
>
>> I have been surprised again and again by a casual form of vandalism that
>> goes unchecked because it is possibly seen as humorous. Here is an example
>> of something I have corrected in passing (and can remember how to find in
>> order to link it here):
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Florence_Devouard&type=revision&diff=427057319&oldid=426139028
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 10:01 AM, Sydney Poore 
>> wrote:
>> ___
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>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] 2015 Harassment Survey - Results Report

[Jane Darnell]

I have been surprised again and again by a casual form of vandalism that
goes unchecked because it is possibly seen as humorous. Here is an example
of something I have corrected in passing (and can remember how to find in
order to link it here):
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Florence_Devouard&type=revision&diff=427057319&oldid=426139028

On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 10:01 AM, Sydney Poore 
wrote:

> Hi Tobias,
>
> Like Maggie, I was not surprised that people (both men and women) were
> reporting revenge porn because I know of reports in the Wikimedia
> community, but like her I was surprised that this survey showed
> revenge porn being reported by this many people.
>
> But it is not surprising that the people who experienced the worst
> types of harassment, or type that the WMF and wikimedia community is
> the least able to address would respond to this survey.
>
> Without further verification, I would not suggest the 65% figure to be
> representative of the whole wikimedia community of people who are
> harassed. Most people understand that this type of survey sample would
> not produce results that are representative of the whole community.
>
> But it does show an example of a type of extreme harassment that
> poorly understood by the community. This information can help educate
> the WMF and the wikimedia community, and hopefully will help find
> better ways of assisting the people being harassed.
>
> Sydney
>
>
>
> Sydney Poore
> User:FloNight
> Wikipedian in Residence
> at Cochrane Collaboration
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 9:03 AM, Maggie Dennis 
> wrote:
> > Hi, Tobias.
> >
> > The pictures may not be the individuals at all; they may be pornographic
> > pictures of others that are misattributed. And sometimes the attribution
> is
> > not to a real name, but to their usernames. In all cases, the intent
> seems
> > to be to humiliate and hurt the target. Sometimes the goal seems to be to
> > drive them away.
> >
> > Of course, I don't know the stories of all the respondents who selected
> > that - not even a substantial percentage of them. I was surprised by the
> > prevalence, too, but maybe not as surprised as you given what I *have*
> seen
> > in nearly 5 years of working in this area at the WMF. People try all
> > different kinds of ways to try to hurt each other, and sexualized attacks
> > of one kind or another are sadly really common.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Maggie
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 8:47 AM, Tobias <
> church.of.emacs...@googlemail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Maggie,
> >>
> >> On 01/30/2016 02:35 PM, Maggie Dennis wrote:
> >> > In the time I've worked at the Wikimedia Foundation, I have
> >> > (unsurprisingly, given its reported prevalence) come across this kind
> of
> >> > harassment in my work with Support and Safety (formerly Community
> >> > Advocacy). There have been cases where perfectly harmless pictures of
> the
> >> > individuals have been doctored to be sexualized and cases where
> existing
> >> > pornographic pictures that were not the individual were selected and
> >> > misattributed as being them. I have personally been involved in
> >> complaints
> >> > of this happening to both men and women.
> >>
> >> thank you for providing further insights. That is really concerning.
> >>
> >> At the same time, a great majority of users do not publish photos of
> >> themselves, and don't publish their name (which would allow others to
> >> find available photos elsewhere), so it is still a mystery to me how
> >> this very high percentage can be explained.
> >>
> >> Tobias
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ___
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> >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> >> 
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Maggie Dennis
> > Director, Support and Safety
> > Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Jane Darnell]

That is so true! Making book items is hard and then using them in reference 
statements is harder

-Original Message-
From: "Andrea Zanni" 
Sent: ‎26-‎1-‎2016 09:20
To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" 
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 8:03 AM, Gerard Meijssen 
wrote:

>- It is really laborious to add references. Many references are a book a
>publication and I give you one example of a book [1]. It takes MUCH more
>time to add a source than it is to add a statement. The book, the
> authors
>they need sources in their own right..
>


Also, Wikidata has not found a way yet to work with books.
Yes, it's relatively easy to create an item for a recent book and populate
it with a few statements relatively to the main metadata (author, year of
publishing, publisher).

What we don't have is a way to *consistently* work with books (which have
often many translations and editions). We cannot import (yet) library
catalogs in wikidata[1]. We don't even have a consistent way to link
Wikidata to Wikisource (index pages, ns0 pages).

I think this is quite relevant for the reference issue.

Aubrey


[1] there is an ongoing project with the National Library of Florence, in
Italy. We now have a script to import records in WIkibase, and will do on a
local one. Then we will approach Wikidata.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Jane Darnell]

Then you are willing to concede that we don't need references on
disambiguation pages? What about categories? What about templates? Those
all have items in Wikidata as well.

On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 6:47 AM, Anthony Cole  wrote:

> I understand there are some data (say, the sky is blue) that are so obvious
> and well-known that no one would expect a source to be provided. I'm
> referring to data that everyone on earth doesn't know the answer to, like
> dry
> air contains 78.09*% *nitrogen.
>
> Anthony Cole
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 1:39 PM, Anthony Cole  wrote:
>
> > Why not insist that every piece of data added to wikidata is supported by
> > a reliable source?
> >
> > That's a genuine question. I don't know the answer.
> >
> > Saying, "Well, Wikipedia is unreliable, too" doesn't answer the question.
> >
> > You're all bright people, and I assume there is a good reason not to
> > insist on reliable sourcing for all of Wikidata's claims. What is it,
> > please?
> >
> >
> >
> > Anthony Cole
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 1:28 AM, Jane Darnell  wrote:
> >
> >> Actually I think Wikidata is sourced more thoroughly than any single
> >> Wikipedia. Looking at the last chart in those stats, less than 10% of
> all
> >> items have zero sitelinks, and we can't see in the stats whether 100% of
> >> those have zero referenced statements, but I would assume that is not
> the
> >> case, especially since items with zero sitelinks and zero internal
> >> Wikidata
> >> links tend to be "cleaned up and deleted". At least one sitelink means
> the
> >> item is coming from a Wikipedia, and therefore the Wikipedia article
> will
> >> have references that could be used in the Wikidata item and just haven't
> >> been added yet. Of all the items with zero or just one statement, I
> expect
> >> a great deal of these to be linked to categories, disambiguation pages,
> or
> >> lists, as these types of items generally only contain one statement.
> >>
> >> Also, we currently have no way to count unreferenced statements in
> >> Wikipedia articles, but there are very few Wikipedia articles that have
> at
> >> least one reference per sentence. So concluding that any single
> >> unreferenced statement no matter how many other referenced statements
> >> there
> >> are in the item brings an entire Wikidata item into the "untrustworthy
> >> zone" is just silly.
> >>
> >> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 3:32 PM, Gerard Meijssen <
> >> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> > Hoi,
> >> > Maybe.. but not all Wikipedias are the same. It is verifiable that
> >> > Wikipedia would easily benefit from Wikidata from Wikidata by
> replacing
> >> the
> >> > existing links and red links with functionality that uses Wikidata.
> >> >
> >> > It happens often that I work on content in Wikipedia and find an error
> >> rate
> >> > of 20%. When you check Wikidata for its quality I expect it to be much
> >> > better than 90%.
> >> >
> >> > It is blooming obvious that Wikipedians only see fault elsewhere and
> are
> >> > forgiving for the error in their own way.
> >> > Thanks,
> >> >   GerardM
> >> >
> >> > On 25 January 2016 at 14:55, Andreas Kolbe 
> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > > On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 9:34 AM, Magnus Manske <
> >> > > magnusman...@googlemail.com>
> >> > > wrote:
> >> > >
> >> > > > What you hear is "Wikidata is unreliable" (compared to the
> >> respective
> >> > > > Wikipedia; proof, anyone? Please, show me proof; silence or
> >> anecdotes
> >> > > don't
> >> > > > count)
> >> > >
> >> > >
> >> > >
> >> > > Any non-trivial content you want to add to Wikipedia today has to
> >> fulfil
> >> > > one basic criterion: that the content be traceable to a
> professionally
> >> > > published source.
> >> > >
> >> > > Most Wikidata content fails that criterion.[1] It's blooming obvious
> >> that
> >> > > Wikidata is "unreliable" according to Wikipedia's definition of a
> >> > "reliable
> >> >

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Jane Darnell]

The answer is quite simple and is exactly the same as it is for Wikipedia:
it's a wiki, and not everyone who contributes knows how to add references.

On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 6:39 AM, Anthony Cole  wrote:

> Why not insist that every piece of data added to wikidata is supported by a
> reliable source?
>
> That's a genuine question. I don't know the answer.
>
> Saying, "Well, Wikipedia is unreliable, too" doesn't answer the question.
>
> You're all bright people, and I assume there is a good reason not to insist
> on reliable sourcing for all of Wikidata's claims. What is it, please?
>
>
>
> Anthony Cole
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 1:28 AM, Jane Darnell  wrote:
>
> > Actually I think Wikidata is sourced more thoroughly than any single
> > Wikipedia. Looking at the last chart in those stats, less than 10% of all
> > items have zero sitelinks, and we can't see in the stats whether 100% of
> > those have zero referenced statements, but I would assume that is not the
> > case, especially since items with zero sitelinks and zero internal
> Wikidata
> > links tend to be "cleaned up and deleted". At least one sitelink means
> the
> > item is coming from a Wikipedia, and therefore the Wikipedia article will
> > have references that could be used in the Wikidata item and just haven't
> > been added yet. Of all the items with zero or just one statement, I
> expect
> > a great deal of these to be linked to categories, disambiguation pages,
> or
> > lists, as these types of items generally only contain one statement.
> >
> > Also, we currently have no way to count unreferenced statements in
> > Wikipedia articles, but there are very few Wikipedia articles that have
> at
> > least one reference per sentence. So concluding that any single
> > unreferenced statement no matter how many other referenced statements
> there
> > are in the item brings an entire Wikidata item into the "untrustworthy
> > zone" is just silly.
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 3:32 PM, Gerard Meijssen <
> > gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hoi,
> > > Maybe.. but not all Wikipedias are the same. It is verifiable that
> > > Wikipedia would easily benefit from Wikidata from Wikidata by replacing
> > the
> > > existing links and red links with functionality that uses Wikidata.
> > >
> > > It happens often that I work on content in Wikipedia and find an error
> > rate
> > > of 20%. When you check Wikidata for its quality I expect it to be much
> > > better than 90%.
> > >
> > > It is blooming obvious that Wikipedians only see fault elsewhere and
> are
> > > forgiving for the error in their own way.
> > > Thanks,
> > >   GerardM
> > >
> > > On 25 January 2016 at 14:55, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 9:34 AM, Magnus Manske <
> > > > magnusman...@googlemail.com>
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > What you hear is "Wikidata is unreliable" (compared to the
> respective
> > > > > Wikipedia; proof, anyone? Please, show me proof; silence or
> anecdotes
> > > > don't
> > > > > count)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Any non-trivial content you want to add to Wikipedia today has to
> > fulfil
> > > > one basic criterion: that the content be traceable to a
> professionally
> > > > published source.
> > > >
> > > > Most Wikidata content fails that criterion.[1] It's blooming obvious
> > that
> > > > Wikidata is "unreliable" according to Wikipedia's definition of a
> > > "reliable
> > > > source", isn't it?[2]
> > > >
> > > > [1] https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/stats.php
> > > > [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:SPS
> > > > ___
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> > > >
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> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Jane Darnell]

Actually I think Wikidata is sourced more thoroughly than any single
Wikipedia. Looking at the last chart in those stats, less than 10% of all
items have zero sitelinks, and we can't see in the stats whether 100% of
those have zero referenced statements, but I would assume that is not the
case, especially since items with zero sitelinks and zero internal Wikidata
links tend to be "cleaned up and deleted". At least one sitelink means the
item is coming from a Wikipedia, and therefore the Wikipedia article will
have references that could be used in the Wikidata item and just haven't
been added yet. Of all the items with zero or just one statement, I expect
a great deal of these to be linked to categories, disambiguation pages, or
lists, as these types of items generally only contain one statement.

Also, we currently have no way to count unreferenced statements in
Wikipedia articles, but there are very few Wikipedia articles that have at
least one reference per sentence. So concluding that any single
unreferenced statement no matter how many other referenced statements there
are in the item brings an entire Wikidata item into the "untrustworthy
zone" is just silly.

On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 3:32 PM, Gerard Meijssen 
wrote:

> Hoi,
> Maybe.. but not all Wikipedias are the same. It is verifiable that
> Wikipedia would easily benefit from Wikidata from Wikidata by replacing the
> existing links and red links with functionality that uses Wikidata.
>
> It happens often that I work on content in Wikipedia and find an error rate
> of 20%. When you check Wikidata for its quality I expect it to be much
> better than 90%.
>
> It is blooming obvious that Wikipedians only see fault elsewhere and are
> forgiving for the error in their own way.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
> On 25 January 2016 at 14:55, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 9:34 AM, Magnus Manske <
> > magnusman...@googlemail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > What you hear is "Wikidata is unreliable" (compared to the respective
> > > Wikipedia; proof, anyone? Please, show me proof; silence or anecdotes
> > don't
> > > count)
> >
> >
> >
> > Any non-trivial content you want to add to Wikipedia today has to fulfil
> > one basic criterion: that the content be traceable to a professionally
> > published source.
> >
> > Most Wikidata content fails that criterion.[1] It's blooming obvious that
> > Wikidata is "unreliable" according to Wikipedia's definition of a
> "reliable
> > source", isn't it?[2]
> >
> > [1] https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/stats.php
> > [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:SPS
> > ___
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> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Happy Magnus Manske Day!

[Jane Darnell]

...which is now added to the Wikipedia page

On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 8:45 AM, Ed Erhart  wrote:

> Don't forget the Wikimedia Blog's profile of Magnus for Wikipedia's 15th
> anniversary!
>
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/18/fifteen-years-wikipedia-magnus-manske/
>
> --Ed
>
> On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 6:56 PM, Ricordisamoa <
> ricordisa...@openmailbox.org>
> wrote:
>
> > Il 25/01/2016 00:47, Jane Darnell ha scritto:
> >
> >> Hope everybody takes some time today to share what they have learned
> from
> >> using Magnus' tools. It's time to call on all posse members to share
> their
> >> tool tips, because it's ...
> >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Magnus_Manske_Day
> >>
> >
> > Actually it's 23:56 UTC of January 24
> >
> >
> > ___
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> >
>
>
>
> --
> Ed Erhart
> Editorial Associate
> Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Happy Magnus Manske Day!

[Jane Darnell]

I couldn't agree more, but isn't this missing link going to be filled by
the article placeholder? Maybe I am missing something, but it was my
understanding that the article placeholder could be used for those
redirects that are not alternate spellings for the same person and so forth

On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 8:49 AM, Gerard Meijssen 
wrote:

> Hoi,
> If there is one thing I have learned from Magnus, it is that a single tool
> is just that. Easily forgotten. The power of his approach is that he thinks
> about tools as part of a chain. This means that when a new tool is build,
> it slots in. It gains power by doing so.
>
> Being an independent thinker, his tools fit his architecture, an
> architecture that is his. He is quite happy to hear ideas and when he sees
> reason, he will even apply himself and make it so. It is why I am grateful
> to him for the many small things he added to Reasonator to humour me.
>
> It is against this light that it bemuses me. He has his day, but he did not
> have his day. One of the best ideas not part of either the Wikipedia or
> Wikidata road map is his tool for redlinks. I have said it before and I say
> it again. It will improve both Wikipedia and Wikidata significantly. It has
> only one drawback, the pundits did not find fault with it so it does not
> get tracktion. 
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
> On 25 January 2016 at 00:47, Jane Darnell  wrote:
>
> > Hope everybody takes some time today to share what they have learned from
> > using Magnus' tools. It's time to call on all posse members to share
> their
> > tool tips, because it's ...
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Magnus_Manske_Day
> >
> > Here are my top links:
> > https://tools.wmflabs.org/mix-n-match/
> > http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/quick_statements.php
> > https://tools.wmflabs.org/magnustools/prepbio.php
> > https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/creator_from_wikidata.php
> >
> > I use these to edit data about artists and their works, but you could use
> > prepbio for preparing to publish any biography on English Wikipedia, and
> > Mix-n-Match for any authority control for person data, not just artists.
> > ___
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[Wikimedia-l] Happy Magnus Manske Day!

[Jane Darnell]

Hope everybody takes some time today to share what they have learned from
using Magnus' tools. It's time to call on all posse members to share their
tool tips, because it's ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Magnus_Manske_Day

Here are my top links:
https://tools.wmflabs.org/mix-n-match/
http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/quick_statements.php
https://tools.wmflabs.org/magnustools/prepbio.php
https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/creator_from_wikidata.php

I use these to edit data about artists and their works, but you could use
prepbio for preparing to publish any biography on English Wikipedia, and
Mix-n-Match for any authority control for person data, not just artists.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A common product development process (was Re: Profile of Magnus Manske)

[Jane Darnell]

+1
I also like this tone and agree both with everything Magnus has claimed and
with Quim's ideas of opening specific Phabricator tasks to move forward. I
think a big problem is how to inform people during product launch. I think
the media viewer would have been launched more smoothly if the viewer had
the "turn this new feature off" button placed more prominently in the first
few weeks of introduction, for logged in users of all kinds, both readers
as well as editors. The main problem there was that the media viewer had a
negative impact on the workflow for many Wiki(p/m)edians, and because there
was no formal study of editor workflows beforehand, this was entirely
overlooked. Readers of maps and other files that use the annotator were
also locked out from that content for a fairly long period of time.

Moving forward, more attention must be paid to documenting existing reader
and editor workflows, gnarly as this may sound to achieve. Once done
however, optimization of such workflows should be much, much easier. After
viewing that video from Mexico Wikimania of a mobile-user's editing
workflow with the Visual Editor I was shocked to think that there are
people out there trying so hard and moving so slowly to achieve their wiki
goals. We really need to spend time on this, because mobile will only
become more and more important. I for one don't see myself making the
switch to Visual Editor any time soon, though I do use several other
websites regularly on mobile.

As far as asking the WMF only to "build what the community wants", I
strongly disagree. I have become a regular user of Facebook to augment my
onwiki work, and a few years ago if you had asked me whether I would find
Wiki(p/m)edians on Facebook I would have said "No Way!"

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 10:36 AM, Pine W  wrote:

> Quim,
>
> I like the tone of these proposals.
>
> I particularly like the concepts (some of which you mentioned) of:
>
> * Limited-scale A/B tests in the wild prior to 100% deployments
>
> * Community involvement in the  ideation and early product design phases
>
> * Well-designed, short surveys with appropriate sampling (with a nod to
> Edward'a possible role here) at various points in product development
>
> * The development and use of SMART goals throughout the product design
> process
>
> * "Design thinking" about contributor workflows
>
> Pine
> On Jan 20, 2016 1:17 AM, "Quim Gil"  wrote:
>
> > Thank you for this interesting thread (and thank you for the interesting
> > blog post in the first place). I'll pick a quote and I will try to
> propose
> > ways forward about other comments made.
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 11:35 PM, Magnus Manske <
> > magnusman...@googlemail.com
> > > wrote:
> >
> > > I would hope the Foundation by now understands better how to handle new
> > > software releases.
> >
> >
> > I think so, although I'm sure the Foundation still needs to understand
> > better how to handle new software releases -- and the communities too.
> >
> > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMF_product_development_process is the
> > common protocol where we want to apply all the learning. Clarifying
> > how community engagement works in this WMF product development process
> is a
> > main priority for us during this quarter (
> > https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T124022
> > ), and everybody is invited to join.
> >
> > I do think that we have many problems as software partners, the first
> > problem being that we all got used to this situation of
> > confrontation-by-default as something natural, they way it is. We are
> > software partners, we really are, and in order to make this partnership
> > productive we need to be in a mood of collaboration-by-default.
> >
> > We need a climate where new ideas are welcomed and encouraged. Today
> > someone comes with a new idea and the chances are that the first replies
> > setting the tone will be more discouraging than encouraging. We need a
> safe
> > and exciting place where everybody can share new concepts, collaborate on
> > them, learn from each other.
> >
> > We need a prioritization process where great concepts receive initial
> > support for planning and prototyping, and where good plans and prototypes
> > receive support to start their way toward production. The WMF needs to
> open
> > that process to the participation of our communities, and our communities
> > need to understand that this is the best point of time to discuss new
> > plans.
> >
> > We need design and build processes that volunteers find easy to follow
> and
> > participate in. There are many and very diverse groups of people (at
> > Wikimedia and beyond)  that would give their feedback about design
> concepts
> > or alpha releases if they would only know about them.
> >
> > We need to make our deployment process more flexible and predictable,
> > allowing development teams and communities to agree on beta releases, A/B
> > tests, opt-in/opt-out approaches, first/last waves... Some ideas:
> >
> > * In order

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia's 15th BD

[Jane Darnell]

Thanks for sharing! I was bicycling through New York and stopped in Lake
Placid in 2005 to buy a pair of running shoes (long story, but I still have
them, though they are really worn down now) and in the sports store and
local (Carnegie) library they are still proud of those Olympics and talk
about them as if it was yesterday. They get lots of "Olympics tourists" and
oddly, probably know the names of all the gold-winning athletes in their
heads by now, supported of course by Wikipedia. The big names for me at
that time were Eric Heiden and Piet Kleine, who they knew about, but for
them (as I guess for pretty much everyone else in the world) the big names
in skating were the ice hockey players.

My biggest usage of Wikipedia outside my home today is looking up food
ingredients in stores on mobile. When I was a teenager I had a friend with
an allergy who would get really sick eating foods with nuts in them. It was
remarkably hard to find out what had nuts, and generally you could only
find this out after the fact (bought it, ate it, got sick, took the
packaging to the library, repeat). Even the fast food places couldn't tell
you. Now I have a brother with an allergy and no matter where we are in the
world we can find out what the ingredients mean on the packaging. I think
that is a huge leap forward, even though sometimes I wish I didn't know
what is in some foods, because I dare to eat less and less of what is on
store shelves today.

On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 9:42 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter 
wrote:

> On 2016-01-15 00:30, Mardetanha wrote:
>
>> Dear Fellow Wikimedians
>> I would like to congratulate you on Wikipedia's 15th birthday, it was
>> historic moment for all of us, I am glad to let you know we had a
>> celebration in Tehran and we were the first country to celebrate it.
>> you can find images here
>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_15_in_Iran
>> Mardetanha
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>> 
>>
>
> I feel like today is time for stories, and I guess this thread is exactly
> the place we can share some stories today. I wish everybody does, since
> this is a nice way to celebrate 15y.
>
> It could be in principle anything remotely Wikimedia related. For example,
> the highest real-life rank of a person I ever blocked on Wikipedia was a
> member of the European parliament (or someone impersonating him). But these
> stories mainly reveal human stupidity, and today we want to talk more on
> the human knowledge. Therefore I am going to spend my daily quota of
> wikimedia-l post for smth else.
>
> I was born in 1967 in the Soviet Union and I am coming from a pre-internet
> generation. I first used internet in 1995 or so, past my PhD degree.
> However, I was always interested in learning things, this is probably why I
> later joined the Wikimedia movement. And I was a pretty advanced-knowledge
> teenager, knowing things my peers would normally not know anything about,
> and I was interested in all kinds of stuff: from exact sciences to history
> and languages and to geographical names. It was really painful to get any
> non-mainstream information. Let me give you a couple of example of the
> problems I encountered.
>
> One was languages. Well, for mainstream foreign languages like English or
> German it was relatively easy to find textbooks and dictionaries. They were
> nothing like modern means of language learning, for example the Teach
> Yourself series, not even speaking of online courses. Other languages were
> more difficult. Some languages were impossible. Well, I grew up in Moscow,
> which had a 10M population, and there were couple of libraries where I
> presumably could find dictionaries of even uncommon languages, but these
> were difficult to get in (normally one had to be 18 yo), they did not let
> the books out of the building, and for a number of practical reasons they
> were not really an option. On the other hand, I was hiking a lot in Central
> Asia, and I was suffering from inability to understand what the local
> Turkic names (in Kazakh and Kyrghyz mainly) mean. Well, you learn soon that
> Ak-Suu means "White river", meaning "aq" is white and "suu" is a river, but
> this is about it). So what I did I searched all available literature at
> home and around including the school library, and came up with a list of
> about 100 words. This was my own, personal, self-made Kyrghyz-Russian
> dictionary. It was weird, since, for example, did not include verbs, and it
> did not help me to speak Kyrghyz in any sense - and I still do not - but it
> was fine to understand the names and to feel kind of like at home. Now we
> have of course professional dictionaries available

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

Well I may live in a fantasy world, but that is entirely beside the point.
When I say these things will be discovered, that's exactly what you are
saying happened years ago. These things will always be discovered, because
they are unhidable. In your example the Uzbek Wikipedians have learned to
stay off certain pages in order to coexist with Uzbek authorities. Similar
coping strategies exist on other projects. It doesn't mean the entire Uzbek
encyclopedia is untrustworthy or that the wiki model is at fault. The trail
of tears is in the talk pages. I don't see anything wrong with making such
concessions, since after discovery it becomes public record and everyone
knows it anyway. What I don't understand is what you are trying to say. If
you are proposing something, just come out and propose it instead of
complaining about what goes on in certain projects and jumping from one
scare tactic to another.

On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 9:06 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 5:39 PM, Jane Darnell  wrote:
>
> > Granted, you could
> > get past the 10,000 article startup requirement somehow and then start
> > creating lots of POV articles, but once you do this you will soon be
> > discovered. There is just no way to hide it.
>
>
>
> Jane, you're living in a fantasy world. We already have Wikipedias with
> these POV articles. They've been "discovered" long ago, and it makes zero
> difference.
>
> See e.g. the hagiography of the Uzbek President in the Uzbek Wikipedia[1]
> (him of the boiled dissidents). It hails him as the best thing since sliced
> bread.
>
> Then see what Human Rights organisations have to say about his regime[2],
> or compare the English Wikipedia article.[3]
>
> That train left the station a long time ago. The wiki model does *not* work
> in these contexts.
>
> [1]
>
> https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=uz&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fuz.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FIslom_Karimov&sandbox=1
> [2] https://www.hrw.org/europe/central-asia/uzbekistan
> [3]
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_Karimov#Human_rights_and_press_freedom
>
>
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 3:18 PM, Andreas Kolbe 
> wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 10:44 AM, Lilburne <
> lilbu...@tygers-of-wrath.net
> > >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > On 28/12/2015 18:00, Jane Darnell wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> All I said is that the wiki way works, that's all. You can't hide it
> > > when
> > > >> someone tries to take over a project, and that is the reason we
> > > shouldn't
> > > >> try to anticipate that with convoluted strategies. "Assume Good
> Faith"
> > > >> will
> > > >> always win out over any strange misguided takeover strategy, which
> is
> > > why
> > > >> governments that intend to do such things choose nowadays to just
> > block
> > > >> wikimedia altogether. It is not our wake-up call to take, but that
> of
> > > the
> > > >> Kazakh people.
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > > Facebook showed the other year that it could manipulate people by
> what
> > it
> > > > showed them in their feeds.
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10932534/Facebook-conducted-secret-psychology-experiment-on-users-emotions.html
> > > > http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28051930
> > > >
> > > > They didn't do this for fun, they did it to show their clients
> > > > (advertisers, governments) that they could manipulate millions of
> > people.
> > > > You only need a small push in one direction or another to influence a
> > > large
> > > > population. Doesn't matter if the push is to buy a particular soap,
> > vote
> > > > one way or another, or how you see a particular minority, or issue.
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2450825/big-data-business-intelligence/facebooks-icky-psychology-experiment-is-actually-business-as-usual.html
> > > >
> > > > Do it to a naively trusted source and you have a triple word score
> > > > jackpot^H^H^Hboot.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > I thought Epstein's and Robertson's paper, "The search engine
> > manipulation
> > > effect (SEME) and its possible impact on the outcomes of elections",
> was
> > > very interesting as well:
> > >
&

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

...and you seem to think one can live by an encyclopedia. I can assure you,
Wikipedia is a lot of things, but it is not a way of life. To answer your
fear which I read between the lines of what you are saying, in order to
create a Wikipedia project you need a basic list of 10,000 articles. The
list as I am sure you are aware, is a pretty boring and strangely ordered
grouping of fairly dry, non-political subjects. I believe there are very
few articles on there that are worth firebombing someone over. [[Michael
Jackson]] is on the list, among other notable Americans. Granted, you could
get past the 10,000 article startup requirement somehow and then start
creating lots of POV articles, but once you do this you will soon be
discovered. There is just no way to hide it.

On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 3:18 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 10:44 AM, Lilburne 
> wrote:
>
> > On 28/12/2015 18:00, Jane Darnell wrote:
> >
> >> All I said is that the wiki way works, that's all. You can't hide it
> when
> >> someone tries to take over a project, and that is the reason we
> shouldn't
> >> try to anticipate that with convoluted strategies. "Assume Good Faith"
> >> will
> >> always win out over any strange misguided takeover strategy, which is
> why
> >> governments that intend to do such things choose nowadays to just block
> >> wikimedia altogether. It is not our wake-up call to take, but that of
> the
> >> Kazakh people.
> >>
> >>
> > Facebook showed the other year that it could manipulate people by what it
> > showed them in their feeds.
> >
> >
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10932534/Facebook-conducted-secret-psychology-experiment-on-users-emotions.html
> > http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28051930
> >
> > They didn't do this for fun, they did it to show their clients
> > (advertisers, governments) that they could manipulate millions of people.
> > You only need a small push in one direction or another to influence a
> large
> > population. Doesn't matter if the push is to buy a particular soap, vote
> > one way or another, or how you see a particular minority, or issue.
> >
> >
> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2450825/big-data-business-intelligence/facebooks-icky-psychology-experiment-is-actually-business-as-usual.html
> >
> > Do it to a naively trusted source and you have a triple word score
> > jackpot^H^H^Hboot.
>
>
>
> I thought Epstein's and Robertson's paper, "The search engine manipulation
> effect (SEME) and its possible impact on the outcomes of elections", was
> very interesting as well:
>
>
> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-could-rig-the-2016-election-121548
>
> http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/E4512.abstract
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 7:43 PM, Jane Darnell  wrote:
>
> > Well the chances of me being firebombed while on vacation in the states
> are
> > probably higher than me being firebombed for editing Wikipedia, but that
> > still doesn't mean we need to worry about changing the wiki model. I
> guess
> > I have lost the thread of your point entirely now.
>
>
>
> To be honest, I don't think you had ever gotten hold of it in the first
> place. To me, you seem to live in a very sheltered and naive world.
>
> If we have reports of Wikipedians being tortured in Azerbaijan (and there
> seems to have been some truth to these reports, as the sysop named in them
> was globally blocked by the WMF a short while later[1]), you should be able
> to understand that it is not quite as easy to live the wiki way there as it
> is in your country, and that some of the assumptions you have formed based
> on your own experiences of the wiki model may not hold in other locales.
>
> [1]
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Irada&diff=12421543&oldid=7322889
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

Interesting link, thanks Gerard! I was referring to a citation for this
quote however:
"and a
> significant
> > selection of the information unsourced WikiDatas data lacks the quality,
> > integrity we all expect of ourselves when we add content to any of the
> > projects."

On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 1:35 PM, Gerard Meijssen 
wrote:

>
> http://www.amnesty.nl/sites/default/files/public/ainl_guidelines_use_of_force.pdf
>
> On 29 December 2015 at 13:30, Jane Darnell  wrote:
>
> > citation needed
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 1:27 PM, Gnangarra  wrote:
> >
> > > >
> > > > This is when sources truly become vital. But do
> > > > remember, the POV of the USA and many of its sources are as suspect
> as
> > > > those from Kazakhstan.
> > >
> > >
> > > ​And that is why regardless of the fact a citation  is so important, ​
> > >
> > > ​because the person receiving the information must able to make their
> own
> > > assessment​ of the sources reliability with a CC0 license and a
> > significant
> > > selection of the information unsourced WikiDatas data lacks the
> quality,
> > > integrity we all expect of ourselves when we add content to any of the
> > > projects.
> > >
> > > On 29 December 2015 at 20:15, Gerard Meijssen <
> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com
> > >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hoi,
> > > > So you have determined that people can be manipulated. Good, then
> what?
> > > >
> > > > If this is the tack that you take you will be grounded because there
> is
> > > no
> > > > plan. It is a negative attitude that only stifles. Quality is not
> only
> > in
> > > > sources, sources can be and are manipulations in their own right.
> Many
> > > > important subjects are woefully underrepresented. The argument has it
> > > that
> > > > it is because of a lack of sources..
> > > >
> > > > Sources are relevant but we only are interested in particular
> subjects.
> > > We
> > > > do not need to look at Kazakhstan to find fault. Amnest (reliable
> > source)
> > > > indicates that all USA police forces are not in compliance with
> > > > international agreements on the use of force. NOW WHAT ??
> > > >
> > > > When quality is the subject, it is important to decide how we
> > effectively
> > > > improve quality. VIAF provided Wikidata with a list of issues they
> > found.
> > > > Tom checked it out and our quality is better as a result. It means
> that
> > > > more information is linked for people who visit a library. When
> awards
> > > are
> > > > known, adding known recipients in Wikidata based on info from
> multiple
> > > > Wikipedias improves the quality and in this way many incorrect links
> > are
> > > > exposed.
> > > >
> > > > When quality of our projects is the subject, decide how we can do a
> > > better
> > > > job. When Facebook invites companies to manipulate people, it is why
> > > > Facebook information is suspect. At most it is a reminder that
> > > manipulation
> > > > is an important issue. It does not mean that people cannot add data
> on
> > > > their hobby horse.
> > > >
> > > > Quality is important but quality is more than sources. When sources
> are
> > > > used as an argument that is detrimental to the quality of Wikidata,
> > then
> > > in
> > > > my opinion we have forgotten why Wikipedia was possible in the first
> > > place.
> > > > It was not because of sources, it was because of the web of
> information
> > > we
> > > > created, a web that is of a NPOV.
> > > >
> > > > Wikidata does not have a NPOV. It represents facts found in many
> > places.
> > > As
> > > > the information becomes more extended, it becomes possible to find
> > > > manipulations, errors. This is when sources truly become vital. But
> do
> > > > remember, the POV of the USA and many of its sources are as suspect
> as
> > > > those from Kazakhstan.
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >  GerardM
> > > >
> > > > On 29 December 2015 at 11:44, Lilburne  >
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > On 28/12/2015 18:00, Jane Darnell wrote:
> > > > >
> > >

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

citation needed

On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 1:27 PM, Gnangarra  wrote:

> >
> > This is when sources truly become vital. But do
> > remember, the POV of the USA and many of its sources are as suspect as
> > those from Kazakhstan.
>
>
> ​And that is why regardless of the fact a citation  is so important, ​
>
> ​because the person receiving the information must able to make their own
> assessment​ of the sources reliability with a CC0 license and a significant
> selection of the information unsourced WikiDatas data lacks the quality,
> integrity we all expect of ourselves when we add content to any of the
> projects.
>
> On 29 December 2015 at 20:15, Gerard Meijssen 
> wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > So you have determined that people can be manipulated. Good, then what?
> >
> > If this is the tack that you take you will be grounded because there is
> no
> > plan. It is a negative attitude that only stifles. Quality is not only in
> > sources, sources can be and are manipulations in their own right. Many
> > important subjects are woefully underrepresented. The argument has it
> that
> > it is because of a lack of sources..
> >
> > Sources are relevant but we only are interested in particular subjects.
> We
> > do not need to look at Kazakhstan to find fault. Amnest (reliable source)
> > indicates that all USA police forces are not in compliance with
> > international agreements on the use of force. NOW WHAT ??
> >
> > When quality is the subject, it is important to decide how we effectively
> > improve quality. VIAF provided Wikidata with a list of issues they found.
> > Tom checked it out and our quality is better as a result. It means that
> > more information is linked for people who visit a library. When awards
> are
> > known, adding known recipients in Wikidata based on info from multiple
> > Wikipedias improves the quality and in this way many incorrect links are
> > exposed.
> >
> > When quality of our projects is the subject, decide how we can do a
> better
> > job. When Facebook invites companies to manipulate people, it is why
> > Facebook information is suspect. At most it is a reminder that
> manipulation
> > is an important issue. It does not mean that people cannot add data on
> > their hobby horse.
> >
> > Quality is important but quality is more than sources. When sources are
> > used as an argument that is detrimental to the quality of Wikidata, then
> in
> > my opinion we have forgotten why Wikipedia was possible in the first
> place.
> > It was not because of sources, it was because of the web of information
> we
> > created, a web that is of a NPOV.
> >
> > Wikidata does not have a NPOV. It represents facts found in many places.
> As
> > the information becomes more extended, it becomes possible to find
> > manipulations, errors. This is when sources truly become vital. But do
> > remember, the POV of the USA and many of its sources are as suspect as
> > those from Kazakhstan.
> > Thanks,
> >  GerardM
> >
> > On 29 December 2015 at 11:44, Lilburne 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > On 28/12/2015 18:00, Jane Darnell wrote:
> > >
> > >> All I said is that the wiki way works, that's all. You can't hide it
> > when
> > >> someone tries to take over a project, and that is the reason we
> > shouldn't
> > >> try to anticipate that with convoluted strategies. "Assume Good Faith"
> > >> will
> > >> always win out over any strange misguided takeover strategy, which is
> > why
> > >> governments that intend to do such things choose nowadays to just
> block
> > >> wikimedia altogether. It is not our wake-up call to take, but that of
> > the
> > >> Kazakh people.
> > >>
> > >>
> > > Facebook showed the other year that it could manipulate people by what
> it
> > > showed them in their feeds.
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10932534/Facebook-conducted-secret-psychology-experiment-on-users-emotions.html
> > > http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28051930
> > >
> > > They didn't do this for fun, they did it to show their clients
> > > (advertisers, governments) that they could manipulate millions of
> people.
> > > You only need a small push in one direction or another to influence a
> > large
> > > population. Doesn't matter if the push is to buy a particular soap,
> vote
> > > one way or another, or how you see a p

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

Well the chances of me being firebombed while on vacation in the states are
probably higher than me being firebombed for editing Wikipedia, but that
still doesn't mean we need to worry about changing the wiki model. I guess
I have lost the thread of your point entirely now.

On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 8:13 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 6:00 PM, Jane Darnell  wrote:
>
> > All I said is that the wiki way works, that's all. You can't hide it when
> > someone tries to take over a project, and that is the reason we shouldn't
> > try to anticipate that with convoluted strategies. "Assume Good Faith"
> will
> > always win out over any strange misguided takeover strategy, which is why
> > governments that intend to do such things choose nowadays to just block
> > wikimedia altogether. It is not our wake-up call to take, but that of the
> > Kazakh people.
>
>
>
> Ah, I see. That's easy to say for people in the Western world.
>
> In Uzbekistan dissidents have been boiled alive.[1] In Kazakhstan,
> journalists are imprisoned and harassed; one was firebombed and had the
> decapitated carcass of a dog left outside her offices. (The dog's head
> later turned up at her home.)[2] In Azerbaijan, Wikipedians have been
> tortured and threatened with torture, according to posts on the WMCEE-l
> mailing list.[3]
>
> All respect to you if you run these risks in order to edit Wikipedia, and
> still do it regardless. But if you don't, please don't dispense blithe and
> jejune advice, and don't tell people who are concerned about remaining
> alive, preferably with their skin and fingernails intact, that they need a
> wake-up call.
>
> I'd rather you told the WMF not to reward the functionaries of such regimes
> with "Wikipedian of the Year" awards and trademark licence agreements.
>
> [1]
> http://www.rferl.org/content/uzbekistans-house-of-torture/24667200.html
> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irina_Petrushova
> [3] http://listy.wikimedia.pl/pipermail/wmcee-l/2015-May/000839.html
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

All I said is that the wiki way works, that's all. You can't hide it when
someone tries to take over a project, and that is the reason we shouldn't
try to anticipate that with convoluted strategies. "Assume Good Faith" will
always win out over any strange misguided takeover strategy, which is why
governments that intend to do such things choose nowadays to just block
wikimedia altogether. It is not our wake-up call to take, but that of the
Kazakh people.

On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 5:58 PM, Risker  wrote:

> On 28 December 2015 at 11:22, Jane Darnell  wrote:
>
> > Anyone can exploit the content on WMF for their needs. What I mean by "it
> > works" is that you can't fool people when you try to change Wikipedia to
> > fit government policy. We can easily identify problematic edits. Never
> > underestimate the diaspora of any country. Wikimedia is always bigger
> than
> > any one government will ever estimate.
> >
> >
>
> Well, yes, anyone can exploit the content of WMF projects; we don't usually
> give them kudos for doing so, though.  And you most certainly CAN fool
> people when you change Wikipedia to change government policy, if the
> government overwhelms a small "traditional" Wikipedia community with
> bribes, threats to well-being and good old fashioned paid editing.  The
> Wikipedia brand is perceived to be independent from such influences; that
> it isn't in this case (and who knows how many other cases) cannot be
> perceived by readers who do not have any alternative resources.
>
> Small communities with less than 50 active editors can be pretty easily
> swamped; a university class adding valuable, well sourced and researched
> content may have a positive effect, just as focused addition of heavily
> biased material by "editing for reward" (rewards including payment, gifts,
> or simply not being incarcerated) can turn a Wikipedia into a platform for
> third parties.This particular project was an easy target, and there are
> many others that could similarly be overwhelmed.  We need to recognize that
> most of the world does not live under the conditions that encourage or even
> permit the development of freely available information. As a global
> community we need to stop pretending that the example of Kazakh Wikipedia
> is not a major and significant bellwether that requires very serious review
> of how we encourage and  develop projects centered in countries with
> repressive regimes.  Many of these regions are areas with significant
> potential for growth of our content - the major focus of the mission of the
> Wikimedia Foundation.  Figuring out how to grow these projects within the
> founding principles is not just important, it's necessary.
>
> Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

Anyone can exploit the content on WMF for their needs. What I mean by "it
works" is that you can't fool people when you try to change Wikipedia to
fit government policy. We can easily identify problematic edits. Never
underestimate the diaspora of any country. Wikimedia is always bigger than
any one government will ever estimate.

On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 4:30 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 12:40 PM, Jane Darnell  wrote:
>
> > If anything, the Kazakh thing just proves that the wiki model works. No
> > shame in that. It's probably why the Chinese are blocking Wikipedia and
> not
> > embracing it. You can't hide your propaganda, even from your own people.
> >
>
>
> Jane,
>
> You don't seem to understand what's happening here. Kazakhstan is in the
> process of replicating the Chinese "Great Firewall" for its own citizens,
> using slightly different means. From a recent report in the New York
> Times:[1]
>
> ---o0o---
>
> Unlike with China, which filters data through an expensive and complex
> digital infrastructure known as the Great Firewall, security experts say
> Kazakhstan is trying to achieve the same effect at a lower cost. The
> country is mandating that its citizens install a new "national security
> certificate" on their computers and smartphones that will intercept
> requests to and from foreign websites.
>
> That gives officials the opportunity to read encrypted traffic between
> Kazakh users and foreign servers, in what security experts call a "man in
> the middle attack."
>
> As a result, Kazakh telecom operators, and government officials, will be
> privy to mobile and web traffic between Kazakh users and foreign servers,
> bypassing encryption protections known as S.S.L., or Secure Sockets Layer,
> and H.T.T.P.S., technology that encrypts browsing sessions and is familiar
> to users by the tiny padlock icon that appears in browsers.
>
> ---o0o---
>
> Do you understand what this means? The Kazakh government will be *able to
> identify any Kazakh citizen who edits Wikipedia, and see what they did
> there.* Even if you go into an Internet café in that country, you have to
> give your name, and your activities will be monitored. That is a major
> chilling effect.
>
> So you now have a situation where the government-published encyclopedia,
> with its own bent on the country's history and government, is in the Kazakh
> Wikipedia, appearing under the Wikipedia brand name. It was put there by
> volunteers who were promised laptops and other prizes for their work
> transcribing these articles.
>
> This was an effort that WMF board members went out of their way to praise
> and reward, even though it's always been clear, since June 2011, when state
> support was announced, that Wikibilim was a Kazakh government-sponsored
> effort. Wikibilim's Kazakh Wikipedia project is publicly described as
> "implemented under the auspices of the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan."[2]
>
> Ting Chen, then chairman of the WMF board, even participated in a press
> conference with Kazakh government representatives and functionaries. Yet
> Wikibilim reportedly had a trademark licence agreement with the Wikimedia
> Foundation within a month of the organisation's founding,[3] something I
> believe most regular chapters have to wait a lot longer for, and was
> immediately hailed as a future chapter.
>
> At Wikimania 2011, this was followed by Wales' "Wikipedian of the Year"
> award for Wikibilim, which was widely publicised by the Kazakh government.
> What could be better PR for them than an endorsement by a free-speech
> figure like Jimmy Wales?
>
> Yet it's long been established that Wikibilim's leaders have been and are
> part of the Kazakh government machine. One is now the vice-governor of a
> major province in the country,[4] and the founding director of a
> Brussels-based think tank that human rights organisations consider a PR
> front for the regime.[5][6] Another went on to become Vice Chairman of the
> company that runs the Kazakh Prime Minister's website; he is at the same
> time an active editor and one of a small number of administrators in the
> Kazakh Wikipedia.
>
> The country's opposition press has been shut down. Even when remnants of it
> still existed, it was clear that opposition papers would not be considered
> "reliable sources" in the Kazakh Wikipedia.
>
> If this proves that the "wiki model works", then it can only mean that it
> "works" in the sense that dictatorships can very smartly exploit it for
> their own ends--in this case, with apparent WMF connivance. (I would rea

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

If anything, the Kazakh thing just proves that the wiki model works. No
shame in that. It's probably why the Chinese are blocking Wikipedia and not
embracing it. You can't hide your propaganda, even from your own people.

As far as the compilation of Christmas songs goes, the list of songs is not
copyrightable, because the sort order of a list is not creative (unless
it's something that becomes poetry when you read the titles as a list).

On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 12:47 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> Pete,
>
> Thanks. Comments interspersed below.
>
> On Sat, Dec 26, 2015 at 5:46 PM, Pete Forsyth 
> wrote:
>
> >
> > I'd say the better question, is "what legal or moral right would we call
> > upon to *insist* on having the same for Wikidata?" If we had a clear
> answer
> > to that one, it would really move forward; but I don't think we do, or if
> > we do, it's not yet clear to me.
> >
>
>
> The same as in the case of Wikipedia.
>
> Is Wikidata different because it aspires to listing machine-readable facts
> only, rather than written expositions? Not to my mind, because facts are
> frequently debatable, and their presentation and sourcing involves choice
> and expertise.
>
> Moreover, speaking somewhat less seriously for a moment, Wikidata doesn't
> actually just contain non-copyrightable facts. As we've seen, it contains
> some of the same hoaxes and errors Wikipedia contains, which are by
> definition creative. It's an entertaining fact that dictionary publishers
> would in the past (perhaps they still do it now) include a small number of
> hoax entries -- made-up words -- in their dictionaries, so they would be
> able to demonstrate that another dictionary publisher had simply copied
> their work. The Wikidata project is (involuntarily of course) doing the
> same.
>
>
>
> > No, and I should have been clearer -- I do see the general advantage in a
> > site providing information about the source of information (of course).
> > What I don't see is the advantage of requiring them to do so in a certain
> > way.
> >
>
>
> Personally, I wouldn't insist on it being done in a certain way. I only
> feel, very strongly, that having no information at all about the source of
> information is very much undesirable, for the reasons previously mentioned
> (data provenance, providing a bridge to potential users, etc.).
>
>
>
> > I don't think Google or Bing aspires to having the highest standard of
> > credibility. If they are useful, their business interests have been
> served,
> > and I would hope that no student or academic would be able to cite the
> > Google Knowledge Graph in a formal paper, any more than they could cite
> > Wikipedia. (caveat emptor)
> >
>
>
> The problem with free information is that it displaces non-free
> information, much like a cheaper product displaces a more expensive one.
> We've seen this with Wikipedia replacing professionally published
> encyclopedias.
>
> Free information tends to become pervasive. This pervasiveness creates a
> steady drip effect – if a certain item of information becomes ubiquitous,
> so you see it in Google, in Bing, and elsewhere, you don't question it any
> more after a while. And once information becomes unquestioned, it enters
> more credible sources, because the authors of those are human, too. People
> cannot be on their guard 24/7, questioning everything they see. This is how
> citogenesis happens.
>
> I'm currently thinking about the Kazakh Wikipedia again, as the topic has
> (rightly) reappeared on Jimmy Wales' talk page.[1] It provides a good
> example. I believe the reason the Kazakh dictatorship embraced Creative
> Commons, releasing its Kazakh National Encyclopedia under a free licence so
> its articles could be imported *en masse* into the Kazakh Wikipedia (by
> editors incentivised by the chance to win laptops etc.), was because that
> encyclopedia reflected the regime's political views and censorship
> criteria. If you make your information ubiquitous, ensuring it appears
> under different brand names, with its real provenance obscured, eventually
> it will not be questioned any more.
>
> The WMF allowed itself to be used there, enthusiastically so. To me it's
> one of the most shameful episodes in its history.
>
>
>
> > I believe in the agency of multiple people and entities in curating
> > knowledge. Individuals, and individual information projects, should have
> > the ability to make their own judgment about how much, and what kind, of
> > citation is required for their purposes. I don't believe that information
> > curation can be perfected by anticipating all needs in policy and legal
> > documents.
> >
> > If our users have a moral or legal right that needs to be defended, we
> > should do so. But I don't see one in this case (perhaps a clear
> > hypothetical example could help?)
> >
>
>
> Some users certainly feel very strongly that they have moral rights they
> would like to see upheld. See the discussion at
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tal

Re: [Wikimedia-l] AWB & Ubuntu: Can really someone help?

[Jane Darnell]

I used to use AWB for lists but now I am running on a Mac so I don't have
it anymore. I still can generate lists with Catscan though, so you may want
to check that tool out if you haven't already.

On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 11:35 AM, Tito Dutta  wrote:

> In last 2 years I have contacted every help section from AWB talk page,
> Ubuntu help forum etc.
> Trying this medium as well:
> Can someone tell me how to use AWB on Ubuntu?
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

The only infoboxes I have touched on Wikipedia in relation to Wikidata are
the ones I created with data from Wikidata with PrepBio and not the other
way around. As far as I know there is no tool available to import Wikidata
statements from Wikipedia infoboxes. This is why it took so long to get rid
of the persondata infoboxes, because the data was not formatted in a way
that was easily importable into Wikidata. Eventually the persondata was
deleted because the birth/death data was updated in Wikidata, albeit in a
different way. Unfortunately we lost all of the alternate spellings that
could have been added to the aliases on Wikidata, but I was delighted that
Maarten Dammers was able to upload aliases for artists into Wikidata last
week from ULAN, which means we now have way more aliases per artist
available for searching than we ever had on Wikipedia.

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 9:24 AM, Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

> Wikipedia is not about infoboxes, they are (and are intended to be) a
> small to very small part of the article in most cases. Similarly,
> Wikipedias are not databases, so also without being a lawyer, I think your
> interpretation is wrong.
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Andreas Kolbe
> Sent: Friday, 18 December 2015 10:06 AM
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues
>
> Gerard,
>
> Of course you can't license or copyright facts, but as the WMF legal
> team's page on this topic[1] outlines, there are database and compilation
> rights that exist independently of copyright. IANAL, but as I read that
> page, if you simply go ahead and copy all the infobox, template etc.
> content from a Wikipedia, this "would likely be a violation" even under US
> law (not to mention EU law).
>
> I don't know why Wikipedia was set up with a CC BY-SA licence rather than a
> CC0 licence, and the attribution required under CC BY-SA is unduly
> cumbersome, but attribution has always seemed to me like a useful concept.
> The fact that people like VDM Publishing who sell Wikipedia articles as
> books are required to say that their material comes from Wikipedia is
> useful, for example.
>
> Naturally it fosters re-use if you make Wikidata CC0, but that's precisely
> the point: you end up with a level of "market dominance" that just ain't
> healthy.
>
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights
>
> On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 2:33 PM, Gerard Meijssen <
> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > Andreas, the law is an arse. However the law has it that you cannot
> > license facts. When in distributed processes data is retrieved from
> > Wikipedia, it is the authors who may contest their rights. There is no
> > such thing as collective rights for Wikipedia, all Wikipedias.
> >
> > You may not like this and that is fine.
> >
> > DBpedia has its license in the current way NOT because they care about
> > the license but because they are not interested in a row with
> > Wikipedians on the subject. They are quite happy to share their data
> > with Wikidata and make data retrieved in their processes with a CC-0.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >  GerardM
> >
> > On 17 December 2015 at 15:17, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 11:12 AM, Andrea Zanni
> > >  > >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 9:35 PM, Jane Darnell 
> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Andrea,
> > > > > I totally agree on the mission/vision thing, but am not sure
> > > > > what you
> > > > mean
> > > > > exactly by scale - do you mean that Wikidata shouldn't try to be
> > > > > so granular that it has a statement to cover each factoid in any
> > Wikipedia
> > > > > article, or do you mean we need to talk about what constitutes
> > > notability
> > > > > in order not to grow Wikidata exponentially to the point the
> > > > > servers
> > > > crash?
> > > > > Jane
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > Hi Jane, I explained myself poorly (sometime English is too
> > > > difficult
> > :-)
> > > >
> > > > What I mean is that the scale of the error *could* be of another
> > > > scale, another order of magnitude.
> > > > The propagation of the error is multiplied, it's not just a single
> > error
> > > on
> > > > a 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

OK I see now what you mean, and that is an interesting point. I think in
this context you need to see the objections to the "Bonnie and Clyde"
problem. Now that we have exploded the concepts of Wikipedia into items,
our interlinking (which is what Wikidata was built for) is a bit less
tightly knit than it was. Some would argue that it's a good thing because
we have fewer unresolvable interwiki links and others would argue it's a
bad thing because they have less opportunity to redirect readers to
material on other projects. Most recently this has come up in the
discussions around structured data for commons, but early adopters noticed
it immediately in the interlanguage links. The only way forward (or
backward, depending on your point of view) is to explode the Wikipedias in
a similar way. So for example I like to work on 17th-century paintings and
sometimes they are interesting because of their subjects, and sometimes
they are interesting because of their provenance, but rarely both, so
Wikipedia articles generally deal with both. On Wikidata we will often have
items for both (the portrait and the portrayed; or a landscape and the
objects depicted in that landscape) and the interwikis link accordingly,
which means some interwikis disappear because one language Wikipedia
article is talking about the person while another language Wikipedia
article is talking about the painting, and so forth. I guess for Wikisource
it's similar with "Wikisource editions of biographies of people" vs. items
about actual people.


On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 12:12 PM, Andrea Zanni 
wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 9:35 PM, Jane Darnell  wrote:
>
> > Andrea,
> > I totally agree on the mission/vision thing, but am not sure what you
> mean
> > exactly by scale - do you mean that Wikidata shouldn't try to be so
> > granular that it has a statement to cover each factoid in any Wikipedia
> > article, or do you mean we need to talk about what constitutes notability
> > in order not to grow Wikidata exponentially to the point the servers
> crash?
> > Jane
> >
> >
> Hi Jane, I explained myself poorly (sometime English is too difficult :-)
>
> What I mean is that the scale of the error *could* be of another scale,
> another order of magnitude.
> The propagation of the error is multiplied, it's not just a single error on
> a wikipage: it's an error propagated in many wikipages, and then Google,
> etc.
> A single point of failure.
>
> Of course, the opposite is also true: it's a single point of openness,
> correction, information.
> I was just wondering if this different scale is a factor in making
> Wikipedia and Wikidata different enough to accept/reject Andreas arguments.
>
> Andrea
>
>
>
> > On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 7:10 PM, Andrea Zanni 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I really feel we are drowning in a glass of water.
> > > The issue of "data quality" or "reliability" that Andreas raises is
> well
> > > known:
> > > what I don't understand if the "scale" of it is much bigger on Wikidata
> > > than Wikipedia,
> > > and if this different scale makes it much more important. The scale of
> > the
> > > issue is maybe something worth discussing, and not the issue itself? Is
> > the
> > > fact that Wikidata is centralised different from statements on
> > Wikipedia? I
> > > don't know, but to me this is a more neutral and interesting question.
> > >
> > > I often say that the Wikimedia world made quality an "heisemberghian"
> > > feature: you always have to check if it's there.
> > > The point is: it's been always like this.
> > > We always had to check for quality, even when we used Britannica or
> > > authority controls or whatever "reliable" sources we wanted. Wikipedia,
> > and
> > > now Wikidata, is made for everyone to contribute, it's open and honest
> in
> > > being open, vulnerable, prone to errors. But we are transparent, we say
> > > that in advance,  we can claim any statement to the smallest detail. Of
> > > course it's difficult, but we can do it. Wikidata, as Lydia said, can
> > > actually have conflicting statements in every item: we "just" have to
> put
> > > them there, as we did to Wikipedia.
> > >
> > > If Google uses our data and they are wrong, that's bad for them. If
> they
> > > correct the errors and do not give us the corrections, that's bad for
> us
> > > and not ethical from them. The point is: there is no license (for what
> I
> > > know) that can force them to contri

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

Andrea,
I totally agree on the mission/vision thing, but am not sure what you mean
exactly by scale - do you mean that Wikidata shouldn't try to be so
granular that it has a statement to cover each factoid in any Wikipedia
article, or do you mean we need to talk about what constitutes notability
in order not to grow Wikidata exponentially to the point the servers crash?
Jane

On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 7:10 PM, Andrea Zanni 
wrote:

> I really feel we are drowning in a glass of water.
> The issue of "data quality" or "reliability" that Andreas raises is well
> known:
> what I don't understand if the "scale" of it is much bigger on Wikidata
> than Wikipedia,
> and if this different scale makes it much more important. The scale of the
> issue is maybe something worth discussing, and not the issue itself? Is the
> fact that Wikidata is centralised different from statements on Wikipedia? I
> don't know, but to me this is a more neutral and interesting question.
>
> I often say that the Wikimedia world made quality an "heisemberghian"
> feature: you always have to check if it's there.
> The point is: it's been always like this.
> We always had to check for quality, even when we used Britannica or
> authority controls or whatever "reliable" sources we wanted. Wikipedia, and
> now Wikidata, is made for everyone to contribute, it's open and honest in
> being open, vulnerable, prone to errors. But we are transparent, we say
> that in advance,  we can claim any statement to the smallest detail. Of
> course it's difficult, but we can do it. Wikidata, as Lydia said, can
> actually have conflicting statements in every item: we "just" have to put
> them there, as we did to Wikipedia.
>
> If Google uses our data and they are wrong, that's bad for them. If they
> correct the errors and do not give us the corrections, that's bad for us
> and not ethical from them. The point is: there is no license (for what I
> know) that can force them to contribute to Wikidata. That is, IMHO, the
> problem with "over-the-top" actors: they can harness collective intelligent
> and "not give back." Even with CC-BY-SA, they could store (as they are
> probably already doing) all the data in their knowledge vault, which is
> secret as it is an incredible asset for them.
>
> I'd be happy to insert a new clause of "forced transparency" in CC-BY-SA or
> CC0, but it's not there.
>
> So, as we are  working via GLAMs with Wikipedia for getting reliable
> sources and content, we are working with them also for good statements and
> data. Putting good data in Wikidata makes it better, and I don't understand
> what is the problem here (I understand, again, the issue of putting too
> much data and still having a small community).
> For example: if we are importing different reliable databases, andthe
> institutions behind them find it useful and helpful to have an aggregator
> of identifiers and authority controls, what is the issue? There is value in
> aggregating data, because you can spot errors and inconsistencies. It's not
> easy, of course, to find a good workflow, but, again, that is *another*
> problem.
>
> So, in conclusion: I find many issues in Wikidata, but not on the
> mission/vision, just in the complexity of the project, the size of the
> dataset, the size of the community.
>
> Can we talk about those?
>
> Aubrey
>
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 6:40 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 5:32 PM, geni  wrote:
> >
> > > On 13 December 2015 at 15:57, Andreas Kolbe 
> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Jane,
> > > >
> > > > The issue is that you can't cite one Wikipedia article as a source in
> > > > another.
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > However you can within the same article per [[WP:LEAD]].
> > >
> >
> >
> > Well, of course, if there are reliable sources cited in the body of the
> > article that back up the statements made in the lead. You still need to
> > cite a reliable source though; that's Wikipedia 101.
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

Andreas,
That's just not true. You can re-use and remix Wikimedia content as much as
you like. When you say you "can't cite one Wikipedia article as a source in
another", this is also not true, as we see this done in translated articles
in the edit summary. Fortunately Wikipedia articles need sources, so those
are translated along with the rest f the content and are perfectly valid to
take from one project to another. In art history, when we are talking about
paintings, we are all mostly talking about the same sources anyway,
worldwide. This is probably true for most other disciplines as well.

As far as citing goes, the ratio of cited vs. uncited statements in
Wikipedia is probably much greater than in Wikidata, except we can't
measure that. All we measure is the "reference" statement, but there are
lots of sources in various properties and my guess is that most items with
zero statements are early imports that have just not had anyone click on
them yet. When we use images in Wikipedia articles, we do not "cite"
Wikimedia Commons. Indeed, this is exactly the problem we have when we talk
to GLAMs about image donations. The link itself is enough to allow the user
with a few clicks to get at the image information on Commons, where there
is more information, including sources. When I as a Wikipedian use images
of paintings from Commons in a Wikipedia article, I am using multiple
sources for that article, but some of those sources may be from the Commons
image itself, as some of these are particularly well-sourced. When I am
updating the associated Wikidata item, I add all of the sources that I have
found, and for the more famous paintings, others add links from their own
sources, making Wikidata much richer as a source of references than any
single project. As Lydia explained however, not every individual statement
in Wikidata is sourced, though each item may be sourced to multiple
references. This is partially because we lack the tools to easily source
each statement when we update multiple statements at a time, but it is also
because we don't *need* to source obvious statements.

The point is, that publishing on any Wikmedia project, whether it's
Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, or Wikidata, is a manually-driven complex
process done by volunteers. It is not and never will be automatic.

Jane

On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 4:57 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> Jane,
>
> The issue is that you can't cite one Wikipedia article as a source in
> another. If, as some envisage, you were to fill Wikipedia's infoboxes with
> Wikidata content that's unsourced, or sourced only to a Wikipedia, you'd be
> doing exactly that, and violating WP:V in the process:
>
> "Do not use articles from Wikipedia as sources. Also, do not use *websites
> that mirror Wikipedia content or publications that rely on material from
> Wikipedia as sources*." (WP:CIRCULAR)
>
> That includes Wikidata. As long as Wikidata doesn't provide external
> sourcing, it's unusable in Wikipedia.
>
> Andreas
>
> On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 9:15 AM, Jane Darnell  wrote:
>
> > Thanks for that essay, Lydia! You said it well, and I especially agree
> with
> > what you wrote about trust and believing in ourselves. I had to laugh at
> > some of the comments, because if you substitute "Wikipedia" for
> "Wikidata"
> > those comments could have been written 3 years ago before Wikidata came
> on
> > the scene.
> >
> > On Sat, Dec 12, 2015 at 10:18 PM, Lydia Pintscher <
> > lydia.pintsc...@wikimedia.de> wrote:
> >
> > > On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 9:27 AM, Lydia Pintscher
> > >  wrote:
> > > > That is actually not correct. We have built Wikidata from the very
> > > > beginning with some core believes. One of them is that Wikidata isn't
> > > > supposed to have the one truth but instead is able to represent
> > > > various different points of view and link to sources claiming these.
> > > > Look for example at the country statements for Jerusalem:
> > > > https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1218
> > > > Now I am the first to say that this will not be able to capture the
> > > > full complexity of the world around us. But that's not what it is
> > > > meant to do. However please be aware that we have built more than
> just
> > > > a dumb database with Wikidata and have gone to great length to make
> it
> > > > possible to capture knowledge diversity.
> > >
> > > I've taken the time and written a longer piece about data quality and
> > > knowledge diversity on Wikidata for the current edition of the
> > > Signpost:
> > >
> >
> https://e

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

Thanks for that essay, Lydia! You said it well, and I especially agree with
what you wrote about trust and believing in ourselves. I had to laugh at
some of the comments, because if you substitute "Wikipedia" for "Wikidata"
those comments could have been written 3 years ago before Wikidata came on
the scene.

On Sat, Dec 12, 2015 at 10:18 PM, Lydia Pintscher <
lydia.pintsc...@wikimedia.de> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 9:27 AM, Lydia Pintscher
>  wrote:
> > That is actually not correct. We have built Wikidata from the very
> > beginning with some core believes. One of them is that Wikidata isn't
> > supposed to have the one truth but instead is able to represent
> > various different points of view and link to sources claiming these.
> > Look for example at the country statements for Jerusalem:
> > https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1218
> > Now I am the first to say that this will not be able to capture the
> > full complexity of the world around us. But that's not what it is
> > meant to do. However please be aware that we have built more than just
> > a dumb database with Wikidata and have gone to great length to make it
> > possible to capture knowledge diversity.
>
> I've taken the time and written a longer piece about data quality and
> knowledge diversity on Wikidata for the current edition of the
> Signpost:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-12-09/Op-ed
>
>
> Cheers
> Lydia
>
> --
> Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
> Product Manager for Wikidata
>
> Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
> Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
> 10963 Berlin
> www.wikimedia.de
>
> Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
>
> Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
> unter der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das
> Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

Just as this discussion shifts, so does Wikidata quality. Both, hopefully,
in a more constructive direction, which was Lydia's original point.

On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 10:14 AM, Gnangarra  wrote:

> I agree getting bogged down on one item of data isnt helpful but the data
> does need to show its disputed and the data item on Israel
> <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q801> should at least have Tel Aviv listed
> as its mentonym
>
>
> within the database because the data base
> > is applying one truth where there is no one truth for everyone. This will
> > always be the single biggest flaw of Wikidata no matter how data is
> > presented it can never be the absolute truth
>
> The Jerusalem/Israel example where the data doesnt indicate its disputed
> means that it will propagated as an absolute truth...
>
>
> Then again this is shifting away from the original concern over quality
> that the ability to verify the information  isnt clear combined with the
> CC0 license the already established practice on other sources. Wikidata for
> falsehoods being easily manipulated its going to have a impact.
>
> On 10 December 2015 at 16:44, Jane Darnell  wrote:
>
> > Amen to that! This discussion about Jerusalem reminds me of the
> discussion
> > we had about the nationality of Anne Frank. For those interested, there
> > have been some heated debates about whether Mobile should use the text in
> > Wikidata "label descriptions" or rather some basic presentation of the
> P31
> > property. Most descriptions are still blank anyway. Personally I think
> > texts such as "capital of Israel" or "holocaust victim" are both better
> > than blank, but many disagree with me.
> >
> > Both of these represent associated items that have a lot of eyes on them,
> > but what about our more obscure items? Lots of these may be improved by
> the
> > people who originally created a Wikipedia page for them. As a Wikipedia
> > editor who has created over 2000 Wikipedia pages, I feel somewhat
> dismayed
> > at the idea that I need to walk through this long list and add statements
> > to their Wikidata items as the responsible party who introduced them to
> the
> > Wikiverse in the first place. But if I had a gadget that would tell me
> > which of my created Wikipedia articles had 0-3 statements, I would
> probably
> > update those.
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 9:27 AM, Lydia Pintscher <
> > lydia.pintsc...@wikimedia.de> wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 1:15 AM, Gnangarra  wrote:
> > > > Criag is right this cant be fixed within the database because the
> data
> > > base
> > > > is applying one truth where there is no one truth for everyone. This
> > will
> > > > always be the single biggest flaw of Wikidata no matter how data is
> > > > presented it can never be the absolute truth unless its measurable
> > > through
> > > > some mathematical scientific process that can replicated by everyone,
> > > > translated into any language.
> > > >
> > > > Wikipedia's answer is to present all considerations in an equal manor
> > and
> > > > not interpret the facts
> > > >
> > > > Wikidata defines what is fact, what is truth, what is right thats a
> big
> > > > task and is something the community has never tackled before...
> should
> > we
> > > > even try, has the damage already been done or should we narrow the
> > range
> > > of
> > > > recorded data, could we flag alternatives, could we give a measure of
> > > > acceptance for each fact. are there alternative means
> > >
> > > That is actually not correct. We have built Wikidata from the very
> > > beginning with some core believes. One of them is that Wikidata isn't
> > > supposed to have the one truth but instead is able to represent
> > > various different points of view and link to sources claiming these.
> > > Look for example at the country statements for Jerusalem:
> > > https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1218
> > > Now I am the first to say that this will not be able to capture the
> > > full complexity of the world around us. But that's not what it is
> > > meant to do. However please be aware that we have built more than just
> > > a dumb database with Wikidata and have gone to great length to make it
> > > possible to capture knowledge diversity.
> > >
> > >
> > > Cheers
> > > Lydia
> > >
> > > --
>

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

Amen to that! This discussion about Jerusalem reminds me of the discussion
we had about the nationality of Anne Frank. For those interested, there
have been some heated debates about whether Mobile should use the text in
Wikidata "label descriptions" or rather some basic presentation of the P31
property. Most descriptions are still blank anyway. Personally I think
texts such as "capital of Israel" or "holocaust victim" are both better
than blank, but many disagree with me.

Both of these represent associated items that have a lot of eyes on them,
but what about our more obscure items? Lots of these may be improved by the
people who originally created a Wikipedia page for them. As a Wikipedia
editor who has created over 2000 Wikipedia pages, I feel somewhat dismayed
at the idea that I need to walk through this long list and add statements
to their Wikidata items as the responsible party who introduced them to the
Wikiverse in the first place. But if I had a gadget that would tell me
which of my created Wikipedia articles had 0-3 statements, I would probably
update those.

On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 9:27 AM, Lydia Pintscher <
lydia.pintsc...@wikimedia.de> wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 1:15 AM, Gnangarra  wrote:
> > Criag is right this cant be fixed within the database because the data
> base
> > is applying one truth where there is no one truth for everyone. This will
> > always be the single biggest flaw of Wikidata no matter how data is
> > presented it can never be the absolute truth unless its measurable
> through
> > some mathematical scientific process that can replicated by everyone,
> > translated into any language.
> >
> > Wikipedia's answer is to present all considerations in an equal manor and
> > not interpret the facts
> >
> > Wikidata defines what is fact, what is truth, what is right thats a big
> > task and is something the community has never tackled before... should we
> > even try, has the damage already been done or should we narrow the range
> of
> > recorded data, could we flag alternatives, could we give a measure of
> > acceptance for each fact. are there alternative means
>
> That is actually not correct. We have built Wikidata from the very
> beginning with some core believes. One of them is that Wikidata isn't
> supposed to have the one truth but instead is able to represent
> various different points of view and link to sources claiming these.
> Look for example at the country statements for Jerusalem:
> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1218
> Now I am the first to say that this will not be able to capture the
> full complexity of the world around us. But that's not what it is
> meant to do. However please be aware that we have built more than just
> a dumb database with Wikidata and have gone to great length to make it
> possible to capture knowledge diversity.
>
>
> Cheers
> Lydia
>
> --
> Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
> Product Manager for Wikidata
>
> Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
> Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
> 10963 Berlin
> www.wikimedia.de
>
> Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
>
> Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
> unter der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das
> Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why are we so boring?

[Jane Darnell]

I wouldn't object to more Australians spread around the Wikiverse, and they
are always welcome in the Netherlands

On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 3:11 PM, Gnangarra  wrote:

> maybe the movement needs to get a few more Australians around events to
> liven things up, as its never boring here... we'll even bring drop bears
>  and other furry creatures to
> keep
> people on their toes  😁
>
> On 8 December 2015 at 21:47, Anders Wennersten 
> wrote:
>
> > Do you imply boring is a bad thing?
> >
> > In a world more and more focusing on show and 10 seconds fame, I am proud
> > and glad to be part of another type of society, where truth, reflection
> and
> > serious discussions are at focus
> >
> > Donald Trump is one of the least boring people just now, but I would be
> > seriously unhappy if our movement was dominated with Donald Trump clones
> >
> > Anders
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Den 2015-12-08 kl. 14:36, skrev Milos Rancic:
> >
> >> We are. It's not about particular thread on this list, it's about our
> >> existence. Initially I thought it's because the level of our
> >> responsibility, but eventually I've realized we are simply boring and
> >> nobody bothers about that.
> >>
> >> Our meetings and conferences look like the meetings of a regional branch
> >> of
> >> German Social Democratic Party at the best. In regular occasions they
> are
> >> more like the meetings of a village cell of a communist party from an
> East
> >> European country during the 80s.
> >>
> >> This enormous distance between the value of our work and ideals and
> >> presenting ourselves to *us* in the range between shiny snake oil
> >> merchants
> >> and demagogues nobody trusts is quite striking. (OK, there is one more
> >> end,
> >> thus making a triangle: highly specialized topics which require highly
> >> specialized knowledge to participate.)
> >>
> >> The distance is also quite striking because the most witty people I ever
> >> met are from the Wikimedia movement itself.
> >>
> >> It's endemic. From local Wikimedian meetings to Wikimania. The most
> >> interesting part of such events is talking with other Wikimedians.
> >> Listening talks, lectures and ceremonies is the worst option. Workshops
> >> and
> >> collective decision making are like gambling: it could be constructive,
> >> but
> >> it could also be not just wasting time but occult session with the only
> >> one
> >> goal: to drain the energy from the participants.
> >>
> >> On average, I would rather spend two times more time talking with a
> >> Wikimedian than listening her or his lecture or talk.
> >>
> >> There are some straight forward techniques. For example, we could work
> on
> >> making our talks much better. We could also ask HR professionals how to
> >> make our live interaction better.
> >>
> >> However, being boring is somehow quite deeply rooted inside of our
> >> culture.
> >> While trying to become "serious", we lost our ability to be playful.
> >> Creativity is something we treat as the least important of our
> activities.
> >>
> >> This is not something which could be fixed quickly. There is no a pill
> to
> >> magically cure it. But we could start thinking about this as a problem
> and
> >> start implementing various ideas to tackle it.
> >>
> >> I wouldn't say that our revolution forbids us to dance. (Whenever
> somebody
> >> from Bay Area is DJ-ing, we dance and it's beautiful, no matter how
> trashy
> >> the music is.) But I am sure we can do better.
> >> ___
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> >> 
> >>
> >
> >
> > ___
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> >
>
>
>
> --
> GN.
> President Wikimedia Australia
> WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra
> Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] (no subject)

[Jane Darnell]

This is exactly why we need "Stuctured Data for Commons" and I for one was
really disappointed to see it get tossed onto the back burner yet again:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey/Archive#Structured_metadata_for_Commons

On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 6:35 AM, Gerard Meijssen 
wrote:

> Hoi,
> It is. I am one of the people who agitated for Commons to be created in the
> first place. I care about Commons and I hate the lack of usability with a
> passion. Wikimedians on the other hand cost us additional money in order to
> cope with Commons.
>
> What is your problem in acknowledging that using Commons is a big problem.
> It is so bad that I typically refuse to add categories because they are not
> easy to guess and therefore to apply. At some stage it is at least what I
> hoped for, a repository for use for WMF projects. As a re-use facility it
> is a failure.
> Thanks,
>GerardM
>
> On 3 December 2015 at 00:09, Gnangarra  wrote:
>
> > There is a big difference here between an individual and the Wikimedia
> > Foundation using Wikimedia Commons
> >
> > On 3 December 2015 at 07:03, Gerard Meijssen 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hoi,
> > > There is an excuse. You may know those categories, I do not and I do
> not
> > > even try to find images in Commons for my blog. It is too hard to find
> > > things. The search is neither efficient nor intuitive.
> > >
> > > For me Commons and Wikisource could do with an abundant sprinkling of
> > > improved user interface. It is geared up for people adding data not
> > really
> > > for people using data. The approach is way too dogmatic as well. So no,
> > > thank you.
> > > Thanks,
> > >   GerardM
> > >
> > > On 2 December 2015 at 23:56, Gnangarra  wrote:
> > >
> > > > 29 million photos, 30 seconds type category:coffee cups
> > > > https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Coffee_cups  90 photos
> > > > subcategory cups of coffee a further 700 images not really difficult
> to
> > > > find or navigate to what you need.
> > > >
> > > > There is no excuse for fundraising team to not use a Free licensed
> > > > photograph and message to the community they are suppose to be trying
> > to
> > > > support and promote either on commons-l or here sayo=ing they need an
> > > image
> > > > of a cup of coffee from above would have got them even more to choose
> > > from,
> > > >
> > > > On 2 December 2015 at 22:53, Marc A. Pelletier 
> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > On 15-12-02 09:46 AM, John Mark Vandenberg wrote:
> > > > > > It wouldnt have been hard to make a free photo of a coffee, or
> even
> > > > > > create a derivative of this lovely CC0 SVG
> > > > >
> > > > > I don't think I'm concerned about the foundation fundraising staff
> > > > > deciding to use a stock photo - expedience and all, but I'm pretty
> > sure
> > > > > that had they known about that (absolutely gorgeous) SVG, they'd
> have
> > > > > used it.
> > > > >
> > > > > ... which I guess is my way of saying "OMG commons actually *sucks*
> > for
> > > > > reuse because it's so hard to find stuff on it that many people no
> > > > > longer even try!!1!one!".
> > > > >
> > > > > -- Marc
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > ___
> > > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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> > > > > Unsubscribe:
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > > >  ?subject=unsubscribe>
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > GN.
> > > > President Wikimedia Australia
> > > > WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra
> > > > Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com
> > > > ___
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> > > >
> > > ___
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> > > 
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > GN.
> > President Wikimedia Australia
> > WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra
> > Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Revision scoring as a service launched

[Jane Darnell]

It's mentioned in the MIT Review here:
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/544036/artificial-intelligence-aims-to-make-wikipedia-friendlier-and-better/

On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 8:35 PM, Steven Walling 
wrote:

> This is really cool! Congrats to everyone who worked on this.
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 7:51 PM Dario Taraborelli <
> dtarabore...@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > (cross-posting from wikitech-l)
> >
> > Today we published an announcement on the Wikimedia blog marking the
> > official launch of revision scoring as a service <
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Revision_scoring_as_a_service>
> > and I wanted to say a few words about this project:
> >
> > Blog post:
> >
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/11/30/artificial-intelligence-x-ray-specs/
> > <
> >
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/11/30/artificial-intelligence-x-ray-specs/
> > >
> > Docs on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ORES <
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ORES>
> >
> > First off: what’s revision scoring <
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Revision_scoring_as_a_service#Rationale
> >?
> > On the surface, it’s a set of open APIs allowing you to automatically
> > “score” any edit and measure their probability of being damaging or
> > good-faith contributions. The real goal behind this project, though, is
> to
> > fix the damage indirectly caused by vandal-fighting bots and tools on
> > good-faith contributors and to bring back a collaborative dimension to
> how
> > we do quality control on Wikipedia. I invite you to read the whole blog
> > post <
> >
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/11/30/artificial-intelligence-x-ray-specs/
> >
> > if you want to know more about the motivations and expected outcome of
> this
> > project.
> >
> > I am thrilled this project is coming to fruition and I’d like to
> > congratulate Aaron Halfaker <
> > https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:Ahalfaker> and all the project
> > contributors <
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Revision_scoring_as_a_service#Team
> >
> > on hitting this big milestone: revision scoring started as Aaron’s side
> > project well over a year ago and it has been co-designed (as in –
> literally
> > – conceived, implemented, tested, improved and finally adopted) by a
> > distributed team of volunteer developers, editors, and researchers. We
> > worked with volunteers in 14 different Wikipedia language editions and as
> > of today revision scores are integrated <
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Revision_scoring_as_a_service#Tools_that_use_ORES
> >
> > in the workflow of several quality control interfaces, WikiProjects and
> 3rd
> > party tools. The project would not have seen the light without the
> > technical support provided by the TechOps team (Yuvi in particular) and
> > seminal funding provided by the WMF IEG program and Wikimedia Germany.
> >
> > So, here you go: the next time someone tells you that LLAMAS GROW ON
> TREES
> >  you can
> > confidently tell them they should stop damaging <
> > http://ores.wmflabs.org/scores/enwiki/damaging/642215410/> Wikipedia.
> >
> > Dario
> >
> >
> > Dario Taraborelli  Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation
> > wikimediafoundation.org  • nitens.org <
> > http://nitens.org/> • @readermeter 
> > ___
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> >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

Gerard,
Thanks for highlighting my work! I already posted slides on Commons, but I
want to flesh them out with links to actual edits so people can better
understand some of these quality improvement workflows. The tools I use for
lists are written mostly by the Wikidata "god" Magnus Manske and the tools
I use on Commons are self-built kludges with the assistance of Commonist
Vera de Kok. Here is an example of a quality improvement I did this morning
for a file on Commons that was originally uploaded by an English Wikipedian
who uploaded it with the default uploader for use in an English Wikipedia
list. The improvements are coming from both the original edits of the
uploader on Wikipedia as well as the associated Wikidata list:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Rembrandt_Man_with_a_Falcon_on_his_Wrist.jpg&diff=prev&oldid=180547014

Jane

On Sun, Nov 29, 2015 at 10:42 AM, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:

> Hoi,
> Wikidata is a wiki and, you seem to always forget that.
>
> The corruption of data .. how? Each statement is its own data item how do
> you corrupt that? As I say so often, when you get a collection that is 80%
> correct you have an error rate of 20%. When you do not include that data
> you have an error rate of 100%. When you have an other source that is 90%
> correct that has similar data and you have an overlap of 50%, you can be
> smart and at the start or later compare the data and curate.. When you only
> import at the start what is the same, you probably get something like 84%
> correct data imported. You can gamify the rest but however you slice it,
> what you do not have and could have is 100% wrong.
>
> Wikidata is NOT Wikipedia. It is much easier to curate data and
> consequently your argument is FUD. The big thing we have not learned is
> cooperation. We do not cooperate. We do not have per standard RSS feeds for
> the changes to the items that belong to a specific source. We are happy to
> get data but we do not reach out and give back. For me the fact that VIAF
> uses Wikidata as a link is an opportunity to do better. The German DNB
> cooperation are the projects that we should emulate.
>
> When you talk about quality, you talk in an insular fashion. We have to do
> it, our community. At Wikidata our community can include other
> organisations with rich collections of data with high quality. We can
> share, compare, curate. Even with our current low quality, we have subsets
> of data that shine. Subsets of data that our of at least the same quality
> as Wikipedia. However this quality is often marred with a lack of quantity,
> quantity we can have when collaboration is what we do.
>
> You are afraid of our reputation. Reputation has many aspects. Jane023
> presented at the Dutch Wikimedia conference. She uses a tool that is easier
> on her because no Wikipedians bother her because it is a Wikidata based
> list. A similar list is now used for its quality on the Welsh Wikipedia.
> The data is of a quality that Google actually uses it as she reported.
>
> When I see the religious application of Wikipedia sentiments. I find that
> we do not even care for the life of one of our own. Bassel is executed or
> likely to be executed soon and some think our neutrality is so important.
> FOR WHAT? So that we may not even protect our own? Is it right to protest
> against TTIP (and we should) and not protest for a Wikipedian that embodies
> our values?
>
> Wikipedia think is not applicable at this stage for Wikidata. Its quality
> is arguably piss poor but better in places. Many items are corrupt because
> they follow the structure of Wikipedia articles. A structure Wikipedians
> insist on because they wrote that article and "Wikidata is only a service
> project".
>
> I do agree that we need more quality. My approach has set theory on its
> side, it embodies the wiki approach and yours is one where Pallas Athena is
> to rise from the brain of Zeus in full armour. You may have noticed that my
> arguments are easy to follow and conform to something that is measurable.
> Yours is private, there is no possibility to verify the accuracy of your
> argument. I call bullshit on your argument, not because you do not make a
> fine argument but because it is an argument that prevents us from improving
> Wikidata.
>
> My hope is that we can work constructively on our quality and have a
> measurable effect.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
> On 29 November 2015 at 02:05, Gnangarra  wrote:
>
> > >
> > > While I happily agree that Sources are good, I will not ask people to
> > start
> > > adding Sources at this point of time it will not improve quality
> > > signifcantly. It makes more sense once we are at a stage where multiple
> > > sources disagree on values for statements. Adding sources is
> signifcantly
> > > more meaningful and useful once we start curating data.
> >
> >
> > ​the problems will that by the time Wikidata starts to curate data​ it'll
> > will have corrupted that data with its own data, a

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

Yes I agree. I think most of the discussion here has to do with people
conflating the concept of text as in Wikipedia sentences and the concept of
data as in Wikidata statements. When a user adds an image from Commons on
Wikipedia, the source of the image is generally not added to Wikipedia, and
I have never heard anyone complain about that except for image donors who
wished that their images *were* attributed when used on Wikipedia. The same
is true when Wikipedians add Wikidata statements from an item on Wikipedia.
A date statement in Wikidata for a painting may be indirectly referenced in
the item in another statement (the collection statement, or a "described at
url" statement). This is also true of the way the date field in the Commons
artwork template is used.

It is just as undesirable to clutter Wikipedia with a reference for such a
date from Wikidata as it is to reference the source of the file image when
including images, and so there will generally not be a reference for the
pulled date in the Wikidata infobox, because the user can always look up
the item for more information. Most paintings included on Wikipedia, with
or without infoboxes, do not reference the date field specifically - either
to the Commons image or to the article. When they do, this is often in
cases where the date has been disputed. Our goal is not to reference
everything, but to reference the things that need referencing.

On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 1:51 PM, Liam Wyatt  wrote:

> On 27 November 2015 at 12:08, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>
> > The Wikimedia movement has always had an important principle: that all
> > content should be traceable to a "reliable source". Throughout the first
> > decade of this movement and beyond, Wikimedia content has never been
> > considered a reliable source. For example, you can't use a Wikipedia
> > article as a reference in another Wikipedia article.
> >
> > Another important principle has been the disclaimer: pointing out to
> people
> > that the data is anonymously crowdsourced, and that there is no guarantee
> > of reliability or fitness for use.
> >
> > Both of these principles are now being jettisoned.
> >
> > Wikipedia content is considered a reliable source in Wikidata...
> >
>  
>
> I agree that "reliable source" referencing and "crowdsourced content" are
> indeed principles of our movement. However, I disagree that Wikidata is
> "jettisoning" them. In fact, quite the contrary!
>
> The purpose of the statement "imported from --> English Wikipedia" in the
> "reference" field of a Wikidata item's statement is PRECISELY to indicate
> to the user that this information has not been INDEPENDENTLY verified to a
> reliable source and that Wikipedia is NOT considered a reliable source.
> Furthermore, it provides a PROVENANCE of that information to help stop
> people from circular referencing. That is - clearly stating that the
> specific fact in Wikidata has come from Wikipedia helps to avoid the
> structured-data equivalent of "citogenisis": https://xkcd.com/978/ If/When
> a person can provide a reliable reference for that same fact, they are
> encouraged to add an actual reference. Note, the wikidata statement used
> for facts coming in from Wikipedia use the property "imported from". This
> is deliberately different from the property "reference URL" which is what
> you would use when adding an actual reference to a third-party reliable
> online source.
>
> Furthermore, the fact that many statements in Wikidata are not given a
> reference (yet) is not necessarily a "problem". For example - this
> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21481859 is a Wikidata item for a
> scientific
> publication with 2891 co-authors!! This is an extreme example, but it
> demonstrates my point... None of those 2891 statements has a specific
> reference listed for it, because all of them are self-evidently referenced
> to the scientific publication itself. The same is true of the other
> properties applied to this item (volume, publication date, title, page
> number...). All of these could be "referenced" to the very first property
> in the Wikidata item - the DOI of the scientific article:
> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269312008581 This
> item is not "less reliable" because it doesn't have the same footnote
> repeated almost three thousand times, but if you merely look at statistics
> of "unreferenced wikidata statements" it would APPEAR that it is very
> poorly cited.
> So, I think we need a more nuanced view of what "proper referencing" means
> in the context of Wikidata.
>
> -Liam
>
> wittylama.com
> Peace, love & metadata
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [GLAM] Video: "Wikipedia, an introduction - Erasmus Prize 2015"

[Jane Darnell]

Did anyone get a close-up picture of the stradivarius?

On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 10:24 AM, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:

> Hoi,
> There was a real nice musical intermezzo, violin and piano. I spoke with
> the pianist and the violinist and they are happy when we use their music in
> our article(s) on the Erasmus prize :)
> Thanks,
>  GerardM
>
> PS nothing formal was done, but it was said all the same :)
>
> On 26 November 2015 at 09:35, Arne Wossink  wrote:
>
> > Just saw that it already has such a license.
> >
> >
> > Arne Wossink
> >
> > Projectleider / Project Lead Wikimedia Nederland
> >
> > Tel. +31 (0)6 11000505
> >
> > *Postadres*: *
> > Bezoekadres:*
> > Postbus 167Mariaplaats 3
> > 3500 AD  Utrecht Utrecht
> >
> > Op 26 november 2015 09:30 schreef Arne Wossink :
> >
> > > Is this going to be released under a CC license? Would be awesome to
> have
> > > it on Commons.
> > >
> > >
> > > Arne Wossink
> > >
> > > Projectleider / Project Lead Wikimedia Nederland
> > >
> > > Tel. +31 (0)6 11000505
> > >
> > > *Postadres*:
> > > * Bezoekadres:*
> > > Postbus 167Mariaplaats
> 3
> > > 3500 AD  Utrecht Utrecht
> > >
> > > 2015-11-26 8:21 GMT+01:00 Pine W :
> > >
> > >> Beautiful video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p8wFdnPfVw
> > >>
> > >> Pine
> > >>
> > >> ___
> > >> GLAM mailing list
> > >> g...@lists.wikimedia.org
> > >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/glam
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

Sorry to read that Fae, but in your specific case I do think your time is
spent more productively on Commons, because the value of your contributions
there is huge. Having created Wikidata items for many of your Commons
uploads, I think it may be worthwhile at some point to try and get someone
to run a Fae-Wikidata-conversion bot to try and get as much data as
possible from your uploads moved over, but until then, please go ahead with
whatever it is you like to do best. In my last mail I was thinking about
Wikipedians, but of course the same is true for all of the sister projects.

On Sat, Nov 21, 2015 at 1:08 PM, Fæ  wrote:

> On 20 November 2015 at 22:47, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> > Offtopic: Gerard, during the last half an hour or so, I am just
> > getting emails from you inside of this thread (including wiki-research
> > list). I thought my phone has a bug. It's useful to write a larger
> > email with addressing all the issues. Besides other things, with this
> > frequency, you'll spend your monthly email quota for this list the day
> > after tomorrow.
>
> +1
>
> I keep an open mind for supporting Wikidata in association with my
> Commons uploads. This thread going over a series of old gripes against
> other projects, with a lack of new proposals, has diminished my
> interest. For me, this effectively burns out the word "Wikidata" for a
> month.
>
> Fae
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Jane Darnell]

Gerard,
I think this was always the case. Most Wikidatans are as at home on
Wikipedia as they are on Commons. The issue you describe also happened to
Commons - both communities feel the other is less focussed on quality. Many
Commonists spend hours on high quality images and these are rarely picked
up by Wikipedia unless a Commonist notices and does so in their own
language. There is no requirement for Wikipedians to get to know any other
project and this is normal wiki behavior. We don't want anyone to feel
pressured to do anything they feel uncomfortable doing. It's already
difficult to get Wikipedians to do small tasks like add catagories to their
articles. The list of things necessary to create an acceptable article on
Wikipedia just seems to get longer and longer, while the associated work
for illustrations of that article or for data of that article is not even
mentioned in current AfC policies on Wikipedia. I have thought about this,
but I still think we need to break down the list of things necessary to
make new short articles on Wikipedia, not extend the list. So in summary, I
think that what you describe is normal predictable behavior for a
"Wikipedia support" project such as Commons and Wikidata. This will change
as more and more external users find out that Commons and Wikidata are
valuable resources in and of themselves. This is already the case for many
GLAMs which have found collaborations with Commons to be valuable
experiences. I have high hopes this will become the case for Wikidata as
well.
Jane

On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 8:18 AM, Gerard Meijssen 
wrote:

> Hoi,
> At Wikidata we often find issues with data imported from a Wikipedia. Lists
> have been produced with these issues on the Wikipedia involved and arguably
> they do present issues with the quality of Wikipedia or Wikidata for that
> matter. So far hardly anything resulted from such outreach.
>
> When Wikipedia is a black box, not communicating about with the outside
> world, at some stage the situation becomes toxic. At this moment there are
> already those at Wikidata that argue not to bother about Wikipedia quality
> because in their view, Wikipedians do not care about its own quality.
>
> Arguably known issues with quality are the easiest to solve.
>
> There are many ways to approach this subject. It is indeed a quality issue
> both for Wikidata and Wikipedia. It can be seen as a research issue; how to
> deal with quality and how do such mechanisms function if at all.
>
> I blogged about it..
> Thanks,
>  GerardM
>
>
> http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.nl/2015/11/what-kind-of-box-is-wikipedia.html
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WLM Brasil 2015 - Winners / Numbers

[Jane Darnell]

I totally agree with Ilario here. We have yet to put a financial value on a
Wikimedia contributor time unit, but I would venture to say that if such
projects manage to procure even one Wikimedia contributor for the projects
then that is money well spent.

On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 12:28 PM, Ilario Valdelli 
wrote:

> On 31.10.2015 12:12, Fæ wrote:
>
>> On 31 Oct 2015 11:00, "Ilario Valdelli"  wrote:
>>
>>> On 31.10.2015 11:46, Fæ wrote:
>>>
 Hang on. Could I have an independent reality check; is that really $7
 per photograph?

 Fae

>>> 30.000 is exact, but they are 30.000 Real which means 11.000 USD.
>>>
>> Cool. So about $2.50 per image.
>>
>> This looks expensive compared to my upload projects (the last 500,000
>> images have cost $0.00 in total) but perhaps the benchmark is better when
>> measures against other WLM projects.
>>
>> Anyone have the numbers to show comparative value?
>>
>> Fae
>>
>
> Using a bot to collect images in internet probably would have been lesser
> than 0$ per image.
>
> Anyway the real calculation of an impact of a project is not so simple.
>
> Because if we would use the same parameters, people reading this thread
> have spent more than 5 minutes, and calculating the sum of people reading
> this thread we can calculate a big time waste.
>
> We can say that this thread is really time-expensive without producing a
> real impact. But we know that this mailing list is done to help the
> communication and not to calculate the time waste, so a thread like this is
> accepted.
>
> I have put the links, it's sufficient to read the measures of the success
> to know that the aim of the project is not to produce only images.
>
> Kind regards
>
> --
> Ilario Valdelli
> Wikimedia CH
> Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
> Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
> Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
> Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
> Tel: +41764821371
> http://www.wikimedia.ch
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Next step in the development

[Jane Darnell]

I was just looking at the vital signs graph for Dutch and noticed that
mobile page views has overtaken desktop pageviews on weekends, which is
pretty cool. Maybe there could be a Wikigame that you could tune per
language that connects items to articles? This wouldn't help with
Wikipedians who refuse to look at Wikidata, but it may help with the
overall reduction of double items. Just yesterday I found an item for a
disambigution page for "Saftleven" in Italian Wikipedia without any
statements at all and merged it to a pre-existing item for a "Saftleven"
disambiguation page for two other language wikipedias that did have some
statements. I think especially these sorts of items can be problematic, as
the label which should link them up is not visible to the Wikipedian
working in their own language wiki.

On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 4:31 AM, Romaine Wiki 
wrote:

> Yes, exactly. :-)
>
> 2015-10-29 23:22 GMT+01:00 Magnus Manske :
>
> > I think it might just be a question of phrasing, actually.
> >
> > "Check if your new topic already exists in other languages, and connect
> it
> > to those!
> > Or [click here] to start a new Wikidata item for your article, so other
> > language editions of Wikipedia can find it more easily!"
> >
> > For Wikipedians, the purpose of Wikidata is not "because Wikidata". It is
> > added value to their own work; language links are an important part of
> > this.
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 10:33 PM Leila Zia  wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Risker,
> > >
> > > On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Risker  wrote:
> > >
> > > > We do not expect anyone to add information to any other
> > > > project when they create content on the project of their choice.
> > >
> > >
> > > I'm thinking the Insert Media option in VE: there, we are giving the
> > editor
> > > the option to upload Media to the article which in reality means
> > uploading
> > > Media to Commons if I'm not missing something. The workflow is very
> > smooth,
> > > and the Wikipedia editor does not need to know about Commons to follow
> > the
> > > flow.
> > >
> > > Leila
> > >
> > >
> > > > On 29 October 2015 at 16:08, Romaine Wiki 
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > That is comparing it with wrong examples that are not relevant
> here.
> > > > > On Wikipedia we have the guideline that articles an categories
> should
> > > be
> > > > > added to Wikidata, that originates back to the phase that only
> manual
> > > > > interwikis existed.
> > > > >
> > > > > And we have already received complaints why users do not get a
> > message
> > > > > after they created a category/article to add it to Wikidata.
> > > > >
> > > > > Further I propose this only for (logged in) users, and perhaps
> > further
> > > > > settings are possible.
> > > > >
> > > > > At the moment the largest workload is coming from articles that are
> > not
> > > > > added to Wikidata. Some users produce five articles a day, all not
> > > added
> > > > to
> > > > > Wikidata, while the articles are fine. In two days we have about
> 100
> > > new
> > > > > articles on nl-wiki, all not added to Wikidata. This is just one
> > wiki,
> > > > and
> > > > > a huge workload to get them added properly.
> > > > >
> > > > > Romaine
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > 2015-10-29 20:46 GMT+01:00 Risker :
> > > > >
> > > > > > Whatever happened to "Wikipedia, the encyclopedia anyone can
> edit"?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > This is adding a layer of complexity and expectation that I don't
> > > > really
> > > > > > feel comfortable with.  We don't expect people to add images to
> > > Commons
> > > > > > when they write an article.  We don't expect people to include
> > > > > definitions
> > > > > > in Wiktionary when they are using a word.  We don't expect people
> > to
> > > be
> > > > > > adding material to Wikisource or add quotes to Wikiquote.  For
> that
> > > > > matter,
> > > > > > we don't expect people to write Wikipedia articles about what
> they
> > > > review
> > > > > > on wikisource, or about images they add to Commons, or quotes
> they
> > > add
> > > > to
> > > > > > Wikiquote.  So why would we set up any kind of expectation that
> > > people
> > > > > > would add "data" to Wikidata?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I also am concerned that people will add a new article that,
> > bluntly
> > > > put,
> > > > > > isn't going to last more than an hour...get these messages, and
> add
> > > > junk
> > > > > > data to Wikidata.  Wikidatians are working hard to add
> referencing
> > > and
> > > > > > improve what is there already, but it's a huge labour and we
> > > shouldn't
> > > > be
> > > > > > adding to their mountain of work unnecessarily.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Risker/Anne
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On 29 October 2015 at 14:37, Romaine Wiki <
> romaine.w...@gmail.com>
> > > > > wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > Hi all,
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I think it is time for the next step in the Wikidata
> > development: a
> > > > > > better
> > > > > > > integration in Wikipedia and her sisterprojects.
> > > > 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Good news for Wikimedians in San Francisco!

[Jane Darnell]

Never heard of Stroopies, but for those with access to a CostCo store, I
have persoally taste-tested their stroopwafels against the true Goudse
Stroopwafels and can vouch for them. The ones for sale at Barnes and Noble
cafés that are individually wrapped are *not* the real thing, however,
though tasty in their way.
Jane
(Cookie expert)

On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 12:26 AM, Leila Zia  wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 4:09 PM, James Alexander  >
> wrote:
>
> > This is spectacular news Romaine! Thank you for finding it!
> >
>
> +1. Roan Kattouw, our official supplier, can finally have a relief. ;-)
> Before that, we need a true Dutch person to approve Stroopie's originality
> though.
>
> Leila
>
>
> >
> > BCCing the Wikimedia-sf list so that they see it ;) [though I imagine
> I'll
> > have to clear it through given BCC]
> >
> > James Alexander
> > Manager
> > Trust & Safety
> > Wikimedia Foundation
> > (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
> >
> > On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 4:06 PM, Romaine Wiki 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > As you of course know, stroopwafels are official wikifood. See:
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Stroopwafel_Addicts
> > >
> > > As Dutch we are aware of the shortage of this original typical wikifood
> > in
> > > other parts of the world, so we travel around the world with many
> > packages
> > > each year at Wikimania and elsewhere. However, it is always more tasty
> to
> > > eat fresh stroopwafels, so the Dutch inspire a lot of people around the
> > > world to sell them.
> > >
> > > Of course everyone has a high need as Wikipedian/Wikimedian, but as the
> > > headquarters of the Wikimedia movement is in San Francisco, the supply
> is
> > > there the most urgent.
> > >
> > > Today I learned that Wikimedia people in San Francisco do not have to
> bit
> > > on their teeth or tongue, but can now buy fresh stroopwafels!
> > > See: http://www.stroopiegourmet.com/
> > >
> > > Finally San Francisco is saved from an anarchy because of a huge
> shortage
> > > of stroopwafels.
> > >
> > > I hope that the San Francisco people enjoy the official
> > > Wikipedia/Wikimedia wikifood as part of their daily (!) local cuisine!
> > >
> > > Romaine
> > >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Princess of Asturias prize streaming now

[Jane Darnell]

Yes, definitely! It's hard to imagine that we have achieved all of the
millions of articles, images, and items. Now we have this noble award, can
we still call this an encyclopedia ?

On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 6:41 PM, Leila Zia  wrote:

> congratulations, everyone, for the amazing work you've done for bringing
> Wikipedia where it is today! It's amazing to take a moment and look back on
> all what's achieved! :-)
>
> On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 9:37 AM, Jane Darnell  wrote:
>
> > Wow thanks for the link - but wait, bagpipes?
> >
> > On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 6:22 PM, Salvador A 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hi community
> > >
> > > I share with you the link to see (just now) the ceremony of the
> Princess
> > of
> > > Asturias prize giving, to see it online. There's an option to hear the
> > > audio in English:
> > >
> > > http://www.rtve.es/noticias/premios-princesa-asturias/directo/
> > >
> > > Congratulations to all!
> > >
> > > Enjoy!
> > >
> > > --
> > > *Salvador Alcántar*
> > > *@salvador_alc*
> > > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Princess of Asturias prize streaming now

[Jane Darnell]

Wow thanks for the link - but wait, bagpipes?

On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 6:22 PM, Salvador A  wrote:

> Hi community
>
> I share with you the link to see (just now) the ceremony of the Princess of
> Asturias prize giving, to see it online. There's an option to hear the
> audio in English:
>
> http://www.rtve.es/noticias/premios-princesa-asturias/directo/
>
> Congratulations to all!
>
> Enjoy!
>
> --
> *Salvador Alcántar*
> *@salvador_alc*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] help needed - Arkansas

[Jane Darnell]

Arkansas is considered one of the "fly-over" states. Good luck locating a
Wikipedian somewhere around there, not to mention a Wikimedian.

On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 7:38 AM, Gnangarra  wrote:

> G'day
>
> I have been contacted by an active Wikiproject Spam editor for help
> (because I've recently been working with an editor here in Perth in a
> similar situation),  to talk to a user who appears to be linked to the
> Encyclopedia of Arkansas. The user is just adding links to EOA in the
> external links section of related articles, another user has asked for the
> links not to be blacklisted as its a good source.
>
> In these case the Australian chapter reaches out such editors as a personal
> discussion over a coffee here works very effectively in turning this type
> of contact into potential programmatic activities.  Being just couple miles
> too far way I was looking for someone closer who would be willing to
> followup with this on a local level.  As I said in my offer of help I'm
> happy to support and advise them that goes for who ever takes up the reigns
> but the important part of developing this is impractical from here.
>
>
> on WP discussion
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Cals.eoa#Help_offer
> ​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Gnangarra#UOA
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#Encyclopedia_of_Arkansas
> ​
>
> already checked meta there isnt any chapters close by, nearest user group
> is in North Carolina with a smaller area of interest, and the only
> experienced editors(10,000+ edits) listed on the en Wikiproject Arkansas
> havent been active in the last 6 months
>
> --
> ​Gnangarra
>
> President Wikimedia Australia
> WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra
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