Re: [Wikimedia-l] Invitation to beta-test HHVM

[Rand McRanderson]

Here is one idea. A dashboard of top level Wikimedia projects with
statuses, estimates, and a key to terms. Or does this exist?
On Sep 20, 2014 3:37 AM, "Pine W"  wrote:

> Do we have a published guideline somewhere about MediaWiki quality
> standards for pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and production releases of elements
> like MediaViewer, VisualEditor, Flow, Winter, and HHVM?
>
> Pine
> On Sep 20, 2014 12:14 AM, "Jon Work"  wrote:
>
> > :}   I am always impressed by those of you for whom English is not your
> > native tongue. It can be very complicated to understand some of the
> > shortcuts we use.
> >
> > Sent from my iPad
> >
> > > On 20 Sep 2014, at 02:22, MZMcBride  wrote:
> > >
> > > Anders Wennersten wrote:
> > >> I also did soma very subjective test on response times and found the
> new
> > >> feature to give 1-3 s quicker response, which is quite much (6s-5s,
> > >> 7s-4s) and make a big difference in the user experience.
> > >
> > > Woo! :D
> > >
> > >> Also after reflecting on my little harsh reaction on the deployment
> > >> process, I wonder if it is not a language/communication issue
> > >>
> > >> Being a non-native English speaking person I must admit I have no idea
> > >> of the meaning "intrepid" means in "for intrepid beta testers".  It
> > >> seems for Guillaume it means "hey this is badly tested, but use if you
> > >> have patience/courage" which I can accept as a message of a
> testrelease
> > >>
> > >> Also in my backgroud working in a company making internal deployment
> of
> > >> software for 4000 internal users, I am used of making a huge
> difference
> > >> in "ready for Alpha test" and "ready for Beta test", but perhaps my
> > >> reference frame is inappropriate in this case, where perhaps a beta
> > >> functionality means "Software for testing, not ready for release" and
> > >> covering both my distinctions
> > >>
> > >> So I apologize if I used too strong wordings and instead want to
> > >> congratulate you on releasing a good function where you so speedily
> > >> fixed the bug!
> > >
> > > No worries. Thank you for taking the time to write up this message
> > > explaining. I think there are definitely ways in which we can improve
> our
> > > communication about beta (or alpha!) features, including attempting to
> > > label them appropriately and making sure the message is suitably clear.
> > > Your constructive feedback will help us do better in the future.
> > >
> > > MZMcBride
> > >
> > >
> > >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Invitation to beta-test HHVM

[Rand McRanderson]

Thank you,

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/Dashboard

This is exacly the sort of thing I had in mind. Although I do have a few 
suggestions.


1. The sizes of the rows are unwieldy. Maybe take the top X amount of 
characters from each status summary, instead of the full status summary, 
and make the links to the full status pages more prominent 
(alternatively, you could have a short summary have an expand link of 
some sort to expand to the full summary within this same page). Is there 
a template for this?


2. A column with a one or two word stage name like Pine described would 
be helpful, especially if you could sort on it. For sorting purposes, it 
would be cool to sort by the order of stages (although that is really 
just an icing on top sort of idea, probably could be done most easily by 
just having a number in front of the stage name).


The problem with just reading the statuses like these is that a brief 
statement about the fact that it is almost ready to deploy or something 
like that can get lost in a wall of text.


On 09/20/2014 04:17 PM, Guillaume Paumier wrote:

Hello,

On Sat, Sep 20, 2014 at 9:32 PM, Rand McRanderson  wrote:

Here is one idea. A dashboard of top level Wikimedia projects with
statuses, estimates, and a key to terms. Or does this exist?

There is https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/Dashboard

It doesn't have everything you mentioned, but we can build on it and improve it.




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[Wikimedia-l] Surveys

[Rand McRanderson]

Hi everyone,

I was just curious, I did not see the survey results for the 2012 
survey, and it seems there has not been any general editor surveys since 
then (with the exception of the more narrowly focused Global South User 
Survey), I was wondering if there was any reason for this lack of 
surveys and for the lack of 2012 survey results (perhaps some long 
policy discussion lost in the bowels of the mailing list)


Rand McRanderson

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons tagging and/versus categorization

[Rand McRanderson]

The difference between categories and tags is semantic but those semantics
determine how the feature is used.

I suppose from an abstract technical perspective what is needed is
different classes of category-like objects based on the purpose it should
serve and displayed separately and possibly differently
On May 19, 2014 9:28 PM, "John Mark Vandenberg"  wrote:

> I think intersection is the most significant cause of the current
> categorisation system.
>
> My understanding of the current reasoning behind categorisation as seen on
> Commons and elsewhere is that:
>
> 1) the lack of category intersection causes the very specific categories,
> which are essentially saved category intersections.
>
> and
>
> 2) the category list at the bottom of the page being very literally the
> category names as listed in the page wikitext is why pages are only
> included in non-overlapping leaf node categories.
>
> On en.wp there are many useful specific categories which are deleted
> because they would only 'clutter' the category section of the page content
> footer. E.g. Spanish Paralympic competitors at the 2012 Summer Games. Most
> other multisport cohorts/intersections can have a category, but 'by
> country; by games' cohort is currently not permitted.
>
> Fair enough. I've seen stubs on en.wp where the category section of the
> page is larger than the page prose.
>
> IMO the 'future' of categories in wikimedia projects would be to replace
> the very specific 'intersection categories' with  saved queries in
> wikidata, with the category list at the bottom of the page dynamically
> including the list of saved wikidata search query results that the page is
> a member of, if the local project has more than  pages that are members
> of the query.
>
> --
> John
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Stop the New Privacy Policy until Lila is Thoroughly Briefed on It, Countdown 14 Hours

[Rand McRanderson]

I think this is all information that is generally collected by server log
files.
Ie, I do not think there is anything special being collected
On Jun 5, 2014 12:21 PM, "Trillium Corsage"  wrote:

> I am writing to ask that the new privacy policy be stopped, pending
> briefings of and thorough consideration by the incoming executive director
> Lila Tretikov. The timing of this major policy change with all its
> implications, including great legal implications, is at minimum
> discourteous to Ms. Tretikov in this the second day of her tenure, and in
> my judgement should additionally be viewed as alarming.
>
> "Wikimedia is beholden to no one, yet accountable to each and every human
> being," she said day before last. Yet the new policy makes every effort to
> distance it from accountability, by attempting to force every editor to
> consent to the most privacy-invasive technologies known, which include, all
> quoted:
>
> "You should be aware that specific data made public by you or aggregated
> data that is made public by us can be used by anyone for analysis and to
> infer information about users, such as which country a user is from,
> political affiliation, and gender." "Type of device you are using possibly
> including unique device identification numbers." "The type and version of
> your browser, your browser's language preference, the type and version of
> your device's operating system." "The name of your internet service
> provider or mobile carrier." "Which pages you request and visit, and the
> date and time of each request" (note: says "visit," not merely "edit"). "We
> actively collect information with tracking pixels, cookies, and local
> storage." "We use your email address." "We can use GPS and other
> technologies commonly used to determine location." "We may receive
> metadata." "IP address of the device (or your proxy server) you are using
> to access the Internet, which could be used to infer your geographical
> location." (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy).
>
> What is the heck is all this? Editors don't know they are signing up for
> this! But it gets even worse, because the WMF is not only providing this to
> its employees, but to hundreds of anonymous "administrators" to whom it
> grants access to this non-public, easily personally-identifying data. This
> means particularly, but not limited to: checkusers, arbitrators, stewards,
> UTRS users, and "community developers." Who are they? While Ms. Tretikov
> aspires to accountability, the new privacy policy flees to "exemptions" and
> "we know nothing." It specifically exempts these hundreds of people from
> the privacy policy. The WMF's Privacy Fellow Roshni Patel said two weeks
> ago "the Foundation can’t control the actions of community members such as
> administrative volunteers so we don’t include them under the privacy
> policy." Is this accountability? No. She further mystifyingly continues:
> "however, under the access policy, these volunteers must sign a
> confidentiality agreement." Mystifyingly, because it's *not* *true*. That
> part of the privacy policy "Requirements for Community Members Applying for
> Access to Nonpublic Information" requires only an email address and an
> assertion from an anonymous individual that he or she is 18 or over. Is
> there requirement there somewhere for a signature? No. Shall they sign for
> example under the nicknames of the prominent administrators like
> "Beeblebrox" and "Wizardman?" This is not accountability. (
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_to_nonpublic_information_policy#Minimum_requirements_for_community_members_applying_for_access_to_nonpublic_information_rights
> .)
>
> How can the executive director be expected to assume responsibility for
> this stuff in 14 hours, on her third official day on the job? Out of simple
> courtesy to her, it needs to be delayed, while she is briefed on it by
> those who most understand it, like the general counsel Geoff Brigham.
>
> Trillium Corsage
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Rand McRanderson]

I think the key here is not to keep more information about users than
necessary.

Of course, there is the question of if the NSA asks for our checkuser data.

I am relatively confident of WMF's honesty here. They have been pretty
concerned about user privacy in general (I am sure that there is some WMF
privacy mishap that happened at some point, but I am judging by my overall
sense of the organization, make of it what you will.

I think it would be a good idea for the WMF legal department to make a
statement (which means I need to remember what mailing list legal is, it's
not a burden but I am a lazy, lazy man)
On Jun 10, 2013 10:39 AM, "Theo10011"  wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 7:31 PM, John Vandenberg  wrote:
>
> > Or DeCSS, or AACS, ..
> >
> > Or 2012 Benghazi attack, Efforts to impeach Barack Obama, Drone
> > attacks in Pakistan, ..
> >
> > Or PRISM (surveillance program), Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, ..
> >
> > It would be good *if* the WMF can provide assurances to editors that
> > they havent received any national security letters or other 'trawling'
> > requests from any U.S. agency.
> >
> > If the WMF has received zero such requests, can the WMF say that?
> > There wouldn't be any gag order.
>
>
> You mean like Yahoo, Facebook, Google and Microsoft did at this program's
> first disclosure[1]. They all denied it for the record. They also have long
> running campaigns about security, protecting user data and privacy. After
> Obama and the NSA chief admitted to it, everyone started re-examining the
> language of their denial and found loopholes and similarities between
> carefully worded responses which were written and revised by a team of
> lawyers. There isn't any personal data (more than IP addresses etc.) on
> Wikipedia to compromise.
>
> As a user, I would actually be more concerned if WMF put out a similar
> response along with the big guys. It would be analogous to walking in a
> police station and yelling "I wasn't involved in that..." - when no one
> actually knows or suspects anything.
>
> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 6:59 PM, Fred Bauder 
> wrote:
>
> > They tap directly into the internet backbone. Only if there is some
> > particular matter which interests them which they would need our help to
> > decipher would they contact the Foundation. There are a few things out
> > there that I can imagine them being interested in, but very few. For
> > example, there are small groups of people in the United States that
> > support The Shining Path or the Naxalites. Active steps to open a
> > military front in the United States would probably kick them into gear
> > and they might be interested in who edited our articles on these subjects
> > as advocates for that tendency.
>
>
> Actually, it's still not clear the methodology they use - there are
> theories about lockboxes, about a beam splitter at Tier 1 service
> providers, or running a shadow copy from the service provider lines, or
> combination of those, or something else entirely. The original slide did
> mention upstream and downstream surveillance methods as some news stories
> pointed out.
>
> I have no possible way to extract who is a supporter of a cause, based on
> what article they edit or what they read. There can be some form of POV
> pushers but again there is nothing that would require this level of
> circumvention to use a secret government surveillance program to discern.
> More often than not, I and prob. a large number of editors just fix things,
> add something here and there and move on. They don't pay attention to the
> political ramifications of editing that article. The amount of false
> positive they would get from monitoring something like this would be
> several times more than anything resembling a useful and sustained pattern.
> Not to mention, this would require human interpretation to discern when
> someone supports a cause, pushes POV or just curates an article without any
> underlying feeling. Again, all this would be going the long way round to
> prove something they can easily get from a user's email, chat logs and
> searches- the perception of threat would also be more evident from their
> personal communication instead of public editing behavior.
>
> Regards
> Theo
>
> [1]
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#Response_from_companies
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Some of Wikipedia's most important tools are broken

[Rand McRanderson]

Maybe it is time to consider taking highly useful but less maintained bots
and adding them to Wikipedia architecture. Wmf can offer (not force) to
take them over.
On Sep 9, 2013 2:22 PM, "Federico Leva (Nemo)"  wrote:

> Sarah Stierch, 09/09/2013 19:26:
>
>> Yeah..I've noticed that with a lot of tools, whether on the toolserver or
>> on labs. The tool I use monthly is:
>>
>> http://tools.wmflabs.org/**glamtools/treeviews/
>>
>> I ping Magnus all the time and he does his best to fix any issues and now
>> i
>> just feel like a broken record each month. It is stifling my reports as a
>> Wikipedian in Residence to UNESCO and the Library of Congress :(
>>
>> It's really tough to function without it, and so many other tools anymore.
>>
>
> That's 
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.**org/show_bug.cgi?id=42259
> The lack of basic pageview stats service from WMF has also been briefly
> discussed at http://lists.wikimedia.org/**pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-**
> September/071714.html
>
> Nemo
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The Wikipedia Gap

[Rand McRanderson]

I wonder if we could do a survey of readers from underrepresented groups.
Even if a group is underrepresented as editors that doesn't mean they ate
underrepresented as readers (for example women) (plus survey results could
be cited in potential deletion discussions)

We may want to think about the WMF giving grants organizations that are
doing research into the history and sociology etc. of these groups, so that
the body of citable evidence becomes greater.
On Dec 10, 2013 8:43 AM, "Delirium"  wrote:

> In terms of specific articles to create, there is also
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_
> encyclopedic_articles
>
> That project collects articles that exist in wide range of other
> encyclopedias, but don't yet exist on Wikipedia. However that's not
> covering quite the same concerns as the systemic-bias discussion, since
> many of those encyclopedias themselves have similar biases. Nonetheless
> this kind of comparison can be useful to find specific gaps in coverage
> that, equally importantly, are "actionable" in the sense that at least one
> source to base an article on exists.
>
> -Mark
>
> On 12/9/13, 9:07 PM, Peter Coombe wrote:
>
>> The English Wikipedia has attempted a (non-exhaustive) list at
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Systemic_bias
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
>> On 9 December 2013 07:35, Romaine Wiki  wrote:
>>
>>  In various research and media articles is written that in several subject
>>> groups Wikipedia is missing a lot of articles and those groups are
>>> relatively unrepresented.
>>>
>>> How can we as Wikipedia get clear which subject groups are missing?
>>>
>>> How can we get lists of less represented subject groups and the articles
>>> in those groups?
>>>
>>> Let us get practical, ow can we fill the gap?
>>>
>>>
>>> Greetings,
>>> Romaine
>>>
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>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia Zero wins!

[Rand McRanderson]

Orkut used to dominate outside US and Europe. Then Google took over,
neglected it and Facebook moved in. Classic big company takes small company
and forgets about it
On Mar 17, 2013 11:39 AM, "Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton" <
rodrigo.argen...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Facebook here is more used than Google and Orkut, but they are well used
> to, so... we really don't know why :)
>
>
> On 17 March 2013 05:29, James Alexander  wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 12:53 AM, Balázs Viczián <
> > balazs.vicz...@wikimedia.hu> wrote:
> >
> > > the favorit social media site in Brazil is Orkut. Far far more popular
> > than
> > > facebook. If you wish to have a strong social media presence there,
> > you'll
> > > have to be present on that.
> > >
> > > cheers, Balázs
> >
> >
> >
> >  Tom or someone else from Brazi would know better then me I'm sure but
> that
> > doesn't seem to have been true since 2011 (
> >
> >
> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ricardogeromel/2011/09/14/facebook-surpasses-orkut-owned-by-google-in-numbers-of-users-in-brazil/
> > )
> > . Looking at the numbers now (
> > http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/BR) looks like FB is the #1 site
> > now (of course, it IS Alexa ;) ).
> >
> > James
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> --
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> rodrigo.argen...@gmail.com
> +55 11 979 718 884
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