Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wiki Loves Monuments] Wiki Loves Monuments in Italy largely blocked by WMF fundraising

2015-08-19 Thread Risker
I can understand the frustration that members of WMIT are expressing here,
but I also see Fundraising's point.  I wonder if there are not some other
options that could be considered.  For example, instead of a banner,
perhaps a big bright button on the sidebar that says Upload images for
Wiki Loves Monuments here! may be technically feasible.  It's not quite
the equivalent of a banner, but it does address the wayfinding issue at
least.  (I think that's possibly the biggest downside of not having the WLM
banners in rotation.)

Let's give ourselves permission to think outside the box a bit here; both
of these activities are valuable and important to our movement, each of
them have different but viable reasons for wanting to proceed during that
specific period. There are a lot of smart people reading this mailing list.
I'd like to think between the several-hundred of us we might be able to
come up with a solution that works to accommodate both groups.

Risker/Anne

On 20 August 2015 at 01:19, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 Yes, Andrew is right. Navigation is a very important focus point of
 organising every Wiki Loves Monuments.

 The complexity of the navigation is that MediaWiki and the whole group of
 Wikimedia wikis is not designed for navigation, but designed for showing
 content. In the past eight years small improvements have been made in this
 field, but in general speaking it is still not easy to navigate for the
 majority of the people.

 Romaine

 2015-08-19 20:45 GMT+02:00 Andrea Zanni zanni.andre...@gmail.com:

  I think Andrew is right: the WLM banner serves as a pointer, and it's
 very
  easy to remember go on Wikipedia and click into the banner on the top.
  It's much more difficult to remember the strange name of the contest (in
  Italy it's still called Wiki Loves Monuments, even if it's English).
 
  And of course we do not have good analytics for the banner: nobody knows
  homw many page views there are in a single wiki per day, so we cannot
 count
  the clickthroughs (which we have as the link is on a WLM landing page).
 
  Aubrey
 
 
 
  On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 6:02 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk
  wrote:
 
   On 19 August 2015 at 14:26, Sam Klein sjkl...@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:
There's a more general problem here we should fix:
   
We already know that effectiveness of any single banner drops off
dramatically after the first few views.  So there's rarely a reason
 to
   run
a continuous banner -- certainly not if there are other banners to
 run.
  
   I think we should be cautious about using our fundraising experience
   to predict the efficiency of 'delayed call-to-action' banners like WLM
   - to my mind they seem to function in quite different roles.
  
   The fundraising banner is calling for an immediate action. You see it,
   and you either donate or you don't. If you decide not to donate, you
   probably won't decide to donate on seeing it tomorrow, either; while
   if you have donated, you're probably not going to donate again. So the
   banner being repeated doesn't gain us much, and it has progressively
   less value on the third, fourth, fifth appearances. There are
   relatively few people who see a fundraising banner and decide I'll
   sleep on it, then come back tomorrow and donate. And if they *do*,
   well - there's a donate link on every page, once they're looking for
   it.
  
   However, WLM is calling for a delayed action - go off, do something,
   and come back again to tell us about it.
  
   The most desired outcome is probably that a previously uninvolved
   person will see it, click through, think that sounds fun, and go off
   to take some photos - after all, it's running all month, they can do
   it at the weekend. A few days later they come back, and want to upload
   their photos... but if the banner's not there on Wikipedia, they won't
   really know where to go. They might not remember the name (Wiki
   something?), making it hard to search for the contest, and they
   probably didn't bookmark the WLM pages. There isn't anything else on
   the page that would help to take them there, and if they're not
   involved in the projects already they probably won't know where the
   information's likely to be. If we can't make sure they can find WLM
   easily when they return, then we've wasted the original call to
   action, we've wasted the potential contributions, *and*, most
   importantly, we've wasted their time and goodwill.
  
   I think this difference in intended response styles makes it hard to
   generalise from the diminishing returns experienced on fundraising.
   Yes, a repeated banner will get progressively diminishing
   clickthroughs. But with WLM, those second clickthroughs in some ways
   provide the value to the first clickthrough - they need to return to
   make the campaign a success, which isn't really a concern for
   fundraising. We need to make sure that that channel is open and
   visible

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Superprotect's first birthday

2015-08-11 Thread Risker
There are situations where not even the administrators of a particular
community should be allowed to edit a page. A good example would be the
pages that describe the copyright and licensing of Wikimedia products.
Individual communities cannot change that (it applies globally), and
individual administrators should not modify it. If there is a problem with
translation, that needs to be brought to the attention of the WMF, because
there may be a similar problem with translation elsewhere.

There are also some examples currently being discussed on the Wikitech-L
list that may require significantly elevated levels of protection above
'all administrators on Project ABC', although they may call for another
level of protection that can be customizable to allowing a much smaller
group or specific individuals to be the only editors.

Risker/Anne


On 11 August 2015 at 16:43, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 So far I know it has only be used once after the occasion, see:
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Superprotect

 If anyone knows another occasion, I would like to ask to report this usage
 at this talk page to keep an overview in future.

 Greetings,
 Romaine

 2015-08-11 20:28 GMT+02:00 Magnus Manske magnusman...@googlemail.com:

  Out of curiosity, was it ever used again after that initial action?
 
  On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 6:13 PM Laurentius laurentius.w...@gmail.com
  wrote:
 
   Il giorno mer, 12/08/2015 alle 01.11 +0900, Hong, Yongmin ha scritto:
It has been a year (and a day) since the gerrit 153302 [1] has been
merged
and deployed to the dewiki.
  
   And it's high time it got removed.
  
   Laurentius
  
  
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Superprotect's first birthday

2015-08-11 Thread Risker
I hate to say it, but a hijacked Steward account is considerably more
dangerous than a hijacked admin account. It's extremely unlikely to happen
- our stewards are probably more aware of maintaining account security than
just about any other group of users. However, stewards under their current
process could very well find themselves in a situation where a community
wants to do something, like change the (global) terms of use or the
(global) interpretation of copyright policyat which point their current
rules put them smack in the middle of the global community and WMF board
that approved a global policy, and a local community that wants to have its
own.  It's not a fair situation for them to be in.

As well, there will always be a need for an ability to lock a problem page
to address technical problems (in fact, I'm pretty sure there was some code
to do that from the back door, and Superprotect is probably the prettied-up
interface so others can do it), and if there's a problem that serious it is
going to ahve to remain in a broader range of hands.

Risker/Anne

On 11 August 2015 at 17:27, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote:

 Most of the time, admins behave as we would hope. Occasionally they don't,
 and on English Wikipedia when that happens often enough or seriously enough
 in the opinion of Arbcom, the offending admins are desysopped. I think that
 for legally sensitive pages, we'd be concerned about the possibility of
 having wheel-warring administrators or hijacked admin accounts. The latter
 can happen to anyone. Restricting certain pages to being edited only by
 Stewards via superprotect would help to protect against the former.
 Generally speaking I agree that standard full protection is sufficient,
 and superprotect should only be invoked in rare cases. I would trust
 Stewards to implement Superprotect at the request of the community, or upon
 hearing good cause for doing so from WMF.

 Pine


 On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 2:20 PM, Ricordisamoa 
 ricordisa...@openmailbox.org
 wrote:

  I trust administrators not to edit pages they shouldn't.
 
 
  Il 11/08/2015 22:56, Risker ha scritto:
 
  There are situations where not even the administrators of a particular
  community should be allowed to edit a page. A good example would be the
  pages that describe the copyright and licensing of Wikimedia products.
  Individual communities cannot change that (it applies globally), and
  individual administrators should not modify it. If there is a problem
 with
  translation, that needs to be brought to the attention of the WMF,
 because
  there may be a similar problem with translation elsewhere.
 
  There are also some examples currently being discussed on the Wikitech-L
  list that may require significantly elevated levels of protection above
  'all administrators on Project ABC', although they may call for another
  level of protection that can be customizable to allowing a much smaller
  group or specific individuals to be the only editors.
 
  Risker/Anne
 
 
  On 11 August 2015 at 16:43, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com
 wrote:
 
  So far I know it has only be used once after the occasion, see:
  https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Superprotect
 
  If anyone knows another occasion, I would like to ask to report this
  usage
  at this talk page to keep an overview in future.
 
  Greetings,
  Romaine
 
  2015-08-11 20:28 GMT+02:00 Magnus Manske magnusman...@googlemail.com
 :
 
  Out of curiosity, was it ever used again after that initial action?
 
  On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 6:13 PM Laurentius laurentius.w...@gmail.com
 
  wrote:
 
  Il giorno mer, 12/08/2015 alle 01.11 +0900, Hong, Yongmin ha scritto:
 
  It has been a year (and a day) since the gerrit 153302 [1] has been
  merged
  and deployed to the dewiki.
 
  And it's high time it got removed.
 
  Laurentius
 
 
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Superprotect's first birthday

2015-08-11 Thread Risker
Who said the problem was on enwiki?

On 11 August 2015 at 17:58, Robert Rohde raro...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 10:56 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
 snip

  There are situations where not even the administrators of a particular
  community should be allowed to edit a page. A good example would be the
  pages that describe the copyright and licensing of Wikimedia products.

 snip

 Since being full protected 6 years ago, Enwiki's current license page has
 been edited by administrators nearly 50 times.  Most of those edits consist
 of modifying categories, interwikis, navigational templates, similar
 things.  Those edits probably aren't essential, but I would still say they
 are useful.

 Though hypothetically possible I can't think of any examples of an admin on
 enwiki modifying a legal page in a harmful way, which makes it seem like
 you have solution for a problem that doesn't actually exist.

 -Robert Rohde


 
  On 11 August 2015 at 16:43, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com wrote:
 
   So far I know it has only be used once after the occasion, see:
   https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Superprotect
  
   If anyone knows another occasion, I would like to ask to report this
  usage
   at this talk page to keep an overview in future.
  
   Greetings,
   Romaine
  
   2015-08-11 20:28 GMT+02:00 Magnus Manske magnusman...@googlemail.com
 :
  
Out of curiosity, was it ever used again after that initial action?
   
On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 6:13 PM Laurentius 
 laurentius.w...@gmail.com
wrote:
   
 Il giorno mer, 12/08/2015 alle 01.11 +0900, Hong, Yongmin ha
 scritto:
  It has been a year (and a day) since the gerrit 153302 [1] has
 been
  merged
  and deployed to the dewiki.

 And it's high time it got removed.

 Laurentius



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Superprotect's first birthday

2015-08-11 Thread Risker
On 11 August 2015 at 18:05, Robert Rohde raro...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 12:00 AM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:

  Who said the problem was on enwiki?


 If you think this issue is only a problem in some specific place or class
 of wikis, then say so.  Otherwise, I would have to assume you consider it a
 problem that exists everywhere, including the large wikis like enwiki.



The problem is most likely to occur on small wikis with comparatively few
active administrators. That doesn't mean it won't happen on a large wiki,
or that it hasn't.  Just because something doesn't happen on English
Wikipedia (whether good or bad) doesn't mean that it's unimportant or
irrelevant, or that it couldn't eventually happen on enwiki.  There's a
certain irony, after all the years of (sometimes quite justified) concerns
that this list is too enwiki-centric, that when someone makes a point that
doesn't necessarily apply to enwikiwell, I have to admit I found it
humorous.


Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Does Foundation have 3rd party standing against Harald Bischoff?

2015-07-26 Thread Risker
Pine, why are you pinging WMF Legal on this?  It is considerably premature
to expect them to do anything much more  than read the relevant
discussions, maybe, if they have an intern to spare. What action do you
expect them to take, when the community has yet to determine whether or not
its own standards have been met, whether there is actually an issue, here,
whether what the user in question is doing is actually wrong or is well
within the acceptable parameters of that project.  Should the community
involved believe that they need assistance on this matter, they will then
be able to decide if it is necessary to discuss with WMF Legal.  Looking at
this user's talk page at dewp and Commons, nobody seems to have raised the
issue directly with him on-wiki.

Calling upon WMF staff and expecting them to deal with all kinds of issues
that are not ripe for their attention, are still being addressed within the
relevant community, or (as in this case) are not being discussed in the
relevant community at all, is not really appropriate, and I for one would
appreciate if you'd stop doing that.

Risker/Anne

On 26 July 2015 at 17:45, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote:

 Pinging WMF Legal to ask about what WMF can do about this entire situation.

 Pine
 On Jul 26, 2015 1:06 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote:

  If Harald Bischoff has defrauded Commons reusers by requiring stricter
  attribution than the community requires, does the Foundation have
 standing
  in Germany to require him to return the money to his victims in
 proportion
  to the extent that their attribution was improper?
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] US affiliates (was: Re: WMF office location and remodel)

2015-06-27 Thread Risker
Ricordisamoa, I have no preference either way. I live in a geographically
enormous country (Canada), which has a national chapter - centered so far
away from me that I'll never be in a position to participate in person at a
regular meetup. In Canada's case, regional chapters might have been better,
and I wonder about other geographically large countries where this would
also be more workable.

Risker

On 28 June 2015 at 01:17, Ricordisamoa ricordisa...@openmailbox.org wrote:

 I infer that you would have preferred a single US chapter from the start,
 wouldn't you?


 Il 28/06/2015 06:08, Risker ha scritto:

 Ironically, Ricordisamoa, the decision to not have a US chapter was made
 around 10 years ago at the strong urging of other chapters. The theory (as
 I understand it) was that the US was the home of the WMF itself, which in
 the view of the era, meant that the US didn't need the protections that
 came from a chapter; the WMF itself was perceived to speak for US
 Wikimedians. (Given the times, back when there were literally only enough
 employees to run the servers and sort of keep an eye on MediaWiki, this
 was
 perhaps an incorrect assessment.) Then US regions started to form
 chapters,
 first New York then DC; there are now a significant number of user groups.
 If there had been a US chapter formed back at that time, there would only
 be one US chapter; the rest would never be recognized at the chapter
 level.
 Instead, we now see the specter of what could come, since the US alone as
 a
 nation with a large number of Wikimedians does not have the opportunity
 for
 a single chapter:  given a little bit more organization, and the ambition
 to do the paperwork to become a chapter, the US could have as many (or
 more) chapters than exist in all of Europe in a few years.  One has to
 wonder if some other countries, especially those with a large number of
 Wikimedians or a massive geographic area, might wish they had gone with
 regional affiliates rather than a national one.

 Risker/Anne

 On 27 June 2015 at 23:26, Ricordisamoa ricordisa...@openmailbox.org
 wrote:

  I know the confederated approach may surely make more sense for the local
 communities, but I think an established regional subject would help
 uproot
 the Foundation from a single country it relies too much on.

 Il 28/06/2015 05:00, Pine W ha scritto:

  Hi Ricordisamoa,

 There are multiple chapters, user groups and thematic organizations that
 are active in the US and have a degree of separation from WMF. The US
 affiliates are cooperative with each other, and the affiliate leaders
 communicate with each other fairly frequently. May I ask what benefits
 you
 think would come from having a consolidated US chapter? We've talked
 about
 this casually among ourselves but so far we seem to be satisfied with a
 confederation of smaller affiliates instead of a single national
 affiliate.

 Thanks!

 Pine

 On Jun 27, 2015 7:20 PM, Ricordisamoa ricordisa...@openmailbox.org
 mailto:ricordisa...@openmailbox.org wrote:

  The WMF will become a truly global organization when a Wikimedia
  US chapter is founded ;-)

  Il 08/04/2015 06:58, Pine W ha scritto:

  Hi Garfield,

  I'm asking this on Wikimedia-l because a number of Wikimedians
  have noted
  the expensiveness of the San Francisco area including its high
  cost of
  living for staff, employer competition for engineering talent,
 and
  associated high salaries for WMF employees.

  I see on


 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/8/8a/RFP_for_Real_Estate_Services.pdf
  that WMF is considering relocating its offices when its
  current main office
  lease expires.

  Questions:

  What happens to the remodel expenses that WMF is paying for at
  its current
  location? If WMF vacates the premesis, will it be compensated
  for the
  remodel by the building owner?

  I hope that WMF is contemplating fully exiting the San
  Francisco market
  area in order to economize, get better value for our donors'
  funds, have
  less competition for talent, and lower costs of living for
  staff. Is this
  being considered?

  Thanks very much,

  Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] US affiliates (was: Re: WMF office location and remodel)

2015-06-27 Thread Risker
Ironically, Ricordisamoa, the decision to not have a US chapter was made
around 10 years ago at the strong urging of other chapters. The theory (as
I understand it) was that the US was the home of the WMF itself, which in
the view of the era, meant that the US didn't need the protections that
came from a chapter; the WMF itself was perceived to speak for US
Wikimedians. (Given the times, back when there were literally only enough
employees to run the servers and sort of keep an eye on MediaWiki, this was
perhaps an incorrect assessment.) Then US regions started to form chapters,
first New York then DC; there are now a significant number of user groups.
If there had been a US chapter formed back at that time, there would only
be one US chapter; the rest would never be recognized at the chapter level.
Instead, we now see the specter of what could come, since the US alone as a
nation with a large number of Wikimedians does not have the opportunity for
a single chapter:  given a little bit more organization, and the ambition
to do the paperwork to become a chapter, the US could have as many (or
more) chapters than exist in all of Europe in a few years.  One has to
wonder if some other countries, especially those with a large number of
Wikimedians or a massive geographic area, might wish they had gone with
regional affiliates rather than a national one.

Risker/Anne

On 27 June 2015 at 23:26, Ricordisamoa ricordisa...@openmailbox.org wrote:

 I know the confederated approach may surely make more sense for the local
 communities, but I think an established regional subject would help uproot
 the Foundation from a single country it relies too much on.

 Il 28/06/2015 05:00, Pine W ha scritto:


 Hi Ricordisamoa,

 There are multiple chapters, user groups and thematic organizations that
 are active in the US and have a degree of separation from WMF. The US
 affiliates are cooperative with each other, and the affiliate leaders
 communicate with each other fairly frequently. May I ask what benefits you
 think would come from having a consolidated US chapter? We've talked about
 this casually among ourselves but so far we seem to be satisfied with a
 confederation of smaller affiliates instead of a single national affiliate.

 Thanks!

 Pine

 On Jun 27, 2015 7:20 PM, Ricordisamoa ricordisa...@openmailbox.org
 mailto:ricordisa...@openmailbox.org wrote:

 The WMF will become a truly global organization when a Wikimedia
 US chapter is founded ;-)

 Il 08/04/2015 06:58, Pine W ha scritto:

 Hi Garfield,

 I'm asking this on Wikimedia-l because a number of Wikimedians
 have noted
 the expensiveness of the San Francisco area including its high
 cost of
 living for staff, employer competition for engineering talent, and
 associated high salaries for WMF employees.

 I see on

 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/8/8a/RFP_for_Real_Estate_Services.pdf
 that WMF is considering relocating its offices when its
 current main office
 lease expires.

 Questions:

 What happens to the remodel expenses that WMF is paying for at
 its current
 location? If WMF vacates the premesis, will it be compensated
 for the
 remodel by the building owner?

 I hope that WMF is contemplating fully exiting the San
 Francisco market
 area in order to economize, get better value for our donors'
 funds, have
 less competition for talent, and lower costs of living for
 staff. Is this
 being considered?

 Thanks very much,

 Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Can Wikipedia Survive? op-ed

2015-06-22 Thread Risker
Gerard, I think you may be missing the point of the NYT op-ed.  The issue
isn't data, it's people who will use that data (whether it comes from
structured data sets like Wikidata, or from dead-tree or electronic media)
to create articles, curate them, maintain them, keep the various wikipedias
mostly spam-free, and develop communities around them.  We're not lacking
in data. We're lacking in human beings and healthy, growing communities.

On the other hand, I'm not entirely certain that Andrew's concerns about
the use of smartphones as the primary mode of access is entirely
justified.  We've known for a long time that many of our editors in Asian
countries edit using smartphones, often with a keyboard attached; we've
even featured them in videos.  But realistically, the overwhelming majority
of Wikipedia *readers* have never considered, even for a moment, actively
participating in editing - and it has been that way pretty much since at
least 2005, and maybe earlier.  We can do better, of course, and making it
easier to edit on tablets in particular is a worthwhile enterprise
(smartphones...well, I'm not even persuaded they're going to exist five
years from now in the way that we know them today...)

Risker/Anne

On 22 June 2015 at 13:41, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hoi,
 Magnus pointed the way forward when he started MediaWiki. When you look
 into the whole stack of his data related tools, you will find how they make
 aggregating data a whole lot easier and worthwhile. He demonstrated how
 people on a mobile can be asked to help with simple tasks it works well
 and it continues to work in production (labs willing).

 When you are talking micro contributions, every statement in Wikidata is
 one. It can easily be done from a mobile when the UI is given attention. It
 is known how to create articles from data. The Swedes, Dutch etc have done
 it often enough and it brought them more readers and more editors...

 Study what we already know. There is nothing new here and the solutions are
 there to be had. We only have to accept them. I do agree that  the old old
 way of Wikipedia is ultimately a dead end.
 Thanks,
  GerardM

 On 22 June 2015 at 19:28, James Heilman jmh...@gmail.com wrote:

  What we need to figure out is how to allow translation of articles
  through micro contributions via cellphones.
 
  Maybe send out sentences one by one for translation from one language
  to another. Just start with the leads of articles that are deemed to
  be of good quality. Than when the lead is all translated join it back
  together and add it to that language. This would of course only apply
  to articles which are non existent in the target language.
 
  Maybe Amir's content translation tool could do this eventually
  https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation
 
  --
  James Heilman
  MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
 
  Starting July 2015 I am a board member of the Wikimedia Foundation
  My emails; however, do not represent the official position of the WMF
 
  The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
  www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Printed Wikipedia is go!

2015-06-17 Thread Risker
On 17 June 2015 at 15:29, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 17 June 2015 at 20:07, Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.com wrote:
  On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 2:00 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 
 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/books/moving-wikipedia-from-computer-to-many-many-bookshelves.html?_r=1
  7,600 volumes, to be available on Lulu. He's printing 106 of them for
  the exhibition.

  Right, and what's the shipping cost run on that? :)



 YOU DARE PUT A PRICE ON *ART*


 -


I am surprised at how many people outside of my Wikipedia life have
brought this to my attention today.

I agree the Buy Now option is probably not the best bet here, but there
is a tiny part of me that wouldn't mind getting a volume that includes an
article I've done a lot of work on or one that includes some form of my
username.  I can imagine the subjects of some of our biographical
articles thinking the same way.  Who knows, this might actually sell...


Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)

2015-06-06 Thread Risker
On 6 June 2015 at 14:58, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm happy with S/N/O and with the election winners, but concerned about the
 diversity of the Board. I wonder if rethinking the entire board structure
 is in order, for example we could have:

 1. One seat per continent, elected by the whole voting community
 2. Two affiliate seats chosen by all affiliates including user groups.
 3. Two appointed seats with non-renewable terms.

 Thoughts?




How many continents will get to have candidates?  Six? Seven? Eight?  There
was some pretty significant discussion in the current election that Europe
isn't really a unified continent, and that Eastern or Eastern/Central
Europe shouldn't be considered the same thing as Western Europe. And I'm
pretty sure we don't have anyone currently resident in Antarctica who would
meet even minimal requirements for election and who would willingly be a
candidate.

I've never really heard a good argument for the existence of the chapter
seats, which are essentially community seats elected by representatives of
less than 10% of the active community.

And I do not understand why appointed seats should not be renewable,
although I agree that term limits should apply to all seats.  These may be
the only way to ensure some diversity.


Illario mentioned before that there was only one new woman candidate for
any of these elected positions, and the only two women candidates for the
board were the incumbents.  The strong push for candidates outside of the
traditional areas may play a role here. Several women I approached to
consider candidacies said quite bluntly that the activities they were
working on or were planning to work on were more likely to make a
difference in the movement than having a seat on the board would have, and
certainly would be making more difference than being on the FDC would
have.  I think there's a fair amount of truth in that.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)

2015-06-06 Thread Risker
The Schulze method that was being used is the one that is specifically
intended  to give only one winner; probably most people don't know that
Schulze also created a separate system that was intended to give multiple
winners.  It is a very confusing system and many people unintentionally
gave support to candidates they did not believe should have a chance.

One of the things that really becomes obvious using the S/N/O system is the
number of *non-votes* or neutral votes:  almost all of the candidates had
more neutral votes than support and oppose votes combined.  The effect of
not requiring voters to decide how to classify each candidate (in Schulze,
to rank the candidate; in S/N/O, to support or oppose) has radically
different effects in the two systems.  In S/N/O, the neutral votes have no
effect at all on the outcome.  In the Schulze system, not ranking a
candidate is the equivalent of an oppose vote; every candidate who is
ranked (even if they are ranked at a level well below the number of
candidates) is ranked higher than a candidate who is not ranked at all.
This is counter-intuitive and gives no effective way for people to
differentiate between candidates that they really really do not think
should be on the board and candidates about whom they have not formulated
an opinion, or even candidates about whom they are indifferent.  It is a
serious weakness in the Schulze system.  Nonetheless, the S/N/O system has
significant weaknesses as well, as others have pointed out.

There are other systems that allow only as many supports as there are seats
open, which might be worth considering. There are systems that only allow
support votes and no opposition.  There are not very many systems, though,
that are specifically designed to give multiple winners when one of the
conditions is that they *not* be running on a shared ticket.

We did not have enough time in 2013 (nor, to be honest, the interest
amongst Election Committee members) to do a thorough review of
multiple-winner voting systems. That year, we had to develop all of the
processes for electing FDC members and FDC ombuds, which was a lot of
work.  This year, the committee barely had enough time to do the tasks that
were absolutely required just to make the election happen, and in order to
incorporate the specific instructions of the board with respect to
outreach, seeking of diverse candidates, and increasing voter participation
(all of which proved very worthwhile), they didn't have time to fine-tune a
lot of the processes that were already developed.  I would have loved to
see changes in the way that questions are handled, and a rethinking of the
voting methodology, for example.  But there simply was not time to come up
with a well-considered *better* way.

So...yes, I agree with Milos and many others that a Standing Election
Committee is needed to re-examine the way that Board candidates are
elected, and to re-examine the entire framework on which the elections are
based - indeed, I recommended it after the 2013 election.

I find it interesting that nobody seems all that worried about the FDC
election (where 5 of 11 candidates got seats) or the FDC Ombud election
(where both candidates came forward in the last 24 hours before nominations
closed).  These two elections suggest some pretty big underlying problems
as well.  Nobody seems all that upset that fewer than 10% of all the
candidates for the 2015 elections were women - one of the lowest
percentages ever - and that not a single woman was elected to any role for
the first time in any election where more than one candidate was being
elected.  On the whole, despite having a fair number of candidates outside
of the US and areas represented by large national chapters, not a single
non-white, non-male candidate, not a single Asian, African or Latin
American candidate was elected.  We're pretty good at talking about
diversity, but very poor at implementing it.

Risker/Anne

On 6 June 2015 at 13:55, MF-Warburg mfwarb...@googlemail.com wrote:

 I still think it was a big mistake (of the electcom? I don't remember, but
 /someone/ pushed it through without discussions) in the 2013 election to
 abolish the Schulze method.
 Am 06.06.2015 19:16 schrieb Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com:

  Moving this discussion into a separate thread, to leave the main one
  for best wishes and similar :)
 
  Before I start talking about the voting system itself, I have to say
  that, from my personal perspective, I wouldn't imagine better outcome:
  a Polish steward (my favorite Wikimedian group :) ), a Croat founder
  of Wikidata (whom I consider as a friend) and a very prominent English
  Wikipedian, with significant record of working with smaller languages
  (BTW, I didn't know that he's a candidate till I saw the results; I
  didn't vote, as I still don't think I am able to make informed
  decision; useful note: one year out of movement requires more than one
  year to be able to fully participate again).
 
  When I

Re: [Wikimedia-l] While Election committee counts the votes...

2015-06-03 Thread Risker
On 3 June 2015 at 19:11, Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net wrote:


  On 3 Jun 2015, at 23:48, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  On 3 June 2015 at 18:42, Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net wrote:
 
 
  By the way, my understanding is that the practice of generating a
 public
  list of voters who cast ballots, while keeping the nature of their
 votes
  private, is relatively common in election processes in general. In the
  United States, political parties use this information for their get
 out
  the vote campaigns so that they know which of their likely supporters
  have
  yet to vote.
 
  In UK political elections I think that would be illegal...{{citation
  needed}}
 
  They certainly exist in Canada, and I'm quite certain they exist in the
 UK
  as well, because that's how the official poll watchers (or scrutineers,
 as
  we call them in Canada) know who to get out when getting out the
  vote.  They don't get published online, but there is a right to examine
  the list of individuals who can vote at the office of the local senior
  election official for a few weeks afterward, and then at the national
  election office once any challenges have been completed.  Of course in
  places where voting is mandatory, the failure to vote is going to be
 public.

 Wow. I'm very far from being an expert on the UK voting system, but my
 understanding is that although the list of who can vote may be made public
 (where voters have agreed to this), who has not yet voted (or, after the
 fact, who has not voted) would never be made public. In the UK, election
 scrutineers would only be involved in reviewing votes that had been cast,
 not who had not voted.


It occurred to me that there's this really great online reference source
called Wikipedia that's generally pretty accurate when it comes to things
like this, so I looked up Electoral roll.  In the UK, [a]fter an
election a 'Marked Register' can be inspected, which is a copy of the
register used for the election with a mark by each elector that has
voted.[1]

As I said...while it's generally accurate, sometimes it's incomplete.  I
note the absence of any information about Canada there, although it is
fairly close to the UK system as discussed in the article.

Risker/Anne



[1]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_roll#United_Kingdom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] FDC annual plan grant recommendations for 2014-2015 Round 2

2015-06-01 Thread Risker
Minor correction:  Appeals are due JUNE 8, 2015, not July 8.[1]

Risker/Anne
(Member of the FDC)

[1]  https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Information#Calendar

On 1 June 2015 at 11:18, Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.pl wrote:

 Hello Wikimedians,

 The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) meets twice a year to help make
 decisions about how to effectively allocate movement funds to achieve the
 Wikimedia movement's mission, vision, and strategy. [1] Just before the
 Wikimedia Conference, the FDC met in Berlin to deliberate on the five
 proposals submitted for this Round. [2] We thank these organizations for
 their hard work on their annual plans and their proposals.

 The FDC has now posted our recommendations on Meta for Round 2 2014-2015 on
 the annual plan grants to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. [3]
 Thanks to the leadership of the FDC’s two Board Representatives (Maria
 Sefidari and Frieda Brioschi), the WMF Board will review the
 recommendations and then make their decision on them by 1 July 2015.

 This round, the six proposals were submitted to the FDC. One proposal was
 withdrawn before we met to deliberate. We recommended allocations totaling
 roughly $1,248,913 USD for these five organizations. Note that all
 allocations were made in local currency. A total of $5,060,913 was
 allocated in both rounds in this year (2014-2015). The remaining $939,087
 from the FDC’s $6 million budget will be returned to the Wikimedia
 Foundation.

 Before our face-to-face deliberations, the FDC reviewed the proposals in
 careful detail. We also reviewed staff assessments and analysis on impact,
 finances, and programs, as well as community comments on the proposals. We
 also took into consideration the discussion pages of relevant documents.

 There is a formal process for grant applicants to submit complaints or
 appeals about these recommendations. Here are the steps for both:

 Any organization that would like to submit an appeal on the FDC’s Round 2
 recommendation should submit it to the Board representatives to the FDC by
 23:59 UTC on 8 July 2015 in accordance with the appeal process outlined in
 the FDC Framework. A formal appeal to challenge the FDC’s recommendation
 should be in the form of a 500-or-fewer word summary directed to the two
 non-voting WMF Board representatives to the FDC (Maria Sefidari and Frieda
 Brioschi). The appeal should be submitted on-wiki, [4] and must be
 submitted by the Board Chair of a funding-seeking applicant. The Board will
 publish its decision on this and all recommendations by 1 July 2015.

 Complaints to the ombudsperson about the FDC process can be filed by anyone
 with the Ombudsperson and can be made any time. The complaint should be
 submitted on wiki, as well. [5] The ombudsperson will publicly document the
 complaint, and investigate as needed.

 The FDC would like to thank Wikimedia Deutschland for hosting this Round’s
 deliberations. We appreciate the team that worked hard to make our
 deliberations meeting a smooth and successful event.

 Finally, we offer our sincere thanks to the six organizations who submitted
 annual plan grant proposals to the FDC.

 On behalf of the FDC,

 pundit Dariusz Jemielniak (FDC Chair)

 [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG

 [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round2

 [3]

 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2014-2015_round2

 [4]

 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Appeals_to_the_Board_on_the_recommendations_of_the_FDC

 [5]
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Complaints_about_the_FDC_process
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Results of the 2015 Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) election

2015-05-15 Thread Risker
Just for formatting purposes, here is an easier-to-read table:



FDC ElectionCandidateSupportNeutralOpposeSupport Ratio S/S+OUser:Laurentius
- Lorenzo Losa5364689784.68%User:Aegis Maelstrom - Michał Buczyński336679
8679.62%User:Wittylama - Liam Wyatt36561911775.73%User:Mike Peel - Michael
Peel27570612069.62%User:Itzike - Itzik Edri30965313968.97%Tanweer Morshed281
68413667.39%User:Ad Huikeshoven - Ad Huikeshoven26569713965.59%User:Smallbones
- Peter Ekman19974216055.43%User:Flixtey - Felix
Nartey22569018654.74%User:Violetova
- Snezhana Shtrkovska25262922053.39%User:Chsh - Shawn Chen20471018752.17%




FDC Ombudsman ElectionCandidateSupportNeutralOpposeSupport Ratio
S/S+OUser:Kirill Lokshin - Kirill Lokshin37062710478.06%User:NickK - Mykola
Kozlenko33366110775.68%


Risker

On 15 May 2015 at 19:48, Gregory Varnum gregory.var...@gmail.com wrote:

 Greetings,

 On behalf of the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, I am
 sharing the certified results of the 2015 Funds Dissemination Committee
 (FDC) election for FDC members and FDC Ombudsperson. These results have
 been certified by the committee, Wikimedia Foundation's legal department,
 and the Board of Trustees.

 There were 1173 votes cast, with 1101 valid votes being given, the
 difference being votes which were recast. In reviewing of the votes, the
 committee did not strike any votes.

 FDC ElectionCandidateSupportNeutralOpposeS/S+OUser:Laurentius - Lorenzo
 Losa
 5364689784.68%User:Aegis Maelstrom - Michał
 Buczyński3366798679.62%User:Wittylama
 - Liam Wyatt36561911775.73%User:Mike Peel - Michael Peel
 275
 706
 12069.62%User:Itzike - Itzik Edri309653139
 68.97%
 Tanweer Morshed28168413667.39%User:Ad Huikeshoven - Ad Huikeshoven265697139
 65.59%User:Smallbones - Peter Ekman19974216055.43%User:Flixtey - Felix
 Nartey22569018654.74%User:Violetova - Snezhana
 Shtrkovska25262922053.39%User:Chsh
 - Shawn Chen20471018752.17%FDC Ombudsman ElectionCandidateSupportNeutral
 OpposeS/S+OUser:Kirill Lokshin - Kirill Lokshin37062710478.06%User:NickK -
 Mykola Kozlenko33366110775.68%

 The questions and discussion period of the board election is still taking
 place, and we encourage you to participate:

 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/Board_elections/2015/Questions

 Thank you to everyone that participated in this election,
 -Gregory Varnum (User:Varnent)
 Volunteer Coordinator, 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Single-user login finalization - starting now

2015-04-15 Thread Risker
On 15 April 2015 at 22:39, Keegan Peterzell kpeterz...@wikimedia.org
wrote:

 Hi all,

 The much awaited, much anticipated migration of all accounts to global,
 also known as single-user login finalization, is currently underway. The
 process is expected to take about a week, but clearly it's never been done
 before so that is an educated guess. You can read a narrative for
 background, context, and what's actually occurring in this blog post (in
 English), put up yesterday: 
 https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/04/14/single-user-login-for-all-wikis/

 A multilingual help page and FAQ about unified login is here: 
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:Unified_login

 Please help spread the word with your communities as appropriate.

 I'd like to extend thanks to all the staff and volunteers that have put so
 much time and energy into making this happen, the list is extensive and my
 gratitude is with you all.



Congratulations and thank you to you, Keegan, and to all who have worked on
this project over successive years. Here's hoping the process goes smoothly!

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] New Wikimedia Foundation report on activities in 2014

2015-04-02 Thread Risker
Actually, it appears it is also published here:  https://meta.wikimedia.
org/wiki/Communications/State_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation

(Heather Walls sent me the link).  This is good - but the document on
Commons points to a serious usability issue; the combination of faint print
and small font made it unreadable for me, a person with fairly normal
vision.  The Commons page should probably also have a link to the Meta
page.

Risker/Anne

On 2 April 2015 at 16:35, Jan Ainali jan.ain...@wikimedia.se wrote:

 Risker: For your convenience:
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ainali/sandbox



 *Med vänliga hälsningar,Jan Ainali*

 Verksamhetschef, Wikimedia Sverige http://wikimedia.se
 0729 - 67 29 48


 *Tänk dig en värld där varje människa har fri tillgång till mänsklighetens
 samlade kunskap. Det är det vi gör.*
 Bli medlem. http://blimedlem.wikimedia.se


 2015-04-02 22:22 GMT+02:00 Risker risker...@gmail.com:

  On 2 April 2015 at 15:31, Katherine Maher kma...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 
   Hi all,
  
   Today the Wikimedia Foundation published a report on its activities in
   calendar year 2014.
  
   This State of the Wikimedia Foundation
   
  
 
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:State_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation.pdf
   
   report
   provides a snapshot view of the Foundation’s major initiatives and
   considerations during that period. It also offers a baseline assessment
  of
   key efforts made by internal Foundation departments, with an emphasis
 on
   data-based results, project impact, challenges, and how our work
 supports
   our mission.
  
   Last December, the Wikimedia Foundation entered into the beginning of a
   strategy planning exercise. As we progressed, we found people had
  differing
   familiarities with the work, needs, and concerns of other departments
 --
   the proverbial Blind Men and an Elephant.[1] In response, we began
  pulling
   together information as a baseline reference so we would better
  understand
   each others’ work. This report is the outcome of that research.[2]
  
   Although the information in the report was originally gathered in
  response
   to an internal Foundation need, we planned to make it public as a
 report
   from the very beginning. It is intended to be relatively candid,
 sharing
   insight into where teams feel they have strengths and where they feel
  there
   are development areas.
  
   The report also offers the first look at the Foundation’s internal Call
  to
   Action for 2015
   
  
 
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/State_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation#2015_Call_to_Action
   .
   The Call to Action is a set of actions for the 2015 calendar year to
  focus
   the staff of the Foundation on our core functions. These include
  improving
   the processes by which we do our work, building stronger community
   relationships, and exploring new ways to expand free knowledge. Terry,
  our
   new COO https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/20/wmf-welcomes-coo/,
 will
   manage its implementation over the coming year.
  
   Finally, a note: the report is a standalone product designed to aide
 the
   strategy development process, and does not substitute for the Quarterly
   Reports, Annual Report, or Annual Plan process. It is scoped only
 against
   the Foundation’s existing workflows in 2014, and not against the work
 of
   the Wikimedia movement overall. We have not committed to making it an
   annual exercise.
  
   The full State of the Wikimedia Foundation report is available as a
 wiki
   here
   
  
 
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/State_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation
   
   and as a PDF on Wikimedia Commons here
   
  
 
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:State_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation.pdf
   
   .  You can also find more information in our blog post:
   https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/04/02/new-wikimedia-foundation-report/
 .
  
  
   We hope you find it interesting, and welcome your feedback.
  
   Thanks,
  
   Katherine
  
   [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
   [2] Thanks to everyone at the Foundation who contributed so much great
   information to their various teams sections. And a special thanks to
  Juliet
   Barbara and Heather Walls who wrote and produced the whole thing!
  
  
   --
   Katherine Maher
   Chief Communications Officer
   Wikimedia Foundation
   149 New Montgomery Street
   San Francisco, CA 94105
  
   +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635
   +1 (415) 712 4873
   kma...@wikimedia.org
  
  
 
  Thank you very much for telling us about this, Katherine.  I am unable to
  read the file on Commons (the print is far too faint, and also quite
  small), and I really don't want to download it.  Is there an alternative?
  I am looking forward to reading this.
 
  Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] New Wikimedia Foundation report on activities in 2014

2015-04-02 Thread Risker
On 2 April 2015 at 15:31, Katherine Maher kma...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 Hi all,

 Today the Wikimedia Foundation published a report on its activities in
 calendar year 2014.

 This State of the Wikimedia Foundation
 
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:State_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation.pdf
 
 report
 provides a snapshot view of the Foundation’s major initiatives and
 considerations during that period. It also offers a baseline assessment of
 key efforts made by internal Foundation departments, with an emphasis on
 data-based results, project impact, challenges, and how our work supports
 our mission.

 Last December, the Wikimedia Foundation entered into the beginning of a
 strategy planning exercise. As we progressed, we found people had differing
 familiarities with the work, needs, and concerns of other departments --
 the proverbial Blind Men and an Elephant.[1] In response, we began pulling
 together information as a baseline reference so we would better understand
 each others’ work. This report is the outcome of that research.[2]

 Although the information in the report was originally gathered in response
 to an internal Foundation need, we planned to make it public as a report
 from the very beginning. It is intended to be relatively candid, sharing
 insight into where teams feel they have strengths and where they feel there
 are development areas.

 The report also offers the first look at the Foundation’s internal Call to
 Action for 2015
 
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/State_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation#2015_Call_to_Action
 .
 The Call to Action is a set of actions for the 2015 calendar year to focus
 the staff of the Foundation on our core functions. These include improving
 the processes by which we do our work, building stronger community
 relationships, and exploring new ways to expand free knowledge. Terry, our
 new COO https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/20/wmf-welcomes-coo/, will
 manage its implementation over the coming year.

 Finally, a note: the report is a standalone product designed to aide the
 strategy development process, and does not substitute for the Quarterly
 Reports, Annual Report, or Annual Plan process. It is scoped only against
 the Foundation’s existing workflows in 2014, and not against the work of
 the Wikimedia movement overall. We have not committed to making it an
 annual exercise.

 The full State of the Wikimedia Foundation report is available as a wiki
 here
 
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/State_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation
 
 and as a PDF on Wikimedia Commons here
 
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:State_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation.pdf
 
 .  You can also find more information in our blog post:
 https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/04/02/new-wikimedia-foundation-report/.


 We hope you find it interesting, and welcome your feedback.

 Thanks,

 Katherine

 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
 [2] Thanks to everyone at the Foundation who contributed so much great
 information to their various teams sections. And a special thanks to Juliet
 Barbara and Heather Walls who wrote and produced the whole thing!


 --
 Katherine Maher
 Chief Communications Officer
 Wikimedia Foundation
 149 New Montgomery Street
 San Francisco, CA 94105

 +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635
 +1 (415) 712 4873
 kma...@wikimedia.org



Thank you very much for telling us about this, Katherine.  I am unable to
read the file on Commons (the print is far too faint, and also quite
small), and I really don't want to download it.  Is there an alternative?
I am looking forward to reading this.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] New Wikimedia Foundation report on activities in 2014

2015-04-02 Thread Risker
On 2 April 2015 at 17:48, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 8:31 PM, Katherine Maher kma...@wikimedia.org
 wrote:

  Hi all,
 
  Today the Wikimedia Foundation published a report on its activities in
  calendar year 2014. [...]
 
  Although the information in the report was originally gathered in
 response
  to an internal Foundation need, we planned to make it public as a report
  from the very beginning. It is intended to be relatively candid, sharing
  insight into where teams feel they have strengths and where they feel
 there
  are development areas. [...]
 
  We hope you find it interesting, and welcome your feedback.
 
  Thanks,
 
  Katherine
 
  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
  [2] Thanks to everyone at the Foundation who contributed so much great
  information to their various teams sections. And a special thanks to
 Juliet
  Barbara and Heather Walls who wrote and produced the whole thing!
 
 


 Thanks. This looks indeed like a candid report. If it's an indication of a
 change in communication style, I like it.

 Good to have it available on Meta as well as in pdf format (I think the pdf
 is very nicely done).



I agree, pretty much.  This is probably the best 'big picture look at the
WMF I have seen:  accomplishments, plans, honest assessments of
challenges.  Thanks very much!

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics

2015-03-01 Thread Risker
So I read the page that is linked.  It says that their *DRAFT* report will
be completed February 28. It does not say that it will be publishing its
draft report.  Presumably the draft will be reviewed by selected partners
(particularly the WMF) before the final report is completed. That is due
March 19. You have no reason to believe that the draft report hasn't been
completed. Perhaps you could hold your concerns about deadlines being
missed until the final report is due.

Risker/Anne




On 1 March 2015 at 21:06, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote:

 Keegan,

 May I point out that the term on the timeline is deadline, as in
 commitment, not as in estimate. I view commitments as serious business.
 I believe that in IEGCom we met our deadlines every single time when I was
 on that committee, the Signpost is published weekly with rare exceptions,
 and there were a number of nights as a WMF intern when I got less than 6
 hours of sleep in my semi-successful efforts to keep my commitments to WMF
 and to my other employer. ( I do thank WMF for that internship, it was a
 good experience overall). Of course there may be variances from schedules
 on occasion (people do get sick, have their cars break down, etc), but I
 believe that Lila made a point in the All Hands that projects are to be
 completed on time, and I think it's reasonable that commitments should be
 kept whenever possible. I try to do this myself and I hope that WMF takes
 its commitments seriously too.

 The report of the Finance Fellows will inform some of my thinking about
 Cascadia's budget and it would be helpful to have the draft published early
 this week.

 Thank you,

 Pine
 On Mar 1, 2015 5:38 PM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.com wrote:

  On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 7:32 PM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote:
 
   Hi Finance Fellows,
  
   The timeline for your work says that your draft report should be
  finished.
   May we look at it? I am very curious about your findings.
  
   Thanks (:
  
   Pine
 
 
  ​I'd like to point out that the timeline estimates completion by February
  28. This is (hemispherically) March 1. And a Sunday. I suggest some
  patience :)​
 
 
  --
  ~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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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: A new structure for WMF Community Engagement

2015-02-20 Thread Risker
Thank you very much for sharing this, Lila.

A special thank you to Anasuya for all of her work in the grantmaking
area.  She has been a driving force, and her contributions will be missed.

Congratulations to Luis, Siko and Asaf in their new roles.  I will look
forward to working with all of them in their new capacities.

Out of curiosity, and bearing in mind that the WMF has put itself forward
as having its major focuses on techology and grantmaking, is there a reason
that the person leading the third-largest group of staff, in one of these
priority areas, is a Senior Director when smaller departments have
Chiefs and the other focus departments have VPs?The organizational
chart is getting a bit tricky to follow.  :-)

Risker/Anne

On 19 February 2015 at 17:15, Lila Tretikov l...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 Dear Wikimedians,

 Among the WMF’s top priorities for 2015 is strengthening our engagement
 with Wikimedia editors and volunteers. Today we are taking the first step
 by bringing together the people who know our communities best and asking
 them to break barriers and improve engagement. Everyone at the WMF who
 carries responsibilities directly related to the communities will join a
 new Community Engagement department.

 I have asked Luis Villa to lead the Community Engagement organization as
 the Senior Director of Community Engagement, reporting to me. Promoting
 from within the WMF for this critical role will allow us to leverage the
 knowledge and experience with our communities and reinforce the strengths
 of our people.

 Luis’s experience with communities is lengthy and deep. He has been
 involved in open communities since the late 1990s, from communities as
 small as the Lego Mindstorms hackers to those as large as Mozilla. He
 worked in open communities as a lawyer, a programmer, a bugmaster, an
 engineering lead, a community leader, and a board member. Luis has
 performed exceptionally within the Foundation and supported some of our
 most fruitful community engagements. The Grantmaking, LE, Education,
 Community Advocacy and Community Liaisons teams will join the new Community
 Engagement department [2] under his leadership.

 Unfortunately, Anasuya Sengupta -- our beloved leader of grantmaking --
 will be leaving us due to personal health concerns at the end of March. We
 will invite you soon to celebrate her time with us, her work at the WMF and
 the deep insight she brought to the Foundation. We are saddened to see her
 go. The team she has nurtured will provide an important foundation for our
 upcoming work.

 Siko Bouterse will move up to lead  the day-to-day work of the Grantmaking
 team as Director of Community Resources, supervising all department Grant
 programs and the Global South strategy. Siko has been instrumental in
 innovating programs at the WMF, including initiatives like the Teahouse[1]
 and the IdeaLab[2] combining vision with strong support for volunteer
 community, tough decision making, and great project management skills.

 These changes are an opportunity to improve the coordination of our work
 supporting the communities. To accelerate this, I have asked Luis to lead
 an internal “tiger” team to better understand the needs, concerns and
 priorities of our volunteers, and to develop recommendations for future
 programs. This work will be shared with all of you as it becomes available.

 Please join me in congratulating Luis and Siko and in supporting our teams.
 The Wikimedia communities are what makes the projects strong, unique, and
 irreplaceable. This is the next step forward in our support to them, and in
 service of our mission.


 Lila



 [1] As Director of Community Resources, Siko will oversee the IdeaLab,
 Annual Plan Grants, Project and Event Grants, and Travel and Participation
 Support. Her team will include Katy Love, Winifred Olliff, Alex Wang,
 Janice Tud, Jonathan Morgan, and Asaf Bartov. Asaf will also take on a new
 title as Senior Program Officer, Emerging Wikimedia Communities.

 [2] Rachel DiCerbo, Philippe Beaudette, Siko, and Anasuya’s other direct
 reports, and their respective teams (CL, CA, and Grantmaking/GLEE) will
 report to Luis. The Engineering Community team will be part of the tiger
 team but will continue to report to Engineering.

 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse

 [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who are the nicest people on our projects ?

2015-02-05 Thread Risker
On 5 February 2015 at 10:47, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi,

 After reading an interesting related discussion on GenderGap, I have
 queried the top 10 users of the thanks feature last month, on both the
 English Wikipedia and Commons. Snapshot image attached and report link
 below.

 Perhaps someone might think of a suitable barnstar and award these
 folks for being nice? :-)

 Link:
 http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:F%C3%A6/sandboxoldid=149050523

 P.S. This is a long query to run, taking 20 to 30 minutes due to the
 nature of the logging tables. However if someone wanted to make a
 monthly summary on-wiki somewhere, part of an active be nice
 campaign, I would be happy to set up an automated monthly report (if
 someone discovers this is already reported somewhere, that's cool we
 can use that).

 Fae



This is interesting stuff, Fae - thanks for sharing, and for doing all the
legwork to produce the report.  It's a much more interesting metric than a
lot of others that get collected!  Perhaps colleagues on other projects
might want to borrow the script and see the results there.

I'll admit to sharing Rich's curiosity about who was most thanked.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Most obnoxious banner yet

2015-01-16 Thread Risker
We now have at least a partial understanding of the reason the fundraising
campaign was extended, which is found in the minutes of the Board of
Trustees meeting of November 2014.[1]

Board members asked Lila and Lisa to consider and evaluate ways to raise
additional revenue to increase the reserve for future needs of the
organization and movement, including the possibility of adjustments in
fundraising methods as appropriate. 



Risker/Anne

[1]
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2014-11-21#Executive_Update_from_Fundraising
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Most obnoxious banner yet

2015-01-12 Thread Risker
On 12 January 2015 at 15:59, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote:

 
   On 12 Jan 2015, at 11:25 pm, Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com wrote:
   Now that the 2014 Fundraising campaign has finished and which,
 according
  to
   a WMF blogpost from a week ago, surpassed our goal of $20 million
 


 According to the data provided at https://frdata.wikimedia.org/ the
 Foundation seems to have taken $30.6 million over the period from December
 2 2014 to December 31 2014.

 This is $10.6 million more than the $20 million fundraising goal indicated
 in the blog post. (At any rate, that's the sum I get; I'd welcome anyone
 double-checking my math.)


There is no scenario I can come up with where this is actually a good
result.  Sure, an extra $10.6 million might be nice in the bank, but it
massively exceeds budget.  The fundraiser met its goal, with plenty to
spare, on December 17.  And yet we put our readers and our users through
another two weeks of fundraising.  Given that we were already really
pushing the goodwill of the broad Wikimedia community (that includes the
users of our products)well, as I say, this is not a good result.
People were putting Wikipedia on Adblock because of those banners, and they
were doing it long after the goal had been reached.

I'd say I was speechless, but actually I am working extremely hard to hold
my tongue here, awaiting an explanation for this.  And yes, I think the
Wikimedia community deserves to know why this happened.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why WMF should reconsider the 3-month gender gap project-related decision

2015-01-08 Thread Risker
I have one simple question:  if the Grants program was to focus on some
other  key area rather than the gender gap, would we be having this
discussion about how horrible it is to waste time this way?  Would we see
throwing up of hands in this way if the focus was, say, requests from the
Global South? A focus on getting great bots built and working across
wikis?  A focus on events and processes for media collection? (Incidentally
the latter more or less happens anyway with several groups applying for
funding for WLM within a narrow period...)


Frankly, there's not a single thing I've read, or a single objection I've
seen raised, that wasn't about how unnecessary it is to focus on women.  I
don't think we've ever heard that about the global south, or non-European
languages, or a lot of other areas where there are acknowledged biases.

Risker/Anne




On 8 January 2015 at 02:07, mcc99 mc...@hotmail.com wrote:

 Dear fellow Wikipedia devotees,

 While I'm new to this list, I've been an avid fan and proponent of
 Wikipedia and all the great service it gives people since it launched.
 People can learn not just all the basics of nearly any topic imaginable,
 but for a large number, readers can with diligence become expert on more
 than a few and save themselves the cost of tuition/training.  All this, in
 addition to satisfying their curiosity about millions of subjects.

 That said, it doesn't matter who writes the content on Wikipedia so long
 as it's relevant and factual.  Unlike the published, single-authority
 edited encyclopediae of the past, Wikipedia allows anyone with relevant
 information to contribute to it.  Their additions or other edits are
 checked by volunteers to make sure the edit isn't a defacement, irrelevant,
 patently unfactual, or unverifiable.  They are typically left as written or
 maybe edited only for grammar/spelling.  Wikipedia is a rare success story
 in democracy of knowledge.  If one feels moved to contribute, they do.  If
 not, they don't.  It's like voting in a sense, though it's true people in
 democracies should perhaps take the opportunity to do so more often.  But
 it's up to them.

 Like voting or anything else, to single out a particular group of people
 based on their indelible characteristics as being desirable as contributors
 to any field implicitly devalues the contributions not just of those
 currently contributing who don't fall into that category, but also says to
 any other group of a particular identity that you care more about the group
 you're trying to get more involvement from than them.  Identity politics
 is unfortunately a fact of our current political climate and I hope one day
 we can, as MLK Jr. hoped, judge one another not by skin color (and I'd add
 gender, sexuality, and a few others), but by content of character.  In the
 context of Wikipedia, this would translate to the veracity and
 applicability of contributions made to the vast Wikipedia knowledge-base --
 not who in particular is doing the contributing, nor their indelible
 characteristics of person.

 Because identity politics is today part of general electoral politics
 doesn't mean it need be for anything else, and especially given how such
 things as a person's ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc., say nothing about
 what they know about or can do, I don't see how it's relevant to the
 veracity and applicability of Wikipedia's knowledge base.  I don't care
 that, for example, a black person (Charles Drew, MD) came up with the
 process of creating blood plasma, an innovation that has saved millions of
 lives.  He was tragically and mortally injured in a car accident, however,
 and so his potential future achievements were lost to humanity.  (He was
 not refused treatment for his injuries at the hospital he was taken to
 because of his ethnicity, as is widely but falsely believed; he was just so
 badly injured that he died.  See
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Drew#Death ).  I also don't care
 that Adm Grace Hopper (USN) wad female, only that she wrote the first
 computer language compiler so programmers of lesser brain power than her
 (such as myself) could go on to program computers without struggling with
 binary switches and punch cards.  Her contributions were what was
 important, not her gender, skin color, or anything else as far as her
 professional achievements go.

 If you ask any RN the names of the greatest contributors to the nursing
 profession, you'll get a stream of women's names.  To suggest that nursing
 needs more men or else it won't be able to achieve its greatest potential
 would be a crass and inaccurate insult to the many thousands of women who
 have made modern nursing what it is.  Of course there have been and will be
 male nurses who stand out as contributors, but only a very small
 percentage, probably in keeping with the ratio of men to women in nursing.
 And yet, despite the high salaries RNs command, are there any
 gov't-sponsored initiatives to get men

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

2015-01-05 Thread Risker
BumpingI do not see any response on this mailing list from the
Grantmaking team, and I can't actually find very much about this entire
plan on the Grants portal at Meta (which may say more about the grants
portal than about the dissemination of the plant).

However, since this is something that has the potential to affect a lot of
Wikimedians (individuals, chapters, and other affiliated groups)...as well
as women (apparently)... it would be really nice to see what is going on.
Some people have mentioned that they received an email.  Perhaps it could
be forwarded to this mailing list?

Risker/Anne

On 3 January 2015 at 13:35, Lila Tretikov l...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 For everyone here: I've asked our Grantmaking team to comment and clarify
 the details of this plan.

 On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 9:32 AM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org
 wrote:

  Answering to Teemu and Chris:
 
  I do think that the for Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Art it is
 safe
  to claim that if we organize it the way we would always do, it would
 still
  tip the gender balance in our community a little more to the female side.
  However, I disagree that this should be a main consideration, because I
  think that would be true for so many outreach projects. Focusing on that
  would be a pity and a distraction imho. Also, for most participants we
  don't know the gender, and we don't want to know the gender (because
 asking
  for it alone can scare people away) - except for a sample of them, who
  happen to answer the survey afterwards. All data on that is quite shaky.
 
  If necessary, I could easily make a case why WLM is a wonderful gendergap
  project - the point is that I don't want volunteers to waste their time
 on
  making such cases, but rather let them be innovative, come up with new
  ideas instead of rebranding existing ideas on something like the
 gendergap.
  My problems are more fundamental than 'I can't get money for my specific
  project'.
 
  So Chris: yes, these people do a lot for reducing the gender gap in our
  projects. Also, Wikimedia organizers tend to hop between projects - their
  next might be more focused on a topic that is popular with women, if
 their
  current idea isn't yet. Drawing them into a topic in a positive way (what
  we do is cool! Join us!) tends to be more successful than telling them
 they
  are not allowed to do other stuff (we won't fund you at all unless you do
  this specific theme).
 
  Prioritisation sounds great, but that only works that way if you have one
  clearly defined pool of resources, that you can actually control. What do
  you think is the major bottle neck in organizing activities in the
  Wikimedia movement? In my experience, that is not money, or even WMF
 staff
  capacity (even though it is a limiting factor sometimes), but the primary
  bottle neck is volunteer organizers (or editors). And volunteer time is
 not
  a resource you can easily 'control'. If you want to influence it, the
 most
  effective way is by persuading the volunteers why another angle is more
  interesting, more fun, more effective.
 
  Best,
  Lodewijk
 
 
 
  On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 6:11 PM, Chris Keating 
 chriskeatingw...@gmail.com
  wrote:
 
   Like Bence, I would be interested to see how this kind of experiment in
  WMF
   grantmaking works out. And also like him I would be a little surprised
 if
   something like this is implemented with no notice period.
  
   A couple of responses to Lodewijk's post;
  
  
with people
confirming my fear that this will likely undermine the community
  support
(or at least support by the 'organizing community') for
  gendergap-related
projects in general - be it out of frustration, compensation or
  jealousy.
  
  
   Out of interest, were any of these people doing anything at all to
  support
   the reduction of the gender gap in the first place? ;)
  
  
  
I
called it a 'negative campaign' in my emails because the focus is not
   about
actively boosting one type of requests (which is the claim), but
 rather
about making it harder to do something unrelated to it in the hope
 that
people instead will choose for the easy way, and organize a gendergap
related event.
   
  
   Equally, if you have limited resources, prioritising one thing means
   reducing attention to something else. So saying we shouldn't work on
 the
   gender gap if anything else gets less atention as a result is
 logically
   equivalent to saying We shouldn't work on the gender gap.
  
   Regards,
  
   Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Most obnoxious banner yet

2014-12-31 Thread Risker
On 31 December 2014 at 11:33, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 Really. Who thought it was a good idea to MAKE THE BANNER FOLLOW YOU
 DOWN THE PAGE?

 There must be an identifiable person who actually said yes, this is a
 good decision, I shall make this decision.


 - d.


It's not doing that for me (Canada, using an old IE browser). However, it
IS ignoring my previously set don't show me this again cookie.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Most obnoxious banner yet

2014-12-31 Thread Risker
On 31 December 2014 at 18:43, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 6:56 PM, Megan Hernandez mhernan...@wikimedia.org
 
 wrote:


  The blue banners at the top of the page do show up more than one time.
 If
  you close these banners, you won't see anymore banners.
 

 That's not my experience here. I've clicked the blue banner away at least
 three or four times this month. It keeps coming back.


I've had the same experience as Andreas - I have had to inactivate the
banners multiple times on every computer I use.  In fact, I've had banners
almost 90% of the time when I go to Wikipedia without logging in, cookies
or no cookies.

Frankly, I am increasingly of the belief that Fundraising has sounded a
klaxon alarm without any concern whatsoever about *next year*.  The fact
that the editorial community doesn't see the banners on a regular basis
anymore is the only thing that has kept the voices of the community quiet;
we tend not to complain too much about things we don't see.  Frankly, I'd
rather the fundraiser fell short of its goals (recognizing that there would
be other impacts within the organization) than continue the current
trajectory; I've had complaints from just about everyone who knows I edit
Wikipedia about the banners, including a handful who said they were former
donors who decided not to give this year because of how obnoxious the
banners were.   There's little doubt in my mind that more and more people
are blocking those banners already - the more annoying they get, the more
people block them, and the smaller the potential contribution pool.  We're
starting to chase our own tails here.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons copyright extremism

2014-12-11 Thread Risker
Fae, Steven hasn't been a WMFstaffer for some months. Luis is, but he
appears to be speaking in his staff role.

Risker/Anne

On 11 December 2014 at 13:14, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote:

 Making defamatory comments about Commons volunteers on this list is
 not terribly productive, nor a very nice thing to do when anyone is
 free to express their point of view in the deletion request so that a
 closing admin can consider all rationales put forward, or raise it on
 the user's talk page.

 I commented in two chocolate 'packaging' related deletion requests
 today, before this thread started, my opinion being to keep. Why don't
 you join me in keeping these images in time for Christmas by making
 positive comments and interpreting Commons policies in a non-hostile
 environment?

 *
 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Belgian_pralines_boxes.jpg
 *
 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_in_Category:Tim_Tam

 Alternatively, you can work to improve policies and guidelines on
 commons. One key benefit is that if photographs you uploaded were
 deleted under old policies but could be kept under new policies, they
 can all be considered for undeletion. I suggest a good starting point
 is better guidelines to interpret what significant doubt means in
 
 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scope/Precautionary_principle
 

 P.S. Stephen, you are young and handsome, in fact rather dishy to my
 ageing eyes. Good for you. Keep in mind that your fellow volunteers
 might not have been born so lucky, and that being young and pretty all
 too soon passes into memory, sigh.

 P.P.S. It might be politic for WMF employees to avoid using their
 staff accounts to join in with whatever the latest witch-hunt happens
 to be. I find it disturbing to see official accounts being used to
 inflame arguments, when in other circumstances the same accounts are
 used to give official positions that affect the whole Wikimedia
 community.

 Fae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising in the UK

2014-12-05 Thread Risker
On 5 December 2014 at 13:25, Russavia russavia.wikipe...@gmail.com wrote:

 Michael

 On Sat, Dec 6, 2014 at 2:22 AM, Michael Maggs mich...@maggs.name wrote:

  Over the last few years the Foundation has decisively moved away from
  allowing local chapters to take part in the on-screen fundraiser,
 preferring
  to centralise the work in spite of the loss of the available local tax
  reliefs (such as Gift Aid in the UK).  Many chapters, including the UK,
  would have liked to have been part of the fundraiser, but the previous
 ED,
  Sue Gardner, determined that that would not be permitted.  WMUK regretted
  that decision, and we responded to it here:
  https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Open_letter_to_Sue_Gardner.

 The question was raised by Nick over at the WMF Board noticeboard.[1]
 There Sj states:

 The [UK Fund for Charities channels gifts to validated non-UK based
 charities. We were able to use their service this year for large
 Wikimania-related donations. They charge 1% for large gifts, making
 this an effective way to receive gift aid. However this is not a great
 solution for individual donors: for gifts under £100, they charge up
 to 20%, consuming most of the gift aid.

 $500,000 is quite a lot of coin to be missing out on; and the WMF is
 obviously looking at ways to get this gift aid (whilst bypassing
 WMUK), just without registering themselves in the UK, which would see
 it having to comply with European directives on numerous issues.

 There's more to this story me thinks ;)

 Russavia



Before getting all excited about losing $500,000first we need to
consider some facts.

Fact #1 - in every country that I'm aware of (and I've been asking around a
bit recently), donors have the *option* of adding Gift Aid or whatever
local equivalent is available, but it is not an automatic option.
Therefore, there might be the *potential* to raise significant dollars
through this process, but it is not a guaranteed amount of money or a
guaranteed percentage.

Offsetting this is the cost of actually collecting the donations.  This
is a very significant factor, and for many chapters the cost of operating
the fundraiser locally with a remittance to the WMF is prohibitively
expensive.  They have to worry about hosting costs, staffing, banking,
lawyers, accountants, issuance of receipts, auditors, legislated
requirements as to how the donations are usedand that's just what I'm
aware of off the top of my head.

Unless there is excellent evidence that the additional donation outweighs
the cost of collecting it *for the movement as a whole, not just the
chapter* - and there was significant work done on this when the opportunity
for chapters to do this before was withdrawn - then it is not in the best
interests of the movement to operate this way.

We also have to keep in mind that there are many chapters that simply have
no opportunity to participate in this kind of fundraising (e.g., those in
countries with no similar government scheme) and there is absolutely no
opportunity for thematic organizations or user groups to participate in
this type of fundraising.

So yes, it is worth investigating, and Lisa Gruwell has already answered
some locally-specific issues. But there were a lot of reasons why this
option was heavily restricted in the past, and it wasn't just because
certain chapters were having governance issues.


Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising banners (again)

2014-12-02 Thread Risker
On 2 December 2014 at 20:27, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 2 December 2014 at 06:53, Lila Tretikov l...@wikimedia.org wrote:

  All -- we will not have a pop-up banner.
 


 And how exactly would you describe this then?

 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oversized_donation_notice.png



Pop-ups are generally considered to obscure content and prevent the
user/reader from proceeding until some sort of action is taken.  I don't
know about you, but for me none of the content was obscured (it was just
pushed down further on the page, but it was all readable), and I did not
need to do anything to see the content or use other functions like edit or
search.

So no, I don't think this is a pop-up.  It's big, and I still think the
message could be improved in a way that doesn't sound as though the funds
go to feeding the caffeine addictions of WMF staffers, but this is a lot
better than the version we saw just under a week ago.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why is bank transfer no longer possible?

2014-11-30 Thread Risker
Ummm.  We have all kinds of ways for people to donate, and the process for
transferring is pretty clear.  Having been in a situation where I had to
make bank transfers, I felt honestly like I was handing over the keys to
the kingdom just for the right to pay someone money: far more personal
information was required than is needed for any other means of payment that
I've ever used.  Banks in Canada regularly call their customers for
transactions under $5 because fraud is so common - and that is with chip
cards and PINs.

Risker



On 1 December 2014 at 00:08, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Hoi,
 IMHO we need to advertise how people can transfer money to us. It requires
 an account number. Now if the USA is not able to accommodate this, FINE,
 let us do it in Europe at least..

 WHAT AM I MISSING HERE ?
 Thanks,
GerardM

 On 1 December 2014 at 03:38, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com wrote:

  On 11/30/2014 1:14 PM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
 
  Hoi,
  An IBAN number is NOT a credit card ... You need a ping number in
  combination with some smart card functionality in order to make it
 work..
  The combination generates a number that is always different..
 
  You seem to have misunderstood the scenario I laid out. I'm not talking
  about people using the IBAN to steal money out of a Wikimedia account, I
  depend on the bank to have security robust enough to prevent that. The
  scenario I'm discussing involves people using the IBAN to fraudulently
 pay
  money to Wikimedia from someone else's account, such as a credit card.
 That
  account does not necessarily have an IBAN or chip-and-pin security, and
 at
  any rate whatever security it has was already breached. The payment would
  just be a method for the fraudsters to verify the success of the breach.
  The result would be added costs to Wikimedia and to the financial
  institutions involved, in order to identify and reverse the fraudulent
  transactions.
 
  To respond to some of the other questions raised about my scenario:
 
  This was a risk scenario I presented to answer the question, How can
  posting a bank account number lead to fraud? It may or may not have
 been a
  factor in the decision to not publicly post the IBAN, I don't know.
 
  I'm also not suggesting that this scenario is unique to IBAN, it could
  affect any type of account number that accepts payments (for example,
  accounts you might have for various utility services, such as water,
  electricity, telephone, or internet). It's also possible thru PayPal, of
  course, and that's the reason for having a $1 minimum donation
 requirement,
  among other protections. I don't know if there are difficulties with
  establishing comparable security around the IBAN, or if it's more a
 matter
  of a cost-benefit analysis indicating that it's worth the resources to
 deal
  with this for donations via Wikimedia's online payment form, but not for
  donations directly to Wikimedia's bank account.
 
  Also, I'm no expert on EU regulations, but I do observe that according to
  the European Payments Council, it seems payees receiving SEPA credit
  transfers are advised to communicate the IBAN only where necessary:
  http://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/index.cfm/sepa-credit-
  transfer/iban-and-bic/ (and likewise for payers making direct debit
  payments). It may simply be that the fundraising team has been advised
 that
  this is more consistent with providing the IBAN upon request, rather than
  posting it on the website. Not to disparage what may be common practice
 at
  other organizations, but that does seem like a natural conclusion to draw
  from that guidance.
 
 
  --Michael Snow
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising banners (again)

2014-11-26 Thread Risker
These banners are problematic in that they are likely to trigger automatic
filtering of Wikimedia sites by certain types/brands of net
nanny/anti-spam/security software - including software used by many
employers, schools and libraries.  And once the sites are filtered/blocked,
it will be difficult if not impossible for many users (particularly if they
don't have administrator permissions for the site) to lift the
filter/block.  Getting donations is not more important than keeping the
sites accessible.

Please reconsider.

Risker/Anne



On 26 November 2014 at 15:33, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:

 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Banni%C3%A8rePopUpWikipedia2014.png

 Gah.

 Yes, I understand that more obnoxious banners means more money faster and
 presumably a shorter overall campaign. I also understand that we're only
 punishing certain large wikis with these banners and that these banners
 typically set a cookie so that they'll only appear once for most users.

 Still, there's an element of basic human decency that must be
 incorporated into our banner designs. Obscuring the page content is not
 cool. Pop-ups (even ones that stay in the same window) are not cool.

 MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] FDC funds allocation recommendation is up

2014-11-26 Thread Risker
Gerard, we hear you.  On the other hand, we have the example of Wikimedia
France, which has recently told us about a highly innovative event that
features community outreach, content creation, editing workshop, and
sufficient fundraising to pay for itself.

We know that, despite the issues of payment processing, several European
chapters have been receiving their national equivalent of Gift Aid for
direct donations, and it is worthwhile for others to look into this and see
if there are opportunities there. (There might not be, because this is
location-specific.)  Some countries have government-supported
opportunities with relatively lightweight application processes to improve
digital content in certain fields, whether photography, literature,
or targeted groups.  Wikidata would not have come to be without external
funding, even though a significant portion of its initial and continued
funding is supported by grants directly from the WMF or as part of the FDC
recommendations.

At the same time, although I believe that chapters (especially those with
budgets in the FDC range) should at least be able to demonstrate that
they've investigated opportunities, I also am aware that in many regions
the opportunities might be very limited, or could require completion of
highly complex documentation with only a small chance of success. (Anyone
thinking that the FDC asks for a lot of documentation has never completed
the paperwork for a typical research grant.)   But chapters are the
organizations best placed to research and analyse their own local
fundraising opportunities, and to figure out which ones are worth pursuing
from both a financial and programmatic point of view.  Fundraising can,
indeed, be expensive.

We do have to keep in mind that this is a big, global movement, the
available financial resources are *not* unlimited (contrary to popular
belief), and that there has to be some sort of evidence that the money
being distributed in large grants is generating demonstrated results within
the movement.  The nature of those results will vary from grantee to
grantee.

Risker/Anne

On 26 November 2014 at 15:06, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Hoi,
 Lodewijk when the funding process stifles innovation and, it does by
 design. The process is suboptimal. When the argument is made that the
 chapters are second class citizens BECAUSE they are foced into a yearly
 straight jacket and BECAUSE they forcibly lost their involvement in fund
 raising. Arguably it makes sense to look for alternative funding. However,
 the chapters are for their projects dependent on WMF projects where they do
 not have any control either. All GLAM projects rely on LABS and it is NOT
 considered a production environment.This is best expressed that with the
 move of Yuvi Panda to the USA, the availability of LABS personnel will
 consequently become worse. The quality of the up time of services is not
 good.

 My observation that chapters are second class citizens is very much based
 on their involvement in critical processes. When the German chapter is
 denied its funding, Wikidata was cherry picked for full funding. This
 denies the ownership of the German chapter of this project. Several
 chapters are independent of WMF funding. They do not answer to the
 community that wants to own them and determine for them. When the
 Toolserver was ended in favour of Labs, it lost its involvement in hardware
 and services. This point is NOT about the quality of Labs but about the
 involvement of chapters. It was removed.and nothing remains that empowers
 chapters in this.

 In discussion we hear about the community about committees but there is
 no sense at all of the chapters as an equal partner.This is imho not
 healthy for us as a movement.
 Thanks,
   GerardM



 On 26 November 2014 at 19:45, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org
 wrote:

  I don't quite agree.
 
  Raising funds from institutions can sometimes even help improve your
 impact
  - it forces you to think beyond the usual lines of thought. It makes you
  think about further partnerships, which might also help your mission. In
  the longer run, it makes you less dependent of a single party, which
 helps
  with answering the constantly changing requirements for reporting to the
  Wikimedia Foundation (which are often with good intentions, but the
  constant changes also cost time).
 
  But yes, there are instances where getting a grant costs more effort than
  you would like. At the same time, it helps you to be more flexible: the
  annual grants process is quite inflexible, as it limits the funds for a
  whole year - for the basis this is great, but for innovative projects
  sometimes external funding is more effective.
 
  Lets not reject the idea of external funding out of hand. There are
  positive sides and of course also negative sides. Lets first aim for
 grants
  where the positive sides outweigh the negative sides, also locally, and
  when the balance goes

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Project Med

2014-11-12 Thread Risker
Actually, as I recall, email alerts for changes in articles has never been
activated on English Wikipedia.

Risker/Anne



On 12 November 2014 22:53, Anthony Cole ahcole...@gmail.com wrote:

 Agree with all that, Svetlana - though we don't have a button at the top of
 articles making it easy for readers to enable email alerts. 99.999% of
 readers wouldn't know it was available. (This is something BLP subjects
 would appreciate too, I'm sure.)

 Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole


 On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 7:17 PM, svetlana svetl...@fastmail.com.au
 wrote:

  Thanks Anthony for sharing your ideas!
 
  Anthony Cole wrote:
   Svetlana, presently we have
  
 
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChangesLinked/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Lists_of_pages/Articles
   which reports all changes to articles tagged on their talk page as of
   interest to WikiProjedt Medicine (about 33,000 so far).
 
  This is a grand tool. Though
  1) it doesn't filter for new page creations (would it be nice to have a
  new page tag?), and
  2) is not as grained as subcats would be (where people would be able to
  pick a more narrow topic to watch).
 
  Anthony Cole wrote:
   I'd like all our
   medical articles to have a button at the top saying email me when this
   article changes, so interested experts could easily adopt a few
  articles.
 
  Yes, this is a watchlist thing, it's already there (interested people can
  enable email delivery).
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [Wikidata-l] Wikidata wins the ODI Open Data Award

2014-11-05 Thread Risker
Very exciting news.

Risker/Anne

On 5 November 2014 14:19, Pierre-Selim ps.hu...@gmail.com wrote:

 Kudos \o/ and keep on the good work!

 Pierre-Selim
   Message d'origine
 De: Lydia Pintscher
 Envoyé: mercredi 5 novembre 2014 19:09
 À: Wikimedia Mailing List
 Répondre à: Wikimedia Mailing List
 Objet: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [Wikidata-l] Wikidata wins the ODI Open Data
 Award

 Hey everyone :)

 I forgot to send this to wikimedia-l this morning as well...
 I'm incredibly happy to share the news with you that Wikidata has won
 the Open Data Award of the Open Data Institute in the category
 publisher. The world is starting to notice that we have something big
 with Wikidata.

 http://opendatainstitute.org/news/first-odi-open-data-awards-presented-by-sir-tim-berners-lee-and-sir-nigel-shadbolt


 Cheers
 Lydia


 -- Forwarded message --
 From: Lydia Pintscher lydia.pintsc...@wikimedia.de
 Date: Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 10:53 AM
 Subject: Re: [Wikidata-l] Wikidata wins the ODI Open Data Award
 To: Discussion list for the Wikidata project. 
 wikidat...@lists.wikimedia.org


 Hey everyone,

 Wow! We won! \o/ This is incredible. I am so happy to see this
 recognition of all the work we've put into Wikidata together. Magnus
 and I had a blast at the award ceremony yesterday night. Here's a
 picture of us on stage with Sir Nigel Shadbolt and Sir Tim
 Berners-Lee: https://twitter.com/opencorporates/status/529721444549550080
 Here's Wikidata written in huge letters above the heads of the
 audience: https://twitter.com/marin_dim/status/529721419580854272 And
 here is Magnus and me with the price:
 https://twitter.com/wikidata/status/529723778558083074
 I am delighted that they especially recognized the breath of topics
 Wikidata covers and that it has been developed in the open since the
 beginning. This award is for everyone in this community. We should be
 proud! This is a perfect start into year 3 of Wikidata :)


 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] Vandalism on photographs of living people

2014-10-17 Thread Risker
Thanks very much for developing this Fae, it's a great idea.

Risker/Anne

On 17 October 2014 03:37, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote:

 Due to recent vandalism a new report on Commons for page patrollers
 has been started at
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:F%C3%A6/BLP_overwrites.

 This page shows images actively used on English Wikipedia biography
 articles, where a new upload has overwritten the original by a
 newbie* account. The report should be automatically refreshed within
 15 minutes of a new image upload/overwrite of this type.

 Instances of deliberate image vandalism of this type are rare, but
 important to handle promptly. If you have suggestions for improvement
 of this report, I would be happy to do my best to accommodate them.

 Notes:
 * For convenience newbie accounts have been arbitrarily taken as
 accounts with fewer than 200 edits on the English Wikipedia or fewer
 than 100 edits on Wikimedia Commons.
 * The report is maintained by Faebot and should be considered in a
 draft state as it may be moved to a more 'official' location or be
 taken on by more skilled bot operators.

 Cheers,
 Fae
 --
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

2014-10-07 Thread Risker
On 7 October 2014 00:57, John Mark Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 10:29 AM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
 snip

 IMO the election must be run by a third party, as happened prior to
 2013, by SPI.
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_in_the_Public_Interest
 Adequate staff support from WMF is also needed.



The elections have never, even once, been run by a third party.  For two
board elections, the voting was hosted off-site, although vote verification
was still carrried out by internal volunteers (the election committee); on
the last board election, to avoid the problems that arose with off-site
hosting, the election key (which acts as a kill-switch for the election)
was held by a third party.  All the rest of the activities were done
on-site by volunteers with some help from staff.  All of the organization
except for the hosting of votes has always been done internally.

In my own post-mortem after the last election, I too suggested that the
elections be hosted off-site; however, my reasoning was that it would be
difficult to justify the expense of redeveloping SecurePoll sufficiently to
make it straightforward enough to use given that it's only used once or
twice a year. However, work has been happening on SecurePoll pretty much
since the last election, so there's no benefit to hosting elsewhere,
especially given the difficulties that were encountered in the past.

External election hosting is a fairly big ticket item if it is being done
well (and it would probably involve non-free software and as much if not
more work on the part of WMF staff), although I do understand that there
are certain advantages to going outside or more precisely not hosting on
our own servers.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

2014-10-06 Thread Risker
John, please explain what your point is here.  I mean really, picking on
individual people who voted in the election?  That's crossing the line,
especially as they met the voting eligibility criteria for the election
involved, which happened 16 months ago.  I expect better from you.

If you would like to propose different voting eligibility criteria for
future elections, including the one that will take place some time around
June 2015, please do so - perhaps consider offering to chair the election
committee for next year.  But insinuating that some people didn't deserve
to vote, or shouldn't have been allowed to vote using a staff account, when
that was in the eligibility criteria for many previous elections (not just
the 2013 one) is just rude.  As best I can tell, there were no concerns
expressed in the lead-up the 2013 election about WMF staff having franchise.

Risker/Anne



On 6 October 2014 22:26, John Mark Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 8:11 AM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
  On 5 October 2014 20:51, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org wrote:
 
  On 10/05/2014 08:24 AM, John Mark Vandenberg wrote:
   I checked a few of the WMF admin staff who have been employed more
   than a year, and many dont look likely to reach the 300 threshold,
   even with wikitech and foundation wikis included.
 
  An interesting question, I think, is /whether/ anyone from the
  Foundation ever voted that would not otherwise have had sufferage from
  the edits requirement?
 
 
  Pretty sure they have, Marc.  It's difficult to tell for certain, because
  some of the applicable wikis where people might be posting are not
 included
  in the SUL grouping (for example, FDC wiki or other non-public wikis,
  Foundation wiki, etc).

 It should be 'quite easy' to confirm wrt staff by looking for '(WMF)'
 and 'office.wikimedia.org' in the raw data, and filtering out any
 developers with merged changesets.

 https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/290?limit=2000

 This is not easy for volunteers because some of the staff usernames
 are not SUL accounts, dont have links to personal accounts, and
 userpages dont include names, so sorry for any mistakes made in the
 following.

 MRay (WMF) - no SUL account, or account by that name on meta or
 wmfwiki - 'ray' doesnt appear on wmf:Staff

 GGrossmeier_(WMF) - no SUL account, but an account by that name does
 exist on wmfiwki, and belongs to dev Greg Grossmeier, but didnt have
 merged gerrit patches for that period AFAICS.

 https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/owner:%22Greg+Grossmeier+%253Cgreg%2540wikimedia.org%253E%22,n,z

 Ldavis (WMF) - SUL account, easily meets community voting criteria

 LVilla (WMF) - SUL account with a link to personal account
 'user:LuisVilla', which from a quick count (I didnt use the
 eligibility checker tool) to have met either criteria of the 200 total
 edits or 20 recent edits.

 Jorm (WMF) - didnt check; quite certain they were eligible one way or
 another.

 Sbouterse (WMF), now Siko (WMF), and Seeeko - SUL accounts, achieved
 the community voting criteria with both staff and personal account.
 woot!

 JMathewson (WMF) - SUL account, easily meets community voting criteria

 KLove (WMF) - SUL account, may have amassed 200 edits across all
 projects with a few months of employment (I didnt use the eligibility
 checker tool to confirm this).  borderline case; but had she known
 that she needed a few more edits to be eligible, my guess is she would
 have done the necessary edits with ease in order to qualify.

 Gyoung - not a SUL account, but does have SUL accounts GYoung_(WMF)
 and GayleKaren, but between them doesnt appear to have met the
 criteria for the 2013 election, but will easily meet the criteria for
 the 2015 election.

 Lcarr - not a SUL account, but lots of merged patches.

 https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/owner:%22Lcarr+%253Cgeekgirl%2540gmail.com%253E%22,n,0024c1aff0b9

 The other exception is for WMF board members; the easiest way to check
 those is by username.

 While scanning the list I saw a few chapter people who voted from
 [country].wikimedia.org , so it would also be worth checking those to
 see if they were also eligible on content wikis.  If chapterwikis are
 included in the eligibility counts, then foundationwiki and wikitech
 (and other WMF public wikis) should also be counted.

 --
 John Vandenberg

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

2014-10-05 Thread Risker
On 5 October 2014 13:35, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru wrote:

 On 05.10.2014 14:24, John Mark Vandenberg wrote:

 On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 3:49 PM, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel
 it...@wikimedia.org.il wrote:

 Pine,


  IMO the minimum thresholds should be set at levels such that any staff
 member who has employed for a reasonable period of time is likely to
 be eligible, if they are engaging with the community on public
 projects, which is how a person becomes part of 'the community', and
 would be a suitable voter for community seats on the board.

 e.g. Danny Horn joined in April 2014, and now has 284 edits globally,
 albeit spread across seven projects.

 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/DannyH_(WMF)


 I think most of the staff (not sure specifically about Danny) have
 normal (not WMF) accounts which are eligible to vote, and they should not
 be voting from two accounts anyway.

 Cheers
 Yaroslav




Speaking as one of the election monitors for the last election,
we specifically checked for those types of duplicate votes, and would have
de-activated the earliest vote(s) keeping only the last one.  As it
happens, nobody did that; the only votes we needed to strike were test
votes.[1]

Risker/Anne

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Results
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quarterly review for Grantmaking

2014-10-05 Thread Risker
I do not think it is a good idea to have community members directly
involved in these meetings.  First off, any community member who
participates is in no way representative of the broad international
community as a whole, so granting individuals access gives them a radically
disproportionate influence on the outcome of these meetings.

Secondly, this is the team's ONE chance per quarter to have the undivided
attention of the Executive Director, and they need to be able to
communicate directly with her for the purpose of evaluation of their work.
They have one hour, and they have to be able to ensure that they cover
the essential points of their message.  Even a few off-point
questions can have a significantly adverse effect on their ability
to update the ED on their progress on the responsibilities within their
portfolio.  This is part of the evaluation of the performance of the teams
and its individual members, which is directly a responsibility of the ED
and the executives, and is absolutely not a responsibility of the
community.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask community members to put their
questions on the talk pages of the minutes, and for the community to expect
that questions relevant to the responsibility of the team will receive a
response.

Risker/Anne







On 5 October 2014 14:13, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi Tilman,

 Thanks for redirecting the thanks to Anna and Maria.

 Erik mentioned quarterly reviews accounting for community feedback:
 http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/471142. Involving
 community members directly in meetings could be interesting if done
 carefully, and/or there could also be ways of amplifying the weight given
 to community feedback already received about projects like Flow when
 conducting quarterly reviews. I believe that Communications already wants
 to find someone who will perform sentiment analysis, and perhaps
 summarizing community sentiment for quarterly reviews could be part of
 their job.

 Let me quote the end of the notes from this quarterly review of
 Grantmaking:

 Anasuya: As we are. If we are moving to a much more proactive structure, we
 are going to need much more tech support internally. There needs to be a
 larger long term strategy around that.
 Lila: it should show success and then Product can invest. We need to
 integrate these projects in the communities. Let's say the library is a
 good one, someone in product needs to look at it and see what is the
 threshold of success and how much staffing do we need so that we can match
 it. And it seems like Growth may be the place to evaluate these things.
 Erik: We also need to look at your team's short term needs. Like I did on
 Friday with Frank Schulenburg and Floor with regard to the education
 program's needs.
 Lila: I think the next steps is to group about this and determine next
 steps.

 To me it sounds like there is further significant business to be discussed
 that is effectively a part of this quarterly review but time expired for
 this particular meeting, so I am hoping that there will be notes from the
 discussion that follows. In order for me to comment usefully, it would be
 good to know if that follow up discussion has already happened and if so
 what was decided in that discussion, or if that discussion is planned for
 the near future.

 Thanks,

 Pine







 On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 8:27 AM, Tilman Bayer tba...@wikimedia.org wrote:

  (For other readers: Pine appears to refer to the publication of the
  minutes from the quarterly review meeting for the Wikimedia
  Foundation's Grantmaking team, announced in a separate thread at
 
 https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-October/074824.html
  )
 
  On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 1:14 AM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote:
   Tilman, thanks for those notes.
  
  As mentioned at the top of the page, these minutes were actually taken
  by Anna Koval and Maria Cruz. (I had been unable to attend this
  particular review due to a conflicting meeting.) So the thanks should
  go to them ;)
 
   There was discussion awhile ago about involving the community in
  quarterly
   reviews,
  I don't recall that discussion, do you have a link?
 
   and I have some questions and comments about this review, mostly
   for Lila.
  Sure! Feel free to leave them on the talk page - as community members
  have already been doing with other reviews this week.
 
  
   However, I would like to see the notes from the group mentioned at
 the
  end
   of the quarterly review before I make comments, or if there is an
   opportunity for community participation in the group, I would like to
   participate in a community capacity, if that is ok. (:
  
  Well, again, I wasn't at the meeting myself, but my interpretation of
  that sentence is that to group about this simply was a somewhat
  colloquial expression meaning to have a smaller followup meeting
  between staff from the Product team and from the Grantmaking team

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

2014-10-05 Thread Risker
On 5 October 2014 20:51, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org wrote:

 On 10/05/2014 08:24 AM, John Mark Vandenberg wrote:
  I checked a few of the WMF admin staff who have been employed more
  than a year, and many dont look likely to reach the 300 threshold,
  even with wikitech and foundation wikis included.

 An interesting question, I think, is /whether/ anyone from the
 Foundation ever voted that would not otherwise have had sufferage from
 the edits requirement?


Pretty sure they have, Marc.  It's difficult to tell for certain, because
some of the applicable wikis where people might be posting are not included
in the SUL grouping (for example, FDC wiki or other non-public wikis,
Foundation wiki, etc).

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] First Wikipedia Article has been Formally Peer Reviewed and Published

2014-10-03 Thread Risker
Umm, no, they aren't - at least not in the way the term is used in
scientific subjects.

Many articles are never reviewed in any systematic manner; in fact, that is
the overwhelming majority of our articles.  Those that are formally
reviewed are reviewed in the context of meeting *Wikipedia* standards:
formatting, manual of style, reliable sources as references (as opposed to,
say, blogs).   It doesn't contain most of the elements of peer review seen
for scientific papers.

Risker/Anne





On 3 October 2014 15:56, Erlend Bjørtvedt erl...@wikimedia.no wrote:

 But remember: all Wikipedia articles are peer reviewed..

 Erlend Bjørtvedt




 Den fredag 3. oktober 2014 skrev Vishnu visdav...@gmail.com følgende:

  Congratulations!
 
  A great model that could be emulated by many of us across other
  disciplines too.
 
  Cheers,
  Vishnu
 
 
  On Friday 03 October 2014 04:54 AM, James Heilman wrote:
 
  Article published by the journal Open Medicine
  http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/viewFile/562/564
 
  Will soon be pubmed indexed. Editorial regarding the efforts are here
  http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/652/565
 
  Hope these sorts of efforts will improve the reputation of Wikipedia and
  the number of contributors. I guess we will see.
 
 
 
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 --
 *Erlend Bjørtvedt*
 Nestleder, Wikimedia Norge
 Vice chairman, Wikimedia Norway
 Mob: +47 - 9225 9227
  http://no.wikimedia.org http://no.wikimedia.org/wiki/About_us
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Damon Sicore joins WMF as Vice President of Engineering

2014-09-29 Thread Risker
On 29 September 2014 16:32, Cristian Consonni kikkocrist...@gmail.com
wrote:

 2014-09-29 20:41 GMT+02:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com:
  Lila Tretikov, 29/09/2014 19:38:
 
  We are excited to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation now has a Vice
  President of Engineering. Damon Sicore will be filling this vital role.
 
 
  Nice to see this long story reach an end. Welcome, Damon. It will be
  interesting to see the experience from previous friend orgs merge into
 ours.

 +1
 (for the lazy ones:
 «[Damon] spent six years at the Mozilla Corporation, where he grew a
 small team of 27 people to a team of more than 600 open source
 software engineers, technical leads, managers, and directors in
 developing Mozilla Firefox, the Mozilla open source platform, Firefox
 for Android, and Firefox OS. Most recently Damon served as VP of
 Engineering at Edmodo, Inc., an educational content network, and was
 responsible for all web, platform, and mobile engineering, security,
 IT operations, support, and QA efforts.»)

 Welcome Damon!



I am admittedly amongst the lazy, so thanks, Cristian.

Welcome, Damon.


Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow: on featured article discussions

2014-09-15 Thread Risker
English Wikipedia rarely has more than 10-15 people participating in
featured content candidate discussions/reviews.  I'm hugely impressed that
Hebrew Wikipedia has this level of participation in similar discussions.  I
suspect this is a higher level of participation than is seen on most
projects, and wonder why editors at your project think that the current
level of participation is too low.  I also don't understand why you find
your watchlist flooded using the current discussion process, but this may
be a difference in preferences or in the setup of your specific project.

Risker/Anne

On 15 September 2014 05:12, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il
wrote:

 My 2 agorot in the Flow or not Flow discussion:

 A prominent Hebrew Wikipedia user started a discussion about his impression
 that too few people participate in the discussions about nominating
 featured articles.[1] This Wikipedia has about 700 active and 150 very
 active editors[2]; the number of participants in these discussions is
 usually much less than twenty, often less than ten.

 Now I don't know what are other people's reasons not to participate in
 them; maybe a lot of them are just not interested in discussing featured
 articles.

 I know what my reasons are, though. I am quite interested in such
 discussions, and I would participate in them, but I don't, because in the
 few times I tried, it filled my watchlist with unnecessary notifications
 about other people's opinions. These opinions are relevant, but the way
 they are presented in the watchlist is unhelpful and I feel that it wastes
 my time.

 More structure in such discussions would encourage me to participate.

 The current version of Flow doesn't solve this problem: Its notifications
 are far from being well-adapted even for simple talk pages, and it doesn't
 even attempt to be adapted to a more structured decision-making discussion
 like Featured Article nomination. But I do believe that Flow is in the
 direction of resolving these problems. Flow will have to be carefully
 tweaked for each discussion scenario, but the general idea of having
 adaptable structured discussion is a good start.

 The frequent argument for remaining with the current talk pages and not
 moving to Flow is that the current talk pages work. Well, at least in this
 case they don't, and Flow could be a solution to that.

 [1] Roughly corresponding to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TFAR
 [2] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaHE.htm

 --
 Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
 http://aharoni.wordpress.com
 ‪“We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Conference 2015

2014-09-11 Thread Risker
I'm with James and Isarra here.  Only a small minority of Wikimedians are
part of chapters and affiliated groups; being a member of an organized
group has nothing to do with being a Wikimedian, or even directly with
Wikimedia itself.  This is an exclusionary conference - not only do you
have to be a member of one of these groups (or otherwise receive an
invitation based on role within the WMF structure or as a speaker) to
attend, but the conference isn't even open to all members of those groups.

Please do not call it the Wikimedia conference.  It may be many things,
but it's not that.  Wikimedia Affiliates Conference will do fine.

Risker/Anne

On 11 September 2014 15:12, Ilario Valdelli valde...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 11.09.2014 20:48, Isarra Yos wrote:


 I'm part of the Wikimedia movement, but there are no chapters nearby, nor
 are there any user groups that I know of relevant to my interests as yet.
 Thus there is nobody to represent me but myself.

 If this is Wikimedia, why can't I go to a Wikimedia conference?

 -I

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 You may create your own user group and participate.

 I suppose that all people participating in Wikimedia conference don't
 represent their own (personal) interests (or they should not).

 If you participate in a project it's not so hard to create an user group.
 All projects are based on collaboration of individuals, so it should be not
 hard to find other members sharing the same interests.

 Wikisource created its own, for instance, and they don't need a single
 chapter to represent their position.

 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] Wikimedia Conference 2015

2014-09-11 Thread Risker
On 11 September 2014 19:19, Charles Gregory wmau.li...@chuq.net wrote:

 On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 8:34 AM, Isarra Yos zhoris...@gmail.com wrote:

  On 11/09/14 22:06, Pete Forsyth wrote:
 
 
  Personally, I have no problem with the existence of the conference, but
 I
  find its name alienating. Not everyone agrees with that assessment, but
  clearly some others in this thread do.
 
 
  What Pete said.
 
  We could go into issues with the exclusionary nature itself, such as that
  it would exclude representatives of groups who ran into trouble becoming
  official - despite such a conference likely being one of the best venues
  for them to bring up and discuss with relevant others how to actually
  address or resolve that trouble that excluded them in the first place...
 
  ...but that sort of thing is much harder to resolve/address. The name, at
  least, is simple, and should also make a lot of the other problems less
  glaring in the process.
 
 
 Assuming the issue of the name is the sticking point ...

 What about the Wikimedia Meta-Conference? Or Meta-Wikimedia Conference?  Or
 MetaWiki Conference?

 It's more about the organisations in the background than keep the movement
 going.  It doesn't seem (from my second-hand knowledge of the event) that a
 regular editor would get a lot out of it?


 Regards,


This is the same problem.  It's usurping the Wikimedia name, and this
proposal also usurps the Meta (all communities communication forum) name.
It is neither for Wikimedia (as a whole) nor for Meta.  It's for designated
members of affiliates/chapters.  It's okay for it to be what it is. But
let's call it what it is.

It's not about the colour of the bikeshed.  It's about calling a bikeshed a
community centre.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Conference 2015

2014-09-11 Thread Risker
We do have a community centre.  It's called Meta.  It may not be a very
elegant one, and there are definitely parts that can be improved, but it's
our virtual community centre.

Risker/Anne

On 11 September 2014 19:54, Richard Symonds 
richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:

 But we don't even have a bikeshed or a community centre yet :-P
 On 12 Sep 2014 00:52, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:

  On 11 September 2014 19:19, Charles Gregory wmau.li...@chuq.net wrote:
 
   On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 8:34 AM, Isarra Yos zhoris...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  
On 11/09/14 22:06, Pete Forsyth wrote:
   
   
Personally, I have no problem with the existence of the conference,
  but
   I
find its name alienating. Not everyone agrees with that assessment,
  but
clearly some others in this thread do.
   
   
What Pete said.
   
We could go into issues with the exclusionary nature itself, such as
  that
it would exclude representatives of groups who ran into trouble
  becoming
official - despite such a conference likely being one of the best
  venues
for them to bring up and discuss with relevant others how to actually
address or resolve that trouble that excluded them in the first
  place...
   
...but that sort of thing is much harder to resolve/address. The
 name,
  at
least, is simple, and should also make a lot of the other problems
 less
glaring in the process.
   
   
   Assuming the issue of the name is the sticking point ...
  
   What about the Wikimedia Meta-Conference? Or Meta-Wikimedia Conference?
  Or
   MetaWiki Conference?
  
   It's more about the organisations in the background than keep the
  movement
   going.  It doesn't seem (from my second-hand knowledge of the event)
  that a
   regular editor would get a lot out of it?
  
  
   Regards,
  
  
  This is the same problem.  It's usurping the Wikimedia name, and this
  proposal also usurps the Meta (all communities communication forum) name.
  It is neither for Wikimedia (as a whole) nor for Meta.  It's for
 designated
  members of affiliates/chapters.  It's okay for it to be what it is. But
  let's call it what it is.
 
  It's not about the colour of the bikeshed.  It's about calling a
 bikeshed a
  community centre.
 
  Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Conference 2015

2014-09-11 Thread Risker
On 11 September 2014 22:07, Charles Gregory wmau.li...@chuq.net wrote:

 ... but the conference has been running for a few years, and has gradually
 evolved over that time, from primarily chapters, to other affiliate
 organisations, AffCom itself, FDC in recent years, etc.  I don't think
 anyone is suggesting any revolutionary changes for the next one?  Just a
 change in name to suit the current audience.

 What's the problem with the name Wikimedia being used?  It is, after all,
 a conference involving Wikimedians.  It appears the main complaint is the
 over-generic title Wikimedia Conference.

 Charles (User:Chuq)



You are correct, Chuq.  Wikimedia by itself is the entire movement. It's
not a subgroup of the movement, which is what the chapters and affiliated
organizations are as a group.  We don't call the hackathons Wikimedia
Conference, nor do we call the diversity conferences Wikimedia
Conference, yet arguably they are even more representative of Wikimedia
(the movement) than this particular conference is; while attendees are
largely self-selected, they are open to anyone who has the means and will
to attend. What's been known in the past as the Wikimedia Conference is
essentially a by-invitation conference that is not representative of the
movement.

It's a big movement with lots of parts.  A better argument could be made
for renaming Wikimania the Wikimedia Conference than using that term for a
conference restricted to one small branch of the movement.  Many
Wikimedians over the years, particularly those who are highly active in
core movement activities but not chapter/affiliate activities, have felt
disenfranchised and marginalized by having the name of the movement to
which they make their contributions used for a conference at which they
will never be welcome.

And the other reason for changing the name to be more representative of
what the conference is that it sets the tone for the agenda.  The focus of
the conference is, at least in theory, chapters and affiliated groups: what
they can learn from each other, sharing of tools and ideas, making
connections within and external to the Wikimedia movement, etc.  It's not
Wikimedia as a whole; it's far too exclusive (and exclusionary) for the
movement as a whole to be the focus of the conference.

From a different perspective, let's compare ourselves to other conferences
that succeed because of their focus:  A conference for gastroenterologists
isn't going to call itself the medical conference, nor would a conference
for neurosurgeons.  They're going to wave the flag that they're focusing on
a specific aspect of medicine.  It's what we do with the diversity
conference, and with the hackathons, too.  You're not losing anything by
changing the name: you're recognizing the specialty focus of the conference.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow

2014-09-10 Thread Risker
On 10 September 2014 07:54, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk wrote:

 On 8 September 2014 08:22, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:
 snip




 * potential to work with Notifications (tell me when anyone replies
 to this discussion) without needing individual pings or relying on
 spotting one talkpage edit in a busy watchlist - especially since on
 some pages a comment may come two years later.



You know, Andrew, this was always something that I thought would be one of
the real features of Flow, one of the things that could pull people over to
supporting the transition.  Until it got turned it on.

I have 'watch-listed' the Flow-specific pages on Mediawikiwiki (MWW) and
English Wikipedia for a very long time.  When they turned on notifications
at MWW about a week ago, my mailbox and notifications were flooded - I'm
not talking just a little bit, I mean I got so many notifications that I
couldn't sort out the ones that weren't related to that one specific Flow
page - and that was with a single Flow stream being watched.  I suppose I
expected it to be like the email notices we get when a watched page gets
edited on non-Wikipedia projects (e.g., Meta, MWW) - that is, the first
change would generate an email/notification and nothing more until I went
to the page itself.  From what I've been told, this isn't something that
Echo/notifications does or was meant to do.

I know the Flow team is scrambling to try to reduce the overwhelming nature
of the notifications.  But it occurs to me that there was a reason why
email notification was never turned on for Wikipedia projects - the sheer
volume of messages that would be generated for users with hundreds or
thousands of pages on their watchlists - and that's going to be just as
much an issue for Flow as it would be if we just turned on those email
messages today.  Looks brilliant on paper, but reality is a different
thing.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow

2014-09-08 Thread Risker
That's not a reasonable task, Marc.  Newbies have an equally hard time
editing content, too, and even when they succeed, on many projects they're
very likely to be reverted and deluged with templated messages in response
to a good faith attempt.  There is no evidentiary basis to demonstrate that
new users have a harder time participating in discussion than they do in
content contribution. Independent studies seem to identify the nature of
the discussions as being significantly more problematic than the technical
means of participating.

Nobody is saying that it is easy for newbies to participate on many of the
larger Wikimedia projects.  There are lots of ways that we can make it
easier.  The most obvious one is automatic signing of comments, and it is
something that we have technically been able to impose for years; sinebot
didn't come into existence in a vacuum.

Risker/Anne



On 8 September 2014 09:58, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org wrote:

 On 09/08/2014 12:46 AM, John Mark Vandenberg wrote:
  While it may not be everybody's dream system, talk pages are quite
  usable, as demonstrated by a lot of people using them every single
  day.

 That's... not a demonstration of usability.  Like many people, I found
 myself using some random blunt object not designed for purpose to hammer
 in a nail at least once; that speaks to the importance of getting the
 nail in, not the lack of need for a proper hammer.  :-)

 Let's be honest here; I'm /highly/ computer-literate, and I've been
 using Mediawiki for some 11 years and I *still* find talk pages an
 annoyance at the best of times and they can be downright painful if
 there's anything like a large discussion in progress you are attempting
 to track/participate in.  Between edit conflicts, increasingly confusing
 indentation, signatures that may or may not make separation between
 commenters clear...  It's no surprise that newbies are scared away.
 Editing articles is already hard enough, anything that provides an extra
 barrier to participation hurts - especially when that barrier lies in
 the way of getting /help/.

 Talk pages, as a mechanism, are lacking every affordance that users
 expect of a communication medium.  And no, that X thousand people have
 gotten used to their failings does not make them any better for the Y
 billion people that have not.

 But don't take my word for it!  Find random newbies, and ask them to try
 the simple task of commenting on a discussion in progress without giving
 them guidance.  They they flail around, or simply give up, remember that
 it's not /them/ who have failed -- I'm pretty sure they've participated
 in plenty of other online discussions before.

 -- Marc


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow

2014-09-08 Thread Risker
Well, I think that the article editing project (i.e., VE)  has a huge
potential for also resolving a lot of discussion space issues.  I don't see
tacking on yet another UI as being a positive for new editor introduction
or retention, and cannot think of another significant site that has two
such wildly divergent interfaces (one very flexible and the other very
rigid in structure), except perhaps in the mobile vs. desktop situation.

I dunno, Marc.  There are different expectations about signature, depending
on the target group.  We still have people being freaked out that article
histories contain their username or IP (a form of automatic signature), so
I'm not convinced that there's an expectation on the part of new users that
anything they write anywhere will automatically be signed.

Risker/Anne


On 8 September 2014 10:24, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org wrote:

 On 09/08/2014 10:18 AM, Risker wrote:
  The most obvious one is automatic signing of comments, and it is
  something that we have technically been able to impose for years; sinebot
  didn't come into existence in a vacuum.

 I suppose that's a philosophical divergence between us then - that
 sinebot even needs to exist to me is demonstration that the system is
 broken.

 You say that discussion isn't all that much harder than editing content.
  Even if I agreed with that (and I do not, edit conflicts in articles
 are much rarer than on talk pages - and usually easier to sort out),
 that's not a *good* thing!

 Participating in discussion should be much, *much* easier than editing
 articles: encouraging newbies to seek help and participate in the
 community *before* diving in anything but trivial article edits would be
 an immensely powerful retention tool!

 (Which isn't to say that editing articles doesn't *also* need a lot of
 help - but that's a different project).

 -- Marc


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow

2014-09-08 Thread Risker
Facebook?

So tell me, how do you explain to new Facebook users about the different
levels of privacy?  Seems to me that I'm constantly hearing about people
having a lot of problems with that, especially since it's supposed to be a
key site feature.

I'm with you about indenting, it's always been something strange.  But
signing posts is very natural for a lot of people, and many, many online
sites encourage the development of canned signature lines - just as we do
with preferences, although we put more constraints on them generally.

Indeed, the majority of people in this thread have signed their posts.
Indeed, Jon Davies' +1 in response to this post had a 588-character
signature line, presumably added to his mail client preferences.


Risker/Anne



On 8 September 2014 11:43, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hello,

 a) This discussion actually belongs to a talk page on Meta or
 Mediawiki.org, for example :-)

 b) All my experience in teaching Wikipedia tells me that the talk page
 system is absolutely outdated and inappropriate. It is, sorry to use this
 word, *ridiculous* that you have to teach people how to communicate
 technically in Wikipedia. I never had to explain to someone how to do that
 on Facebook...

 As other people have pointed it out already, if you are already accustomed
 to the Wikipedia user interface for a longer time, you might find it
 difficult to fully understand what is the problem for newbies. And how big
 this is a problem, and how important it is to solve this problem.

 Kind regards
 Ziko



 Am Montag, 8. September 2014 schrieb Risker :

  Well, I think that the article editing project (i.e., VE)  has a huge
  potential for also resolving a lot of discussion space issues.  I don't
 see
  tacking on yet another UI as being a positive for new editor introduction
  or retention, and cannot think of another significant site that has two
  such wildly divergent interfaces (one very flexible and the other very
  rigid in structure), except perhaps in the mobile vs. desktop situation.
 
  I dunno, Marc.  There are different expectations about signature,
 depending
  on the target group.  We still have people being freaked out that article
  histories contain their username or IP (a form of automatic signature),
 so
  I'm not convinced that there's an expectation on the part of new users
 that
  anything they write anywhere will automatically be signed.
 
  Risker/Anne
 
 
  On 8 September 2014 10:24, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org
  javascript:; wrote:
 
   On 09/08/2014 10:18 AM, Risker wrote:
The most obvious one is automatic signing of comments, and it is
something that we have technically been able to impose for years;
  sinebot
didn't come into existence in a vacuum.
  
   I suppose that's a philosophical divergence between us then - that
   sinebot even needs to exist to me is demonstration that the system is
   broken.
  
   You say that discussion isn't all that much harder than editing
 content.
Even if I agreed with that (and I do not, edit conflicts in articles
   are much rarer than on talk pages - and usually easier to sort out),
   that's not a *good* thing!
  
   Participating in discussion should be much, *much* easier than editing
   articles: encouraging newbies to seek help and participate in the
   community *before* diving in anything but trivial article edits would
 be
   an immensely powerful retention tool!
  
   (Which isn't to say that editing articles doesn't *also* need a lot of
   help - but that's a different project).
  
   -- Marc
  
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow

2014-09-07 Thread Risker
On 7 September 2014 23:54, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org wrote:

 On 09/07/2014 01:57 AM, Diego Moya wrote:
  a major property of a document-centric architecture that is lost in a
  structured one is that it's open-ended, which means that end users can
  build new features and flows on top of it, without the need to request
 the
  platform developers to build support for them (sometimes even without
  writing new software at all; new workflows can be designed and maintained
  purely through social convention).

 And yet, after over a decade of open-ended design through social
 convention, the end result is...  our current talk pages.  Perhaps
 another decade or two will be needed before that document-centric
 architecture gives us a half-decent discussion system?

 Sorry if that sound snarky, but I have difficulty buying an argument
 that the current system has the potential to suffice when it has
 demonstrably already failed.  It does no good to have the hypothetical
 capacity for a good system if, in practice, it's unusable.

 -- Marc


I suppose the question really is, has it failed?  On what basis are we
saying that our current discussion system is unusable?

Simply put, I'd suggest that the problem isn't the system, it's the
discussion process itself that has points of failure.  The replacement of
actual discussion with templates is a point of failure, and that will not
be improved by a change in the platform if all that happens is we use
basically the same templates to have the same non-discussions.  Nothing in
the technology, either document-based or open-ended, will change the nature
of the discourse itself; rude people will still be rude, erudite people
will still be erudite, and none of will change the snark on Jimbo Wales's
talk page. A significant percentage of Wikimedians rarely use talk pages at
all (and a goodly number of those identify as exopedians), but no evidence
that the percentage of Wikimedians who eschew social interaction has
changed significantly, or that those with a low level of contribution to
discussion space are doing so because they find the *technology*
unappealing.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow

2014-09-07 Thread Risker
On 8 September 2014 00:46, John Mark Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote:

snip


 .  e.g. once it is
 beta quality, I am sure Jimmy Wales will want it enabled on his user
 talk page, which would increase exposure to, and acceptance of, Flow.



...or possibly far less complaining on his page.  :-)

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Next steps regarding WMF-community disputes about deployments

2014-09-06 Thread Risker
I'm not going to reply in-line here, because I think there's been an
undoubtedly unintentional missing of the point here.  Instead I will tell a
story about a friend of mine.

Some years ago, when her children were 3 and 4, their family had a lovely
traditional Christmas Day, but something felt like it was missing.  She
told her husband about a tradition in her own family, where she and her
siblings had (since they were very young children) always bought their
mother a Terry's Chocolate Orange for Christmas - no matter what else her
mom got, that was considered the one essential Christmas gift under the
tree.  Mom would glow with joy when she unwrapped it, and her most
heartfelt thanks was for this specific present.  Some time later in the
day, she'd smack it open and everyone would get a piece.  My friend thought
it would be wonderful to start a similar tradition in her own young family.

Her husband remembered this story in the weeks leading up to the next
Christmas.  He plotted with the children, now 4 and 5; he researched the
best types of similar treats; and ultimately he helped the children
obtain a chocolate orange made of the finest Swiss chocolate, filled with
Grand Marnier liqueur, presented in an elegant marquetry box.  Everyone was
surprised when she burst into tears instead of smiles, and spent the whole
day snapping at people and generally being a grouch.  Finally her husband
confronted her and insisted she explain her behaviour.

What happened, of course, was that despite his best efforts, he'd missed
the real purpose of the chocolate orange.  He thought it was symbolic of
the esteem in which the matriarch was held. Really, it was about the
familial sharing of a special treat; the joy that the sharing brought to
both the recipient and the presenters.  But she couldn't share
liqueur-filled chocolate with her children, and could barely bring herself
to smack open the beautifully designed and presented chocolate.  In other
words, even though the gift looked brilliant on paper, it missed the point.

I think the design of Flow is much like the liqueur-filled chocolates.
It's missed the point of a discussion space on Wikimedia projects.  All the
use cases in the world, no matter how carefully researched and accounted
for, will help you build a discussion system to effectively replace a
discussion system if you don't understand that the one overriding,
incontrovertible feature of the current system is that it is a page that
acts just like all the other wiki pages, with all the same functions, and
anyone who can work on one wiki-page can work on any of them.  In other
words, you're building something that is explicitly different from
wiki-pages - but the expectation of the majority of the people who will use
these pages is that they work exactly like any other wiki-page.

This is what I mean when I say that you've not really understood how
wiki-discussion functions, and you've created the bells and whistles
without demonstrating an understanding of what the real, core functions of
these pages are.  The priority in design should focus on being able to
produce identical results for basic wiki-editing and page management: we
move pages, we protect them, we undo and revert edits, we fix typos and
correct URLS and links in each other's posts, we quote each other and
copy/paste, we modify each other's words when collaborating on the wording
of a complex section of an article, we get rid of trolling, we delete and
sometimes suppress personal attacks, we hat and archive individual
discussions.  Whether or not a post gets auto-signed is a frill compared
to those basic functions, and it is inevitable that the deprioritization of
the basics will result in people not really caring much about the frills
(no  matter how well they are executed) and focusing instead on what the
new system doesn't do.  This is the real parallel between Flow and Visual
Editor - focusing on the difference between the new product and that it
was intended to replace, instead of ensuring that things that had to be
similar or identical were considered the first step of design.

Risker/Anne




On 6 September 2014 02:13, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 10:42 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
  The major deficiencies that have long been identified in the current
  discussion system (and that can be addressed by technology) are all able
 to
  be addressed in MediaWiki software or by extensions. Automatic signatures
  have been done by bots for years; indenting could be added to the editing
  function gadget and moved to an extension; much work has already been
 done
  on graceful resolution of edit conflicts.  The ability to watchlist an
  individual thread or section of a page is more challenging but, I have
 been
  told, still possible.

 Let's just acknowledge that the limitations of what can reasonably be
 layered onto wikitext-based representation of comments have not been
 fully explored, rather

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

2014-09-05 Thread Risker
I think there have been some pretty strong indications over the years that
the current talk page system needs to be improved.  However, there's been
little discussion at all about whether Flow is that improvement.  I have
been following the development for quite a while, and it really looks like
the system was developed backwards: essential functions for effective
discussion that already exist and are used on a daily basis were not
included in the initial designs, while the design incorporated plenty of
bells and whistles that were considered desirable (although the reasons for
desirability weren't necessarily universally held or particularly clear).
This has resulted in a huge amount of re-engineering to incorporate (some
of the) needed functions , and a lot of downplaying of the feedback given
because the feedback has conflicted with the bells and whistles of the
original design.  There is also the fact that it would add another
completely different user interface to the editing process, which increases
barriers for existing users but even more so for new users.

In other words, the issues with Flow are so deeply rooted in its core
design and philosophy that it may not be possible to come up with a product
that is actually useful on the projects we have to replace the discussion
system we have.  It seems that the Flow team has assembled the ingredients
to make a chocolate cake with the hope that it will be a suitable
replacement for vegetable stew.

Risker/Anne




On 5 September 2014 13:29, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote:

 This somewhat circuitously brings us back to the subject. We have a
 chance to rollout Flow the right way. There are some questions that
 come to mind that might tell us if we're headed for a big win or a
 bigger debacle:

 1) Is the WMF working with the community as closely and substantially
 as possible to make sure Flow is ready for primetime?

 2) Is the community preparing itself for a major change, not only in
 interface, but to some degree in wiki-philosophy about how discussions
 are conducted- not to mention the notion that, while wiki software can
 do almost anything involving asynchronous online communication, it
 can't do everything as well as other interfaces?

 I think Flow will be particularly challenging. I deployed Liquid
 Threads on another site. I liked the threaded interface, as did
 others. But overall it was roundly rejected because it was harder to
 search (I only found out you have to add the namespace to the
 searchable namespace in LocalSettings.php later), and it invasively
 took over all discussion pages, among other headache. Problems like
 these could easily be addressed before a rollout, but they should be
 addressed as early as possible. It is notable, however, that the more
 our users used it, the more they seemed to like it.

 What can we do to make the Flow rollout as smooth as starting '''now'''?

 ,Wil

 On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 9:34 AM, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org
 wrote:
  On 09/05/2014 11:12 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
  On 25.08.2014 06:07, Marc A. Pelletier wrote:
  FLOW?
 
  Last I checked, Flow isn't deployed except as experiments in a handful
  of places, and is still in active deployment.
 
  But you're correct that this would constitute a replacement rather than
  a new method alongside the old.  A long, long overdue and desperately
  needed replacement -- but a replacement nonetheless.
 
  That also explains the very deliberate development and feedback loop.
 
  -- Marc
 
 
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Next steps regarding WMF-community disputes about deployments

2014-09-05 Thread Risker
Wil, the tl;dr here is Philosophical beliefs aren't an effective
underpinning for good software design. Start over.


It's taken me a while to piece together much from the early discussions
about Flow and figure out how we got to where we are now.  It's my opinion
that the root of the problem is that, much as the WMF wants to move toward
being a software or tech organization, it really doesn't have very much
history or experience in the kind of  ground-up software design and
deployment that is conducive to successful implementation.  Tech
organizations seeking to redevelop a core function normally start by
gathering extensive data on the current system,  identifying key functions
that must be incorporated into the new system, understanding how the
current system is used, what its strengths and weaknesses are, and ensuring
that even early iterations will at least include the key functions and
strengths from the soon-to-be-deprecated system.  This baseline background
research was never really done before investing in the development of Flow.
Instead, Flow very much comes across as software being designed according
to philosophical principles rather than function.

The major deficiencies that have long been identified in the current
discussion system (and that can be addressed by technology) are all able to
be addressed in MediaWiki software or by extensions. Automatic signatures
have been done by bots for years; indenting could be added to the editing
function gadget and moved to an extension; much work has already been done
on graceful resolution of edit conflicts.  The ability to watchlist an
individual thread or section of a page is more challenging but, I have been
told, still possible.

Several of the features identified as must-do have turned out not to
quite work out.  Automatic signature (something that is currently
functional on Flow, but is not customizable) turns out to be more of a
challenge when users are widely known by a signature line that doesn't
match their username, and there is no method by which users can add an
explanatory note to their signature such as formerly known as
User:Whatever.  The more efficient indenting has reduced possible
indents to three levels, without exception; even in simple discussions,
it's pretty clear that hasn't really worked out as it's often difficult to
figure out who is responding to which post.  Rigid predictable technical
restrictions on who can edit what has resulted in inability to remove
posts that are obviously unsuitable (there's no undo or revert
function), replaced with a hide function that can only be applied by
certain users that's practically a red flag for people to look-see what the
problem edit is.  With broader early discussion, some of these would
probably have been fleshed out before getting this far.


At the core is whether or not there is value in developing a discussion
system that is radically divorced from any other interface used by the
system.  This is a philosophical question, and doesn't actually have that
much to do with technology - and this conversation has never really taken
place anywhere but by a bunch of guys who are into making cool software
and, often as not, have little interest in the kinds of discussions that
normally occur on Wikimedia projects.  There has certainly never really
been a discussion with the broader community about what would better serve
in discussions. More importantly, some of the core assumptions and goals
upon which Flow has been built[1] have very little to do with technology at
all - plenty of research indicates that new users are driven away by the
nature of discussions rather than the technological challenges of
participation -  and the lack of active broad community consultation means
that the development team really doesn't know what's working well, what's
problematic, and what kind of efficiencies experienced users are looking
for. There's absolutely no basis to believe that Flow  is in any way likely
to encourage [more] *meaningful conversations* that support
collaboration.  (I'd love to see what kind of metrics would be used to
assess the meaningfulness of conversations!)


And the other key issue is a complete lack of recognition that the more UIs
a new user needs to learn to develop competency, the lower the likelihood
that they'll actually be able to develop the necessary skills to become
fully functioning members of the editing community.  The Wikimedia family
has largely bought in to the necessity to introduce a WYSIWYG editing
interface (that would be VisualEditor), and to recognize that wikitext
editing needs to remain in existence as well.  Adding a third one whose
primary purpose will be to talk about the content being created using the
other two is counterintuitive at best.


Risker/Anne


[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow


On 5 September 2014 21:53, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote:

 Risker, what do you think might get us all back on track for Flow?
 Should the WMF

Re: [Wikimedia-l] AffCom - Call for candidates 2015 [UPDATE]

2014-09-04 Thread Risker
A gmail address?

I am sure if you ask nicely the committee can be granted a wikimedia.org
email address through Mailman that will allow more than one person to
handle applications. It could probably be done pretty quickly.

Risker/Anne


On 4 September 2014 14:35, Carlos M. Colina ma...@wikimedia.org.ve wrote:

 Dear all,

 Please note that, due a technical issue, direct your emails to
 salvador1...@gmail.com instead.

 Kindly apologize for the inconvenience.

 Regards,
 Carlos


 Sent from Samsung Mobile

  Original message 
 From: Carlos M. Colina ma...@wikimedia.org.ve
 Date: 03/09/2014  19:58  (GMT+02:00)
 To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org,Wikimedia Chapters general
 discussions chapt...@wikimedia.ch
 Subject: [Wikimedia-l] AffCom - Call for candidates 2015

 (in the case you received it already, sorry for re-sending it, my
  Thunderbird crashed just as I clicked the send button :-( )

 Dear all, The Affiliations Committee [1], the committee that is
 responsible for guiding volunteers in establishing Chapters, User Groups
 and Thematic Organizations and approving them when they are ready is
 looking for new members.

 The main focus of the AffCom is to guide groups of volunteers in forming
 affiliates. We make sure that the groups are large enough to be viable (and
 advise them on how to get bigger), review bylaws for compliance
 with the requirements and best practices, and advise the Board of the
 Wikimedia Foundation on issues connected to Chapters, Thematic
 Organizations and User Groups.

 This requires communication with volunteers all over the World,
 negotiating skills and cultural sensitivity and the ability to understand
 legal texts. We try to get a healthy mix of different skill sets in our
 members.

 The key skills/experience that we are looking for in candidate members,
 are typically the following:

   * Excitement by the challenge of helping to empower groups of
 volunteers worldwide
   * Willingness to process applications through a set, perhaps
 bureaucratic process
   * Readiness to participate in (movement roles) political discussions
 on the role and future of affiliates, models of affiliations, and
 similar questions
   * 5 hours per week availability [2], and the time to participate in a
 monthly ~2 hour voice/video meeting
   * International orientation
   * Very good communication skills in English
   * Ability to work and communicate with other languages and cultures
   * Strong understanding of the structure and work of affiliates and the
 WMF
   * Knowledge of different legal systems; experience in community
 building and organising is a plus
   * Effective communication skills in other languages are a major plus
   * Experience with or in an active affiliate is a major plus
   * Willingness to use full (real) name in committee activities
 (including reaching out to potential affiliates) when appropriate

 In 2012, new types of affiliations were introduced, and the role of the
 Committee has increased in guiding through volunteers towards
 affiliation models that empower them to further our mission, and making
 sure these models meet both the needs of the volunteers and the
 movement. We are looking for new people to help, who are not afraid of
 the workload and are motivated by helping other volunteers to get
 organized and form communities that further our mission around the world.

 Members are usually selected every twelve months for staggered two-year
 terms. The applications will be voted on by the current members not
 seeking re-election, taking into account comments put forward by the
 committee's members, advisers, WMF staff and board liaisons based on the
 above membership criteria. A final decision will be made by the end of
 the year, with new members expected to join on or around 1 January 2015.

 If you are interested, You can send your applications with your full
 name, contact data (e-mail address, wiki username), relevant experience
 and motivation letter to our treasurer Salvador Alcántar at salvador AT
 gmail.com by 30 September 2014. You will get a confirmation that your
 application came through.

 If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me and/or the
 committee as a whole. We are happy to chat or have a phone call with
 anyone about our work, if this helps them decide to apply. Please
 distribute this call among your networks, and do apply if you are
 interested.

 Best regards,
 Carlos Colina
 Chair, Affiliations Committee

 [1]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee (please
 follow the links and familiarize yourself with our work)
 [2]: Our member standards of participation are at:

 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Standard_of_participation_%E2%80%93_September_2012

 --
 *Jülüjain wane mmakat* ein kapülain tü alijunakalirua jee wayuukanairua
 junain ekerolaa alümüin supüshuwayale etijaanaka. Ayatashi waya junain.
 Carlos M. Colina

Re: [Wikimedia-l] AffCom - Call for candidates 2015 [UPDATE]

2014-09-04 Thread Risker
Committees can have more than one mailing list, Bence.

I suggest that Affcom rethink its approach: there's no good reason to
assume that the order of candidacy has anything to do with selection,
particularly if it goes to a second list, and your nominating
subcommittee all has access.  It is always a bad idea for only one person
to manage anything that results in formal appointments.  Accountability is
important here.  I don't think it will harm your process whatsoever to get
a mailing list set up by the weekend, since self-nominations do not close
until September 30. Indeed, I'm not entirely clear why this isn't happening
onwiki, but I suppose there may be a reason for that which doesn't come
through in the original email.

Risker/Anne




On 4 September 2014 15:34, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:

 Thank you for the suggestion, Anne!

 As some background, the reason the private e-mail address is used instead
 of the AffCom mailing list is that  it allows the incoming applications to
 be looked at all at the same time - thus not giving anyone an advantage or
 disadvantage based on the time they apply  especially if there are any
 outgoing AffCom members who are reapplying for another term (which may not
 be relevant this time around, I am not sure, but we tend to rely on
 existing processes and improve on them iteratively where we can based on
 suggestions like yours).

 Having a @wikimedia.org address would be cool, but they are not allocated
 to individual volunteers - we did ask a while ago. AffCom itself does have
 a mailing list on a wikimedia server, which we are not using for this
 purpose.Setting up a separate mailing list for the purpose might be
 something to consider next year.

 Hope this helps.

 Best regards,
 Bence
 (A member of AffCom, with some experience on how this process runs, but
 this is my personal view)


 On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 8:50 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:

  A gmail address?
 
  I am sure if you ask nicely the committee can be granted a wikimedia.org
  email address through Mailman that will allow more than one person to
  handle applications. It could probably be done pretty quickly.
 
  Risker/Anne
 
 
  On 4 September 2014 14:35, Carlos M. Colina ma...@wikimedia.org.ve
  wrote:
 
   Dear all,
  
   Please note that, due a technical issue, direct your emails to
   salvador1...@gmail.com instead.
  
   Kindly apologize for the inconvenience.
  
   Regards,
   Carlos
  
  
   Sent from Samsung Mobile
  
    Original message 
   From: Carlos M. Colina ma...@wikimedia.org.ve
   Date: 03/09/2014  19:58  (GMT+02:00)
   To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org,Wikimedia Chapters general
   discussions chapt...@wikimedia.ch
   Subject: [Wikimedia-l] AffCom - Call for candidates 2015
  
   (in the case you received it already, sorry for re-sending it, my
Thunderbird crashed just as I clicked the send button :-( )
  
   Dear all, The Affiliations Committee [1], the committee that is
   responsible for guiding volunteers in establishing Chapters, User
 Groups
   and Thematic Organizations and approving them when they are ready is
   looking for new members.
  
   The main focus of the AffCom is to guide groups of volunteers in
 forming
   affiliates. We make sure that the groups are large enough to be viable
  (and
   advise them on how to get bigger), review bylaws for compliance
   with the requirements and best practices, and advise the Board of the
   Wikimedia Foundation on issues connected to Chapters, Thematic
   Organizations and User Groups.
  
   This requires communication with volunteers all over the World,
   negotiating skills and cultural sensitivity and the ability to
 understand
   legal texts. We try to get a healthy mix of different skill sets in our
   members.
  
   The key skills/experience that we are looking for in candidate members,
   are typically the following:
  
 * Excitement by the challenge of helping to empower groups of
   volunteers worldwide
 * Willingness to process applications through a set, perhaps
   bureaucratic process
 * Readiness to participate in (movement roles) political discussions
   on the role and future of affiliates, models of affiliations, and
   similar questions
 * 5 hours per week availability [2], and the time to participate in a
   monthly ~2 hour voice/video meeting
 * International orientation
 * Very good communication skills in English
 * Ability to work and communicate with other languages and cultures
 * Strong understanding of the structure and work of affiliates and
 the
   WMF
 * Knowledge of different legal systems; experience in community
   building and organising is a plus
 * Effective communication skills in other languages are a major plus
 * Experience with or in an active affiliate is a major plus
 * Willingness to use full (real) name in committee activities
   (including reaching out

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

2014-09-01 Thread Risker
Wasn't the creation of the DRAFT namespace at least in part a response to
concerns raised at ACTRIAL, in particular new, poorly developed articles
showing up in mainspace?

Risker/Anne


On 1 September 2014 19:08, Joe Decker joedec...@gmail.com wrote:

 This, to the best of my knowledge, represents the entirety of the WMF's
 response to ACTRIAL.  To the extent that there was additional feedback
 given, it was not given at WP:ACTRIAL, nor any other venue I am aware of.

 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30208

 --Joe


 On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 3:44 PM, Todd Allen toddmal...@gmail.com wrote:

  That's the issue I cited above. You haven't heard more complaints,
 because
  the complaint was pointless the first time and took a massive effort to
  produce.
 
  The underlying issue isn't fixed. We're still drowning in crap and spam
  from people who never have the slightest intent of editing helpfully, and
  those who are newbies who genuinely want to help but need guidance get
  caught in the crossfire aimed at the vandals and spammers. It is
 relatively
  rare that when a genuinely new editor's first edit is a creation, it is
 the
  creation of an appropriate article on a workable subject, and that's
  normally more by dumb luck than them having actual knowledge that they
  should do it.
 
  So, consider that a complaint. The proposed fix didn't work, and most
  people at the time didn't figure it would work, but it was clearly the
 best
  we were going to get.
 
 
  On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 4:20 PM, Philippe Beaudette 
  pbeaude...@wikimedia.org
   wrote:
 
  
  
  
On Sep 1, 2014, at 8:45 AM, Todd Allen toddmal...@gmail.com wrote:
   
That's contradicted by, among other things, ACTRIAL as mentioned
 above.
   The
en.wp community came to a clear consensus for a major change, and the
  WMF
shrugged and said Nah, rather not.
  
   That's... Not exactly what I remember happening there. What I remember
  was
   that a pretty good number (~500) of enwiki community members came
  together
   and agreed on a problem, and one plan for how to  fix it and asked the
  WMF
   to implement it. The WMF evaluated it, and saw a threat to a basic
  project
   value. WMF then asked what's the problem you're actually trying to
   solve?, and proposed and built a set of tools to directly address that
   problem without compromising the core value of openness. And it seems
 to
   have worked out pretty well because I haven't heard a ton of complaints
   about that problem since.
  
   __
   Philippe Beaudette
   Director, Community Advocacy
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 Joe Decker
 www.joedecker.net
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The reader, who doesn't exist

2014-08-24 Thread Risker
Given the mission is sharing information, I'd suggest that if we have a 95%
drop in readership, we're failing the mission.  Donations are only a means
to an end.

Risker/Anne


On 24 August 2014 22:57, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:

 Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
 First, let's make one thing clear: the reader doesn't exist; it's just a
 rhetorical trick, and a very dangerous one. For more:
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stupidity_of_the_reader

 This essay looks fascinating. I hope to read it soon.

 Page views, however brute a concept, exist; and I think they're telling
 us we do have a readership problem. For it.wiki, in the last year I see
 a suspiciously similar decrease in desktop pageviews and editing
 activity (possibly around –20 %). It would *seem* that every user
 converted to the mobile site is a step towards extinction of the wiki.
 Long story:
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/9380388
The page above is just a collection of pointers that I probably
 won't
 be able to pursue in the coming months, to study an unprecedented
 collapse of editing activity and active editors on it.wiki. However,
 there /are/ several things worth looking into and we do have a huge
 problem (or several).

 I don't know enough about the Italian Wikipedia to comment on it
 specifically. But generally I think it's important to re-emphasize that
 correlation and causation are distinct, as are readership and editorship
 rates. The two items of each set can be interrelated or connected
 sometimes, of course, but we need to make sure we're drawing accurate and
 appropriate conclusions.

 At https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62811#c10 Jared
 Zimmerman writes, We have a reader decline, its backed by hard numbers,
 any creative solution for bringing more readers and contributors into the
 project should be seriously discussed without being dismissed out of
 hand. There's substantial discussion in the subsequent comments.

 Let's temporarily accept the premise that pageviews suddenly drop from 20
 billion per month to 1 billion per month. The easy argument is that we'd
 save a lot of money on hosting. But unlike most of the Internet, Wikipedia
 doesn't rely on advertising. Why does it matter how popular we are? Does it
 affect donation rates? Does it affect editorship rates? I'm not sure how
 much of this we know. It's increasingly clear that much of the rest of the
 Internet _is_ different: it doesn't require much thought of participants,
 it's user-focused, and it's built on the idea of selling (to) people. This
 difference in how we want to treat users, as collaborators and colleagues,
 rather than as clients or customers, will permeate the site design and
 user experience and that's okay.

 If the number of pageviews suddenly drops, for whatever reason, what
 happens next? The most likely worst case scenario seems to be a
 reduction in annual donations, which results in a smaller staff size
 (sometimes referred to as trimming the fat or optimizing). There's a
 lot of talk lately about the imperiled future, but we could end up with a
 smaller, more decentralized Wikimedia Foundation staff in what some would
 consider one of the least desirable outcomes. Eh.

 MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Specifying office action in edit summary?

2014-08-22 Thread Risker
I think the problem is that your question does not really relate to the
subject line, Svetlana.  Office actions are specifically directed at
content (e.g., removal of specific content for copyvio reasons or court
orders).  Office actions are almost never undertaken by Engineering staff;
it's usually Legal  Community Advocacy staff, or rarely another
administrative staff member.

What you are talking about is something that has only been done very
occasionally over the years by Engineering/Operations staff/sysadmins.
There has been no designated manner in which those actions should be
flagged.  One must remember that until the last few years, the majority of
individuals who could have taken (and in some cases, did take) such serious
action were volunteer sysadmins, so labeling it a WMF action would not
have been correct.  We also have to remember that many of the systems that
developers and engineers work with on a daily basis do not permit edit
summaries, so adding what for many of us is an automatic and routine
comment is for some of them a rare and unusual event.  (Perhaps they should
set their work account preferences to be reminded to include an edit
summary?)


Risker/Anne


On 22 August 2014 11:50, svetlana svetl...@fastmail.com.au wrote:

 Hi all,

 I'm sorry to repeat, but I would like to hear some thoughts on this
 question. Also added a clarification for one of the lines.

 On Thu, 21 Aug 2014, at 22:26, svetlana wrote:
 
  Hi all.
 
  I understand the Engineering folks used superprotect instead of
 /undoing/ the edit and adding 'This is a WMF action.' in edit summary.
 Could I please be enlightened on the reasoning behind that?
 
  I suppose people could go and try editing other JS pages and cause
 havoc, but that's still possible where superprotect only affects a single
 page and not a namespace. Or can entire namespaces be protected and this
 new user right was intended to be able to prevent that easily?

 This is worded poorly, I mean - or can entire namespaces be protected and
 the new user right was intended as a means to easily revoke mediawiki:*
 access?

 
  Svetlana.

 svetlana

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The reader, who doesn't exist

2014-08-21 Thread Risker
On 21 August 2014 05:31, Strainu strain...@gmail.com wrote:

 2014-08-21 9:30 GMT+03:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com:
 It would *seem* that every user
  converted to the mobile site is a step towards extinction of the wiki.


 That is an excellent point Frederico. In addition to the inherent
 difficulties of editing on small screen, especially large articles and
 the we know better approach discussed in detail in the last weeks,
 there is also the problem of navigating between articles - the mobile
 website arbitrarily skips some elements visible on desktop, such as
 navboxes and significantly alter some infoboxes because it doesn't
 look good. This makes it difficult to just browse the Wikipedia (thus
 finding mistakes that you might want to correct) and encourages
 searching for the information, which means going right on target

 Hopefully the future announced at Wikimania, no more mobile team, but
 mobile in every team will solve some of these problems. It's just a
 matter of when will this future be.



Well, now.  Here's a classic example of what is sometimes called a first
world problem.  I know that, even on desktops, the more infoboxes and
navboxes and succession boxes on an article (regardless of article length),
the longer it takes to load.  On a slower desktop collection, some really
large, complex articles sometimes time out.

I went to look at some of those same articles using my smartphone with the
desktop option turned on.  Many of them timed out without fully loading;
others took several minutes. There was a very, very noticeable difference
in load time between the mobile view and the desktop view.  And that was in
North America with fast, very good connection on an up-to-date phone. Many
of our editors and readers don't have this kind of infrastructure available
to them.

So - we know there is a definite cost to having all these navigation aids
in articles.  We need to justify their use, instead of simply adding them
by reflex.  So here is where analytics teams can really be useful:  tell us
whether or not these navboxes are actually being used to go to other
articles.  If they're widely used to leap to the next article, then we need
to find ways to make them more efficient so that they're suitable for
mobile devices.  If they're hardly ever being used, we need to reconsider
their existence. Perhaps this becomes some sort of meta data tab from
articles.  The current format isn't sustainable, though.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The reader, who doesn't exist

2014-08-21 Thread Risker
On 21 August 2014 09:18, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru wrote:

 On 21.08.2014 14:26, Risker wrote:

 On 21 August 2014 05:31, Strainu strain...@gmail.com wrote:

  ...


 I went to look at some of those same articles using my smartphone with the
 desktop option turned on.  Many of them timed out without fully loading;
 others took several minutes. There was a very, very noticeable difference
 in load time between the mobile view and the desktop view.  And that was
 in
 North America with fast, very good connection on an up-to-date phone. Many
 of our editors and readers don't have this kind of infrastructure
 available
 to them.

 So - we know there is a definite cost to having all these navigation
 aids
 in articles.  We need to justify their use, instead of simply adding them
 by reflex.  So here is where analytics teams can really be useful:  tell
 us
 whether or not these navboxes are actually being used to go to other
 articles.  If they're widely used to leap to the next article, then we
 need
 to find ways to make them more efficient so that they're suitable for
 mobile devices.  If they're hardly ever being used, we need to reconsider
 their existence. Perhaps this becomes some sort of meta data tab from
 articles.  The current format isn't sustainable, though.

 Risker/Anne
 ___


 For me the conclusion would be not that we should drop them altogether in
 the mobile version (most of them are useful navigation means after all) but
 that the mobile version should be improved to parse them and to present
 them as a piece of plain text, not as a template.


Many of these templates have over 100 links in them; a surprisingly large
number have subtemplates built into them.  I'm having a hard time seeing
how adding all those links at the bottom of an article is actually going to
help that much. Unless we have some evidence to confirm this information is
actually useful to readers -seriously, this is a community-designed feature
targeted at readers as opposed to editors - it's probably time to rethink
what indirectly related information on our article pages is made routinely
available.  We want people to use our information, not give up because it
takes too long to load.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New movement org?

2014-08-21 Thread Risker
On 21 August 2014 12:21, James Forrester jdforres...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 21 August 2014 09:13, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote:

  Hi Richard, any links to where you found this information?
 


 ​The ever-excellent OpenCorporates has its entry:

 https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_mi/71656Y

 … leading to the official US state of Michigan's entry:

 http://www.dleg.state.mi.us/bcs_corp/dt_corp.asp?id_nbr=71656Y

 No information about the officers, sadly, just a filing office.


Incorporation documents here:
http://www.dleg.state.mi.us/bcs_corp/image.asp?FILE_TYPE=ELFFILE_NAME=D201408\2014224\E0091608.TIF

President:  Scott Perry
Vice President:  Ann Perry
Secretary:  Danielle Lewis

Someone else can figure out how to copy/paste.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Superprotect user right, Coming to a wiki near you

2014-08-18 Thread Risker
On 18 August 2014 03:53, Pete Forsyth petefors...@gmail.com wrote:

 Risker, some replies below:

 snip


 As I stated in my response, although the WMF failed to predict that this
would be a hot issue, I predicted it clearly in February, and so did
another longtime community member. (If anybody wants to see that other
piece, let me know -- I now have permission to share it, actually an IRC
log, not an email.)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:
LilaTretikovdiff=9512960oldid=9512915

(and the reference link:  https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?diff=907392
)

Wow, Pete.  You predict something will be rejected by the community, and
identify a list of concerns.  Several months later, you apply the code that
applies a community rejection.  This brings the term self-fulfilling
prophecy to a whole new level.  Just wow.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Superprotect user right, Coming to a wiki near you

2014-08-17 Thread Risker
Well, hold on here.


On 17 August 2014 19:55, Pete Forsyth petefors...@gmail.com wrote:

 I think it is also a problem to look at this in terms of bugs. I don't
 think you can retrofit good design into something that has a variety of
 substantial problems, by merely squashing bugs. You might say that is the
 wiki way, but it is widely known that some tasks are better suited than
 others to ad hoc collaborative processes.



Given the current use of bugzilla, which doesn't limit itself to bugs but
also feature requests and enhancements over the base functionality, calling
everything reported using bugzilla a bug is incorrect and inappropriate.



 In this case, we have a broad range of issues:
 * does it let the reader know they can help improve the page or upload
 another photo


The Commons/File pages don't do that, why would you expect this software to
do it?


 * does it reflect copyright holders' licenses accurately and effectively


Agree this is important.  Do you have any evidence that it is any less
accurate than the Commons/File pages?


 * does it adequately respect the privacy of the subjects of photos


The mere fact of the image being used on an article anywhere on a Wikimedia
project suggests that this problem is in the actual usage, not in the
software being used to display more information and detail in the image.
If you believe that this is a serious issue, then it should be addressed
where 100% of readers can see it, not in a subpage viewed only by the
limited number of readers who click on the image. It's not a Media Viewer
problem, it's an image usage problem.


 * does it reflect a look and feel that we feel OK about and is consistent
 with the rest of the software
 etc. etc.


What problems are you seeing here?  Spell it out, rather than making vague
suggestions that there is an issue.




 Fixing one bug may well lead to other bugs, or negatively impact those
 already reported. What is needed, I believe, is a well-facilitated process
 to identify the problems and the best solutions. This is not easy to do and
 takes time. But I think the WMF has (not for lack of trying) managed to do
 a very bad job of that with this software product, and with many software
 products in the last few years. That does not mean it is impossible to do
 it that way, only that those specific efforts were insufficient.



Why is this a Media Viewer issue?  This is a problem for all types of
software on all types of platforms, and is a challenge even for IT
departments hundreds of times the size of the WMF.  I cannot think of any
software I have used in the last 20 years that has not had bugs or
unsatisfactory UI elements or seems to miss a functionality I'd like to
have.  It is unreasonable to hold a comparatively very small organization
to a standard that can't even be met by IT giants.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Superprotect user right, Coming to a wiki near you

2014-08-17 Thread Risker
On 17 August 2014 20:25, Pete Forsyth petefors...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 5:12 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:

  Well, hold on here.
 
 
  On 17 August 2014 19:55, Pete Forsyth petefors...@gmail.com wrote:
 
   I think it is also a problem to look at this in terms of bugs. I
 don't
   think you can retrofit good design into something that has a variety of
   substantial problems, by merely squashing bugs. You might say that is
  the
   wiki way, but it is widely known that some tasks are better suited than
   others to ad hoc collaborative processes.
  
 
 
  Given the current use of bugzilla, which doesn't limit itself to bugs but
  also feature requests and enhancements over the base functionality,
 calling
  everything reported using bugzilla a bug is incorrect and
 inappropriate.
 

 While this is true, I have yet to see bugzilla used as a platform for a
 design process for Media Viewer, and I don't think I would recommend it.
 It's *possible* to use it as a platform for more than mere bugs, and it has
 been done before; but I don't think tha'ts what's going on here, or should
 go on here.


Perhaps you should get to know a bit more about bugzilla and its current
usage; of the 104 current reports on Multimedia Viewer, 16 are enhancements
and several others that are currently listed as bugs of varying
importance/urgency are features that don't appear to exist in the
standard format for viewing images or are so badly designed in the File
pages that they're almost impossible to call acceptable in that format,
either.

Someone who is better able to describe the developer functions could better
describe the planned changes from the use of Bugzilla to Phabricator, which
is a more flexible platform that (I understand) is intended to consolidate
several different design/development/improvement/bug reporting platforms
currently in use.  But right now, bugzilla is at least in some cases used
as a platform for the design process of just about everything to do with
MediaWiki, its extensions, and all the other platforms that are in
use/developed by WMF.

Every single type of software used on Wikimedia project sites, as well as
software for other features provided by the WMF, has bugzilla reports.
There are thousands for MediaWiki, the core software of the project.  We
haven't thrown in the towel on it just because it's got lots of bugzilla
reports.




   In this case, we have a broad range of issues:
   * does it let the reader know they can help improve the page or upload
   another photo
  
 
  The Commons/File pages don't do that, why would you expect this software
 to
  do it?
 

 The Commons/File page DOES do that, to the extent that readers have some
 familiarity with MediaWiki software and how to find the Edit button. You
 may not believe that is significant, but I encounter people on an almost
 daily basis who are mystified by Wikipedia, but at least have a basic
 understanding what the edit button does, or could allow them to do. It
 may not be all readers or even a majority, but it is my very strong belief
 -- rooted, perhaps not in rigorous scientific analysis, but in my very
 active engagement with non-Wikipedias since 2006 -- that it's the pool of
 people who tend to replenish our declining editor pool. A great many of the
 100+ students who signed up for the 4 rounds of my online course on editing
 Wikipedia, for instance, had accounts that were several years old, but only
 had a dozen or so edits.


I'm sorry.  How, exactly, do you envision a new editor or reader improving
file pages? There's not very much that can be edited there that isn't going
to cause more problems than it solves. Should they modify the author?
Change the license?   Add (potentially non-existent) categories?  When the
chances of reversion are nearly 100%, it's not necessarily a net positive
to make a big deal about the existence of an edit button.  Media pages
are not really comparable to (written) content pages. I'd rank file pages
as possibly the worst place to suggest that new editors just jump in, with
the possible exception of templates.

snip

 * does it adequately respect the privacy of the subjects of photos
 

 The mere fact of the image being used on an article anywhere on a
Wikimedia
 project suggests that this problem is in the actual usage, not in the
 software being used to display more information and detail in the image.
 If you believe that this is a serious issue, then it should be addressed
 where 100% of readers can see it, not in a subpage viewed only by the
 limited number of readers who click on the image. It's not a Media Viewer
 problem, it's an image usage problem.


This point has a lot of nuance in it, and I'm happy to discuss it, but not
 here and now. If you want to dig into it, I suggest this as a venue:
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Consent -- if you leave a
 note there, please {{ping|Peteforsyth}} so I can find it.


I am at a loss as to why

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

2014-08-05 Thread Risker
On 5 August 2014 12:05, Gryllida gryll...@fastmail.fm wrote:

 On Tue, 5 Aug 2014, at 20:48, Fæ wrote:
  On 5 August 2014 11:33, Gryllida gryll...@fastmail.fm wrote:
   Hi all.
  
   WMF Engineering is currently composed of individual teams as
 documented at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering .
 These teams look after the software that faces us everyday, and often work
 together.
  
   Could we please have some more people (potentially a dedicated
 ‘community’ team) who could do these things:
   - encourage feedback by absolutely /anyone/ about the next features
 they'd like,
   - run programming and documentation activities requested (or started)
 by community [there would be a lot of small projects, unlike the big ones
 the current Teams are working on],
   - encourage localising documentation for, and centralising the
 location of, all community-developed programming work,
   - raise awareness of community development efforts across all
 Wikimedia projects,
   - actively encourage members of community become MediaWiki and Gadgets
 hackers in the Free Software philosophy?
  
   This would be, in my view, a relatively small, collaboration-type team
 (with just half a handful of people for timezone coverage for IRC support).
  
   Open to brainstorming and suggestions. I would compile thoughts into a
 wiki page afterwards to continue thinking on the idea.
 
  The roles you describe seem to have a lot of overlap with what we
  might expect WMF volunteer coordinators / WMF community liaison
  employees to be busy with. Compare with:
  *
 http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Volunteer_Development_Coordinator
  * http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Community_Liaison
 
  Do you intend this to be an unpaid team of volunteers doing these
  tasks, or a end user group (in the Agile sense) that would be
  supported by employees and may themselves be paid for some activities?
 
  Fae

 Both please? [This is a question! This is a brainstorming thread.]

 Some part of such group of people could be paid (like the job openings you
 linked), and a very vast part could be volunteer and supported by the said
 employees (and documentation).



You mean like the tech ambassadors?
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/Ambassadors



One thing to keep in mind is that English Wikipedia is only one of hundreds
of projects. The technology and engineering groups generally work at a
global level because they affect all projects; it's rare that they're doing
something for one project only.

There are lots of opportunities for community members to interact and to
test software in advance (the beta preferences are but one of them) - but
when discussing a global project or process or software, the best place to
discuss is rarely going to be a single page on a single non-global project.

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

2014-08-02 Thread Risker
I'm not sure you're correct about what is being disappeared, Fae.  I
believe that the Guardian is referring to an article of theirs that is now
not seen in Google search results for certain terms.  The article makes it
pretty clear that The Guardian does not known which article is involved.

Risker/Anne




On 2 August 2014 23:27, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote:

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

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

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

 Fae
 --
 fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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

2014-08-02 Thread Risker
Well, Fae, since the only place that Adam Osborne is mentioned in Wikipedia
is as the son of his father, and it does not mention anything more than his
name, I am pretty certain that you're mistaken.  The exact quote from the
Guardian is:


Google has already begun to implement the ruling, with tens of thousands
 of links removed from its European search results to sites ranging from the
 BBC to the *Daily Express*. Among the data now hidden from Google is an
 article about the 2009 Muslim conversion of Adam Osborne, brother of the
 chancellor, George Osborne.


Nothing in that quote says that it is a Wikipedia article that is
hidden.


Risker/Anne

On 3 August 2014 00:12, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote:

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

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

 Wikipedia cannot be misread as the Guardian newspaper.

 Fae
 --
 fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community RfCs about MediaViewer

2014-07-14 Thread Risker
On 14 July 2014 09:55, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com wrote:

 On 7/14/2014 4:43 AM, Andrew Gray wrote:

 I've been doing some thinking about this over the past year or so,
 bubbling away in the back of my mind, after a talk at last Wikimania -
 would there be any interest/usefulness if I sat down and tried to dump
 it into a how to run a large project RFC, and what doesn't work page
 somewhere?

 There certainly would be usefulness, so I hope there would be equivalent
 interest. I'd be interested in seeing it, at any rate.



Me too, Andrew.  I think we actually do need some sort of checklist or
guidance document on how to deal with these sorts of issues.  In this
particular case, it had the added element of affecting readers possibly
even more so than editors, so some thoughts on how to involve
readers in discussions that affect their usage of the site would be good.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community RfCs about MediaViewer

2014-07-11 Thread Risker
While I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, Todd, there were 14,681
users on English Wikipedia alone who had enabled MediaViewer using the Beta
Features preference before it became the default.  That's a huge number of
people who were all using it every time they clicked on an image in the
weeks and months beforehand, and every one of them had to make a conscious
decision to turn it on.  The 64 users who want it disabled as default pale
in comparison to the number of people who were actively using it
beforehand.

I've asked for some better statistical information because I don't think
the Limn graphs that have been referred to in the discussion of the RFC are
really accurate; it's my understanding that about 1600 registered accounts
have opted out of MV in total (this should be a linear graph of the
cumulative total, not a daily number of people who opted out graph which
is what we seem to see now).  As well, somewhere in the neighbourhood of
500 logged out users a day are disabling it - this needs to be a daily
number, not a cumulative one, because logged-out disabling is linked to the
individual browser session; those who aren't logged in don't have the
chance to set preferences.  There are between 4 and 5 *million* clicks on
image thumbnails every day on enwiki, with only around 500 of those viewing
the images disabling the MediaViewer (excluding logged-in users who have
turned it off in their preferences).

I suspect that at the end of the day, MediaViewer is going to be more like
the switch to Vector skin: there will be plenty of people who choose to
disable for reasons that work for them, but the overwhelming majority of
users will be entirely fine with the default.   It's having nowhere near
the impact that VisualEditor had when first enabled as default; in the
first 48 hours there were hundreds of how do you turn this off queries
and complaints about functionality, not to mention pretty much automatic
reverting of edits done by IPs because there were so many VE-related
problems associated with them.  We're not at that level at all here.  I
agree with John Vandenberg's comments that a clear roadmap and prioritized
list of next steps is probably required for MediaViewer.

Risker/Anne






On 11 July 2014 00:56, Todd Allen toddmal...@gmail.com wrote:

 If you don't want to do small opt-in trials, release software in a fully
 production-ready and usable state. What's getting released here is barely
 ready for beta. It's buggy, it's full of unexpected UX issues, it's not
 ready to go live on one of the top 10 websites in the world. It's got to be
 in really good shape to get there.

 Until software is actually ready for widescale use, small and very limited
 beta tests are exactly the way to go, followed by maybe slightly larger UAT
 pools. Yeah, that takes longer and requires actual work to find willing
 testers. Quit taking shortcuts through your volunteers.


 On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 10:40 PM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org
 wrote:

  Hey guys,
 
  I use MediaViewer, I like it, and I am happy to trust the WMF product
 team
  to build stuff. I didn't know about the RFC, but even if I had I would've
  been unlikely to have participated, because I don't think small opt-in
  discussions are the best way to do product development -- certainly not
 at
  the scale of Wikipedia.
 
  I think we should aim on this list to be modest rather than overreaching
 in
  terms of what we claim to know, and who we imply we're representing. It's
  probably best to be clear --both in the mails we write and in our own
 heads
  privately-- that what's happening here is a handful of people talking on
 a
  mailing list. We can represent our own opinions, and like David Gerard we
  can talk anecdotally about what our friends tell us. But I don't like it
  when people here seem to claim to speak on behalf of editors, or users,
 or
  readers, or the community. It strikes me as hubristic.
 
  Thanks,
  Sue
  On 10 Jul 2014 16:13, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:
 
   Erik Moeller wrote:
   In this case, we will keep the feature enabled by default (it's easy
   to turn off, both for readers and editors), but we'll continue to
   improve it based on community feedback (as has already happened in the
   last few weeks).
  
   Thanks for the reply. :-)
  
   If your feature development model seemingly requires forcing features
 on
   users, it's probably safe to say that it's broken. If you're building
  cool
   new features, they will ideally be uncontroversial and users will
  actively
   want to enable them and eventually have them enabled by default. Many
 new
   features (e.g., the improved search backend) are deployed fairly
  regularly
   without fanfare or objection. But I see a common thread among
  unsuccessful
   deployments of features such as ArticleFeedbackv5, VisualEditor, and
   MediaViewer. Some of it is the people involved, of course, but the
 larger
   pattern is a fault in the process, I think. I

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community RfCs about MediaViewer

2014-07-11 Thread Risker
There's a easy, clearly accessible, one-click option for disabling
MediaViewer, Todd.  Scroll to the bottom of the screen.  Click disable.
Done - it automatically changes your preference.

Risker/Anne


On 11 July 2014 02:44, Todd Allen toddmal...@gmail.com wrote:

 Risker,

 I'm actually not going to disagree with you in principle. I ultimately see
 Media Viewer being used by a good number of users, and said as much from
 the start. But I also warned that a bulldozer approach was going to cause
 massive blowback, especially after the previous debacles (VE and ACTRIAL
 come to mind for me). And well, here we are, with another repeat of the VE
 situation. That greatly eroded trust in WMF, especially its dev teams and
 PMs, and that's nowhere even close to rebuilt yet. Now that lack of trust
 is being confirmed and entrenched.

 WMF needs to step very lightly with deployments that will affect editors,
 and treat the volunteer community as an ally rather than adversary. If that
 doesn't happen, these showdowns will keep happening.

 Part of that is pure arrogance. A significant part of the reason the Vector
 switch worked is because there was an easy, clearly accessible, one-click
 option that said Do not want, disable this!. If that'd been the case
 here, I would have clicked that and forgotten about it. Instead, I had to
 dig for an hour to find how to disable the thing, after being surprised by
 a totally unexpected change. But now we hear things like We made Vector
 opt-out too easy!

 Media Viewer probably does have its place, once it is fully functional and
 free of major bugs. I might even turn it on at that point. But shoving it
 down people's throats will only serve to further place the WMF's flagship
 project and the WMF at odds. That is not, I can't imagine, a desirable
 situation by anyone's estimation. WMF needs a far better deployment
 strategy than YOU ARE GETTING IT, LIKE IT OR NOT, AND THAT IS
 FINAL! If the WMF's strategy for when the core community and
 dev team disagree is We're right, you're wrong, pipe down, these
 situations will increase in frequency and intensity. I want to stop that
 before it reaches a real boiling point, and it could've this time if
 someone had actually gotten desysopped.


 On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 12:21 AM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:

  While I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, Todd, there were 14,681
  users on English Wikipedia alone who had enabled MediaViewer using the
 Beta
  Features preference before it became the default.  That's a huge number
 of
  people who were all using it every time they clicked on an image in the
  weeks and months beforehand, and every one of them had to make a
 conscious
  decision to turn it on.  The 64 users who want it disabled as default
 pale
  in comparison to the number of people who were actively using it
  beforehand.
 
  I've asked for some better statistical information because I don't think
  the Limn graphs that have been referred to in the discussion of the RFC
 are
  really accurate; it's my understanding that about 1600 registered
 accounts
  have opted out of MV in total (this should be a linear graph of the
  cumulative total, not a daily number of people who opted out graph
 which
  is what we seem to see now).  As well, somewhere in the neighbourhood of
  500 logged out users a day are disabling it - this needs to be a daily
  number, not a cumulative one, because logged-out disabling is linked to
 the
  individual browser session; those who aren't logged in don't have the
  chance to set preferences.  There are between 4 and 5 *million* clicks on
  image thumbnails every day on enwiki, with only around 500 of those
 viewing
  the images disabling the MediaViewer (excluding logged-in users who have
  turned it off in their preferences).
 
  I suspect that at the end of the day, MediaViewer is going to be more
 like
  the switch to Vector skin: there will be plenty of people who choose to
  disable for reasons that work for them, but the overwhelming majority of
  users will be entirely fine with the default.   It's having nowhere near
  the impact that VisualEditor had when first enabled as default; in the
  first 48 hours there were hundreds of how do you turn this off queries
  and complaints about functionality, not to mention pretty much automatic
  reverting of edits done by IPs because there were so many VE-related
  problems associated with them.  We're not at that level at all here.  I
  agree with John Vandenberg's comments that a clear roadmap and
 prioritized
  list of next steps is probably required for MediaViewer.
 
  Risker/Anne
 
 
 
 
 
 
  On 11 July 2014 00:56, Todd Allen toddmal...@gmail.com wrote:
 
   If you don't want to do small opt-in trials, release software in a
 fully
   production-ready and usable state. What's getting released here is
 barely
   ready for beta. It's buggy, it's full of unexpected UX issues, it's not
   ready to go live on one of the top

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

2014-07-11 Thread Risker
Actually, Trillium Corsage, I'd say that's a reason for banning you again.
It's a very serious allegation you're implying about a longstanding member
of our community.

Risker


On 11 July 2014 14:24, Trillium Corsage trillium2...@yandex.com wrote:

 Hi Fae,

 I was banned from the list by Austin Hair. I had contributed in my view a
 lot of good and polite stuff that was reasonably reasoned, but he banned me
 on the basis of a 17-word parenthetical phrase regarding arbitrator
 Timotheus Canens. I said that I had read it claimed that he was connected
 to Chinese military intelligence. Is that a reason to ban me? I emailed
 him, and then repeat emailed him to talk to me about it. I was met by
 silence.

 I wasn't going to get upset about it, and didn't. I figure Austin just
 another type who got moderator privilege on a mailing list. It's not even
 worth it to criticize him, but I guess I'll notice he banned me within
 minutes, and he hasn't posted to the list anything since, and I don't
 recall him ever contributing a email of substantive opinion since I joined
 the list.

 I logged on here today with the aim of unsubscribing to the list, but I'll
 keep reading long enough to see if your below email asking for transparency
 on the list goes anywhere. Good luck.

 Trillium Corsage

 11.07.2014, 11:28, Fæ fae...@gmail.com:
  Hi,
 
  I would like to propose that this list have a published process for
  post moderation, banning and appeals. Perhaps a page on meta would be
  a good way to propose and discuss a policy? I would be happy to kick
  off a draft.
 
  This list has a defined scope at
  https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l which
  explains who the 3 list admins are, but no more than that. There is no
  system of appeals, no expected time limits on bans or moderation, nor
  an explanation of the 30 posts per month behavioural norm that
  sometimes applies to this list. Neither is there any explanation of
  what is expected of list admins, such as whether there is an
  obligation to explain to someone who finds themselves subject to
  moderation or a ban, as to why this has happened and what they ought
  to do in order to become un-banned or un-moderated.
 
  I believe this would help list users better understand what is
  expected of them when they post here and it may give an opportunity to
  review the transparency of list administration, such as the option of
  publishing a list of active moderated accounts and possibly a list of
  indefinitely banned accounts where these were for behaviour on the
  list (as opposed to content-free spamming etc.)
 
  I see no down side to explaining policy as openly as possible. Thoughts?
 
  Fae
  --
  fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
  (P.S. I am active on the English Wikipedia where I have a GA on the
  go, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fae. Sorry to disappoint,
  but reports of my retirement are premature.)
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Interference in workshop for professors

2014-07-03 Thread Risker
What project(s) are you working on?

Risker


On 3 July 2014 18:12, Leigh Thelmadatter osama...@hotmail.com wrote:

 I am, at this moment, trying to give a workshop on Wikipedia to professors
 and they are having their own user pages being speedily deleted by
  Tarawa1943   and Taichi   We have sent polite messages to them and
 bibliotecarios (admins) but the deletions continue.  Suggestions
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open Letter to Lila Regarding Access to Non-Public Information Policy

2014-06-29 Thread Risker
Okay, that's enough, Trilliium.  You've now made a personal attack against
an identifiable individual based on gossip and rumour.

Stop.

Risker


On 29 June 2014 10:18, Trillium Corsage trillium2...@yandex.com wrote:

 Pine,

 An analogous argument to the one you're making is: someone who intends to
 rob your home will be able to get in one way or other, so why bother
 locking the doors when you go out. This is not a good argument.

 You're calling into question the reliability of every identification
 document copy ever presented to the WMF by an advanced-rights-seeking
 administrator because a really sophisticated wrongdoer (I dunno, Chinese
 military intelligence, with whom arbitrator Timotheus Canens is said by
 some to be associated?) could make a masterful forgery that beats the
 system. The fact is that 95% of them, I'd suppose, are going to be okay and
 the identification requirement is going to be an effective deterrent to at
 least the casual among the bad apples. And of course, once they've truly
 identified, the personal accountability aspects of it are going to keep in
 line once well-intentioned administrators that might be tempted to go bad
 for some reason.

 Forging identification documents is not impossible is another variation
 of the perfection is not attainable and no policy can be a magical
 solution arguments put forth previously on this mailing list by the WMF's
 deputy general counsel Luis Villa. I've attempted to answer those by
 explaining that you can have a pretty good and effective policy without
 having an infallible one.

 Trillium Corsage

 29.06.2014, 07:32, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com:
  Trillium,
 
  I am having difficulty understanding how retaining copies of possibly
  forged identification documents helps anyone with holding accountable any
  rogue functionary or OTRS user. Can you explain that please? Surely
 someone
  who intends to misuse the tools will be smart enough to forge an
  identification document. Even in the United States, forging
 identification
  documents is not impossible, and the police occasionally catch people
  creating such documents.
 
  Pine
 
  On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 7:42 AM, Trillium Corsage 
 trillium2...@yandex.com
  wrote:
   @Nathan
 
   You said so if you want to argue that such users should be positively
   identified, then please make some practical suggestions (which you have
   conspicuously avoided doing so far). How should identities be
 confirmed? In
   what circumstances should the ID information be disclosed, and to whom?
   What, fundamentally, is the usefulness in collecting this information
 to
   begin with? What are the use cases in which it is necessary?
 
   It would be a good faith evaluation of the copy of the identification
   document provided. There's no need to be quarrelsome about the
 practical
   suggestions I've conspicuously avoided. I did at least suggest a
 secure
   filing cabinet and making use of a removable hard-drive. As to the
 precise
   criteria by which an identification document is deemed good enough,
 I'd
   suppose those would be developed on a good faith basis by the action
   officer. Nobody is depending on perfection by that individual. The
   principle would be that the document appears genuine, has the minimum
   elements settled on by the policy (name, age, address, possibly other
   elements). If the document is in a foreign language, say Swahili, and
 the
   WMF person can't read that, I would think it would be a do the best
 you
   can and file it by respective Wikipedia and username. None of these
 are
   insurmountable obstacles. The answer to this is hard is not well,
 let's
   just stop doing it. The answer is this is important, let's just do
 the
   best we can.
 
   I have called for a basic examination of the document, not any
   verification process. I'd suppose if the document looked suspect in
 some
   way, then a telephone call or follow-up could be done, and that would
 be a
   verification, but I would expect that to be the exception, not the
 rule.
   Again, these details would be settled by the hands-on person, not by me
   attempting to write a ten-page standard operating procedure while
 Nathan
   zings me with what are your specifics on the mailing list.
 
   What is the usefulness in collecting this information to begin with?
   Well, I thought the premise here was obvious. It was obvious enough to
   those that crafted the previous policy in the first place. It
 establishes
   some level of accountability to those individuals accorded access to
 the
   personally-identifying information of editors. Personal accountability
   encourages acting with self-control and restraint. With apologies to
 the
   other person that responded, anonymity encourages a care-free and
   unrestricted handling of that data, and in fact to some of these
 people it
   indeed yields a MMORPG (multimedia online roleplaying game)
 environment,
   and they will do whatever they want, because

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Disclosure amendment to the Terms of Use

2014-06-17 Thread Risker
On 17 June 2014 12:56, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 6:16 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:


  
  
 
  I'm so very disappointed in the Board and the WMF for this TOU amendment,
  which was obviously written to quell concerns about English Wikipedia,
 with
  extremely little consideration of any other project.  Now projects *must*
  formally exempt practices that are perfectly acceptable to them: Commons
 in
  particular, where professionals (who link to their personal for-profit
  websites in their file descriptions) contribute a great deal of the
 highest
  quality work; MediaWiki and all its developer-related sites, where a
 large
  number of our best non-staff developers are financially supported by
 other
  organizations; Wikidata, which is pure data and no benefit can be
 derived;
  Wikisource, where no benefit can be derived; and a multitude of
 Wikipedias
  that have openly welcomed editors who receive financial support or are
 paid
  by various organizations without any issue whatsoever.  It is extremely
  unlikely that it will ever be enforced in the vast majority of WMF
  projects.
 

 I'm sorry you're disappointed. But I don't really follow your reasoning. I
 don't know of many people who get paid *specifically* to upload photos or
 contribute to Wikidata. Perhaps a few cultural professionals who are
 already, in general, following this best practice. And if someone is
 specifically getting paid to upload photos to Commons (or contribute to
 another wiki) it seems, in general, like a good idea to know about it. (If
 a professional photographer that's not doing work for hire chooses to
 donate some of their professional-quality photos to the project -- in their
 spare time, as it were -- I don't think the amendment applies, though I
 leave discussion of that nuance to the legal team and the commons
 community).


The amendment has effect if someone decides to kick up a fuss about it; it
may not result in a determination of paid contributions but will create a
chill directed toward anyone contributing in a like manner.  Substitute the
word photos in the above with words; if someone linking to their
personal site and contributing words from their published sources
(available at a fee, click shop!) is not essentially a self-employed paid
editor, then there is little point in this amendment.





 Anyway, I'm not sure why you are assuming that the amendment will
 automatically be abhorrent to every community that's not English Wikipedia.
 Of course projects do vary based on size and cultural norms and other
 factors; that's why we put in the local exemption clause however.


Editors from several non-English Wikipedia projects stated that their
projects are quite happy to have paid editors. Now in order for those
editors not to violate the TOU, those projects have to go to the work of
developing and approving an alternate policy, or they can just ignore it,
and refuse to enforce the TOU; either way, it's not cost-neutral, and
reduces the respect that the broad community has for the terms of use. I
cannot think of another site anywhere that creates opt-out terms of use.
Can you? Why does this need to be in the terms of use at all?






  It would have been far more beneficial if the WMF and the Board had had
 the
  courage to work directly with the English Wikipedia community to develop
 a
  policy there instead of imposing it on hundreds of projects that not only
  don't care, they will now have to create policies to counteract the
 effects
  of this TOU amendment.  Simply put, Terms of Use should never include
  clauses whose enforcement is undesirable in a significant portion of the
  overall site.
 
  I'll be off now to help Mediawiki create their RFC to essentially void
 this
  decision.


 Of course you should feel free, though I'm not entirely sure how a
 provision that a person should disclose if they are getting paid
 specifically to edit that wiki (in mediawiki's case, it would likely be
 something along the lines of I work for the Foundation or I work for
 someone else who has an interest in developing mediawiki and also
 developing documentation on the wiki) is especially undesirable. I'm
 pretty sure most paid developers do this anyway. (If someone is editing in
 their spare time -- on any project -- and not specifically getting paid for
 that work, the amendment doesn't apply). At any rate, I leave that specific
 discussion to the mediawiki community, where I suspect it's basically a
 non-issue.


There are actually a surprisingly large number of non-WMF employees who are
indeed paid to develop mediawiki.  As well, for the majority of the
developer-related sites/software, they can't include the information on
(non-existent) userpages or edit summaries which are either non-existent or
specifically used for other purposes.

If it's not important enough to be a mandatory requirement for every single
user on every single project, then it really

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Disclosure amendment to the Terms of Use

2014-06-16 Thread Risker
Not quite sure what you're shouting about, Gerard.  The amendment clearly
gives individual projects the right to have an alternative to this
particular section of the terms of use, and that alternative can be either
more strict or less strict.  Seems Commons is considering an alternative
that is very much less strict.

If your point is that terms of use that are specifically intended for one
or a small number of projects, and that are extremely unlikely to be
enforced on most projects, should be addressed on a project-by-project
basis, I tend to agree with you; however, it seems that since the primary
target project couldn't come to consensus on a policy, everyone else gets
stuck with one designed for enwiki.

Risker


On 16 June 2014 13:58, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hoi,
 WOW,
 CAN SOMEONE WHO HAS THE AUTHORITY TO DO SO CLARIFY IF THIS WILL GET A
 HEARING?

 Either it is something that should apply to all projects and consequently
 it is a board issue or it is en.wp only. When it is en.wp only, the policy
 is either not carefully thought through or it should not be a board issue
 in the first place.\

 The time to reconsider the application from a project level did come and
 has gone REALLY
 Thanks,
  GerardM


 On 16 June 2014 19:32, Tomasz W. Kozlowski twkozlow...@gmail.com wrote:

  Stephen LaPorte writes:
 
   We would like to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
 Trustees
   has approved an amendment to Section 4 of the Terms of Use to require
   disclosure of paid editing.
 
  There is a proposal on Wikimedia Commons that aims to opt-out that
 project
  from the amendment, given the huge differences between Commons and the
  English Wikipedia, at which the amendment was targeted.
 
  Feedback and comments are welcome at
  
 
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/Alternative_
  paid_contribution_disclosure_policy
 
  Tomasz
 
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Disclosure amendment to the Terms of Use

2014-06-16 Thread Risker
On 16 June 2014 20:48, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 11:17 AM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:

  Not quite sure what you're shouting about, Gerard.  The amendment clearly
  gives individual projects the right to have an alternative to this
  particular section of the terms of use, and that alternative can be
 either
  more strict or less strict.
 

 That's correct. Members of various projects asked for this kind of
 flexibility in the comment period, and the board agreed that we should add
 the ability for projects to craft alternatives on a per-project basis to
 this amendment.

 In the absence of a local policy, however, the ToU amendment applies to
 every project. While this issue is a concern of many on the English
 Wikipedia, the amendment was not crafted specifically for en:wp; this has
 been an issue across many language communities. The terms of use
 (amendments and all) apply to all of our projects.

 best,
 -- phoebe



I'm so very disappointed in the Board and the WMF for this TOU amendment,
which was obviously written to quell concerns about English Wikipedia, with
extremely little consideration of any other project.  Now projects *must*
formally exempt practices that are perfectly acceptable to them: Commons in
particular, where professionals (who link to their personal for-profit
websites in their file descriptions) contribute a great deal of the highest
quality work; MediaWiki and all its developer-related sites, where a large
number of our best non-staff developers are financially supported by other
organizations; Wikidata, which is pure data and no benefit can be derived;
Wikisource, where no benefit can be derived; and a multitude of Wikipedias
that have openly welcomed editors who receive financial support or are paid
by various organizations without any issue whatsoever.  It is extremely
unlikely that it will ever be enforced in the vast majority of WMF
projects.

And the end result is an amendment that can't effectively be enforced
without violating the internal rules of the amendment. [1] It's virtually
impossible to make a supportable allegation of undeclared paid editing
without violating outing or harassment policies.  Of course, we all know
there will be plenty of unsupported allegations.

It would have been far more beneficial if the WMF and the Board had had the
courage to work directly with the English Wikipedia community to develop a
policy there instead of imposing it on hundreds of projects that not only
don't care, they will now have to create policies to counteract the effects
of this TOU amendment.  Simply put, Terms of Use should never include
clauses whose enforcement is undesirable in a significant portion of the
overall site.

I'll be off now to help Mediawiki create their RFC to essentially void this
decision.

Risker/Anne



[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use/FAQ_on_paid_contributions_without_disclosure#How_does_community_enforcement_of_this_provision_work_with_existing_rules_about_privacy_and_behavior.3F
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why Wil's actions in multiple forums are a matter of significant concern

2014-06-15 Thread Risker
 I'm sorry to say that my reading of your postings to this list in the past
24 hours is that you are making numerous personal attacks and insinuating
yourself into the personal lives of individuals.

I ask you to stop this line of discussion entirely; if you do not do so, I
ask the moderators of this forum to start moderating your posts.

Just stop, Pete. And everyone else, please stop responding and let these
threads die.

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

2014-06-07 Thread Risker
Yep, I'm not happy with that particular quote.  But you know what?  It was
a set-up. Any reporter worth her salt attending a conference like this
knows how to spot the person in the room that will give them the story they
want to tell, and this is what happened here.  She came in looking for the
geeky white guy whose talent at chatting up women was, um, not his strong
suit, and then quoted him instead of talking to the women. Notice that?
One would think that the people to talk to about the challenges of being a
woman Wikipedian would be the Wikimedia women.  And yet the reporter
herself refuses to allow them their voice.

I wasn't able to attend this conference, but I talked to several people who
did, and I also looked at the photos.  What struck me was how many women
were there. Some of those who attended were struck by how engaged the women
were, too; they were committed to being part of the gendergap solution.

Russavia, give everyone a break here.  I feel badly for the young woman,
because she was put on the spot in a very awkward situation.  I feel badly
for Kevin, because I think he really does get the importance of expanding
the perspectives on Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, but he was put in a
situation that was well outside his comfort level. Wikipedia, Wikimedia and
the conference itself were inaccurately portrayed by a media outlet.  We
all know it happens all the time; it's why we look for multiple reliable
sources in our articles.

Risker




On 7 June 2014 00:39, Russavia russavia.wikipe...@gmail.com wrote:

 MZMcBride, et al

 On Sat, Jun 7, 2014 at 9:17 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:

  I know for certain that there quite a few people who feel that you,
  Russavia, are actively damaging and degrading the wiki culture with your
  actions... perhaps the same would be said of me and others, though I hope
  not.

 I would appreciate it that if you are going to have a pot shot at me,
 that you expand on it, and explain exactly what actions you are
 talking about. However, this isn't about me, so feel free to start a
 new thread on that if you so wish.

 The article in question is obviously an issue, because gendergappers
 are already saying that the unnamed female is owed an apology for the
 comments which were directed towards her.[1][2]

 The comments from Kevin Rutherford were entirely inappropriate, and
 whilst others may not want to publicly say anything because they know
 the editor in question,[3] I am willing to go on the record and say
 that comments that come across as totally clueless have no place in a
 chapter-organised and WMF sponsored event.

 If Kevin Rutherford thinks that his comments were acceptable, then he
 is sorely mistaken and he has shown clear misjudgment through his
 comments at this public event, because they are not supported by the
 wider community (if they are, then shame on the community).

 I'm seriously not doubting that Frank Schulenberg is reported to have
 shaken his head at the comments, because I know others who have read
 the article have *facepalmed* and lolwut.

 Having this in the media is just another cost that communities have to
 face (it's not always about money), and unfortunately it seems to have
 overshadowed anything actually useful that might have come of the
 conference.

 Cheers,

 Russavia


 [1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/2014-June/004310.html
 [2] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/2014-June/004311.html
 [3] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/2014-June/004312.html

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

2014-06-07 Thread Risker
On 7 June 2014 13:27, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 07/06/2014, Pharos pharosofalexand...@gmail.com wrote:
 ...
  This was an entirely volunteer-run conference.

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

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



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

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

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] VisualEditor on English Wikipedia

2014-06-03 Thread Risker
On 3 June 2014 03:02, ENWP Pine deyntest...@hotmail.com wrote:

 Because VE has repeatedly been mentioned in this list as something that is
 improving and may help us with acquisition of editors and their knowledge,
 I have started to draft an RfC about re-enabling VE on English Wikipedia.

 I am not proposing any specific outcome in the RfC. My goal is to set up a
 framework which the community can use to decide which of several paths we
 would like to take.

 This is not my personal RfC, I just happen to think that with recent
 discussions trending positively about VE's improvement over the past
 several months and with the comments in this list about its possible value
 to acquiring new editors, I'm willing to put in some time to draft a
 framework for a discussion on-wiki. I am providing this note to let the
 community know that someone (me) is drafting a framework for on-wiki
 discussion. If someone else wants to start an RfC before I get around to
 starting one, that's completely ok.

 Cheers,

 Pine



Without denigrating your considerable contributions to the project, Pine,
I'd suggest that anyone setting up an RFC on this issue should have more
recent experience with the product than you have, and I'd also suggest that
an RFC is premature until there is an indication from the WMF that *they*
feel the product might be ready for broader access.  I don't think that a
fair discussion can be had when it is happening without, for example, a
clear understanding of what issues existed before and whether or not they
have been resolved.  I hope you will reconsider - or perhaps actually test
the product for a couple of weeks before proceeding, so that the RFC can be
based on factual information rather than well, some people think it should
be enabled.  There have always been some people who thought it should be
enabled.  There have always been some people who think it is a waste of
engineering time and energy.  But factual information about the current
status of the tool, complete with intelligent assessment of its features,
is what is really needed for the community to make a considered decision.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] VisualEditor on English Wikipedia

2014-06-03 Thread Risker
On 3 June 2014 09:05, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:



 On 3 June 2014 03:02, ENWP Pine deyntest...@hotmail.com wrote:

 Because VE has repeatedly been mentioned in this list as something that
 is improving and may help us with acquisition of editors and their
 knowledge, I have started to draft an RfC about re-enabling VE on English
 Wikipedia.

 I am not proposing any specific outcome in the RfC. My goal is to set up
 a framework which the community can use to decide which of several paths we
 would like to take.

 This is not my personal RfC, I just happen to think that with recent
 discussions trending positively about VE's improvement over the past
 several months and with the comments in this list about its possible value
 to acquiring new editors, I'm willing to put in some time to draft a
 framework for a discussion on-wiki. I am providing this note to let the
 community know that someone (me) is drafting a framework for on-wiki
 discussion. If someone else wants to start an RfC before I get around to
 starting one, that's completely ok.

 Cheers,

 Pine



 Without denigrating your considerable contributions to the project, Pine,
 I'd suggest that anyone setting up an RFC on this issue should have more
 recent experience with the product than you have, and I'd also suggest that
 an RFC is premature until there is an indication from the WMF that *they*
 feel the product might be ready for broader access.  I don't think that a
 fair discussion can be had when it is happening without, for example, a
 clear understanding of what issues existed before and whether or not they
 have been resolved.  I hope you will reconsider - or perhaps actually test
 the product for a couple of weeks before proceeding, so that the RFC can be
 based on factual information rather than well, some people think it should
 be enabled.  There have always been some people who thought it should be
 enabled.  There have always been some people who think it is a waste of
 engineering time and energy.  But factual information about the current
 status of the tool, complete with intelligent assessment of its features,
 is what is really needed for the community to make a considered decision.

 Risker/Anne


Okay, further to what I've said aboveI think that before having an RFC,
we should seek community assistance to carry out a small-scale study so
that there is some evidence on which people can base their decisions.  This
is what I would suggest.


   - Create a sample article that includes an infobox, an image or two,
   some references, a template or two, and at least three editable sections.
   Editors will be asked to copy/paste this page into a personal sandbox to
   carry out the experiment, so that their individual results can be observed
   through the page history, and problems can be more easily identified.
   - Identify about 15-20 *basic* editing tasks that an inexperienced
   editor would be likely to try.  Some that come to mind:
  - Remove a word
  - Add a word
  - change spelling of a word
  - add a link to another article
  - remove a link to another article
  - move a sentence within a section
  - move a sentence across sections
  - add a [new] reference (multiple tests for website, newspaper, book
  references)
  - edit an existing reference
  - re-use an existing reference
  - edit existing information in the infobox
  - add a reference to the infobox
  - add a new parameter to the infobox
  - add an image
  - remove an image
  - add an image description
  - modify an image description
  - add a commonly used template (such as {{fact}})
  - remove a template
  - add several symbols and accented characters that are not available
  on their standard keyboard (e.g., Euro and GBP symbols for US keyboards,
  accented characters commonly used in German or French)
   - Ask the testers to complete a chart outlining their results for each
   of the editing tasks being tested, and any comments they have about each of
   these editing features.

If we can persuade even 25 people to work through these basic tasks, and
the results are aggregated well, the community will have some useful data
on which to base next-steps decisions.  It will also provide the
VisualEditor team with comparatively unbiased information about their
progress.  The key emphasis in the experiment is that it should focus on
straightforward, elementary editing activities rather than complex tasks,
and the purpose is to see whether or not these features work in an expected
way or not.

Thoughts?

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] VisualEditor on English Wikipedia

2014-06-03 Thread Risker
On 3 June 2014 12:25, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 3 June 2014 16:37, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:

  Okay, further to what I've said aboveI think that before having an
 RFC,
  we should seek community assistance to carry out a small-scale study so
  that there is some evidence on which people can base their decisions.
  This
  is what I would suggest.

 [snip a possible user test scenario]


 +1. Some sort of user testing like this would be fantastic.

 We might even be able to set it up so the Internet will do it for us,
 which will save WMF paying testers ... could do some serious A/B work
 too. There must be frameworks for this sort of thing ...

 VE team (cc James): so. How do you think this thing is now, getting to
 a year later? Performance? Robustness? Stability of code?


 -


David, one of the most important features of this proposed test is that
people who *know* what the results ought to look like are carrying out the
testing.  It is probably a good idea to have parallel testing with new or
inexperienced users, but at the end of the day, it's
experienced Wikipedians who are going to make the decision whether or not
to open up availability of VisualEditor to an expanded user group, and they
are the ones who have to believe that it is fit for purpose, at least for
basic editing skills required by new users.  I suspect that
most Wikipedians will give much more regard to the documented experiences
of editors whose reputations they know as compared to those who are brand
new - and I include myself in that group.  I've seen ringers sent in too
often in different kinds of user tests (not necessarily Wikimedia-specific)
to fully assume good faith.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] VisualEditor on English Wikipedia

2014-06-03 Thread Risker
Thanks Ed.  The point I am trying to make is that the community can't make
a good decision on this unless they understand the VisualEditor product as
it exists today.  I think pretty much everyone agrees it wasn't ready for
default editing on 1 July 2013, but absent recent data most people would
naturally base their opinions on their personal experiences from that very
early period.

Risker/Anne


On 3 June 2014 12:15, Edward Saperia e...@wikimanialondon.org wrote:

 Sounds like your suggestion would be a perfect contribution to some kind of
 community discussion to try and decide a framework to decide if or when we
 might want to re-deploy visual editor, much like Pine was suggesting in the
 first place :-)

 *Edward Saperia*
 Chief Coordinator Wikimania London http://www.wikimanialondon.org

 On 3 June 2014 16:37, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:

  On 3 June 2014 09:05, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
   On 3 June 2014 03:02, ENWP Pine deyntest...@hotmail.com wrote:
 
   Because VE has repeatedly been mentioned in this list as something
 that
   is improving and may help us with acquisition of editors and their
   knowledge, I have started to draft an RfC about re-enabling VE on
  English
   Wikipedia.
  
   I am not proposing any specific outcome in the RfC. My goal is to set
 up
   a framework which the community can use to decide which of several
  paths we
   would like to take.
 
  Okay, further to what I've said aboveI think that before having an
 RFC,
  we should seek community assistance to carry out a small-scale study so
  that there is some evidence on which people can base their decisions.
  This
  is what I would suggest.
 
 - Create a sample article that includes an infobox, an image or two,
 some references, a template or two, and at least three editable
  sections.
 Editors will be asked to copy/paste this page into a personal sandbox
 to
 carry out the experiment, so that their individual results can be
  observed
 through the page history, and problems can be more easily identified.
 - Identify about 15-20 *basic* editing tasks that an inexperienced
 editor would be likely to try.  Some that come to mind:
- Remove a word
- Add a word
- change spelling of a word
- add a link to another article
- remove a link to another article
- move a sentence within a section
- move a sentence across sections
- add a [new] reference (multiple tests for website, newspaper,
 book
references)
- edit an existing reference
- re-use an existing reference
- edit existing information in the infobox
- add a reference to the infobox
- add a new parameter to the infobox
- add an image
- remove an image
- add an image description
- modify an image description
- add a commonly used template (such as {{fact}})
- remove a template
- add several symbols and accented characters that are not
 available
on their standard keyboard (e.g., Euro and GBP symbols for US
  keyboards,
accented characters commonly used in German or French)
 - Ask the testers to complete a chart outlining their results for
 each
 of the editing tasks being tested, and any comments they have about
  each of
 these editing features.
 
  If we can persuade even 25 people to work through these basic tasks, and
  the results are aggregated well, the community will have some useful data
  on which to base next-steps decisions.  It will also provide the
  VisualEditor team with comparatively unbiased information about their
  progress.  The key emphasis in the experiment is that it should focus on
  straightforward, elementary editing activities rather than complex tasks,
  and the purpose is to see whether or not these features work in an
 expected
  way or not.
 
  Thoughts?
 
  Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]

2014-06-01 Thread Risker
On 1 June 2014 01:39, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote:

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

 (Probably drifting to Increase participation by women)

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

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

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



Fae, I don't know if wiki-syntax in and of itself is more of a barrier for
women than men.  What I do know is that wiki-syntax is a lot harder today
than it was when I started editing 8 years ago, and that today I would
consider it more akin to computer programming than content creation.  That
is where the barrier comes in.

The statistics for percentage of women employed in computer-related
technology is abysmal; we all know that. Even organizations that actively
seek out qualified women (including Wikimedia, I'll point out) can't come
close to filling all the slots they'd willingly open, because there simply
aren't that many qualified women.  They're not filling the seats in college
and university programs, either.

Eight years ago, only about a quarter of English Wikipedia articles had an
infobox - that huge pile of wiki-syntax that is at the top of the
overwhelming majority of articles today.  There were not a lot of
templates; certainly the monstrous templates at the bottom of most articles
today didn't exist then.  The syntax for creating references was
essentially ref insert url /ref; today there is a plethora of complex
referencing templates, some of which are so complex and non-intuitive that
only a small minority of *wikipedians* can use them effectively.  I know
wiki-syntax, and I have found it increasingly more difficult to edit as
time has gone on.  I don't think it's because I'm a woman, I think it's
because I'm not a programmer - and women who *are* programmers are only a
small minority of all programmers, so it follows that women are less likely
to have the skills that will help them sort through what they see when they
click Edit.

It's exactly why I've been following and keeping up with the development of
VisualEditor - because I believe it will make it easier for those who
aren't particularly technically inclined to contribute to the project.  I
believe it's the route to attracting a more diverse editing population,
including but not limited to women.  And I think that it's pretty close to
being ready for hands-on use by those who are new to our projects, now that
it can handle pretty well most of the essential editing tasks.  It's not
perfect, but it's getting there.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia movement affiliates liaisons

2014-05-31 Thread Risker
I'm still stuck on bylaws.  Why is AffCom asking for bylaws?


Risker






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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A personal note.

2014-05-28 Thread Risker
Wil, the deletion log of the page in question is publicly visible.  There
are no WMF employees who have deleted anything on that page, ever. This is
information you can check for yourself instead of relying on the words of
others.

Risker


On 28 May 2014 12:23, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote:

 Hi Fae, if you're referring to the discussion on this page, then I
 think I make it quite clear why I won't engage with WMF employees
 going forward:
 http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14t=4680start=150.

 To be sure, I'm not used to having anyone from Lila's team immediately
 emailing her through their official company addresses as soon as I ask
 a question in a public forum. In this case, the WMF has made it quite
 clear that the IRC channels aren't official and/or sponsored by the
 WMF, and I was asking about community affairs WRT to those channels.
 So my question about why a user was kicked from the channel didn't
 have anything to do with the WMF. I still don't understand why this
 employee felt it was necessary to bring Lila's attention to safety
 concerns through official WMF employee channels, although I'm sure he
 or she felt it was the right thing to do and I've given them the
 benefit of the doubt that it was. Of course, I can't form my own
 independent opinion, since a WMF employee revdeleted the rev in
 question in the ~10 minutes between when it was first posted and when
 I tried clicking on the link.

 In any case, it should be made clear that the WMF did not ask me to
 disengage with employees and has not yet asked me to stop posting to
 Wikipediocracy directly. So far, the organization itself has respected
 my individuality; I can only appeal to everyone in the WP community
 and all WMF employees to do the same in the future. I will be engaging
 with the broader WP community in whatever way I can, but I've made the
 hard decision to limit my engagement with WMF employees to public,
 logged forums from now on.

 ,Wil

 On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 5:59 AM, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote:
  On 28/05/2014, Lila Tretikov l...@wikimedia.org wrote:
  ...
  independent individual
  able to speak with his own voice and ask his own questions. He does not
  take direction from me. He will not work for the WMF or engage with the
 WMF
  employees.
 
  Thanks for making these distinctions. It is sad to see that your time
  and energy is being used so early on in your introduction to the
  Wikimedia community, in creating a political distance between yourself
  and the public actions of your life partner, due to his casual
  curiosity about Wikimedia projects. A curiosity that only manifested
  itself shortly after the public announcement of your employment by the
  Foundation board.
 
  I do not really understand the point being made about not engaging
  with WMF employees, any active volunteer on Wikimedia projects should
  and must be free to engage with WMF employees. The statement does not
  appear to match actions over the last 24 hours, with Wil freely making
  public comments about his dissatisfaction after conversations
  (emails?) with some WMF employees.
 
  Thanks again for clarifying your position during this difficult start
  to your engagement.
 
  Fae
  --
  fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A personal note.

2014-05-28 Thread Risker
Wil, if you want to use email lists for your discussions, you may find a
better reception if you use one of the project- or task-specific lists.
There is a page on English Wikipedia with links to mailing lists that most
closely relate to that project[1] and a more extensive list at Meta that
describes lists for many other projects and specific areas of interest.[2]
One is more likely to get a positive response when the audience is more
accurately targeted.

You will probably find that a lot of practical questions you have asked
could easily be answered at the English Wikipedia Teahouse page, where you
have been invited.  That would include questions about how to tell if
something has been deleted from a page, how to read page histories, or even
how to tell whether or not someone is WMF staff.


Risker




[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mailing_lists

 [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Overview




On 28 May 2014 13:07, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote:

 Thanks, I wasn't aware I could do this. I'm assuming that it would be
 obvious who was an employee at Wikimedia in the log, too. I posted the
 following to Wikipediocracy a few minutes ago:

 
 I may have misread which page the rev was on, or I misunderstood the
 person who said s/he revdeleted it in thinking that it had been
 revdeleted in the previous few minutes. This is exactly why I prefer
 public recorded forums. Now no one can go back to clear up the
 confusion. For all I know, I might have to apologize for a
 misunderstanding, and it would really suck if I somehow misrepresented
 things and didn't have any opportunity to straighten things out.

 Of course, it is entirely on me. I knew that the IRC channels weren't
 logged, and that it was a bannable offense to log them (for those who
 aren't familiar with IRC, this essentially means that you aren't
 supposed to save conversations there; in most channels that's A-OK,
 but on all of the most used wikipedia channels it seems to be
 disallowed). Next time I have a concern, I will take it to wikimedia-l
 or one of the other mailing lists. As this example also shows, one
 can't be sure that the revs on a page within Wikimedia's wikis
 themselves won't be redacted after-the-fact. I'm not expressing an
 opinion about whether stuff should be redacted or on what grounds, but
 I am asserting that it is possible to do so.
 

 There is a discussion about this issue there, as well. It can be
 followed at the link I posted earlier. Here's the last page of the
 discussion that includes the comment above:
 http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14t=4680p=96600#p96600

 ,Wil

 On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 9:57 AM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
  Wil, the deletion log of the page in question is publicly visible.  There
  are no WMF employees who have deleted anything on that page, ever. This
 is
  information you can check for yourself instead of relying on the words of
  others.
 
  Risker
 
 
  On 28 May 2014 12:23, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote:
 
  Hi Fae, if you're referring to the discussion on this page, then I
  think I make it quite clear why I won't engage with WMF employees
  going forward:
  http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14t=4680start=150.
 
  To be sure, I'm not used to having anyone from Lila's team immediately
  emailing her through their official company addresses as soon as I ask
  a question in a public forum. In this case, the WMF has made it quite
  clear that the IRC channels aren't official and/or sponsored by the
  WMF, and I was asking about community affairs WRT to those channels.
  So my question about why a user was kicked from the channel didn't
  have anything to do with the WMF. I still don't understand why this
  employee felt it was necessary to bring Lila's attention to safety
  concerns through official WMF employee channels, although I'm sure he
  or she felt it was the right thing to do and I've given them the
  benefit of the doubt that it was. Of course, I can't form my own
  independent opinion, since a WMF employee revdeleted the rev in
  question in the ~10 minutes between when it was first posted and when
  I tried clicking on the link.
 
  In any case, it should be made clear that the WMF did not ask me to
  disengage with employees and has not yet asked me to stop posting to
  Wikipediocracy directly. So far, the organization itself has respected
  my individuality; I can only appeal to everyone in the WP community
  and all WMF employees to do the same in the future. I will be engaging
  with the broader WP community in whatever way I can, but I've made the
  hard decision to limit my engagement with WMF employees to public,
  logged forums from now on.
 
  ,Wil
 
  On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 5:59 AM, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote:
   On 28/05/2014, Lila Tretikov l...@wikimedia.org wrote:
   ...
   independent individual
   able to speak with his own voice and ask his own questions. He does
 not
   take direction from me

Re: [Wikimedia-l] The first three weeks.

2014-05-28 Thread Risker
It is great to hear how you are working to learn about the vast Wikimedia
community, its projects, its priorities and its challenges, Lila.

I'm thinking there's something else that all of us should help you
celebrate as well:  after only a few weeks on the job, being named to the
Forbes list of the 100 most powerful women:
http://www.forbes.com/profile/lila-tretikov/

That's a great start.


Risker


On 28 May 2014 08:58, Anna Torres a...@wikimedia.org.ar wrote:

 +1

 Great to hearing your experience. As being a new ED too (3 months now) I
 can indentify myself with your experience: the first month is about
 listening and getting to know :)

 All the best for what is to come! Hope to meeting you asap!

 Hugs from Argentina.


 2014-05-28 2:48 GMT-03:00 Nurunnaby Chowdhury n...@nhasive.com:

  +1
  Thank you for this write-up. Happy to read..:)
 
 
 
  On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 7:24 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:
 
   Lila Tretikov wrote:
   I wanted to give you an update on my first three weeks of Wikimedia
   immersion -- this will also go on the blog.  As you probably noticed,
 my
   leadership approach is rooted in observation and focused discussions
 --
   this means I watch and listen more than I talk. But I expect that you
  are
   probably curious about what I have observed and learned so far, and to
   know a little more about who I am.
   
[...]
  
   Thank you for this write-up. It was nice to read. :-)
  
   Your recommendations on areas you see as priorities for development
   (while keeping in mind that not everything can be a priority at
   once!); [...]
  
   I think this continues to be a huge pain point. Developer resources are
   scarce and expensive and there's often a feeling that the latest
  Wikimedia
   Foundation initiatives trump all other worthwhile projects. I think we
   need to find a better way to more fairly allocate resources.
  
   As a concrete example, there continue to be dozens of Wikimedia
  Foundation
   developers and other staff specifically focused on the English
 Wikipedia
   and sometimes Wikimedia Commons, while the other sister projects such
 as
   Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and Wikisource continue to receive almost no
  direct
   attention. (Over the past few years, even the term sister projects
 has
   become mildly insulting. These projects are more accurately the
  red-headed
   stepchild projects.) This won't happen quickly, but we must make it a
  goal
   to do better in this area.
  
   MZMcBride
  
  
  
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  --
  *Nurunnaby Chowdhury Hasive*
  Administrator | Bengali Wikipedia
  http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:nhasive
  Member | IEG Committee, Wikimedia
  Foundationhttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/People
  Social Media Interaction Expert | The Daily
  Prothom-Alohttp://www.prothom-alo.com
  Bangladesh Ambassador | Open Knowledge Foundation Network
  http://www.okfn.org
  Treasurer | Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) http://www.bdosn.org
 
  Task Force Member | Mozilla Bangladesh http://www.mozillabd.org
  fb.com/nhasive | @nhasive http://www.twitter.com/nhasive | Skype:
  nhasive
  | www.nhasive.com
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 --
 Anna Torres Adell
 Directora Ejecutiva
 *A.C Wikimedia Argentina*

 *Imprime este correo solo si es realmente necesario*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Child Protection and Harassment Policy

2014-05-28 Thread Risker
On 28 May 2014 21:37, Molly White gorillawarfarewikipe...@gmail.com wrote:

  Harassment: Has harassment been addressed in a comprehensive way on
  all sites, including all of the WP site? As an example, Wikipedia has
  had a problem with low and declining female participation for years,
  and the WMF has often stated that it would like to address it. Are
  women actively encouraged to participate on Wikipedia by the WMF or
  other organizations? If we're not doing everything to protect women
  and all other Wikipedians, is it morally or ethically correct to
  perform outreach to potentially vulnerable groups? I'd especially like
  to hear about this from a female perspective.

 A great start would be to hold this conversation in a safe space where
 people can discuss without fear of reprisal. I do not mean to say that
 wikimedia-l, nor any other public Wikimedia mailing list or page, is an
 inherently unsafe place to hold this discussion—that's not the case at all.
 But trying to hold this discussion after all the drama that you have been
 passing through this list in the past few days makes this a scary place for
 myself and others to post.

 You have ensured that this list has Wikipediocracy's rapt attention.
 Although I don't doubt the folks over there pay some attention to the
 regular goings-on of this list, the threads that you have been motivating
 and interacting with mean that every comment to this list is being
 scrutinized, and anyone they dislike is being torn apart. You have also
 shown that you have been interacting with and, at least to some degree,
 sympathizing with at least one person who, I feel, is dangerous.

 You have created a space where comments are being picked apart by a group
 of
 people eager to find or fabricate any flaw. My revision-deletion of an
 extremely violent and threatening edit was construed not as a standard
 admin
 action but as some sort of clean-up after someone whom they feel I am
 desperate to protect or cover up. You have drawn the attention of a
 dangerous user, who had not had contact with me for quite some time until
 now. You have the attention of at least one, likely more, of the people who
 created the racist, sexist, and threatening attack/doxxing pages mentioning
 me at EncyclopediaDramatica.

 So you'll have to excuse me when I'm somewhat unwilling to give my more
 in-depth female perspective here and now.

 Yours,
 Molly (GorillaWarfare)



I'm going to second what Molly says here, Wil.  I'm a woman who has held
positions that have attracted abuse and harassment  (directed both at me
and my family) throughout the movement for years, and the first time I have
ever felt unsafe on this mailing list was today.

You knew that the subject you were raising here had already caused a
Wikimedia staffer to take the (very unusual) step of advising his ED that
s/he felt unsafe because of your actions, not to mention the post that was
left on a talk page.  Let me tell you, Wil, 85-90% of women would never
edit Wikipedia again if that post had been left on their talk page. And
yet, you could not leave it alone.  It was all about you, and how you were
done wrong by, and how you didn't like how someone who has a long history
of making violently and sexually graphic abusive posts on English Wikipedia
(and other places) was treated.  (I'm pretty sure he didn't get around to
telling you why he was banned, but you knew by the time you were drawn away
from IRC.)

So..you perpetuated the feeling of unsafeness for your own purposes rather
than respect that your actions (whether intentionally or not) had created
that unsafe setting.  Several community members tried to draw you away from
continuing in this vein, myself included, but you were not to be deterred.
Your determination to continue to perpetuate this unsafeness, by actively
participating in the ridiculing of Wikimedians, is precisely the kind of
behaviour that makes Wikimedia projects so unpleasant for women.

I've been trying very hard to keep an open mind about you, despite your
unwillingness to modify your behaviour or even try to work with the
Wikimedia community.  But today, you went too far.

Risker
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Child Protection and Harassment Policy

2014-05-28 Thread Risker
No, Wil. I mean the repeated linking to a Wikipediocracy thread that
actively denigrates many of the other correspondents on this list; that
advocates that you use your personal influence to persuade the new ED to
fire WMF staff; that implies that every WMF-related IRC channel (there are
dozens, several of which are logged all the time) is littered with
gratuitous insults and poor behaviour. Your own comments tar every
Wikimedian and WMF staff member with the same brush.  You appear to have
accepted wholesale the information provided by people who have had a
negative experience while discounting the comments of anyone who encourages
you to try things out for yourself, no pressure.  And you've worked very
hard to try to force this community to discuss issues that are amongst the
most highly contentious on any internet community at your convenience and
with you framing the discussion, discounting any discussions that were had
before, many of which you could have found for yourself with a rather basic
google search.

You knew all along that there was a security concern about the events
relating to that IRC discussion, and yet you persisted.  You would have
earned some respect if you had walked away from that, but you chose not to.
Now, I realise that you don't value the respect of Wikimedians very much.
But on a day when Lila should be celebrating, she is instead trying to deal
with the fallout of her life partner creating havoc amongst her staff and
the volunteers who contribute to the projects for which she will be
imminently responsible for.  That's sad beyond words.

Risker


On 28 May 2014 23:54, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote:

 Ah. You mean the edit that I didn't write, I didn't post to IRC, and
 I've never actually seen.

 Got it.

 ,Wil

 On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 8:46 PM, Molly White
 gorillawarfarewikipe...@gmail.com wrote:
  Wil Sinclair wllm@... writes:
 
 
  What???
 
  What talk page are you talking about? How in the world am I making an
  unsafe environment?
 
  I believe Risker is referring to the post I revision-deleted.
 
  Those are some *very* serious charges. I'm really just stunned.
 
  *No wonder people are afraid to post here!*
 
  I've made my point, and I'm more or less done talking about this on-list,
  probably for similar reasons as NYB. Feel free to contact me off-list if
 you
  wish.
 
  Yours,
  Molly (GorillaWarfare)
 
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Child Protection and Harassment Policy

2014-05-28 Thread Risker
Wil, the links?  They're harassment. If you don't understand that, you're
in no position to initiate a discussion about the subject.

Risker


On 29 May 2014 01:46, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote:

 Thanks, Risker. I think there are a few inaccuracies in there.

 * I link to threads on Wikipediocracy to demonstrate what I've
 actually said. In some cases, it has been characterized here without
 context. I'd prefer everyone just look at the original so that there
 are no misconceptions. What other people post there is their own
 business. I don't read the personal stuff, in any case, and I very
 actively discourage it there.

 * I believe I only talked about that one experience on the
 #wikipedia-en IRC channel and haven't said anything about any other
 channels.

 * I have told the people on Wikipediocracy countless times that I have
 no influence on Lila's profession decisions and that I refuse to get
 involved with the WMF at all for the time being. I've told everyone
 here, too, for that matter. I specifically said that I don't read the
 personal stuff on Wikipediocracy, and that I don't discuss WMF
 matters- staff or otherwise- with Lila.

 * Every experience that I've discussed here has been my own.

 * I don't know what security concerns you are talking about. Could you
 elaborate with links?

 * It's true. I value my self-respect far more than anyone else's, and
 I maintain it by being true to myself and to everyone I deal with. But
 I do value the respect of Wikimedians. In the end, I will either earn
 it or not by continuing to be true to myself and acting in good faith
 in all my dealings.

 * Again, Lila's career is her own. If others choose to bring my
 actions to her doorstep, it is their call. I've been very clear about
 my role with respect to the WMF; basically, there isn't one. And I
 would greatly appreciate it if everyone would stop bringing our
 private relationship in to this discussion. I've decided that I won't
 have anything to do with the WMF in any way. So our private lives are
 no longer the community's business.

 * I'm quite capable of thinking for myself. I am truly interested in
 protecting children and preventing harassment. And I'm particularly
 interested in the current state of the policies around these issues as
 the leadership of the WMF changes. Old discussions might contain
 outdated information. I could go on-wiki to see the current policies,
 but I keep having to reply to mails like these that somehow attribute
 a bunch of opinions to me that I've never expressed.

 I'm still trying to understand what I've done wrong here. I've
 basically asked some questions and replied to posts that either were
 directly addressed to me (as yours is here), or made extensive
 reference to me (as some of the mails calling for my blocking). Let me
 ask you a simple question that may help me understand where you are
 coming from: do you find the questions themselves personally
 upsetting?

 Thanks again!
 ,Wil



 On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 10:09 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
  No, Wil. I mean the repeated linking to a Wikipediocracy thread that
  actively denigrates many of the other correspondents on this list; that
  advocates that you use your personal influence to persuade the new ED to
  fire WMF staff; that implies that every WMF-related IRC channel (there
 are
  dozens, several of which are logged all the time) is littered with
  gratuitous insults and poor behaviour. Your own comments tar every
  Wikimedian and WMF staff member with the same brush.  You appear to have
  accepted wholesale the information provided by people who have had a
  negative experience while discounting the comments of anyone who
 encourages
  you to try things out for yourself, no pressure.  And you've worked very
  hard to try to force this community to discuss issues that are amongst
 the
  most highly contentious on any internet community at your convenience and
  with you framing the discussion, discounting any discussions that were
 had
  before, many of which you could have found for yourself with a rather
 basic
  google search.
 
  You knew all along that there was a security concern about the events
  relating to that IRC discussion, and yet you persisted.  You would have
  earned some respect if you had walked away from that, but you chose not
 to.
  Now, I realise that you don't value the respect of Wikimedians very much.
  But on a day when Lila should be celebrating, she is instead trying to
 deal
  with the fallout of her life partner creating havoc amongst her staff and
  the volunteers who contribute to the projects for which she will be
  imminently responsible for.  That's sad beyond words.
 
  Risker
 
 
  On 28 May 2014 23:54, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote:
 
  Ah. You mean the edit that I didn't write, I didn't post to IRC, and
  I've never actually seen.
 
  Got it.
 
  ,Wil
 
  On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 8:46 PM, Molly White
  gorillawarfarewikipe...@gmail.com wrote

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Child Protection Policy

2014-05-23 Thread Risker
On 23 May 2014 13:05, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote:

 Is the following a full statement of Wikipedia's Child Protection
 Policy, reflecting all responsibilities that the Wikipedia community
 and the Wikimedia Foundation have taken on to protect children in all
 of the projects they are involved with and/or sponsor?

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Child_protection

 Are there any other *published* policies of WP or the WMF pertaining
 to child protection that I might have missed?

 I know that this is a very politically charged issue in the WP
 community. I'd appreciate a high light:heat ratio if anyone has
 comments beyond links to current policy statements.

 Thanks!
 ,Wil



English Wikipedia policy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Child_protection

The existence of a 'formalized' policy has been a topic of heated debate
since its creation, although there is some truth that its original form
more or less documented existing practice at the time.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Child Protection Policy

2014-05-23 Thread Risker
On 23 May 2014 13:09, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:



 On 23 May 2014 13:05, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote:

 Is the following a full statement of Wikipedia's Child Protection
 Policy, reflecting all responsibilities that the Wikipedia community
 and the Wikimedia Foundation have taken on to protect children in all
 of the projects they are involved with and/or sponsor?

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Child_protection

 Are there any other *published* policies of WP or the WMF pertaining
 to child protection that I might have missed?

 I know that this is a very politically charged issue in the WP
 community. I'd appreciate a high light:heat ratio if anyone has
 comments beyond links to current policy statements.

 Thanks!
 ,Wil



 English Wikipedia policy:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Child_protection

 The existence of a 'formalized' policy has been a topic of heated debate
 since its creation, although there is some truth that its original form
 more or less documented existing practice at the time.

 Risker/Anne


Just noting in addition that on the left side of the page there are
language links to four similar policies on other Wikipedias: Catalan,
Indonesian, Persian and Ukrainian.  Since few other Wikipedias have active
Arbitration Committees and each existing arbcom has a different scope, it's
pretty clear that processes and policies would vary from project to project.

Risker
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Participating on Wikipediocracy

2014-05-23 Thread Risker
Well, Wil, I caught your early posts there and was of the impression you
joined to protect the privacy of a member of your family. And out of
respect for that I declined to ask the question you seemed to be begging to
be asked.

You wouldn't be the first Wikimedian who felt that was a necessary action.

Risker


On 23 May 2014 21:36, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote:

  Doesn't it strike you as odd that the question came from an active
  wikipediocracy memeber?

 Honestly, I hadn't thought about it. I'm much more interested in the
 question that who asked it.

  You know where 4chan is I assume.

 No, actually. Can you tell me? What is it?

  Again you cite free speech. In effect you're saying that the most
  compelling thing you can say for your activity is that it's not literally
  illegal (XKCD 1357 alt text)

 I agree this is a bit confusing. I don't mean it in a legal sense-
 which one might well argue that's the only sense it has- but in a more
 social sense. I ask that if you don't like what I'm doing or saying,
 that you take it out on me by excising your own right to free speech
 by criticizing me, my actions, and my words- not on Lila through WP
 politics.

  Thats your opinion. Wikipedia is a fairly mature project at this point.
 We
  are where we are as the result of over a decade of refinement by
 thousands
  of people with each of those refinements destruction tested against
  whatever the internet can throw at them.

 Yeap. It's my opinion. And I also think that Wikipedia is an amazing
 achievement. Congrats and thanks to all of you!

  Given the size of the project and your fairly breath interaction with it
  what makes you think that you are in a position to make that judgement?

 Sorry, what do you mean by breath interaction?

  Not really. The issue had already been brought up on a thread on
  wikipediocracy that you were posting on. Makes your claim that I'm just
  asking what the current policies are. lack a certain credibility.

 Ah. Sorry. I was referring to the questions I asked on this list.
 After discussing it there, I wanted to figure out what the current
 policies were from the source. It was pretty hard to track down
 everything on WP and WM, so thanks everyone for all the links! Do you
 have the link to that thread? Maybe we should post it so that people
 can see what you're talking about.

  The relevant talk page has over 100 entries in its archives.

 Are you saying that I should discuss it there instead?

  I'm not aware of anyone planning to have you arrested. The US right to
 free
  speech involves governments something wikipedia is not. Sure wikipedia is
  pretty extreme on the spectrum on the degree of speech is will allow but
  that doesn't change the fact your right to free speech is between you and
  your government.

 Sure. I may not have used the right word. My apologies. I meant,
 please don't hold my words and actions against Lila in any way. Feel
 free to hold me to them, tho. :)

  This is a mailing list for dealing with cross project issues. It isn't
 for
  getting to know people.

 Ah. I guess I'll look for other places to get to know people. I'm
 really sorry to have bothered you here.

  Eh as long as you stick to the relevant venue which is not really this
  mailing list. This is for people who already have the knowledge base and
  are trying to move into genuinely new areas or have hit an issue that
 can't
  be dealt with through the usual project level channels.

 Yeah. It sounds like I really just barged in to the wrong place. Doh!

  So not an editor?

 Actually, I'm editing some. I'm about to publish an article about the
 modular sofa in the WMF office. It happens to be among my favorite
 furniture designs, and now I've got a great pic to use in the article.
 In addition, I plan to add some audio loops that I have made over the
 years doing electronic music to Commons. It would be really cool for
 people to have completely free loops to use in applications like
 Garage Band and FL Studio. Stay tuned!

 I guess I'll see y'all around somewhere else.
 ,Wil

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] COM:IDENT?

2014-05-20 Thread Risker
I do not understand why anyone would assume that the woman has agreed to
this, without her actually, personally, saying that she has agreed to this.

Risker


On 20 May 2014 15:22, Pierre-Selim pierre-se...@huard.info wrote:

 Hi all,

 As an oversight, I'd like to give an advice first. When encountering a
 privacy matter that you believe falls under the oversight policy 
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Oversight_policy#Use you should probably
 contact directly oversight-comm...@lists.wikimedia.org rather than linking
 the information on a public forum (or even on a talk page), i.e. if there
 is a real breach of privacy more people will see it :(.

 That said, I fail to see what falls under the oversight policy as explained
 by Odder on his talk page. The only use case that come to mind is the first
 one *Removal of non-public personal information*, however by publishing the
 information the couple seems to agree, for now, to have this information
 published (as far as we know, they are not lying about their identity). I'd
 gladly suppress the personnal information if it is requested by the person
 concerned or if it was an obvious mistake.

 As an administrator, it remains, [[COM:IDENT]] which is a guildeline on how
 to proceed with photography of identifiable person, however I don't see any
 photo in this discussion.

 In the end I just think we are having this thread because of the topic
 being related to nudity (which is clearly a not consensual topic in our
 communities, probably because it is cultural) and not really because of any
 real breach of privacy. If I'm getting it wrong, I'm open to discussion.


 2014-05-20 20:04 GMT+02:00 Pipo Le Clown plecl...@gmail.com:

  (...)
  Now, I'm not really at ease with Odder's decision, and I think we (as a
  community) need to discuss that, in a civilized manner. This could have
  (and will, I hope ) happened on the pages meant for that, on Commons,
  without any unnecessary drama.
 

 @ Pipo Le Clown  Feel free to send an email to the oversight mailing list
 or start a discussion on Wikimedia Commons in order to explain your
 opinion. I believe the oversight team is open to community input.


  Pleclown
 


 Sincerely Pierre-Selim,


  On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 7:48 PM, Thyge ltl.pri...@gmail.com wrote:
 
   What a kind communication! It gives me the impression that you are
 afraid
   to discuss matters outside of Commons.
  
   The special role of Commons as a joint resource should occationally
 allow
   concerns to be raised outside the community of commonites. If concerns
  are
   not of a general nature, please at least deal with them in a friendly
   manner.
  
   Regards,
   Thyge
  
  
  
   2014-05-20 17:51 GMT+02:00 Pipo Le Clown plecl...@gmail.com:
  
You didn't get the answer you wanted, so you're forum shopping to get
  the
right one ? How nice of you.
 Le 20 mai 2014 17:37, Jeevan Jose jkadav...@gmail.com a écrit :
   


   
  
 
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Odderoldid=124445321#Commons_talk:Nudity

 Is this the way Commons:Photographs of identifiable people works?

 Regards,
 Jee
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 Pierre-Selim
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