Re: [Wikimedia-l] Our problem with India

[Theo10011]

Milos, I hope this wasn't the participation you expected when you said you
wanted to hear from Indian wikipedians. ;)

While I know where Milos, Gerard and even Amir are coming from, I don't
know about this talk of "lower-class". Unless you are not talking about
economics and income level here, but actual class - a caste system, which I
doubt.

I don't know if it's inconsiderate, or some weird sort of
political-correctness where you make people feel uneasy about their own
identity, unintentionally I assume. You had indian wikipedians at wikimania
for a long time, you still do. There is the indian chapter, random
wikipedians from India and Asaf, still has CIS staff coming and going I
presume. I'm not sure if they fulfil this quota of "lower-class", for you
to feel truly represented. Your typical version of indian, shouldn't be
able to speak english? just one indian language, that you then feel you are
helping? Would it have to fulfil some other stereotype about the way they
dress, sound or behave - "Indian". If I apply that standards within US or
anywhere else, they sound incredibly prejudiced. Are you less of a serb
because you speak english or are in a particular income-level?

Then as others said, is that who "we" are? Is social outreach and diversity
relevant to dispensation of free knowledge? Why aren't there more homeless
and people from low-income households from the US, Europe, Australia at
wikimania? should we reserve scholarships now based on income-levels?(but
then everyone would just mark it as low). I suppose it's a whole host of
identical problems affecting those groups that affects Indians. Some are
more complex and compounded, as I rant on about below, but the largest are
same as any other country. Every country would have its own "lower-class".

I also fail to see how getting your typical imagined version of
"lower-class" indian to a wikimania will have a measurable effect? Will
attending a 3 day conference in another country change his/her life? change
wikipedia?

Also, first time I am hearing of these WMF activities in India. Nice.
Research on new readers, in my city of all. I would be interested to see
the results. I don't know about the team member "in India", in-charge of
partnerships, sounds vague and historically, not a good direction. I hope
you steer away from hiring too many consultants this time. ;)

I would also invite Milos, Gerard and anyone else interested to consider
spending some time in India itself before they start talking about how to
fix problems (real or imagined) of my country. As I wrote on Gerard's blog
6 years ago[1], It's not as simple as you think it is. Rather uninteresting
and long rant below, for those linguistic questions you asked.



== Rant: tl;dr version (for non linguaphiles) - 99 problems, english isn't
one. ==

As for the sociolinguistic, ethnolinguistic, socio-economic factors, they
are too varied. It's like this. India has a great degree of language
fragmentation. Going from different dialects and borrowed words to entirely
different syntax, alphabets and language systems. There is still some
degree of homogeneity based on language belts around the country, similar
to social belts in other countries. Language belts yield several groups of
sub-languages and dialects that are similar but differ greatly outside that
particular language belt.

The dominant problem, as others cited, is economical. Chances are, if
someone is able to find a computer and get online, they know english,
though smartphones have been highly disruptive of this trend in the last
decade. It is highly compounded by the fact, India is highly bilingual. The
most basic form of primary education in school covers english, just like it
covers some form of maths or science. This is necessary within India
itself. Primary education where children are taught to read and write their
own mother-tongue usually almost always has some degree of english lessons.
At times, this becomes the only lingua-franca within India itself. If I
travel to the south of my country or to the east, most times the only
language I would be able to communicate easily in, would be english. If you
travel within India, majority of the billboards and even road signs outside
metros that you will encounter, will be either in english or bilingual, as
would official communications from courts, government bodies and so on.

Languages also have a tendency of dividing the population. Some take their
linguistic identity as a sign of pride but there have been right-wing
campaigns to promote division based on the same linguistic lines. It's not
always bad, linguistic pride lead to a lot of good effort for the projects.
Wikitionary and wikisource benefited a lot when I saw a few years ago. In
those cases, highly educated, socially mobile individuals used our projects
as a platform for protecting and promoting their languages. But the
communities were small, between 10-30 active users. Their efforts were
short-lived, compounding an 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] internet-in-a-boxs to the refugee camps?

[Theo10011]

Heh, It's times like these I realize I'm still in a minority here. As one
of the few non-american/european readers of the list, my perspective,
differs on this issue.

I don't know what people imagine when they think of the conditions in these
refugee camps. Allow me to paint a picture using commons [1][2] - These
places have some of the highest population density anywhere in the world.
Most have make-shift housing - tents or shanty, electricity - which is
mostly for a single light or to charge an old phone - is unreliable, water
in tankers has to be collected in jars and carried back[4]. Sanitation,
roads - if such things exist, are equally troublesome. The designated
monthly food vouchers/allowance, if they can get, is already being cut [3].
Add to that some petty crime and occasional police clashes. There's always
the constant fear of outliving their host countries welcome, and being
thrown out, left homeless. All that remains is just a harsh desert, a few
sandstorms.

These are people fleeing their homes from a civil war, with no end in
sight. Food, water, shelter, safety and their own dignity has to rank
higher as a major concern. I'm not saying that we can't help, just that we
figure lower in priorities from avoiding a civil war, genocide, to just
surviving - things are far from stable at these places still, sadly. These
refugees don't even have a legal status in most places, when they do it is
only temporary.

On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 1:15 AM, Leinonen Teemu 
wrote:

> Hello people,
>
> Just an idea. Number of Syrian refugees is over 4,000,000 people, mostly
> residing in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.[1] Refugee camps are set in
> all in these countries.[2]
>

Between ISIS and kurdish forces, Iraq and Turkey are likely to have some
instability in these camps. Turkey with the highest number of refugees has
concentrated them at overcrowded refugee camps at borders while denying
them refugee status. Lebanon refuses to set up any refugee camps, Jordan
might have some of the highest density population center on earth, at one
of its two camps. While the other gulf states have outright refused these
refugees.


>
> Internet-in-a-Box[3] is a a WiFI-device with "Wikipedia in 37 languages, a
> library of 40,000 e-books, most of the world's open source software and
> source code, hundreds of hours of instructional videos, and world-wide
> mapping down to street level.”
>

This device sounds like a portable hotspot with an attached storage.

I don't understand however, what device people would use to access this
hotspot? ios, android- smartphones aren't as common in that part of the
world yet. And you would still need electricity to charge those devices,
all that remains is the language barrier...

Anyway, I think we already have something better - Wikipedia Zero. It was
designed for very similar situations. We just need some sort of a carrier
relationship to avail free access for everyone with a phone in those
region, I seem to recall a light text only version too that would work on
any phone. The carriers might even be receptive to the idea, if approached
correctly - Kul might know.

Regards
Theo


[1]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_Aerial_View_of_the_Za'atri_Refugee_Camp.jpg
[2]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Syrian_refugee_camp_on_theTurkish_border.jpg
[3]http://www.unhcr.org/55b7737b6.html
[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Children_filling_water_in_Al-Zaatari_Camp.jpg


> Could we as a movement get the internet-in-a-box to the refugee camps?
>
> - Teemu
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War
> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_refugee_camps
> [3] http://internet-in-a-box.org
>
> --
> Teemu Leinonen
> http://teemuleinonen.fi
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community

[Theo10011]

Greetings James. Your response here seems unhelpful and mind I suggest,
snarky. You are essentially arguing over semantics. You object to the usage
of a term - "core editing community", then suggest his titles is faulty and
misleading while suggesting almost antithetical alternatives. You end by
questioning his logic, suggesting that might just be vandalism being
reverted, while ending it all with what you plan on doing with this next?

It certainly seems like more is going on here behind the scenes than what
one can infer from reading. The article mentions Erik Zachte, who I would
always trust on these numbers, that "The growth seems real to me". It also
mentions lila's different leadership style that may be bearing fruit.

Please have another read at your response. I read a nice email earlier from
Lila on this list[1], about distracting with polarizing rhetorics. And to
bring up issues, in good faith and with care for each other. I hope staff
members, especially senior members, along with other readers, take note.


On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 9:22 PM, James Forrester 
wrote:

>
> ​Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion.​
>
> Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty offensive
> term to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a month",
> disregarding the continuing editors who make fewer than 100 edits as
> non-core regardless of the value they add to the wikis; the normal term is
> "very active editors" to avoid implicit disparagement.
>

That would be just an opinion, and that too, over terminology not the data.
Interesting data though, you are correct.

I don't believe that term is offensive, other opinions may differ. However,
what I don't know if it's the new terminology WMF wants to use? You can
make some delineation here about this being your own personal opinion, you
are using your staff email and your title in signature.


> ​[Snip]​
>
> editors making 5 or more saves
> > ​[is]
> >  down
> > across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
> >
>
> ​So, actually, your title​ is faulty and misleading. Instead, you could
> say:
>
>- "English Wikipedia editor numbers continue to decline but meta-editors
>are up",
>- "Editor diversity falls as more edits are done by fewer editors", or
>even
>- "Beset by a falling number of editors, existing users of the English
>Wikipedia feel compelled to edit still more in their desperate attempts
> to
>fix things"?


> But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
> >
>
> ​I'm not sure it is.​ What is the nature and value of these edits? Two
> editors endlessly reverting each other counts as "more edits" but adds no
> value; one hundred editors each writing a beautiful Featured Article in a
> single edit counts as less "work" than one admin reverting 101 vandalism
> edits by a single spambot. What's your next step to evaluate this?
>

None of the part above, or those alternative titles are helpful. Perhaps
you want to look in to this issue and work with WereSpielChequers.

Thanks
Theo

[1]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-September/079054.html
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] internet-in-a-boxs to the refugee camps?

[Theo10011]

Hiya Lodewijk :)

I apologize if this is going off-topic.

On Sat, Sep 12, 2015, Lodewijk  wrote:

> Interesting. Over here, the 'experts' are adjusting the image exactly the
> other way around: that smartphones are much more common there than we would
> expect, and that we underestimate the inventivity of people to get access
> to information/the internet. Especially in the context of people being
> suspicious of all those refugees being photographed with a smartphone.
>

Those "experts" seem to be building a narrative, I suppose. There might be
political motivations or general apathy at play there so I won't know what
image people are formulating in Europe. There are two groups of refugees at
the moment, one that are making their way through Europe and fleeing
constantly and the other, that are stuck in overcrowded refugee camps in
Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. The original post seemed directed towards the
second group. So, those entering through Greece pay as much $2500 per
person to smugglers, they take huge risks with their lives, and physically
carry all they own in this world on their backs, in comparison, smartphones
cost less than $100[1]. It starts becoming a necessity for a family to stay
together and keep in touch with relatives - phones become quite necessary
for this group of refugees fleeing across borders. The article does state
that human rights group in Serbia are setting up free wifi, and UN agencies
are handing out thousands of free SIMs, similar to what Teemu envisions -
but you have to remember that is mostly in Europe.

The other group in refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, which is
more than half of the total number of refugees, have more dire concerns -
Food, being the most prominent one[2][3]. They are usually the poorest and
most vulnerable group of refugees in the situation. Things are getting so
close to rock bottom in fact that the refugees are considering going back
to the Warzone in Syria instead of starving in the camps.[2]


> I don't know what is the truth, and why this difference of understanding
> exists - just adding to the noise here.


It's certainly a bad situation all around.

Coming back to my on-topic suggestion, Wikipedia Zero is a much better
alternative. Partnering with other agencies and setting these devices up
physically in sometimes hostile areas, is a huge undertaking that I believe
we are not set up for. WP Zero already exists in a dozen markets in the
developing world, all it needs is a single agreement with a local carrier -
it just makes access to Wikipedia free for everyone with a phone (smart or
not). It's a better fit in my opinion.

Kind regards
Theo


[1]
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/for-syrian-refugees-smartphones-are-a-lifeline-not-a-toy-1.3221349
[2]
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/sep/11/destitute-syrian-refugees-jordan-lebanon-may-return-to-warzone

[3] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34220590
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimania 2017 Montreal - scooped by Signpost

[Theo10011]

I thought the mandate of this committee was to facilitate and coordinate
bidding, set up policy and best practices. The page on Meta still mention
the same as its purpose[1].

When did a committee intended to facilitate an already established, open
process make the leap to downright owning the process and instead, doing
away with it all together? We went from an open jury system to finalizing
things behind closed doors in a physical meeting that seemingly the same
people attend regularly.

It's downright patronizing to hear plans about rotating wikimania from
Europe (excluding eastern Europe for some reason?), to North america and
the "rest of the world". This seems more like someone picking holiday
destinations, talking about countries, entire continents and rest of the
world, in a manner so cavalier.

It's constantly mentioned that the open bidding process is unwieldy and too
cumbersome. While that may be true for the bidding teams, it's still an
open, accessible process that gives everyone the same chance. The entire
idea of the committee was to move the process away from a single
individual's initiative to a group, not make the same individual chair who
just does away with the entire process and decides things on a whim.

Lastly, I don't think this is the usual WMF communication shortfall. This
is more of a committee issue, with its quasi-official status, they took
some liberty with the entire process and their own stated purpose, made
some sweeping changes and forgot to tell anyone, for months. The foundation
could have been as out of the loop as the rest of us.


Theo


[1]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Committee#Purpose_and_process

On Sun, Oct 4, 2015 at 12:55 PM, Pine W  wrote:

> Yes and no. Considering that I've been waiting for months for answers to
> questions about the WMF Annual Plan, I would say that there is much room
> for improvement in communications.
>
> On the other hand, the WMF Comms department itself seems to more or less
> ok, and I personally think we'll of WMF's chief communications officer.
>
> So, some good points, and some room to improve. I agree that the status quo
> has been this way for awhile and it would be good to see across-the-board
> communications SLAs.
>
> Pine
> On Oct 4, 2015 12:18 AM, "Mathias Damour" 
> wrote:
>
> > Le 04/10/2015 05:36, Craig Franklin a écrit :
> >
> >> I take your point Pine, but "improving communication with the community"
> >> seems to have been a WMF priority for as long as I can remember, yet
> there
> >> doesn't seem to have been any consistent improvement, as we can see
> here.
> >> A new approach and direction to how matters like this are communicated
> is
> >> clearly needed, because the current one doesn't seem to be working at
> all.
> >>
> >
> > I wouldn't say that the WMF communication is simply bad, it is pretty
> > professional.
> >
> > It may rather be that an open communication and keeping control on the
> > greater part of the decisions (or even conducting the users of the
> projets
> > themself, as an average internet company does), are "two tendancies that
> > are not fully compatible" (to borrow Florence's words).
> >
> > --
> > Mathias Damour
> > [[User:Astirmays]]
> >
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimania 2017 Montreal - scooped by Signpost

[Theo10011]

Hi

I think we are all jumping ahead about the committee's status first of all.
It's mandate was never to make such broad changes. If you would read the
talk page on meta from 2010 on this issue, there are comments there from me
and others where the envisioned goal of this committee was to facilitate
the jury and develop expertise for wikimania, no one thought it was going
to change the jury process. This is a huge leap that was made by broadening
the mandate and most people here are accepting it, as an established fact -
It is not.


On Sun, Oct 4, 2015, Florence Devouard  wrote:
>
> There are roughly three components on the Wikimania committee.
> One component is WMF staff.
> One component is former and future Wikimania organizers.
> One component is community members.
>

Those components aren't that distinguishable. If ellie was the only liaison
for WMF on the committee acting in a passive capacity, it would be one
thing. But someone like James, actually fits in to all 3 roles. It's his
position as chair that also complicates the situation.


> WMF staff does not have the same obligations and standards than the other
> members.
>
> The rather unique situation of this committee is that... whilst it should
> include much community input... for most years (not all), Wikimania is
> actually mostly funded by WMF and beyond funding, some WMF staff put quite
> a bit of work in it. To say it bluntly, most of the time, without WMF
> input, Wikimania would simply not happen. This is no criticism to local
> teams (without them, Wikimania would not occur either), but a simple
> statement. WMF is a key stakeholder. What is the consequence of that from a
> committee member perspective ?
>
> In my opinion, the consequence to that is that community members on the
> committee do not feel that they "own" this committee. It "does" feel like
> being invited on a Wikimedia Foundation committee. And as such, it feels
> like a sort of special attention/listening should be given to WMF staff
> members on that committee. And when things go ashtray... we hesitate being
> bold. It is not about forgetting.
>

I understand WMF being a key stakeholder. But I'd differ here about who
feels a sense of ownership. I really have the opinion that James is over
reaching. He used to start with a call for jury, run the process year after
year, then formed this committee, of which he is the chair, and now wants
to remove the jury process all together for a list of places he would like
wikimania to happen.

I would also venture to guess that the board and Lila, are probably the
least involved in these decisions about where Wikimania should happen for
the next 5 years.


> Now, beside head rolling... (uh, ouch :)) what do you suggest to fix that ?
>

I never suggested head rolling. To be absolutely blunt, I think James
should stand down from his own capacity and let someone else take over the
process and committee. Or give the community the option to choose which way
it prefers.


On Sun, Oct 4, 2015, Pavel Richter  wrote:
>
>
> So, what happened? The Wikimania committee came to the conclusion that the
> current process to select the next Wikimania host is broken (and I think
> the committee was right about that). So something needed to happen - and
> the committee did something that we
> ​see ​
> not often enough in Wikimedia-land: *they made a decision*.
> ​A decision they were tasked to take: Think and decide on the next
> Wikimania host, and on the process to find one. Nobody ever said that their
> job was only to execute a set of old guidlines and processes (which, I
> guess, were never "community approved" but rather were around just for a
> long, long time).
>

Those are some pretty broad leaps Pavel. They were never tasked to take
that decision. They came to a conclusion that the process is broken, they
thought to do away with the process, they picked a winner, and set about
corresponding with them, without telling anyone. Then, developed an entire
roadmap of where they want to see Wikimania next for the near foreseeable
future. All of this was never tasked to them in the first place.

This committee isn't "community approved", their mandate isn't community
approved. Its members weren't elected, in fact, I don't know why and how
these people got on this committee, or how long they will be in-charge -
because someone certainly seems to think they are in-charge. Maybe I missed
a call or notification asking to join or approve or comment as to who
should be on this committee.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimania 2017 Montreal - scooped by Signpost

[Theo10011]

I see the talk page on Meta for this committee hasn't been updated since
2013. I copied James' update to the talk page. I am going to oppose there
and ask anyone else interested in reverting this decision to comment on
meta[1]. This needs consensus, but more so, a choice, that was never given
to the larger community.

This committee can be dissolved if needed, or another one can be set up in
its place.

On Mon, Oct 5, 2015, Pavel Richter  wrote:
>
> ​Theo, you argue process, I argue outcome.
> They faced a problem, they tackled it, they made a decission. And their
> mandate? They *showed up and volunteered*. That is enough mandate in my
> book.
>

This is a ludicrous proposition to even defend. The outcome, as you might
have noticed isn't being supported or endorsed by the majority. This is not
a solution, it is another problem, worse than that it is going against the
grain by taking an open process and making it closed. By your logic, I can
claim this new solution is a bigger problem, some of us here are objecting
to it and we can tackle it by dissolving the committee? Or how about I
apply the same logic to everyone donating to WMDE - recognize a problem,
tackle it, communicate with the concerned parties and not even tell you
about it, because I "showed up and volunteered". The whole logic here is
indeed, non sense as MF-W put it.

First, there is no consensus the current process is a problem. Second, if
there is, James is and has been chiefly responsible for the entire process,
ergo, the problem. Now, the new initiative is to give James complete
control to decide things in private without discussion, deliberation or so
much as a notification to the wider community.


>
> The revolution will not be community-approved.


Actually a revolution by definition, would have to be majority/community
led and hence, community-approved. What we have now is a small group of
connected individuals in a clique, who make large decisions for everyone.
That would be an Oligarchy, and I for one, am tired of seeing the same
people make these horrendous decisions.

On Mon, Oct 5, 2015, Pavel Richter  wrote:
>
> Hopefully not by consensus, but by a small group of people who just say:
> Enough is enough).​


You clarified my point further.

Regards
Theo

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania_Committee#Oppose
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[Wikimedia-l] WMF as an advertiser

[Theo10011]

Hi

I started writing some common thoughts on WMF fundraising, particularly the
whole notion of advertising. I've always thought of evaluating WMF as just
another advertiser that uses banners. I started this essay on Meta[1].

We certainly claim to be free from advertisement. How about we consider for
a moment that WMF is our biggest client - utilizing banners on every
project in any country, at any time, for as long as it wants -
hypotheticals mostly ;). What standards would we hold ourselves up to? The
truth, verifiability and neutrality of Wikipedia, or standards spurious
enough to be brought in front of a judge for false and misleading
advertisement.

Sponsors and advertisers, even agencies, do hold themselves up to certain
standards in terms of their messaging. There are boundaries and legalities
that ad campaigns tend to blur but they are open to be challenged in a
court. What about those standards for our banners - Do we lie, mislead, do
we make emotionally manipulative asks and form narratives that are really
not connected with what we do. From establishing urgency through "urgent
appeal from our founder", to stating that the funds are "needed" to keep
wikipedia online, to all those fuzzy, warm donor stories from India and the
developing world. In fact, there is a trend to use narratives from the east
and developing countries, to make a personal ask accompanying pictures -
making it all emotionally impactful. (If you look at fundraising by region
- India, South Africa, make up around 5-10% of the revenues. So basically,
it is about selling emotional narratives from developing countries to more
affluent countries.)

How about we compare ourselves to the leaders of banner based ads. The
spammers of the world, those peddling porn, viagra and gambling sites would
be the king of banner clickthroughs, no? The biggest experts at banner
design, placement and messaging. Would their teams be solely focused on
data and making incremental changes to maximize their revenue - does the
underlying message/product matter to them? does it matter to us? I wonder
if they A/B test everything too.

Anyway, some thoughts to ponder over the weekend for me. I say all that
without focusing on anyone and realizing well, that there have been a lot
of changes in leadership during this time. But I see the fundraising
campaign itself, as if it is on a rail track headed one-way faster and
faster - to what end I wonder.


Regards
Theo

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_as_an_advertiser
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Something

[Theo10011]

Blind, impotent rage isn't helpful, neither are conjectures about the
abstract and nebulous nature of "something".

Let's try and remember, this is the same pattern as every other last time,
most people commenting here are in agreement, this was wrong or at the
least, this was handled poorly, and as usual, there is little to no
official communication from the other side. The pitchforks are ready, the
mob is assembled but the castle is empty, as usual.

I'm not sure why we keep perpetuating this us vs them mentality. Whether
its the action of singular staff member or the board or large decision by
the executive, the end result is always the same and I'm not sure we are
making any progress over the years. Just pushing this boulder up the hill
to watch it roll down every few months.

It is irrelevant what the disagreement was over with James. It is healthy
for consensus building, and if james' views or actions were so radical that
it required his immediate removal from the board - maybe that's what the
board needed in it entrenched ways, isolated from what is relevant. I am
not sure what the board is trying to maintain in their silence - beyond
this expectation to be professional and secretive and respect some sort of
group cohesion or collective authority - the legal department isn't helping
the situation either, peppering it with NDAs and gag order/requests.

The prepared and semi-prepared statements from the two board members aren't
really assuring or remotely revealing of anything. So I guess, we are left
to conjectures and conspiracies, extrapolating theories from morsels of
information. This has been a sad effort from the board and the
communication need for all parties involved.

On Mon, Jan 4, 2016, MZMcBride  wrote:
>
>
> No more Sue, no more Erik, no more many, many others. With the exception
> of Geoff, we have a full turnover of the leadership/executive/whatever
> team of the Wikimedia Foundation. This, in addition to two vacancies for
> Chief Technology and Chief Financial Officers, along with a recent-ish
> massive re-organization of the engineering team that ruffled feathers.
>

I think you are missing some of the context to support your narrative.
Sue's departure was the precondition for Lila's arrival and the new
leadership. Erik also, would be seen as an extension of the same executive
body that had to be refactored. You mention Geoff, but he was brought on to
replace someone else in that position(Mike), by Sue. I count several of the
same individuals still around - off the top of my head, Asaf, Siko, James,
Megan, Brion, Tomasz, and many more are still around. A large majority of
the WMF staff just never interacted with the community, and there were
always new staff members around, so it really doesn't feel all that
different. I would also argue the average employment length for a wfm
employee under Sue wasn't any better. There were a lot of staff changes
that happened quietly and frequently. There was also a clique that formed
that moved around titles - I see less of that now. The open positions on
staff aren't really evidence of anything in particular beyond a suitable
hire hasn't been located, given how important those two positions are I
would rather they err on the side of caution.

I assume bringing in a new executive and new leadership for an organisation
means change. In fact, I'd be more surprised if there weren't these changes
and Lila was working with the same people doing the exact same things as
Sue. Change in this case is evident, whether that change is for good or not
- remains to be seen - something we agree on.


> I like to remind people that Sue's start as Executive Director wasn't
> exactly drama-free, but at no point in her tenure can I remember anyone,
> inside or outside of the Wikimedia Foundation, suggesting holding a vote
> of no confidence for her. The same hasn't been true of Lila, unfortunately.
>

I would disagree, and I would also point out that there isn't a no
confidence vote for Lila now either. This is strictly about the board and
its conduct, this might be among the first few times the focus is shifting
to Lila without even her mention by any of the parties involved. For
historical accuracy, I would point you to the 2012 fundraising debate, the
superprotect debacle, and a lot of contentious discussion over the years
that questioned Sue's leadership on a regular basis.


It's possible that the secrecy is hiding all of the work taking place in
> the background, with people diligently studying the past five years,
> associated goals, and figuring out what went wrong and what went right.
> But the suspicion I have, as a somewhat-informed observer, is that the
> high-level vision for what comes next for the Wikimedia Foundation is
> missing. And that's what driving the low morale and high discomfort.
>

As another somewhat-informed observer, I would assure you that a high-level
vision for what comes next for WMF was ALWAYS missing. Just see the
original strate

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thank you, Jan-Bart and Stu

[Theo10011]

A big Thank you from me too, to both these wonderful people. We've
certainly had our share of disagreements in other venues, but I've always
thought highly of both.

Stu is an excellent financial strategists, with an understanding for what
matters. His work with the audits and general business acumen were big
resources. I am grateful to have had our share our disagreements, it
afforded me the opportunity to know how knowledgeable Stu is and how
passionate he is about our goals. Thank you Stu.

I spent a few days around Jan-Bart, and he truly is a warm, wonderful
presence to be around - gregarious and funny, a true mensch. He was more
community oriented and supportive than any elected trustee I've known over
the years (Perhaps with the exception of Sj). A positive influence and a
voice of reason in any contentious discussion I've seen. Thank you
Jan-Bart.
Warm Regards
Theo

On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 3:22 PM, Gerard Meijssen 
wrote:

> Hoi,
> Jan Bart, I am grateful for our trip to Brussels. You have done good.
>
> Stu you have done your thing and it is not mine. Thank you that I have
> never taken an interest.
> Thanks,
>  GerardM
>
> On 6 January 2016 at 10:44, Tanweer Morshed 
> wrote:
>
> > The contribution of Jan-Bart and Stu cannot be ignored.They have
> immensely
> > put effort for the movement, and were involved for a long time. Thank you
> > Jan-Bart and Stu for your commitment and contribution.
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> > Tanweer
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 3:37 PM, Chris Keating <
> chriskeatingw...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I just wanted to add my thanks as well as both Jan-Bart and Stu have
> > served
> > > the movement with a huge amount of dedication and commitment for many
> > years
> > > and helped steer the WMF through many challenges. It has been a real
> > > pleasure to work with both of you.
> > >
> > > Thank you both for everything you have done and best wishes for the
> > future!
> > >
> > > On a more practical note as there is now no Dutch person on the WMF
> > board I
> > > am concerned that there is now no obvious supplier of stroopwafel at
> > board
> > > meetings - has a proper impact assessment been conducted?
> > >
> > > Chris
> > >
> > > On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 8:56 AM, Steven Walling <
> steven.wall...@gmail.com
> > >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Thanks for starting this thread Lodewijk.
> > > >
> > > > Jan-Bart and Stu: Wikimedia has been lucky to have your participation
> > > over
> > > > these years.
> > > >
> > > > Stu, thank you in particular for helping steer the financial
> governance
> > > of
> > > > the Wikimedia movement. Your expertise and professionalism have been
> > > deeply
> > > > important to making sure Wikimedia is a good steward of the money
> > > entrusted
> > > > to us by donors.
> > > >
> > > > Jan-Bart, my friend, you are a force to be reckoned with. It is
> > difficult
> > > > to sum up the total impact of your leadership in the movement. I find
> > > > myself falling back on memories not just of your formal role on the
> > > board,
> > > > but of your warmth and generosity of spirit. I hope leaving the board
> > > (this
> > > > time) doesn't mean your Wikimania streak will be broken. ;-)
> > > >
> > > > On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 11:11 PM Lodewijk <
> lodew...@effeietsanders.org>
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > While we have long discussions on this list about board
> composition,
> > we
> > > > > seem to almost ignore the fact that two long time veterans are
> > leaving
> > > > the
> > > > > Wikimedia Foundation board, as scheduled. Jan-Bart de Vreede and
> Stu
> > > West
> > > > > have been around longer than many regular editors nowadays, and I
> > think
> > > > > there are not many people who can recall the days that the board
> > didn't
> > > > > have them on it. I have never had the pleasure to serve on the
> board
> > > with
> > > > > them, but a little thank-you from our community side, would seem in
> > > > place.
> > > > >
> > > > > Stu joined the board already in 2008 (filling Michael Davis' seat),
> > and
> > > > has
> > > > > been a solid power on the board's audit responsibilities (I believe
> > he
> > > > > chaired the audit committee for quite a while) and was a force
> behind
> > > the
> > > > > accountability of movement affiliates. While we often strongly
> > > disagreed
> > > > on
> > > > > affiliate issues, I appreciate the fact that he always remained
> > > > > constructive and wanted to think about solutions rather than
> > problems.
> > > He
> > > > > served both as treasurer and vice chair.
> > > > >
> > > > > Jan-Bart was on the board even longer, since early 2007, and I
> recall
> > > > > already working with him through Kennisnet (a Dutch foundation for
> > > > > education and IT) before that. Jan-Bart is one of those rare people
> > who
> > > > > went to ALL wikimania conferences, and can be easily recognised
> there
> > > > with
> > > > > his big smile. I can't remember a theme Jan-Bart didn't work on in
> > the
> > > > 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Strategic plan

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Jan 7, 2016, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
>
> Me, editorializing, very briefly for now:
>
> This answer is very bizarre. Characterizing the 2010 process as having been
> "outsourced" or not involving staff is wildly inaccurate, as I'm sure
> anybody on staff (or on the Board -- such as the board member who was in
> attendance at that meeting) would know. And while it may be that more
> people answered specific questions used to inform the plan this time
> around, the kind of specific questions asked were worlds away from the kind
> of deep engagement encouraged in the 2010 process.


Perhaps, she means that the process was outsourced to the Bridgespan Group
and Blue Oxen Associates (Eugene's firm). It is mentioned on Strategy Wiki
under Process[1]. Eugene and Philippe were brought in to facilitate the
project which eventually led to Philippe joining WMF. Bridgespan conducted
interviews and developed a "guiding paper" that became the broad-strokes
for the plan itself, and eventually led to Barry and Jessie joining WMF.

As someone intimately involved in that last process, I can attest to it
being open but not necessarily community designed. The task force area and
the larger direction was decided by other parties involved.I am not sure if
the last plan was a resounding success either. Just see the deliverable and
how much was achieved - we went through a lot of changes and outright
failures.

Lastly, the concern about this new plan being designed in private is
something I share with the rest. The current situation with the staff and
the board, the high number of new employees, acrimony with the community,
along with the less than stellar performance of the last few years, any new
plan designed in private under those circumstances does not sound very
promising.

Regards
Theo

[1] https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Process#Phase_I:_Level-setting
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

[Theo10011]

Denny, there was very little substantive content in your email. As with the
explanation from other trustees, this too, has the same markings of
subterfuge and evasionary tactics. It has been established beyond doubt
that there were "trust" issues. Repeating it or any variation thereof by
another board member will not be helping the situation.

You and others constantly mention trust issues as a pre-condition, and
describe situations arising from it. The glaring omission each time there
is about how and why? - What did he do to lose this trust in such a short
period? Did he leak sensitive information to another party or the media?
Did Google, Facebook and all the Pharma companies demand his removal as
tribute? Did he post the location of a super secret hideout or the location
of the holy grail itself? Because the longer this is going on, the more
creative the conspiracies are getting.

This brings us to the issue of trust. Trust is mutual, the community
trusted you and James in an election to represent them on the board, the
board lost trust in James, currently, the community is losing trust in the
board itself. So how should this situation be handled? Offer the board the
same options or talk through the issue? Deafening silence from the board
and senior staff who know and hope this blows over, will not repair the
damage here, things like this keep piling up under the rug and have to
addressed.

On Thu, Jan 7, 2016, Denny Vrandecic  wrote:
>
>
> I’ll tell you how I experienced it from my point of view: a few weeks ago,
> I had to turn to the Board in a confidential and important matter for me.
> And while writing my email, I felt that I probably should not write it as
> openly and frankly as I would desire; I was unconvinced that it would be
> held in confidence. I rewrote the mail because I had concerns about James'
> being on the Board, as I had lost my trust in him. This is, I think many
> will agree, not a healthy situation.
>

Actually no, there aren't enough facts to agree on anything. The constant
loss of "trust" does not translate well to all the uninformed parties. The
gist above is, you had to write a private email to the board, and you
rewrote it because you didn't trust James.


>
> At the next executive session I raised this issue to the whole Board -
> James included. It became clear that I was not the only Trustee who felt
> that way. We had a discussion in which we openly discussed this matter.
> James was asked, repeatedly, to consider a resignation, but he suggested
> that it would not matter whether he resigns or whether he is voted off. I
> disagreed with him on this point.
>

This sounds like you were the one who brought up the motion of his
dismissal or at least initiated the discussion. I also don't know why you
keep thinking James agreeing to a resignation would have been better or he
should have consented at all? He was trusted and elected to this position.
Without knowing the other facts, his decision so far seems logical.


> I am, to be completely frank, rather surprised and also relieved by the
> fact that the Board not only acted, but acted decisively - despite knowing
> very well that there would be quite some community fallout. The Board was
> not afraid to make a hard and likely unpopular decision, because it truly
> believes to act in the best effectivity of the Board, and thus also the
> best effectivity for the Foundation and the Movement at large. This gives
> me hope in this Board.
>

This opinion might be in the minority. The "community fallout" that was
expected is a big unknown risk. It is bringing up a lot of other issues,
perhaps conflating a few, forming wild conjectures, all the while two new
trustees are joining the board, we have the 15th anniversary around the
corner, the strategic plan is going to be discussed/published soon, not to
mention the fundraiser just wrapped up. It is at the least, a bad start to
the new year.

 if the rest of the Board loses
> the trust in one of its members, how should we handle this?
>

Better than this. It should have taken more effort than this to just remove
an elected trustee. The board and WMF consult with many professionals on a
range of issues. Perhaps some sort of mediation or consultation about this
issue could have happened, even involving third parties. At the least, some
sort of a hint or a public mention about the disagreements would have been
helpful for the community.

The more important question now is, if the rest of the community loses
trust in the board, how should the community handle it?

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF trustee Arnnon Geshuri and part in anticompetitive agreements in Google

[Theo10011]

Hey Fae

On Sat, Jan 9, 2016, Fæ  wrote:
>
> LOL.


> Jeez, this board are complacent beyond the point of incompetence. We
> are well overdue for a major turnover of board members. For goodness
> sake, what a bunch of clowns we have put in charge of the cash cow.


I know there is a good bit of frustration and disappointment around, but
language like that is not helpful. I say this with appreciation for all the
research and relevant comments you've made so far. You are doing yourself
and the conversation a disservice by comments like that. A "bunch of clowns
we have put in charge of the cash cow" is wrong on so many levels, and I
know you realise it too.

Don't reduce the level of conversation here, you have been doing well here.
It will only make it easier to marginalise and ignore all your effort.

Kind Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your questions about KE.

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2016, Bence Damokos  wrote:
>
> Just as a courtesy to those who follow the topic here on the mailing list,
> can you please send an update to this list whenever there is new content on
> the page, or at least when there are significant changes?



This seemed relevant.

Brion gave some background on KE [1] and if anyone remembers, I think this
might have had something to do with this [2].

Regards
Theo

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Knowledge_Engine%2FFAQ&type=revision&diff=15359671&oldid=15358976
[2]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-January/080913.html
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Theo10011]

As I see it, there are 2 large issues here.

The staff morale and distrust being the first. The exodus of a good chunk
of staff was expected at the beginning - Erik and a few others were too
much a part of Sue's leadership and it seemed natural. New leadership would
entail, a new leadership style, new staff and getting rid of some of the
old. This wasn't a surprise - in the beginning. What became evident was the
revolving door of new hires as well, departure of quite prominent ones and
oldhands who had been vetted by the community, in community-facing
positions. All the while very important high level management positions
have remain vacant. If there was a staff reorganisation planned, it should
have been the priority before anything else to make it quick and painless
as possible. This was a big failing for Lila in terms of her priorities -
this should have been the first task before anything else.

I also don't understand why people think Sue's tenure was especially rosy.
Her start was quite rocky and we had a lot of bumps along the way. No
doubt, Lila's start has been far worse but the difference there might not
be as large. I see a lot of shortcomings in communication - there were a
lot of issues Sue kept contained (as a few would know), and certainly
increasing the staff to twice or thrice the size, isn't going to be easy to
monitor - bringing back the idea of making WMF smaller.

The simplest solution right now would be hiring a* new deputy*. I think
Lila needs a buffer. Someone much more closer to the staff that can fill
the community and staff facing requirements. Given the HR history, I also
think this task should be carried out by the board directly, and that too,
at the earliest. The task of replacing an ED is a long and public one.
Depending on how you look at it, we already need a deputy, it would be
filling a vacancy. The future direction can be decided once we stop the
hemorrhaging of talent and trust.

Second issue, is the KE. I don't know if Lila still thinks there are any
perceived benefit left with pursuing this ill-advised venture. Finding out
that Damon conceived it to take on Google along with his colorful paranioa
as brion put it, and the cryptic email last month - I have no faith in this
project along with most others on the list. If you separate the buzzwords
and corporate speak from the description on the FAQ page, KE seems like a
new search engine that will integrate OSM and other data, to reside at the
main domain. A smaller and better search that focused on improvements,
would have gone under the radar until you had a prototype or more of an
idea what exactly you wanted. But instead you filed a grant request from
another organisation - their lack of interest should have been an early
indicator here. The $250 K grant everyone thinks is a smoking gun would be
the tip of the iceberg, and ultimately irrelevant, if the figures I saw on
the FAQ page were true. This grant wouldn't cover development for 2 months
of a multi-year project - Ask yourself, was it worth it?

There are a lot of really smart people trying to tell you this is not a
good idea. Not to mention, the implication of designing in an open culture
- you can spend 32 million or 50 or 60, owing to our ethos we would have to
make it accessible and open - for anyone to copy and improve as they see
fit. And If Google remotely wanted something like this, those numbers are a
drop in the bucket - they have paid more for parking and transportation of
their employees than the entire budget of this project. This is only going
to be a sad mistake that can ruin an important relationship and hurt our
credibility. This is similar to the whole Arnon's debacle if the board is
listening, you can drag your feet, resist, ignore, hope it goes away but
you know the end. So, whether you do it now, or the next ED, or it happens
in an year by either one, the outcome is probably going to be the same -
junk it and move on. This already costed you and everyone else much more
than just money.

Regards
Theo

P.S. Andreas, you are one of the smartest commentators I read on this list.
You have great points and new information but really, there is an obsession
here with Google. There are real problems right now that are quite
unrelated to what Sue said in 2008. The donor agreement and relationship as
imagined by Sue 8 years ago has only tangential relationship to the
management issues right now and the lack of clarity related to KE. I can't
see the relationship you are trying to allude to here. I say this with
great respect, and appreciation for your opinions.


On Sun, Feb 21, 2016, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 20, 2016, Anthony Cole  wrote:
>
> > Lila should have taken the community along with her as the Knowledge
> Engine
> > project was evolving. I don't know what was behind her reticence. I
> presume
> > an element was unwillingness to announce a thing while the thing was
> > shifting and changing from one day to the next.
> >
>
>
> It was 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Theo10011]

Is it time for a #IamwithVibber tag now? :)

It might be time to consider just promoting Brion or something? (as deputy
or head of engineering). There is no one the community would trust more on
the engineering needs of WMF. And from the looks of it, he does have the
support of staff and isn't holding back any relevant information or
opinion. He can bring stability to a very shake ship right now.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016, Austin Hair  wrote:
>
> I really don't think I can let this one go, though. Would you please
> name one "pet project"—actually, I don't think it's so much to ask to
> name them all—that's had to be shut down?
>

I think that might be a reference to Flow or AFT, even the MoodBar (3 off
the top of my head). Apart from that staff roles and entire departments
like Globaldev, and I even remember a strategy department briefly, that was
reshuffled. The timeline isn't as clear when these things were refactored
but a lot of things were abandoned over the years.

Lila, I don't know what impression you had before you joined WMF. This
wasn't a struggling project, or not at the desperate level that is forming
your narrative now. We had larger and more successful fundraisers every
year, the staff doubled and tripled, the pageviews rose, as did unique
visitors, and we enjoyed an improving reputation - there were no immediate
burning fires that needed addressing. This entire paradigm shift reeks of a
desperation that isn't supported by facts.

Your project and vision is far too radical for the need of the hour. Even
the changes you speak of, they can only be achieved gradually. You can't
turn this ship in such a dramatic fashion for such an ambitious project.
You should have prototyped exactly what it is you want - you had more than
enough funds and resources without this tiny Knight foundation grant and
this whole drama.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timeline of recent events at the Wikimedia Foundation

[Theo10011]

Good Job GW!

Please consider (for later) either linking or making a wiki version for
Meta. Thanks for making this effort.

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:
>
> All the shit from mailinglists is missing. For the temperature aka the
> understanding of the developments it is certainly as potent as some of the
> departures.
>

Hoi
 It is not the point but I will explain the point .

I think GW covered enough relevant points from the list. There are other
sources that cover similar comments from here, and sifting through a few
hundred long emails to find relevant quotes is going to be a time-consuming
activity which will require editorial choices. Choices, which you and
others might again disagree with. It's better to just cover big
announcements and important messages (important being subjective).

Also, please try to avoid colorful language and be appreciative of someone
else's effort.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Shared list

[Theo10011]

I am totally with Benjamin on this.

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016, Oliver Keyes  wrote:

> "sorely under-represented perspective" or not, that kind of attitude
> is of course going to piss people off. And it may be that denying the
> value of peoples' experiences or dismissing their misery is not, in
> fact, what you mean to be communicating. But it is how it's coming
> out. For me, at least, that's why I find your emails frustrating.
>

That is an odd way to dismiss any counter-argument - it is going to piss
you or others off? You are the only staff member so far objecting to any
dissenting view, existentially. I'm sure you would prefer no dissent should
exist at all because you are having a miserable time, just 100 people
piling on one?

I see the conversation heavily leaning in one direction - against Lila. She
is overwhelmingly being blamed, accused and rebutted by just about every
member on this list - in unofficial and official channels. This includes
the staff, community members and even past board members. Anything short of
calling her literally the worst or comparison her to lady hitler will not
be moving things any further than they are.

A few staff members like Brion, expressed dissent to Lila's assertion, but
wonderfully well. They offered counter-arguments, and provided context we
all needed. Dissent is necessary, it moves the conversation along. You are
in essence doing what your senior management was accused of, silencing
criticism internally because you are having a rough time. I'm sure it
doesn't feel nice.

Regards
Theo

PS Anthony, you shouldn't have sent a private email to the list.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] I am going to San Francisco

[Theo10011]

Hmm. I wonder if Jimmy is going to be named the interim bosssomeone has
to be.

Finding an ED is a long painful process, something that is bound to get
more difficult after Lila and Arnon. The only question is, if the board
brings back someone or chooses to promote/move someone around. Food for
thought.

Theo


On Fri, Feb 26, 2016, Lodewijk  wrote:

> #Iamwithrisker
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Silly question? - What list is meant for what?

[Theo10011]

On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 4:10 PM, Rui Correia  wrote:

> Nemo
>
> I am not sure I understand your cryptic message
>

I believe he meant that you were writing to the same list. (Wikimedia-l was
formerly Foundation-l, it was renamed a while ago by Erik). If you read in
context, he was quoting you and then answering.

The link he provided was to the meta page which gives an overview of the
lists.

As for info...@wikimedia.org - It's not a list, it's the OTRS address for
contacting the Foundation indirectly and sending general inquiries,
including copyright issues.[1]

Regards
Theo

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


 2014-05-21 10:24 GMT+02:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) :
>
> > Rui Correia, 21/05/2014 00:01:
> >
> >  I realised a while back that I have in the past written to the Wikimedia
> >> Foundation Mailing List and to the Wikimedia Mailing List without een
> >> realising that I was writing to more than one list.
> >>
> >
> > Because you were not.
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Overview
> >
> > Nemo
> >
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>
>
>
>
> --
> _
> Rui Correia
> Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant
> Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant
>
> Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186
> Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Proposal: List administration policy

[Theo10011]

On Sat, Jul 12, 2014, Richard Ames  wrote:

> I think it is very difficult to have hard 'rules'. The guidelines have
> been published and are referred to in the footer of each messages sent from
> this list.
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines


Ya, those are far from established or instructive in cases of moderator
involvement. I started those[1], and even I don't agree with the current
draft. They weren't written for Foundation-l/Wikimedia-l necessarily,
originally proposed on a private, now defunct list and edited by a small
minority from there. To the best of my recollection, there was no vetting
by a larger community at the time.

That page had a dedicated section about moderation[2], and suggested
practices that were removed all together - with guidelines to warn before
any moderator action, along with a recourse in case of disputes. A somewhat
similar approach as admin actions. I suppose they could still be used as a
starting point, if there is a need to have these written down.

-Theo

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mailing_lists/Guidelines&action=history
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mailing_lists/Guidelines&oldid=3544960



>
> Regards, Richard.
>
>
> On 11/07/14 20:28, Fæ wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I would like to propose that this list have a published process for
>> post moderation, banning and appeals. Perhaps a page on meta would be
>> a good way to propose and discuss a policy? I would be happy to kick
>> off a draft.
>>
>> This list has a defined scope at
>>  which
>> explains who the 3 list admins are, but no more than that. There is no
>> system of appeals, no expected time limits on bans or moderation, nor
>> an explanation of the 30 posts per month "behavioural norm" that
>> sometimes applies to this list. Neither is there any explanation of
>> what is expected of list admins, such as whether there is an
>> obligation to explain to someone who finds themselves subject to
>> moderation or a ban, as to why this has happened and what they ought
>> to do in order to become un-banned or un-moderated.
>>
>> I believe this would help list users better understand what is
>> expected of them when they post here and it may give an opportunity to
>> review the transparency of list administration, such as the option of
>> publishing a list of active moderated accounts and possibly a list of
>> indefinitely banned accounts where these were for behaviour on the
>> list (as opposed to content-free spamming etc.)
>>
>> I see no down side to explaining policy as openly as possible. Thoughts?
>>
>> Fae
>>
>>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The case for supporting open source machine translation

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 7:56 PM, Denny Vrandečić <
denny.vrande...@wikimedia.de> wrote:

> Not just bootstrapping the content. By having the primary content be saved
> in a language independent form, and always translating it on the fly, it
> would not merely bootstrap content in different languages, but it would
> mean that editors from different languages would be working on the same
> content. The texts in the different language is not a translation of each
> other, but they are all created from the same source. There would be no
> primacy of, say, English.
>

This is a thought but I've never heard of a Language independent form. I
also question its importance to your core idea vs. say, a primary language
of choice. An argument can be made that language independent on a computer
medium can't exist, down to a programming language, the instructions and
even binary bits, there is a language running on top of higher inputs (even
transitioning between computer languages isn't at an absolute level)- to
that extent, I wonder if data can truly be language independent.

As far as Linguistic typology goes, it's far too unique and too varied to
have a language independent form develop as easily. Perhaps it also depends
on the perspective. For example, the majority of people commenting here
(Americans, Europeans) might have exposure to a limited set of a linguistic
branch. Machine-translations as someone pointed out, are still not
preferred in some languages, even with years of research and potentially
unlimited resources at Google's disposal, they still come out sounding
clunky in some ways. And perhaps they will never get to the level of
absolute, where they are truly language independent. If you read some of
the discussions in linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), there is
research to suggest that a language a person is born with dictates their
thought processes and their view of the world - there might not be
absolutes when it comes to linguistic cognition. There is something
inherently unique in the cognitive patterns of different languages.

Which brings me to the point, why not English? Your idea seems plausible
enough even if your remove the abstract idea of complete language
universality, without venturing into the science-fiction labyrinth of
man-machine collaboration.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

[Theo10011]

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 9:32 PM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski  wrote:

>
> [Yes, I do understand there is a considerable time difference, etc; I'll
> be patiently waiting for a response from the WMF.]


Might even have to wait till Monday. This was done on a Friday night I
think.

There doesn't seem to be any method to how these rights are being assigned
and retained. Observations-

1) Only 2 of the current board members (besides Jimmy) have admin rights.
Prob. on the argument that they are community-elected?
2) A few of the current admins that retained their flag have never made a
contribution, or made any in the last year.
3) Phoebe for some reason, retains her right while currently not being on
staff or the board.
4) Only 2 people are prob. assigned on the basis of "advisory board"
without any explanation. There is no updated list to check who is on the
advisory board this time.

There does seem to be a pattern about how this is being cleaned up, and I
don't think Gayle is the impetus behind this though she is taking the blame
for it.

Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

[Theo10011]

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 5:34 AM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski  wrote:

>
> So what did you want to say? I haven't been able to find any answers to
> any questions that have been asked by so many people in this thread.


Try and be a bit nicer please. Gayle is still relatively new and this level
of scrutiny might be jarring for someone. I'm not sure what the expectation
was here, it wasn't going to be a grand plan or a hidden explanation for
this action. Sue and Erik gave their versions, so as far as explanations
go, if Philippe said he was the button pusher, Gayle could have argued she
was merely the one who authorized the button pushing. I kind of like that
she didn't take that route.

I don't think there's anywhere else to go from here. I suppose now it comes
down to futile arguments over levels of culpability. At the most, there was
malicious intent against Mz, where his removal alone was the eventual goal,
and a policy had to be erected or modified to facilitate that. The rest
might have been an amalgamation of inactive users and bystanders who got
caught on either side of it. It's sad if it had to come down to that.
Admins like THO and Mz, are godsend.

At the very least, this was handled poorly. I don't think anyone including
the executives would disagree with that one. Perhaps a courtesy note - a
thank you, a warning, some time in between - would have made the world of a
difference. Maybe the problem itself instead of the person could have been
isolated, and talked out. I still have a sneaking suspicion that Gayle
didn't realize what she was getting into.

I also think that people reading this are missing a lot of the context and
history here. Before the removal of his rights, Mz made ~2000 edits on that
wiki this year. A lot of them are tedious edits which no one really does
from the foundation's side. I think he's been working on his Manana list
since 2009[1] for that wiki.

For those that might not know him, even a cursory look at Mz's meta or
en.wp talk page would reveal that his time is valued as it is in other
places. It's filled with people asking for help with bots, db queries,
Mediawiki, small hacks and what not, he can certainly do a heck of a lot
more than an average technically-inept editor like me can. Mz also has his
own charm, and for the people who know him, love him for it. A few staff
members though, do seem immune to that exposure and do tend to lock horns
occasionally.

The two years that I have known Philippe and Mz (and strangely both were
among the first people I interacted with), they have had more than a few
contentious moments. Philippe might have a tendency to be a bit more prone
to control (IMO). I have also seen him discuss issues about staff rights,
and who has access where for a long while. It wouldn't be surprising to
learn that this removal, and policy change was in the offing. Perhaps, the
issue got exacerbated with Zack and Erik's concerns (something about HTML
insertions?) about the fundraising infrastructure residing on WMF wiki, who
knows.

Regards
Theo

[1]http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Ma%C3%B1ana
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Fwd: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues (David Cuenca)

[Theo10011]

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 1:46 AM, Geoff Brigham wrote:

> As Achal pointed out, we will put resources into researching this issue in
> depth and hopefully finding a solution that may work.  It will probably
> take a month or two to ensure we are looking at all possibilities to see if
> this is possible.  If you have any great ideas, please feel free to send
> them to me, and I will ensure our team will consider them fully.
>
> This will be an interesting project, and I greatly appreciate everyone's
> interest in finding a lawful solution that ensures the distribution of all
> materials in the public domain.


Well, this was interesting to note. In stark contrast to the other thread,
this email was disappointing for the wrong reasons, maybe it's for me
alone. It took about 70 emails and 3 threads, and 2 days of waiting to get
a reply from the concerned staff members, but I believe Achal forwarded
this to Wikimedia-l less than 12 hours before you responded on a Sunday and
agreed to devote a month's resources to it. I don't think more than 2-3
people responded to the issue either on this list or the Indian one. I
guess that's the sole difference of the position he occupies, speaking of
which, the advisory board appointments seem indefinite, and the list
doesn't seem to have been updated - for the past 2 years I have only seen
Achal identify himself as that. As far as I know Mr. Prabhala has not even
logged in to an existing wikisource project, or uploaded anything on
commons beyond anything relevant to the last grant.

I ask because this issue was brought up a couple of years ago on the same
list[1] and received a lot more attention locally than this time.
Completely regardless of the issue itself, I know of several individuals,
and committees waiting for answers from the legal department, and actually
expect to wait weeks. I barely see you respond directly on a list these
days, and you are agreeing to devote a month's resources at his behest
alone so quickly.

Glad to be reminded how somethings change and somethings stay the same. And
speaking for me alone, it's disappointing to note the difference in tone
above vs. the one being employed on the other thread.

-Theo

[1]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-August/004080.html
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

[Theo10011]

Hi Casey

First, I miss seeing you around, in case you are not omnipresent anymore.

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Casey Brown  wrote:

> On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 8:28 PM, Theo10011  wrote:
> > Try and be a bit nicer please. Gayle is still relatively new and this
> level
> > of scrutiny might be jarring for someone.
>
> Comments like these have always bothered me.
>
> Gayle isn't some random secretary or new run-of-the-mill employee. She
> is a C-level staff member who has been here for more than a year and
> made a policy decision that people have feedback on. While the
> feedback may not have come in the nicest form, it is still valid and
> we can't just ignore it because "it wasn't nice enough". As a high
> level staff member in charge of your own department, you need to deal
> with it -- this is one thing that comes with the job, unfortunately.
> It's an insult to Gayle to assume that she will not be able to handle
> criticism or answer people's responses. A C-level staff member needs
> to be able to handle this "scrutiny", even high level scrutiny, when
> they were the one that made the call, and I'm sure she's more than
> capable of doing that.
>
>
Fair point. I'll concede that one, I might have a soft spot for certain
people for no apparent reason. Out of anyone else affected perhaps you're
truly the really slighted party in all of this, and it really wouldn't be
my place to tell you to be nicer.

I still find out in bits and pieces how many things Casey handled. You and
Cary made these issues disappear and made a lot more currently broken
things function. The cracks seem to be showing more these days, which lends
credence to a theory that you and Cary might have acted as buffer points on
some of these things. As both of you became more inactive, minor things
start generating more friction.

Perhaps, it's a bit of maturity that makes the difference here, but there
is no real-world implication of "C-Level" - they have these tiers that
supposedly imply something in staff but they aren't born different or sent
to army camps for training - they are just people. You know, people
fumbling around, making mistakes, accidentally pissing other people off. We
all stumbled our way here I think, no one started editing perfectly or
never said a wrong thing or made a faux-pas - I made 4 today. Yes, some
people handle criticism better than others, but I can tell your from
witnessing it first-hand that being singled out by ~100 strangers is an
emotionally taxing experience. Or maybe the gender gap discussions have
sensitized me too much :P and I'm being biased.

Lastly, I'll ask again, what was the expectation here? "Yes, I took some
time out between clubbing baby seals, and kicking blind people, to take
away flags I don't understand, from strangers I don't know. You know,
because I'm evil like that" - nothing short of that would have gratified
the current quest. There are two possible reasons, either someone else on
staff asked or Ms. Young wasn't provided all the facts and didn't realize
the implications. Both involve implicating another staff member, the course
she took seems evident that it's not the road she wants to go down. While I
don't agree, given her position, I can empathize.


> [Note that I'm speaking generally -- I personally think Gayle can
> handle criticism and she seems very nice. She also probably had no
> idea this would create dramz. My comment is directed towards the
> general "omg think of the staff member!" response to criticism that is
> systemic in our movement.]


You've actually read my mail on those other lists, do you really think I'm
the one to say "omg think of the staff member!" ? I recall arguing the
opposite on at least 3 very visible occasions.

On the other hand, I had deja vu reading Philippe's email. Between the two,
I think Gayle is far more pensive than Philippe's appears to be. It's
almost combative. He agrees that he advised her wrong, and then spends the
latter half chastising the tone on IRC and emails, and ends with a familiar
sign-off. I vehemently believe he had more to do with this than just being
the trigger-man. Considering how long he's known Mz, the amount of
interactions they've had, even the times Mz has helped Philippe. He knew
the reaction, perhaps why this was done first without warning in this way.
I would point out "seven years ago the WMF was paralyzed from lack of
strategy and direction" - and say I can really make an argument that it's
actually the other way round. The strategy then was to grow. Now it's
running in every direction and switching mid-stream - you can start from
global development, to the education program and find a lot in between.

-Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

[Theo10011]

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 10:09 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak wrote:

> hi Florence,
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry
>
> sockpuppeting is using more than one account in the same time. There are
> legitimate situations when users have a new account set up (e.g. after
> forgetting a password). Also, some users have multiple accounts for privacy
> reasons. Finally, we also have a clean start policy, which is not
> considered improper.
>



Do you know anything about Florence? BTW Aren't you the FDC chair?

-Theo
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[Wikimedia-l] Exit Interview - Sue

[Theo10011]

Hi

A few weeks ago MZMcBride proposed an exit interview for Sue on Meta. I
believe his intention was something similar to Reddit's IAmA. I thought
that this was a good idea and supported it. Sue has been at the helm for a
long while, it would be interesting to get her reflection on all the
changes, and give everyone who missed the last IRC office hour session, a
chance to ask any lingering questions.

Sue graciously accepted to do an exit interview a couple of weeks ago. The
page is already set up on Meta[1] for this, and we have a few questions
already. So far, things are organizing themselves pretty well with everyone
voting on what questions are finally picked. Please understand that we want
this to be a slow process, so everyone has time to see the questions and it
can take weeks to get your answer.

I would like to invite everyone reading this to have a look at the page.
Please feel free to post your questions or vote for the ones already
listed. Signpost, Wikinews or any other project/group that wants to use the
exit interview is welcomed to follow that page and add to it. Thanks to MZ
for getting things rolling on Meta and Sue, for accepting to do this.

Regards
Theo


[1]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_exit_interview/Sue_Gardner
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Theo10011]

I don't understand this line of discussion.

From an intelligence stand-point, the goal of the program seems to be
communication interception COMINT through SIGAD means. From phone calls, to
emails, to private and public posts. I'm not sure how that would have any
bearing on Wikipedia though, the purpose there is to write an article, fix
typos, add pictures, occasionally there is cross-communication between
different editors. Nearly all of it is visible to the world. I read Domas'
email[1] linked to by Benjamin Lees, he seems pretty clear that there is
nothing hidden and discussions like this are a waste of time.

This is one of the big benefit of the open culture. There is little hidden
about Wikipedia, or even Wikimedia. There are no secret server logs, and
I'm not sure what they would actually be of. Most of the logs are already
there in revisions, and the entire copy of Wikipedia can just be downloaded
without anyone's permission and inspected to death.

As far as CU checks go, I think we've made a bigger deal of it on wiki than
it has, in real world implication. They just pull information from the
headers, that virtually any server that has a visitor has access to. If a
system with a breadth like PRISM can exist and monitor virtually all
communication traffic across multiple countries, - in comparison, figuring
out someone's header info or extracting their browser choice and IP address
would be the least useful thing to them. And then drowned between a deluge
of IP addresses, most of which are already dynamic, would reveal what,
exactly- a user from Russian fixed a typo today, a user from Spain likes
ice cream, someone else uploaded a picture of their dog.

I guess what I'm saying is, all this wouldn't be hard to do - but there is
absolutely no utility any decent intelligence community can expect to gain
from this, when they have access to your email accounts and phone records,
this seems like a giant waste of time when 90% of it is already up there
for anyone to see.

The irony here is perhaps that we're having a discussion about a top-secret
government monitoring program on a publicly archived indexed list, most of
us using email accounts which the program actually *does* monitor, all to
talk about exposure to wikipedia which has no such thing to archive,
monitor or hide.

Regards
Theo

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/49712/focus=49727

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 5:59 PM, Craig Franklin
wrote:

> If the NSA, CIA, or some other spook agency is getting information off of
> Wikimedia servers, they don't have a CU account or anything like that.
>  They'd have a program running at the operating system level that extracts
> the data in a standardised format and sends it off to some secret server
> somewhere where it can be collated for data mining purposes.  If they have
> some way of getting private information, it's going to be well hidden and
> not something you or I are likely to (or capable of) stumbling across.
>
> Cheers,
> Craig
>
>
> On 10 June 2013 20:09, David Gerard  wrote:
>
> > On 10 June 2013 10:56, Florence Devouard  wrote:
> >
> > > Precisely, they could ask to have "CU" accounts...
> >
> >
> > There are people who closely monitor who has what powers.
> >
> >
> > - d.
> >
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> >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Theo10011]

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 6:33 PM, Anthony  wrote:

> Wikipedia is not a top traffic website from people editing.  99% of the
> traffic is reading/searching.
>

Yes, and I as I pointed to the email written by Domas, that those logs
don't exist.


>
> We know that people's Google searches have been used against them in
> court.  I'm not aware of any cases where Wikipedia searches have been
> used.  But I can't imagine why they'd be any different.


Because one is a search engine and the other is an encyclopedia. If someone
was researching ways to make explosives or looking for child pornography,
those are grounds to incriminate. Wikipedia on the other hand is an
encyclopedia. There is nothing illegal about going in to a library and
looking at a physical encyclopedia, nor should there be about Wikipedia.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Theo10011]

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 7:31 PM, John Vandenberg  wrote:

> Or DeCSS, or AACS, ..
>
> Or 2012 Benghazi attack, Efforts to impeach Barack Obama, Drone
> attacks in Pakistan, ..
>
> Or PRISM (surveillance program), Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, ..
>
> It would be good *if* the WMF can provide assurances to editors that
> they havent received any national security letters or other 'trawling'
> requests from any U.S. agency.
>
> If the WMF has received zero such requests, can the WMF say that?
> There wouldn't be any gag order.


You mean like Yahoo, Facebook, Google and Microsoft did at this program's
first disclosure[1]. They all denied it for the record. They also have long
running campaigns about security, protecting user data and privacy. After
Obama and the NSA chief admitted to it, everyone started re-examining the
language of their denial and found loopholes and similarities between
carefully worded responses which were written and revised by a team of
lawyers. There isn't any personal data (more than IP addresses etc.) on
Wikipedia to compromise.

As a user, I would actually be more concerned if WMF put out a similar
response along with the big guys. It would be analogous to walking in a
police station and yelling "I wasn't involved in that..." - when no one
actually knows or suspects anything.

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 6:59 PM, Fred Bauder  wrote:

> They tap directly into the internet backbone. Only if there is some
> particular matter which interests them which they would need our help to
> decipher would they contact the Foundation. There are a few things out
> there that I can imagine them being interested in, but very few. For
> example, there are small groups of people in the United States that
> support The Shining Path or the Naxalites. Active steps to open a
> military front in the United States would probably kick them into gear
> and they might be interested in who edited our articles on these subjects
> as advocates for that tendency.


Actually, it's still not clear the methodology they use - there are
theories about lockboxes, about a beam splitter at Tier 1 service
providers, or running a shadow copy from the service provider lines, or
combination of those, or something else entirely. The original slide did
mention upstream and downstream surveillance methods as some news stories
pointed out.

I have no possible way to extract who is a supporter of a cause, based on
what article they edit or what they read. There can be some form of POV
pushers but again there is nothing that would require this level of
circumvention to use a secret government surveillance program to discern.
More often than not, I and prob. a large number of editors just fix things,
add something here and there and move on. They don't pay attention to the
political ramifications of editing that article. The amount of false
positive they would get from monitoring something like this would be
several times more than anything resembling a useful and sustained pattern.
Not to mention, this would require human interpretation to discern when
someone supports a cause, pushes POV or just curates an article without any
underlying feeling. Again, all this would be going the long way round to
prove something they can easily get from a user's email, chat logs and
searches- the perception of threat would also be more evident from their
personal communication instead of public editing behavior.

Regards
Theo

[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#Response_from_companies
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 10:26 PM, Lodewijk wrote:

> This was definitely mentioned at Wikimania. What I understood is that it
> will be hosted externally for performance and reliability reasons, but that
> the rest should remain the same.
>

So, A blog for one of the top 10 websites in the world is being hosted
externally "for performance and reliability"? - That doesn't sound right.
Maybe Mr. Roth & friends can clarify a bit here.

Blogs generally don't require a lot of resources, aside from some comment
oversight. But it's not like there is a deluge of comments or moderation
required in the current blog - they average about 1, maybe 2 comments and
from my impression, don't particularly have a high number of regular
followers.

This seems like something trivial, perhaps because of familiarity with
Wordpress, it is being preferred in this case. But then, why are we
willingly and so easily handing the visitors to a third party? especially
with so much paranoia about monitoring and privacy issues. Even for the
sake of our own impression and opinions - Is there a particular role there
that Mediawiki can't fill in? (I recall Erik once argued that wiki is the
most versatile platform, does he believe that Wordpress is a better
alternative? )

Regards
Theo


>
> Anyway, I'm not an expert here, just what I understood from Matthew Roth &
> friends
>
> Lodewijk
>
>
> 2013/9/5 Richard Symonds 
>
> > This is being discussed on-wiki too, at
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy#Blog_not_hosted_by_WordPress.3F
> > .
> >
> > Richard Symonds
> > Wikimedia UK
> > 0207 065 0992
> >
> > Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
> > Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered
> > Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A
> 4LT.
> > United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia
> > movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who
> > operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
> >
> > *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control
> > over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.*
> >
> >
> > On 5 September 2013 14:00, Neil Harris  wrote:
> >
> > > On 05/09/13 13:37, MZMcBride wrote:
> > >
> > >> Hi.
> > >>
> > >> The recent draft privacy policy mentions that the Wikimedia blog
> > >> () will soon be hosted by WordPress.com.
> > >>
> > >> Was this discussed anywhere? If so, where?
> > >>
> > >> What is the proposed URL structure of a blog hosted by WordPress.com?
> I
> > >> think there's a reasonable expectation that when a user visits
> > >> *.wikimedia.org, we don't simply send his or her browser info to a
> > third
> > >> party without his or her consent. This has come up previously with
> > Jobvite
> > >> and iframes. It's also come up with the use of tracking tools such as
> > >> Google Analytics, which not only affect one-time visitors, but aim to
> > >> persist client-side.
> > >>
> > >> How will the blog be backed up? Relying on an external service means
> not
> > >> being in control of the data. Will there be regular backups made to
> > ensure
> > >> that if WordPress.com goes away, we won't lose all of our posts?
> > >>
> > >> MZMcBride
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > > I agree: this does seem to be a curious decision, at odds with the
> WMF's
> > > general policy of self-hosting as much as possible in order to maintain
> > > maximum independence from outside entities, particularly in the context
> > of
> > > the recent concerns about privacy. I would have thought that
> maintaining
> > a
> > > WordPress installation would be well within the WMF's capabilities.
> > >
> > > Neil
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > __**_
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org 
> > > Unsubscribe:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l<
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l>,
> > >  > wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org>
> > > ?subject=**unsubscribe>
> > >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia and the politics of encryption

[Theo10011]

So, does this have any bearing on the discussion? -
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html

Or are we just partial to the US surveillance over PRC.

The article does mention SSL, VPNs and 4G security. They even have a "Key
recovery service" and it's been going on for a long while apparently, to
the point that the NSA has been steering the release of encryption
standards and tools. I suppose that should make the "politics of
encryption" a bit less relevant?

-Theo


On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 10:09 PM, Erik Moeller  wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 7:46 AM, Brion Vibber 
> wrote:
>
> > I would love to see Wikipedia content made available in China on Chinese
> > infrastructure operated by a Chinese organization, with total ability to
> > determine their own security and censorship policies.
> >
> > "But that's what Baidu did and we hate them!" you say?
> >
> > We could work *with* such an organization to coordinate, share content,
> > etc, without compromising basic web security for our sites or giving up
> our
> > liberal content policies on Wikipedia "proper".
>
> I don't buy the argument. Last time I checked, Hudong (now just
> "Baike") and Baidu Baike were the main wiki-like encyclopedias
> operating out of and serving mainland China. Both use non-free
> licensing terms, and both are subject to local censorship policies and
> practices. That may include turning over contributors if they post
> content that's deemed to be problematic by local authorities.
>
> At least on the surface, the projects are successful, with millions of
> articles and lots of traffic. I have no idea what the quality of the
> content is, but looking at an article like DNA, I'm guessing it
> provides useful value to its readers:
>
> http://www.baike.com/wiki/DNA&prd=button_doc_jinru
>
> Where they are failing to do so, they can improve, if necessary by
> copying Wikipedia content. But the one thing that they _cannot_
> provide, and that a neutral encyclopedia _must_ provide, is precisely
> information of the kind that the Chinese government would censor.
> Neutral information about people, politics and history, irrespective
> of whether that information afflicts a comfortable bureaucrat
> somewhere.
>
> I would posit a different argument. The problem of providing basic
> information about any subject _is_ being solved for by local
> information providers. China isn't some backwater waiting for us to
> educate them about physics and disease control. The problem of
> providing a neutral, uncensored encyclopedia in the Chinese language,
> on the other hand, isn't being solved for by anyone but us. The answer
> is not to water down our security or partner with local information
> providers that allow censorship and are willing to turn over user
> data. It's to find ways to get that information to people, including
> the bits they'd rather have people not see.
>
> Erik
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] letter from the FDC to the WMF

[Theo10011]

This seems like a preposterous proposition, if not for the distinct
recollection that this might have been insinuated by Ms. Gardner in the
discussion leading up to the formation of FDC. It still reads like a poorly
thought out attempt at some form of a coup or the making of one. This is as
bad an idea, as the actual formation of the FDC.

On Tue, Oct 22, 2013, Dariusz Jemielniak  wrote:
>
> I have no idea what gave you this impression. The FDC is composed of
> Wikimedia volunteers and serves as an advisory committee by the Board. The
> Board itself is not the foundation, neither - it is a body overseeing and
> supervising it.
>

Actually, no. The board and WMF both have a legal existence and basis. FDC
as a committee, albeit a board mandated one sits on the same or equal
footing as Langcom or Comcom, slightly above OMGcom, as far as I'm
concerned. It has little to no real world existence. Second, the WMF board
members are volunteers as well, quite like you. Unlike the FDC however, the
WMF board has several elected members and has gone through quite a few
iterations and external scrutiny.


>
> If the Board disagrees with the FDC recommendation, it naturally can
> overrule it, but how is this possibility relevant? The FDC at no point is
> inclined to provide rubber stamps to any entity in the process in general,
> and WMF in particular. We use our best judgment, experience, and skills to
> give meaningful evaluations. What possible motivation could we have to do
> otherwise? I strongly believe that none of the FDC members is driven by an
> urge to please anyone (WMF, the Board, the chapters).


I quite believe the opposite might be true.


> We are motivated to
> recommend sensible resources allocation within the entire movement. At no
> point do we take part in a popularity contest (and I believe we've shown
> that already). Moreover, keep in mind that even though we only prepare
> recommendations, and decisions are made by the Board, our responsibility is
> to the movement as a whole for our recommendations, and not for what the
> Board does with them. If we recommend cuts and the Board overrules them,
> the community will decide which of these two bodies went wrong.
>

So a direct path of conflict with the board. One can assume you'd expect
the community to side against the board on some or any occasion and
hilarity will ensue.

On Tue, Oct 22, 2013, Dariusz Jemielniak  wrote:
>
> I'm not saying that the problems you're pointing out are non-existent.
> Rather, I'd say that they are likely unavoidable. I'm not certain about
> Western Europeans' solidarity anyway - I have serious doubts if any of the
> Western European FDC members would have any preference for other Western
> European chapters, just as I (coming from Eastern, or, more accurately,
> Central Europe) would not perceive other Eastern/Central European chapters
> as more suited for funding. If you have any thoughts on how should the
> future FDC composition be altered from a systemic point of view (election
> criteria, etc.), I'd be very much interested in learning about them -
> especially if the changes would only improve the results (rather than bring
> other problems on their own).
>

I have one. Resign. Half the of current FDC should resign and open up the
other half to some participation from the larger community - be it through
an open election, arbcomm seat, board seats, then you'd need to add Jimmy
of course - Hey! we can then have the same structure as the board. so,
another quasi board that really has no legal authority or basis to comment,
just disagree and create more conflict when some chapters don't get their
way. This entire exercise with FDC has been futile, fixing little and
consuming a lot of time and resources.


> As of now, all FDC members exclude themselves in the cases when their home
> chapters applications are considered, irrespective of their engagement in
> the boards.
>

Those are some high standards right there.

--

I'm quite surprised to constantly read FDC is somehow representative of the
larger community and accountable to them. Almost all the current members
were part of chapter leadership and have been quite active within that
circle. I suppose this is the same fiction as chapters inherently being
representatives of the larger community. The FDC is sort of a UN-like
gathering that yet somehow overlooks the largest and most active community
of all.

Perhaps you might want to take a look at the dismal rate of actual
community participation in FDC discussions. An year or so in to its
formation, there isn't exactly a stellar record and high-opinions to go
around. I hope I don't need to point to the recent news articles and
comments about the FDC and possible issues of corruption, which might have
even played a part in...whatever this is.

I also don't understand why FDC alone should have this right to evaluate
and offer recommendations. Why not the GAC? Arbcomm? or even individuals,
like Risker or Nathan,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] letter from the FDC to the WMF

[Theo10011]

Hi Nemo

I'll get straight to my point here before answering in-line. I see this as
yet another move to change or one-up the power structures at play here. WMF
created this FDC to evaluate chapter finances, FDC is still limited in what
they believe is their scope, WMF still has a great deal of control over it
but the recent comments about its effectiveness, and who knows perhaps even
future dissolution/re-evaluation, might have brought upon this request to
one-up the WMF. For example, in this scenario, accusing a chapter of
corruption or nepotism would exacerbate a given situation, which in return
might allow FDC to say something similar publicly about WMF or disagree
with its requests. Since, the majority of FDC is composed of chapter
specialists, the entire dynamics will get skewed to one side, composed
primarily by chapter members overseeing mostly chapter grants, who will
also have a platform to oppose the board if need be and little in the form
of opposition.

This issue might lay claim to the odd nature of WMF between an Tech/IT firm
internally and the external non-profit part of the equation with chapters
around the world, that have little to do with the online identity. It might
seem ludicrous to think the WMF engineering and tech departments will be
scrutinized by random members of chapters, more so, they might be able to
dictate the terms and influence expense and programs(with little
participation from the largest community), as such, I believe their opinion
should only rest on the same footing as yours and mine. No more-no less.

On Wed, Oct 23, 2013, Federico Leva (Nemo)  wrote:

>
>  I'm quite surprised to constantly read FDC is somehow representative of
>> the
>> larger community and accountable to them. Almost all the current members
>> were part of chapter leadership and have been quite active within that
>> circle. I suppose this is the same fiction as chapters inherently being
>> representatives of the larger community. The FDC is sort of a UN-like
>> gathering that yet somehow overlooks the largest and most active community
>> of all.
>>
>> Perhaps you might want to take a look at the dismal rate of actual
>> community participation in FDC discussions. An year or so in to its
>> formation, there isn't exactly a stellar record and high-opinions to go
>> around. I hope I don't need to point to the recent news articles and
>> comments about the FDC and possible issues of corruption, which might have
>> even played a part in...whatever this is.
>>
>
> I'm not sure how this matters for this proposal/request by the FDC: do
> such defects exist or apply only to evaluating the WMF budget? If not, how
> do they bring water to the idea of letting WMF be special compared to the
> other entities' funding?


I'm not sure I follow your earlier point there. As for WMF being "special"
- there were extensive debates about this around 2 years ago related to
decentralization. A lot of chapter members apparently saw things as WMF
should be the same as them. I don't believe that can be possible, first an
attempt was made to separate these entities on the basis of "payment
processing", and an independent body dispensing funds while WMF merely
collects and holds them - true to that structure this suggestion might fit
in but It's far too late now. WMF can not be judged by the same logic,
chapter funding is. I'm also not sure if the recent issues Ms. Gardner
alluded to are real with the FDC, but they should offer pause when handing
over control to a body that its creators think is still flawed and broken.
Not to mention, WMF is the only one who actually has full control of the
funds, the servers, the trademarks - basically everything, and FDC derives
its authority from a page on meta.


>
>> I also don't understand why FDC alone should have this right to evaluate
>> and offer recommendations. Why not the GAC? Arbcomm? or even individuals,
>> like Risker or Nathan, heck, even my cat should have that right! There is
>> an Auditcomm kicking around still I think. There is also some conflation
>> in
>> the comments over how much authority FDC is looking for- is it to merely
>> offer feedback, suggest increases /decreases - which like feedback, WMF
>> can
>> reject at will or the authority to go head-to-head with the board, as the
>> following comments allude to. The latter is quite preposterous, the former
>> not so much. I suppose sharing the plan with everyone openly, and letting
>> everyone comment might be the quickest solution there.
>>
>> Anyway, of the dozen reasons why this is a bad idea here are a few-
>>
>> -The internal structure - the foundation recently built up and then
>> expanded a grants department, added to the internal finance department
>> including some global work, the executive leadership - it would make
>> somethings redundant, making a whole lot of resources so far wasted.
>> -The external structure - hierarchy between the board, WMF executives, the
>> FDC, auditcommittee, the FDC steeri

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New Wikimania Committee Formed

[Theo10011]

On Wed, Oct 23, 2013, Sarah Stierch  wrote:

> Orsolya was Deputy Program Chair for WM 2012.
>
> And James was the lead for WLM 2012.
>

James was the lead for Wiki Loves Monument too?


>
> So it's correct no matter what :)
>

-Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fellowship

[Theo10011]

Hi Florence

I'm sure someone from the staff is going to explain this better later, but
I will give it a shot until they do. I fielded questions about this last
year, and did some clean-up work on Meta, so I looked up the information
about this. I might be wrong on a couple of things, but I will try and
explain to the best of my knowledge.

Fellows, and their organizational, administrative roles have been fleshed
out much better now than they were before. I believe Siko deserves a lot of
the credit, along with other staffers. The delineation are becoming more
clearer now than they were before.

As it stands, there seem to be 2 types of fellows- one is, Research fellows
and the other, Community fellows.

Research fellows are usually remotely located, who sign on for a limited
time and project. Their terms are usually smaller and only for the duration
of the project which they sign on for. They are signed on for a specific
task or project and supported through it. They are remote contractors,
whose purpose is the completion of their research project and WMF supports
them through it.

Community fellows, which might be more familiar, are usually community
members. They are usually located at the WMF office, and usually have one
year terms (in majority of the cases). They may or may not have a specific
project, or take on more projects during their fellowship. They are usually
community resources/representatives at the staff with some familiarity with
the staff and inner-workings. The last 3 community fellows incidentally,
moved on to staff positions after their terms - Steven, Maryana and James.
As far as I know, no past fellow exceeded the one year term.

To the best of my knowledge, Community fellows are contractors. They are
technically separate from staff, and technically not answerable to a direct
superior. Traditionally, fellows are independent of the organization that
appoints them. (not sure if that is the same in WMF context)

I answered a couple of your questions in-line also.

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 2:15 PM, Florence Devouard wrote:

> Hello
>
> Following a conversation started on another mailing list on the meaning of
> "fellowship", I am forwarding here a question that I hope will be answered
> by someone (I can not help being curious :)).
>
> My original question was
>
> "I have also been wondering myself what the difference is between a fellow
> and a staff member. The only difference I could personally figure out is
> that the fellow is there for a very specific mission and for a fixed amount
> of time, whilst the staff person may have his role and tasks change over
> time and is supposingly on unlimited time (until he leaves or get fired).
> Am I correct in my interpretation or is a fellow something different than
> what I think it is ?"
>
> I got the following answers
>
> "From a communications perspective I have no problem defining what a
> fellow is, and what they're doing. They are receiving compensation from the
> Foundation to really focus on the work that they do, but I don't believe
> would we call them 'staff' of the Foundation, nor contractors. Creative
> Commons has fellows as well, but I've generally seen them communicating and
> carrying out work within their research or area of activity focus:
> https://creativecommons.org/**fellows
>
> I do believe in either case a fellow does work on a specific project or
> initiative for a set period of time."
>
>
> as well as
>
> "See also https://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships#**
> What_a_Fellow_is...
> (and the following section, "What a Fellow is not...") "
>
> and
>
> "In other contexts, one of the important reasons why a fellow might not be
> considered "staff" of the organization providing the fellowship is because
> they would remain on the staff of whatever organization they were
> affiliated with originally. Somebody at a university who receives a
> fellowship to pursue research while on sabbatical is still primarily seen
> as part of the university. (Not that Wikimedia fellowships are designed for
> purely academic research, but the principle about affiliation applies
> nevertheless.)"
>
> Which answers partly to my question indeed.
>
> I would be interesting to have not only a communication/management
> perspective, but also an administrative & legal one.
>
> Does the fellowship status implies that the WMF pays for health or
> retirement benefits (as it would for a staff member) or does the fellow
> receive a lump sum and manages by himself to pay for taxes and benefits
> depending on the country he lives in (as would a contractor) ?
>

Depends on the type of fellowship. Research fellows don't get other
benefits, they are purely contractors. Community fellows are different, the
exact nature of benefits was going through a change from what I remember
since last year. Since majority of the community fellows 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

[Theo10011]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 9:45 AM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> I was actually thinking of the board, or just Jimbo himself, rather than
> any wider group of luminaries (or actual Wikipedia editors). If Google
> wanted something, I am sure they would speak in person to the people they
> have had personal contact with. I was struck by the following four-month
> timeline the other day:
>
> ---o0o---
>
> October 4 to October 6, 2011: Italian Wikipedia blackout, hailed as
> successful in preventing Italian legislation.
>
> November 18, 2011: Media announce that Google's Sergey Brin is donating
> half a million dollars to Wikipedia.
>
> December 10, 2011: Jimmy first raises the topic of an anti-SOPA Wikipedia
> blackout on Wikipedia.
>
> January 16, 2012: English Wikipedia is blacked out for a day, in an action
> hailed as successful in preventing US legislation.
>

So, a chain of events during a 4 month period can not be incidental. What
you neglect to mention that there was an annual fundraiser during the end
of the year, this was not the first grant Google made to Wikimedia, in
fact, it might not even be the second, they donated in the past fundraisers
as well, larger amounts I believe. I am thinking of the 2
Million received from Google in 2010.

Now, far be it for me to defend Jimmy, but the central assumption in your
polemic is, that jimmy is devoid of caring about any social issues, issues
that might even affect the identity he has created. He would have to be
paid in order to care, if not Google than someone else paying him off to
care, can't it just be that he believes in something? even if there is
a perceived threat? I know it might be hard to believe, but people have
been known to care about legislation and larger social issues from time to
time, and use the platform they have.

Your timeline seems clouded with conspiracy theories. Maybe geni is right,
and you have been hanging around the critics forum too much. I fail to see
the mass conspiracy being alluded to here.

As far as funding goes, I have been around WMF funding discussion more than
a lot of people. The last fundraiser was close to 30 Million USD, majority
of which was accumulated through small donations. Large grants aren't
something that's all that new, WMF has been receiving them for a few years
now, 2012, wasn't particularly that eventful in terms of large grants [1].
I fail to see your point about the "luminaries" being bought off. As a
non-profit, they have to legally declare large grants and mention the
sources of their revenue. I absolutely fail to understand why Jimmy or
anyone would jeopardize their standing now, raising money for an
organization that really has no trouble raising it at this point.

Regards
Theo


[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Grants
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[Wikimedia-l] OFFICE actions and WMF image tagging

[Theo10011]

Hi

I would like to bring up an issue with office actions that was brought up
elsewhere. There has been an issue on commons with User:Saibo tagging
images from WMF staff. He disagreed with a particular office action taken
by WMF staff. He gives an explanation with relevant diffs here[1]. The
issue is rather complicated, and the specifics of it seem to be in secret.
And that is mostly the problem here. He asked for an explanation is several
places, but so far, the response from Philippe, and the rest of the staff
has been that office actions are not explained - that is the crux of the
entire offered explanation.

Office actions have historically been used to blank or delete pages, the
current listed policy on Meta and commons[3][4] make no mention of Global
bans or blocking a user locally, or even globally. I have not known for
office actions to extend to users and global bans, the last I know was a
discussion going on with Steven on Meta about this. This might be its first
usage. The proposed policy[5] and open RfC[6], have not concluded yet. The
RfC received comments just today. Is that proposed policy already being
used on commons?

Office actions, have been limited to blanking pages, though sometimes
contentious, they have been exercised with caution. It is a different
ball-game when it goes from just blanking a page, to instantly blocking a
user globally, and giving no explanation to community members who have
known that user for years. if it is stretched to banning a 2 year old user
with no explanation beyond, "OFFICE ACTION" it is going to do more than
just raise eyebrows. I understand the specifics of the issue here, but
banning users with absolutely no explanation can not be this widely
accepted.

Regards
Theo

[1]http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Saibo/WMF
[2]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Philippe_(WMF)#Why_did_you_block_a_user_without_a_reason.3F
[3]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_actions
[4]http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Office_actions
[5]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_bans
[6]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Request_for_comment/Global_bans
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] OFFICE actions and WMF image tagging

[Theo10011]

On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 11:38 PM, Nathan  wrote:

> So, can you say what it is about this that made you bring it up now, in
> July?


I heard about this issue fairly recently, on a private list. So, you
probably already know more than I do.

I really don't care about the specifics of the issue to be honest, my
question was simple was OFFICE action used before to block someone,
globally or locally? The policy pages I read on Meta, make no mention of it
beyond it being used to blank or delete pages without an explanation.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] OFFICE actions and WMF image tagging

[Theo10011]

On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 12:10 AM, Nathan  wrote:

> Except as I then described, in fact the specifics are known - it was done
> at Sue's request, in mid-March, after she consulted with the GC and after
> Jimbo weighed in. Several other WMF staffers then commented about its
> status as an office action and their inability to publicly justify it. I
> understand why people will have a problem with that reply, it's just
> irritating to get a discussion prompt with vague allusions that you then
> have to go digging through in order to understand what the heck is going on
> :-P


I might have completely missed this discussion Nathan, would you mind
linking me to where this block was discussed? The discussion on commons
doesn't reach a conclusion among the community, and several people oppose
it.

So far, what I have seen is the discussion on Jimmy's page where he said,
"If he's still not banned in 3 days time, I'll eat my words."[1]. 2 Days
later, he is blocked as an office action [2]. There is lengthy discussion
on commons about this issue.

The response from Sue, Philippe and Maggie on commons (provided by
Philippe), all mention its an office action and we don't talk about office
actions.-

>From Sue:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons%3AAdministrators%27_noticeboard%2FUser_problems%2FGeni%27s_allegations_against_Beta_M&diff=68383175&oldid=68383137
>From Philippe:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Philippe_%28WMF%29&diff=68382760&oldid=68382707
>From Maggie:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons%3AAdministrators%27_noticeboard%2FUser_problems%2FGeni%27s_allegations_against_Beta_M&diff=68412785&oldid=68412270

Again, the specifics of the issue aside, has WMF blocked anyone globally
prior to this? Can anyone be blocked tomorrow after years of being on the
projects with "OFFICE action" as the sole reason?

Regards
Theo

[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=481915964&oldid=481915874#Global_policy_on_child_protectiion
[2]http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&user=WMFOffice
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] OFFICE actions and WMF image tagging

[Theo10011]

On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 12:35 AM, Philippe Beaudette
wrote:

> To the best of my knowledge, no.
>
> And that's precisely why we would like a global ban policy implemented. We
> would prefer an established, community-monitored process that we can turn
> to when at all possible (and make no mistake, in this case it was needed; I
> wish we could give all the specifics, but for privacy reasons, we just
> can't).  Because we didn't have that, we had to break new ground with the
> Office actions policy.  I hope we never have to use that again.
>

Thanks Pb.

Most of the discussion archived on Jimmy's page reveals majority of the
issue. I have more to say I suppose, about crime being separate from a
criminal. There is something to be said about privacy also, how there are
expectations that re-affirm anonymity. But everyone I know and trust on
this issue, is saying that it was justified, so I won't talk about this
case.

I would ask about a hypothetical, is someone's off-wiki opinion or behavior
or even criminal past, grounds for a block? There are Arbcomm members here,
and I have known of cases of harassment following editors off-wiki. But
what about privacy rights? doesn't someone has the expectation of privacy?
if so, then no action on wiki can be directly linked to off-wiki opinion or
behavior. The only exception, would be ongoing abuse or on-wiki abuse
making its way off-wiki. The projects are fragmented with their own
communities and policies, this is exactly why sweeping global actions make
a bold general statement, especially so, when they are done by staff under
the aegis of OFFICE action.

If this is global block policy is going to stand, I hope this can be
fleshed out more, like the work Steven has been doing and discussing on
Meta, with some oversight or community based body to balance the staff.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Site notice on meta

[Theo10011]

Sure James, I can add that.

Just in case, you should leave a note with the exact site notice you want,
here - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel  since it's a meta-only
issue.

Regards
Theo

On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 12:15 PM, James Heilman  wrote:

> Wondering if anyone here can put up a site notice on meta regarding
> the proposal for the Wikimedia Travel Guide. One needs to be an admin
> on meta.
>
> The proposal is here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Travel_Guide
>
> The site notice goes here
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
>
> --
> James Heilman
> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
>
> What I do in my spare time
> www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Request for comment on global bans policy

[Theo10011]

On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 4:04 AM, Steven Walling wrote:

> P.S. On a personal note, I wanted to say that though I'm writing this
> with my staff accout during working hours, this is not really a part
> of my core job description now that I've joined Engineering and
> Product Development. I've spent my time authoring this policy and
> proposing it because I think it's really important, not merely because
> I was assigned to do so.


Steven, just a note, I'd be a bit more comfortable if you could clearly
demarcate whether you are doing this in your staff role or as a
volunteer. You are debating a few people who are opposing that policy using
your "Steven Walling (WMF)" staff account. And, not everyone new on Meta
might be aware of that postscript you just added here. It also doesn't help
that 4 of the 12 supporters for implementing the policy in its current form
are WMF staff.


Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Request for comment on global bans policy

[Theo10011]

On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 4:43 PM, Philippe Beaudette
wrote:

>
> Theo,
>
> Could you please expand on this a bit?  I'm not sure that I understand.  Is
> it your proposition that WMF staff shouldn't weigh in on this?  Or are you
> surprised at the number?  or what?


Hi Philippe

No, that is not my proposition. I am not surprised at the numbers either,
though everyone on staff is voting in the same way without partaking in the
discussion before. This might be incidental or you might agree with the
policy, but it currently makes up for a third of the supports.

If you were to follow my earlier reasoning, my concern stemmed more from
demarcation of roles there, something that I have brought up to you earlier
as well. If Dan's understanding is correct, Steven proposed this policy as
part of his staff role through his official work account, then he supported
from his regular editing account and then you, and some of the WMF staff
members are voting in line with the proposed policy from the volunteer
account.

My point was it was all getting a bit confusing since he mentioned this in
his postscript.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Declaring my candidacy

[Theo10011]

On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 8:37 PM, Thehelpfulone
wrote:

> On 9 July 2012 13:21, Sebastian Moleski  wrote:
>
> >
> > Today, I'm declaring my candidacy for Secretary General of the Wikimedia
> > Chapters Association. After recent conversations with a number of people
> at
> > different chapters, I've decided to run for this position because I
> believe
> > that it would allow the chapters to make best use of my skills and
> > experiences. Last year, when I worked with four European chapters on
> > starting developing strategies for their organizations, I realized
> > first-hand what huge potential we have still left uncovered. Many
> chapters
> > excel in some areas while failing in others, rarely for lack of
> enthusiasm,
> > but mostly for lack of support, guidance, and advice. When discussion of
> a
> > council of chapters started again last year, I felt that it was one of
> the
> > most promising ways that could allow chapters to excel much more often
> than
> > to fail in the future.
> >
>
> Given that
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Secretary-General
> is
> still in a draft format and hasn't significantly been touched since April
> 2012, I'm inclined to say that this is premature. In addition, there's a
> question related to this on the talk page,
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Secretary-General#Status
> that's
> been unanswered for just under a month. Where have recent discussions, if
> any, been taking place as I seem unable to find them on-wiki (and I don't
> think a WCA specific mailing list exists)? What is the election process?
> How many candidates are there? How will the Secretary General be appointed
> - Chapter voting? Public voting?
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Secretary-General#Process_of_Selection
> suggests
> that a HR company will be selected, by whom? It also suggests that a
> community-driven subcommittee will be appointed, again by whom, what will
> these requirements be?
>
> In addition, I do not think that we have ever (someone will no doubt
> correct me if I am mistaken) posted candidate nomination statements to this
> mailing list, is this also something new? I don't intend to sound hostile
> and in no way am I opposing your candidacy, it's just your email has just
> brought up quite a few questions that don't appear to have been answered as
> of yet.
>
> I also just came across
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Establishment_of_the_Chapter_Council_Steering_Committee
> which
> states that "*The committee will hold an open process via Meta Wiki, email,
> IRC and other communication means so it could receive as much input as
> possible from anyone." *It appears that so far this has been a very much
> closed process if anything has been happening to date.
>
> --
> Thehelpfulone
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Thehelpfulone
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Hi THO

You are right about everything. ;)  And yes, this was premature, not a lot
has been decided. I think the committee learnt of this as the same time, as
you did.

Sebastian announced this on a private list and I believe, and he wanted to
announce it publicly as well. And the same things you pointed out have been
brought up. There are no other candidates, there has been no call for
candidates. Majority of what has happened is on Meta, there is an interim
committee and a meeting is planned with the chapters during Wikimania.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Declaring my candidacy

[Theo10011]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 1:40 AM, Alice Wiegand  wrote:

> Hi Thehelpfulone,
>
> On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 5:07 PM, Thehelpfulone
>  wrote:
>
> > Given that
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Secretary-General
> > is
> > still in a draft format and hasn't significantly been touched since April
> > 2012, I'm inclined to say that this is premature. In addition, there's a
> > question related to this on the talk page,
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Secretary-General#Status
> > that's
> > been unanswered for just under a month. Where have recent discussions, if
> > any, been taking place as I seem unable to find them on-wiki (and I don't
> > think a WCA specific mailing list exists)?
> ...
> > I don't intend to sound hostile
> > and in no way am I opposing your candidacy, it's just your email has just
> > brought up quite a few questions that don't appear to have been answered
> as
> > of yet.
>
> and if it would be only this - bringing process and discussion into
> the public again - it is appreciated. Questions on Meta about the
> state of the process remained unanswered and I as one of those who are
> really interested but limited to the information published on meta,
> this mailing list and internal-l, I am still unsure about the current
> state of the WCA and I hope that discussions and reports will follow.
> Rather here or on Meta than on closed mailing lists.
>
> Regards, Alice.
>
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Alice, Craig did provide an update for only you on meta just a couple of
weeks ago[1]. There has been little to no discussion recently, aside from
whatever the committee has talked about between themselves. In fact, you
would probably know more about the subject of this thread than most of us,
since sebastian is/was your former board member and most of us on Internal
are as surprised as anyone else here. None of us know what progress he has
made.

You would also have to accept that you are/will be part of the WMF board.
You'd have access to less and in some case, more information, but not a lot
besides what people choose to disclose. This interim time between the WMDE
board and WMF board is transitory. So, I would only remind that you be
patient for now, you will not be entitled to any more or less information
than rest of the board, as much as all of us here are entitled to what the
board has or will discuss. And I do recall when the calls were made last to
ask what the board was discussing. Somehow the rest of the board seems to
have subsisted on the available information.

Regards
Theo


[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Place_of_registration#obsolete_discussion
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Declaring my candidacy

[Theo10011]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 4:48 AM, Thehelpfulone
wrote:

> On 9 July 2012 17:32, Theo10011  wrote:
>
> > You are right about everything. ;)  And yes, this was premature, not a
> lot
> > has been decided. I think the committee learnt of this as the same time,
> as
> > you did.
> >
> >
> Thanks for the confirmation Theo, and can I confirm a point on the
> committee, the current "Steering Committee" consisting of Damian Finol,
> Frieda Brioschi, Craig Franklin and Tomer Ashur is going to be different
> from the community-driven subcommittee previously referenced, or are these
> committees one and the same?
>
>
I'm not sure THO, You'd better ask the existing committee.


>
> > Sebastian announced this on a private list and I believe, and he wanted
> to
> > announce it publicly as well. And the same things you pointed out have
> been
> > brought up. There are no other candidates, there has been no call for
> > candidates. Majority of what has happened is on Meta, there is an interim
> > committee and a meeting is planned with the chapters during Wikimania.
> >
>
> Would I be correct in thinking that the discussions in this meeting (and
> future discussions) and the outcome of this meeting will be posted
> publically on Meta-Wiki or here, as opposed to chapters-l for others to
> follow?
>

Heh, actually I am with you on this, I hope they are posted openly. There
have been a few meetings in the last year, and I was not present at any of
them, neither am I for Wikimania, but I can tell you not a lot was posted
privately either. I hope the outcomes are posted publicly.


Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike

[Theo10011]

Hi Mike

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 10:18 PM, Mike Godwin  wrote:

> 'I'm entirely comfortable with The New York Times Company (a
> corporation) and its efforts to influence the outcome of elections
> (e.g., through candidate endorsements). And I wouldn't want to
> prohibit The New York Times Company from political speech regarding
> legislation or policy.'


There's 2 things here, perhaps you are choosing an odd example here, a very
well-reputed newspaper without demarcating it with the corporation that
owns and publishes it. I believe the New York Times's editorial board has
been making endorsements of political candidates since 1850, starting with
Abraham Lincoln[1]. As far as I know, it is the newspaper and an editorial
board that made that endorsement, not the corporation.

But anyway, whether you are comfortable or not with The New York times
Company influencing the outcome of an election, might be colored by your
political leanings. The same analogy could be used for Fox News for
example, though I'm not sure how comfortable that would make everyone else.

I suppose there is another argument to be made here, about Media
endorsements on its own and unregulated money being used to buy Media and
such endorsements, but I shall leave that out for now.

Regards
Theo

[1]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/10/23/opinion/20081024-endorse.html
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Seeks Declaratory Relief in response to Legal Threats from Internet Brands

[Theo10011]

On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 5:56 PM, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 6 September 2012 14:48, David Gerard  wrote:
> > On 6 September 2012 01:46, Kelly Kay  wrote:
>
> >> Today the Wikimedia Foundation filed a
> >> suit<
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:WMF_complaint_for_declaratory_judgement_September_2012.pdf
> >
>
> > I urge everyone to read through the PDF. To be clear: IB is attacking
> > the freedom to fork; WMF is defending the freedom of free content.
>
>
> Internet Brands have themselves put up their suit against James and Ryan:
>
>
> http://static.ibsrv.net/ibsite/pdf/2012/2012_9_4_Internet%20Brands%20Files%20To%20Protect%20Its%20Wikitravel%20Trademark%20From%20Deliberate%20Infringement.pdf
>
> It does indeed look the same as the copy served on Ryan:
>
>
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Internet_Brands_v_William_Ryan_Holliday.pdf
>
> Compare and contrast with the Wikimedia PDF.
>
>
> My blog post, in which I emphasise that this is fundamentally an
> attack on CC by-sa and the freedom of free content:
>
>
> http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2012/09/06/internet-brands-sues-people-for-forking-under-cc-by-sa/
>
>
> - d.
>
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IB's primary complaints stems from alleging Trademark infringement, and
unfair practices originating from such an infringement along with Civil
conspiracy.

I'm not sure why its alleging Trademark infringement against a volunteer,
perhaps through James' affiliation with Wikimedia Canada - which they might
consider to be an extension of WMF, and it should be pointed out and
clarified at some point. James' wouldn't be the legal owner of the fork
either way. In order, for it to have any basis, it would have to be
directed to the owner of the domain name, which would be WMF. But that's a
much harder battle, so this seems like intimidation.

The matter of forking and licensing issue aside, the issue of trademark
infringement seems separate and straightforward. The complaint related to
the Lanham Act, etc.-

43. Defendants’ unauthorized use of a mark confusingly similar to
Internet Brands’ Wikitravel trade name and trademarks for an identical and
related
website is likely to cause confusion, mistake or deception as to the
source,
business affiliation, connection or association of Defendants and their
website.

It would be a tall order to make that claim against WMF. It might even come
down to the "Wiki-" prefix.

Looking at the recent history of Wiki- prefixes (Wikileaks come to mind),
in addition to it making its way to the general lexicon. Is there a
sustainable long-term legal strategy when it comes to other party alleging
trademark or ownership of a "Wiki-" related domain in future? It hasn't
required much legal attention up till now but this seems to crop up year
after year.

Regards
Theo

P.S. Good Luck James. I'm sure you've been told already, this
complaint doesn't have much merit.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation and Saudi Telecom (STC) partner to provide access to Wikipedia free of mobile data charges in the Middle East

[Theo10011]

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 3:31 AM, Moushira Elamrawy wrote:

> @Andreas:  Censorship!  Thats interesting --but my understanding is that
> Wikiipedia is fine in KSA, except for some visual content that is being
> blocked.


Not exactly.[1][2] ;)

Regards
Theo

[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Saudi_Arabia#Internet
[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_articles_censored_in_Saudi_Arabia
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation and Saudi Telecom (STC) partner to provide access to Wikipedia free of mobile data charges in the Middle East

[Theo10011]

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 10:35 PM, Yann Forget  wrote:

> Hello,
>
> This announcement is worrying, to say the least.
> In other words, the Wikimedia Foundation is doing a partnership with
> one of the most retrograde government, which is also a regular censor
> on Internet content.
> How could you justify that?


Hi Yann

It's not a partnership with the government, it's with a telecom company to
allow its subscriber in KSA (MENA region), free and easy access to
Wikipedia. KSA is a big part of the middle-east region, the political
reasons aside this helps the public get better access to Wikipedia. There
is no reason why we should not increase availability for the general public.

I'm not sure about the stance against this either, if a government is
trying to censor and restrict access, we should do what? not help provide
access to their citizens, not increase availability? how would that help
the situation? This is a way of working with the current situation and
perhaps around it, its about providing free access to people in the region,
which is probably the best thing to do at the time.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation and Saudi Telecom (STC) partner to provide access to Wikipedia free of mobile data charges in the Middle East

[Theo10011]

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:33 AM, Sarah  wrote:

> Apologies if this is a stupid question, but I don't understand the
> need for a partnership between the Wikipedia Foundation and the Saudi
> Telecom Company (STC).
>
> If STC wants not to charge its customers for accessing Wikipedia, in
> what way does it need the help of the Foundation to achieve that?


Hi Sarah

The partnership is part of a larger initiative[1] - the page provides a
list of countries and carriers where this partnership exists, it includes,
Orange, in  Kenya, Niger, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Telenor in Monte Negro, dtac
in Thailand and now STC is KSA.

The partnership with the telecom companies provides free access through
either Wikipedia Zero or mobile Wikipedia in different languages to
millions of users who might not have access to these services. The listed
page mentions that the partnership does not involve any financial deal to
provide this access. I'm not aware of the particulars but the partnership
might have just focused on providing some technical help and a point
of interaction to facilitate the deal. It's a good
deal considering millions of people get free access, who would have had
limited access and use of Wikipedia before.

It was part of the focus for the Global Development department and WMF, to
provide better access in these countries in the developing world, under the
previously-used and inappropriate title of "Global South".

Regards
Theo

[1]
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mobile_partnerships#Where_is_Wikipedia_free_to_access.3F
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Bon voyage, Jay

[Theo10011]

On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 11:58 PM, Geoff Brigham wrote:

> *Next week, we’re saying goodbye to our long-term Head of Communications,
> Jay Walsh. He will be starting shortly a new adventure working at a San
> Francisco based start-up in corporate communications. His last day at the
> Foundation will be Tuesday, October 23. The Foundation will be kicking off
> a search process for a new head of communications, and in the interim we’ll
> also be receiving communications strategy from our advisers at Minassian
> Media, a consultancy that helped us manage communications around
> Wikipedia’s tenth anniversary.
>
> Since Jay started at the Foundation in January 2008 he’s taken a lead role
> in shaping both the voice and identity of the Wikimedia Foundation, and has
> played a critical function in supporting our projects. He’s been our
> spokesperson on hundreds of media inquiries, helping to shape a positive
> and enlightened perspective on our projects in some of the biggest media
> outlets in the world. Jay has provided communications counsel on major
> initiatives to almost everyone at the Foundation, and I’m sure to many of
> you throughout our community.
>
> Since starting at WMF Jay has grown the communications team, which now
> includes roles supporting movement communications, global media outreach,
> and merchandise. Under his leadership we created and grew a blog which now
> sees up to 40 posts a month, a social media presence with over a million
> followers, and content published in many localized languages. Jay helped us
> bring the Foundation’s first four annual reports to the world, and he gave
> us a voice and open identity for great events like Wikipedia 10.
>
> We’ve been fortunate to have strong communications leadership for a period
> of rapid growth for our projects and our movement. Please join me in
> wishing Jay well on his next steps.  We will miss him.*
>
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I'm sad to see Jay go. He was great at so many things. I'd wish him nothing
but the best on his next endeavor.

Good luck and Bon voyage, Jay!

Regards
Theo
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[Wikimedia-l] The new narrowed focus by WMF

[Theo10011]

Hi

Sue Gardner started working on this document on Meta a couple of weeks ago
- http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sue_Gardner/Narrowing_focus The
document outlines some rather big changes in the priority for WMF and
future responsibilities it will agree to keep. I am surprised by how little
attention this is getting from the larger community. There are comments but
mostly from the same individuals on Meta, little to none from some of the
most active voices and the larger English Wikipedia community.

This is the new direction being considered by the WMF, to basically abandon
or cut back on majority of activities from the last few year. Here are some
points-
1) No more Fellowships.
2) No more direct work in the developing markets (aka Global South- India,
Brazil, MENA)
3) No more support for International events, and cutting back on Wikimania

Instead of these, things like Editor engagement, Mobile and FDC/grant
making are being made priorities for WMF in the future. A large majority of
editors have had no interaction with grants and are unlikely to have so
with FDC as well, same with some of the mobile initiatives like Wikipedia
Zero which are limited to certain developing markets. A lot of these
changes will have a lasting impact, its not just relevant to those
interested in governance issues. Some of the implications are - Fellowships
would be removed all together, little to no spending on Hackathons,
possibly GLAM camps and other international events all together, less
spending on Wikimania and scholarships, the work in India and Brazil will
be moved away from WMF completely for a "partner" organization to take over
with a grant from WMF. If you do find some time, please consider taking a
look and commenting on these developments before they are approved.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sue_Gardner/Narrowing_focus

Regards
Theo

The document has some interesting quotes -

"The Wikimedia Foundation is not a think tank or a research institute.
We're not an advocacy organization or a lobbyist, and our core mission
isn't to keep the internet free and open. We are not a general educational
non-profit. (We are a website, or set of sites, and everything we do needs
to be understood through that lens.) We don't just reactively "support the
community"—responding to requests from editors and doing what they ask us
to do. Our purpose isn't to provide MediaWiki support for third parties
(but it's in our interest to ensure that a healthy third party ecosystem
develops around MediaWiki). We're not, ourselves, content creators. Our
purpose is not to ensure the chapters grow and develop, nor is it to
support the chapters in their growth and development: rather, chapters are
our partners in supporting editors and other content creators.

The Wikimedia Foundation is not the only fish in the sea of free knowledge;
not everything that needs to be done must be done by the Wikimedia
Foundation, and it's not our job to do work that other individuals or
entities are better positioned or mandated to do, however important that
work may be. When we try to do work that more properly belongs to other
individuals or groups, we imperil our ability to get our own core work
done, and we arguably make it less possible for other entities to do what
they're supposed to be doing."
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The new narrowed focus by WMF

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 7:47 PM, Nathan  wrote:

> Other than the fellowships, which I'll come back to in a moment, I
> think Sue's new course for the WMF makes a lot of sense. The WMF has
> been the subject of a lot of valid criticism in the last few years
> around its goals, spending and achievements. Despite soaring budgets
> and an FTE trend to delight any bureaucrat, measurable positive
> impacts have been few and far between. Glamorous international efforts
> and experiments in organizational management might please their
> respective stakeholders and beneficiaries, but they have had
> questionable benefit for what is supposed to be the WMF's core
> mission. Perhaps in an attempt to be all things in this "movement",
> the WMF has lagged at being what it truly ought to be - an effective,
> innovative manager for an ecosystem of web-based knowledge references.
>
> There's no margin in ignoring the fact that steadily dropping editor
> involvement is a serious challenge for the future of Wikimedia. We
> don't really understand what's causing this drop, and we're suffering
> from a lack of ideas on how to solve it. There's a place for
> small-bore efforts like training small groups of people on how to use
> our projects, but they are too low impact for a big scale problem. Yet
> I haven't seen big efforts at innovating solutions.  Beyond Vector and
> the abuse filter, what attempts have been made to solve the big
> problems? Or even to understand them? Why can Reddit and other
> massive userbase sites keep their community and continue to grow,
> while Wikimedia can't? Is it that we're too hard to use? Too much has
> already been done? Are the communities not open enough? Too bound by
> rules and standards and a conservative ethic of interaction? This is
> where I think fellowships are useful and should continue; they are an
> opportunity to incubate innovative solutions and improvements to the
> problems we face, and to generate insight into what those problems
> are. I don't have the answers, and I don't think Wikimedia does
> either. Narrowing the organizational focus to more tightly concentrate
> on these issues sounds like a great idea; keeping on as it has been
> sounds like arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
>
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I disagree with your interpretation, but it still deserves to be said. The
talk page has mostly resounding opposition. You are basing a lot of your
interpretation that WMF has been the subject of a lot of criticism in the
past, and this move might help ameliorate some of the tension. I actually
don't recall the fellowship program, presence in the developing world or
Wikimania itself, as being subject of criticisms being directed at WMF. The
education program is still there, as is the "community advocacy"
department, and mostly the same structure that brought you fine ideas like
the filter and took away chapter fundraising, so are the initiatives that
brought us tools like the AFT and Wikilove/Moodbar. It's highly debatable
if any of the area WMF was criticized on, is removed in this move. It is
arguably also abandoning duties and expenses it was able to maintain once
at a budget of $6-8 million, at the current level of $40 Million. If you
look at this in context, first the chapter fundraising ability was taken
away so there is just one source of funding, then decisions are being taken
to shut down programs which would be absolute in this scenario.

I have no idea how properties like reddit still maintain and keep growing.
Perhaps, it's because they are not emaciated bodies anemic for constant
fresh blood, as WMF seems to have been convinced Wikipedia is. Perhaps,
it's also because one is a social website that creates memes and posts
funny pictures that their members find and the other is an Encyclopedia,
with rules, citations, and all the serious stuff that might require more of
a commitment. Not everyone likes to edit an encyclopedia, fewer still do it
well, maybe comparing our community with Facebook and reddit is the
problem.*

As far as "Movement" goes, that's what we actually raise money in the name
of, we don't ask to support "an effective, innovative manager of an
ecosystem of web-based knowledge references". Movement, I suppose was hard
to characterize, in different context it could mean different things, it
could be organizing an event on one end of the world one day, doing
something like WLM the next or opposing something like SOPA the day after,
all the while running the largest, online encyclopedia. Something was
needed to bind those common threads, I suppose Movement was the word they
chose, I don't like it any more than you do, but it fits. There just
doesn't seem to be a lot tying all this together, more and more threads are
being cut and manipulated.

Last point about fundraising, It was 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] The new narrowed focus by WMF

[Theo10011]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 3:28 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> Well, there's your problem. You're reading the talk page! You want the
> subject-space page, of course:
> .
>

Ah darn. And there I was so lost, you saved us.


>
> I've read (or skimmed) your posts to the talk page and to this list and I'm
> a bit lost why you seem to be hostile to the document. Were you a big fan
> of
> the fellowships or India programs? Do you think Wikimania can't sustain
> itself? I think you have been pretty vocally critical of programs like
> these
> in the past and I would think you would be pleased with the narrowed focus.
> I am. And I think the Board will be. Is it a perfect plan? No. Is there
> more
> work to do? Of course.
>

Well, you seem to be singling me out as if I'm the only one. As of writing
this, there is Liam, Bence, Pine, Ocaasi, DGG and several others
criticizing these developments, some even started before me. I wasn't a fan
of the what preceded these changes, and no, I'm not happy about some of the
things replacing them including what's being done with the India program. I
also don't think Wikimania can sustain itself without constant WMF support,
and fellowships have become an integral part of the annual program. These
changes will affect a lot of things - GLAM, Wikimania scholarships, events
around the world - there is also a lot more that money could have gone
to. My post here was just to bring the discussion in view, just like Pine
did a week or so ago, and hopefully get more participation, maybe the
rhetoric got a bit heavy somewhere along the line.

Perhaps, you can assume that I have a different set of concerns than yours.
Understandably, most of these changes don't interest you (beyond the
concern you displayed for the term 'Global South'), but it shouldn't be
hard to understand that they might concern others. If you see the talk page
again, I'm certainly not alone in some of these thoughts. If this seems
uninteresting, fine, I'm sure there is a Jimmy conspiracy not far from
here, that usually interests the majority. You see, I'm also not as
detached as you are, after spending the better part of the decade following
this, you can look at it with a mixture of amusement and apathy, I can't. I
expect to burn out soon and not care, but until then I'm certainly going to
rage against the dying of that light. (tl;dr version - Whatever, brah!)


> But I'm sincerely confused about which parts you're upset with and why. If
> your intent is to rabble-rouse, you're doing it wrong. :-)
>

Heh, you'd know. ;) I think I can be a bit more effective, if my only
intention was to rabble-rouse - it wasn't.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Democratizing the Wikimedia Foundation

[Theo10011]

On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 8:02 PM, Anders Wennersten
wrote:

>
> Federico Leva (Nemo) skrev 2012-11-03 15:03:
>
>
>> Frankly, I think it's certainly not needed to "dramatize" it even less
>> than it currently is (i.e. to increase its rubberstamping hall appearance).
>>
>> Nemo
>>
>>  I do no understand.
> If they have a  "rubberstamping hall appearance" who is then perceived as
> having the power to decide.  And do you mean the preparation process is so
> excellent so no direct action is needed by the Board (which I would  take
> to be the ultimate sign of a well functioning democracy) what is then the
> issue at hand in this thread?


Since, you took this thread into the direction of FDC, advocating how
extending that model would "undramatize the role of the board". And you
asked the question about who has the power above, try and consider for a
moment - who picked you for the FDC? who thought of the FDC to begin with?
who laid out the framework, and facilitated its creation?

I can go on to point out the presence of board members, and this evaluation
period for the FDC when it's useful will be decided in 2 years. who will
decide then, to even have the FDC around anymore? Right, Democracy.

There isn't a lot of doubt where the centers of power are.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Democratizing the Wikimedia Foundation

[Theo10011]

On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 10:30 PM, Anders Wennersten  wrote:

> Theo10011 skrev 2012-11-03 16:12:
>
>
>>>
>>>
>>> There isn't a lot of doubt where the centers of power are.
>>>
>>> Regards
>>>
>>>  I do not understand what you refer to in this statement. Could you
> please elaborate what you believe is the centers of power?


Sure, let's see. You questioned who has the power to decide, as opposed to
Nemo's analogy of a rubber-stamping hall. Centers of power, are dominant
forces that define a particular time and decide the overall direction. They
influence rather than give the appearance of direct interaction. In this
context, I was pointing out that these ideas are conceptualized by a small
minority in private, suggestions like let's have an FDC, let's remove
fellowships, cut spending and narrow focus, even earlier decisions like the
image filter and chapter fundraising change might have been byproducts of
that - it is hard to distinguish. Depending how closely you followed these
developments, the centers of power that came up with those suggestions
never changed, the discussions and arguments did, but they emerged from the
same place.

What you might perceive as control and power, is a limited sandbox provided
to give the appearance of power, for example, Sue placed her thoughts on
Meta before presenting them, between the hundreds of points on the talk
page, not a single thing was reconsidered, the board unanimously approved.
Your own meeting with the FDC, a hand-picked committee proposed and formed
by the same group, with the presence of two board members, in WMF offices,
who will eventually decide if they even want an FDC in 2 years.

There seems to be a nebulous mix between the executives, along with certain
board members, not all, perhaps even advisers and outside forces that
dictate whatever decisions are to be made, for everyone. Maybe this is a
particular area where transparency would be appreciated. Given that
individual board votes are made public now, there aren't a lot of instances
where board members disagree, if ever, with whatever the Executives provide
them. Most of these decisions rarely try and conflict the wider editor base
directly, as learnt from some past instances. To clarify I'm only talking
about where these ideas are proposed and conceptualized, not what follows,
the process of complaint, feedback and the eventual approval. There is no
recourse for challenging these changes, no other side of the argument, no
veto power, perhaps that's what the aim of this exercise ought to be.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising updates?

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 7:34 PM, Itzik Edri  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Could we get some updates (or that I missed them?) about how the
> fundraising goes? WMF and Chapters will be great. Since we only focus on
> few countries this year, the discussions regarding it is very low, but it
> still very interesting to know how much we collect and how the banners
> works (and which one of them)
>

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics  - is a
good start.

-Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Strange, surprising, bold and unnecessary - reply to the WMF board statement

[Theo10011]

I would appreciate it if you not start this discussion with conflating my
recommendations and removing the context completely. First, there is a talk
page attached, it would be highly advisable to read that clarification and
context of why I chose what. Second, my second draft at the time was
reactionary to the one you see first by Delphine (user:notafish) which
started with appropriating 96,000 euros as the salary for this SG and
totaled close to half a million euros. I made my feelings known at the time
here[1] and elsewhere on the page and lists repeatedly.

The context that you are probably missing which I mentioned at the time was
that, it was premature to work on this budget without laying the
groundwork, my second draft mostly revised the figures downward to the bare
minimum, and it was limited by things like minimum wage laws and legal
requirements. As I recall it was met with disapproval in the private
discussions as "too low", I have no idea about the following discussion as
I disengaged soon after that point.

I still stand by my version of the budget - it had around 60,000 euros for
direct chapter development and spending on actual programs (like WLM or
GLAM-related outreach), salaries for 3 full time employees, 2 part-time
consultant and their associated travel costs. As mentioned by others and on
the page, it was a premature budget draft - if you or anyone feels they can
do better and still maintain the legal minimum for the
incorporated geography - by all means, go ahead.


On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 9:31 PM, James Heilman  wrote:

> "The WCA is lead by the council, who are all volunteers. They will be
> supported by staff, but the council are in charge."
>
> I would love to have my Wikipedia work supported by staff too. Who is
> paying for said staff? How much are they projected to cost? In fact I
> would simply like some of the travel costs and accommodations for
> those involved in my Wikipedia projects covered. I am happy to cover
> my own costs.
>

As am I, and several others here. You are clearly conflating the objectives
of the two. One is volunteer editing work, the other is facilitating and
promoting the said work and idea. Projects with institutions, GLAMS,
outreach - cost money, they require support. Your argument seems to be
directed more towards the implicit nature of chapters vs. editors - I
suggest you start with the biggest one with a staff that actually fits your
classification.


>
> We have a second draft budget here
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Draft_budget_2012-2013
> at more than $300,000
>
> We have $42,000 going to a translator / PR person? I have managed to
> find translators for more than 30 languages which have translated more
> than 1 million words in 2012 as part of this project
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_task_force
> Most translation on Wikipedia is done by volunteers. Why is
> translation for this organization deem more important than say for key
> medical diseases?
>

Actually the 42,000 is for the PR/media-person who would be doing double
duty and filling in for chapter support and overseeing translations, based
in Belgium, which again would have to be above the minimum wage and close
to the industry average. Perhaps you would like to consider the spending
WMF or a large chapter like WMDE, even WMUK has towards this role and
compare them.


>
> I see that in the second draft the funding for the SG has decreased
> from 96000 euro to 6 euro. I think the number I am looking for is
> around zero, we are an organization run on volunteers. The World
> Health Organization is willing to have a Wikipedian in Residence. I
> have found someone who will do it for free / the experience of working
> at the WHO but he needs some help covering his expenses. The person is
> willing to work full time to do out reach to 600 interns at the WHO
> who are usually young leaders in their respective medical communities
> from around the world.
>

It would be helpful if you dont start conflating the two worlds. You can
look through Meta to see several chapters have or have had employees who
are paid much more for the top position.

At this point, I understand that your work is primarily in the capacity of
a volunteer, it is not your day-job. What that budget is referring to, is
hiring employees. You are repeatedly comparing your work with what people
do during the day from 9 to 5. I believe you have a job in some capacity,
try and compare those numbers with your industry, and averages.

If you employ someone on a daily basis, I believe there exists a law in the
developed countries whereby you have to pay them a legal minimum - I
believe its called the Minimum wage. The other alternative is hiring people
and making them work daily, sometimes against their will, from 9 to 5, but
it had another term back in the day - slavery. I believe that is still
frowned upon.


>
> With respect to the law firm costs

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Strange, surprising, bold and unnecessary - reply to the WMF board statement

[Theo10011]

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 11:25 PM, James Heilman  wrote:

> Okay usually when one comes up with a new idea for something the
> expectation is that it will be stated clearly what problem this new
> idea will solve and how it will solve it.
>

Well, I don't know what to say. I had an idea in mind when I first wrote
the draft for the council, then it got contorted into something and then
something else, and I have barely been involved in the process for around
an year, partly against my will then willingly.


>
> Here is the list of potential tasks set for the WCA
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Tasks


I wasn't involved in that task list, so better the people who wrote that,
answer that.


>
> Why do any of these need paid staff to complete them rather than
> volunteers? Why do they deserve paid staff any more than the dozens of
> other issues that we have that are at least equally important? In fact
> no paid staff is requested for any of the tasks set forth.
>

Why don't you start by asking those questions to WMF, then WMDE then WMUK
and any other chapter filing a budget with FDC. This organization just had
the bare minimum personnel spending it needed to accomplish the goals at
the time, but as the Dylan song went, things have changed


>
> A lot of "facilitating and promoting said work and idea"s of volunteer
> is done by volunteers. And IMO should continue to be done by
> volunteers. So am not conflating the two.
>

So WMF doesn't facilitate and promote anything? how about any of the
chapters?Do you believe the last few wikimedian-in-residence, or
GLAM-outreach, or WLM, or hundreds of remote outreach events didn't have
anyone facilitating them? this can include Wikimania, hackathons and tons
of events half of us haven't heard of. They were done by volunteers of
course, but they were supported, backed, evaluated by paid staff members.
I'll be happy to go in detail and point you to several budgets on Meta if
you like.


>
> With respect to "The law firm is supposed to look over contracts,
> documents and agreements of 40 other organizations" Only 21 have
> signed up. Where does the number 40 come from? And why do all these
> organizations need documents looked over more? We have managed to find
> free lawyers for both Wikimedia Canada and Wiki Project Med Foundation
> and we managed to incorporate both as volunteers.
>

The number of chapters at the time of my involvement was 38 or 39, some
organization including yours were approved in the following period. I took
the liberty and rounded up. The 40 were envisioned at the time when I wrote
the original draft idea for the council (WCA), I have no idea why it is 21.

I am glad that you have been able to find free lawyers in Canada. I don't
think you should expect that everyone is as fortunate or comes from an
affluent country with relevant contacts. It wasn't a leap to have at least
a single legal expert on call for 40 organizations using the trademark and
name Wikipedia and Wikimedia. My recommendation was based from experience
of watching chapters have occasional legal issues and problems all over the
world, mostly Europe and Asia. WMF can not always be expected to help or
bail out every editor and every organization in 40 countries carrying our
name. It would only be an asset to have a local expert on the ground.


>
> With respect to "If you employ someone on a daily basis" This is the
> issue. I am not convinced we should employ someone on a daily basis
> for this work as it is presented. Wikipedia is not a fancy shiny
> project, we are not Google or Microsoft. We are a rag tag group of
> "amateurs" trying to do something amazing. We do not need shiny
> offices, in cities of global importance, we do not need to fly around
> the world with important titles.
>

It's a viable point, and I partly agree with it. But the comparison I would
offer is this- this is or was, supposed to be a support organization for 40
chapters, some of them had budgets that were nearing or over 1 million USD.
They had several staff members, support personnel - how can you expect a
back-office, support organization for 40 chapters that was envisioned to be
self-sufficient some day, be smaller than the first 5 or 10 chapters they
were supporting.

BTW that entire "rag tag group of amateurs doing something amazing",
doesn't hold very true indefinitely  We were doing something amazing when
we started, but we're really not amateurs anymore. The editing community is
still isolated from some of the recent spending and support but it has only
been increasing and increasing for the last decade. Look at the recent
budgets, look at the spending, the chapter spending, the programs, the
infrastructure- while its not as close to a typical top 10 nternet
property, it's not exactly a rag tag bunch of amateurs either.


>
> So with respect to a budget I would consider in the range of $25,000
> to me more appropriate. No actual office. No paid staff. Some funding

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Strange, surprising, bold and unnecessary - reply to the WMF board statement

[Theo10011]

Hey Nathan

On Thu, Feb 7, 2013, Nathan  wrote:

> >
> I'm more inclined to criticize the budget and spending priorities of the
> WMF, to tell the truth. The various budgets for the WCA primarily went
> wrong in assuming that the WMF itself would provide the cash, a truly odd
> plan given the role the WCA's boosters saw for it. My own opinion is that
> it was that intermediary, adversary role (which one person recently
> compared to a union opposing corporate interests) that doomed the WCA. But
> there is a good point to make about the envisioned support role. It's
> difficult to understand how a single lawyer, or a single firm, was intended
> to provide legal support of any utility to chapters in 40 countries. And
> pitching the WCA's level of professionalism at a degree to where it could
> help out the largest chapters seems like an odd strategy, when it's the
> smallest and newest that would need the kind of help the WCA could provide.
>


Your evaluation might be correct about the time. But initially even the
spending was expected to come from the chapter budget, then some changes
happened, others got involved, FDC was also created and direct support
became the only revenue source. I believe Sebmol and I might have discussed
it to be an x%(nominal close to 2 or 4%) of a chapter revenue on our
singular IRC talk. I'm sure that in the last year a sizable chunk of the
budget has been burnt through, that could/should have gone to actually
creating this organization.

As you may read a single law firm was only supposed to be the initial
amount. Based on my proximity with chapter affairs at the time, my
judgement was that most issues, would not require a lot of billable hours.
And I only saw 4 or 5 chapters have any of those minor issues in a given
year. That amount was never supposed to cover 40 organizations in the first
year, but at least have someone on the ground to support. Any professional
organization would be expected to have insurance, legal compliance,
external support and lastly bankruptcy protection laws at its disposal. It
was for the smaller organizations that might need someone to occasionally
inform them about their rights or just correspond with WMF's legal dept.
for them. If you would take a look at the draft again, there was someone
else helping out with translation services on staff, combined with our
local contacts - I thought it could offer a first line of defense or a
safety-net in case WMF chose not to get involved and risk its own exposure.

Then there was someone envisioned for accounting who would follow up on
chapter reports and spending, and make sure there is full compliance. This
alone might justify the required cost-saving WMF would have, for the
back-office support it does for chapters and the compliance requirements by
law. This was a big concern at the time when I met Stu and talked with some
of the board members.

There were a lot of great ideas floating around. Asia, more specifically
India has had a lot of issues, but the highest concentration of chapters is
in europe but there is no one with local expertise available - little
co-ordination. One of the ideas at the time (might have been from John
Vandenberg) was to support chapters by region, the requirements for Asian
chapters would never mix with those of europeans (not to mention everyone
just loved the Iberocoop chapters, and it was a good model to follow).
Considering WMF has tried and prob. spent 10 times the proposed WCA budget
in India alone, and MENA region might be nearing half or more - a future
strategy might have been to focus on regional growth, rather than direct
involvement or more offices.


> As a lot of other people have said, there is clearly a role out there for a
> support organization that helps chapters develop. But I don't think the
> WCA, as it has been modeled, is the right organization for that role. I
> don't know if it is the people who were involved at various points, or the
> environment in the movement at the time a formal body was proposed, but the
> attitude and approach for the WCA has been wrong for a long time and the
> WMF is right to not support the current incarnation.


Agreed. That is a fair assessment. I'm just explaining what it was
originally supposed to be, it is far from that now.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Strange, surprising, bold and unnecessary - reply to the WMF board statement

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Feb 7, 2013, Sarah  wrote:

> > The more people are paid, the more editors we lose (or the fewer we
> attract), in part because they wonder why they're writing for free for an
> organization that pays people to do other things.
>

I don' think anyone has been paid by WMF to edit..yet?

There might be a correlation in there somewhere, but it might also be a
small factor when you consider some of the research WMF repeatedly
generates. There is also the divide between reader and editors, things like
conversion ratio, plus the older community came up at a different time. I
think the argument these days is, WMF pays so editors don't have to do
those "other things"- either way, not my argument to make. This was just
about being a responsible parent organization and looking after those that
carry its name, rather than about individual editors.


>
> So I agree with Doc James that it would be great if the focus on payment
> could be reversed a little. Or else spread some money around the editing
> community in ways that won't cause COI problems.
>

Completely agreed. This just isn't the way, I'm always surprised how the
most active part of our community is completely insulated from the majority
of governance issues and most of the direct spending.

I think there was an idea to start micro-grants and support some tool
developments directly by community members (faster, smarter bots!), maybe
more grants and scholarships related to editing work rather than reflecting
a diverse or an international base, but I digress.


> But as things stand, we ought to assume that the growth of the paid
> bureaucracy and the shrinking of the volunteer editor community might be
> connected.
>

I hope not.

Just for the record, I have no idea what WCA is now in its current
incarnation. It is definitely too bureaucratic for me.

Regards
Theo
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[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimediaindia-l] How to set up a SIG?

[Theo10011]

On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 7:10 PM, Abhishek Suryawanshi <
i.abhishek.suryawan...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> *BTW I'd like to join this "Wikipedia club pune" of yours along with 3
>> other brazilians, one of them might be under 18 - I'm not sure. I'd like to
>> join and speak on its behalf please. *
>>
>
> You are welcome to join it. and relax - below 18, above 18 is last thing
> we care. Special thanks for bringing in diversity to Club.
>
>  Call us older generation, but we prefer facebook for communication :
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikipediaClubPune/
> Stay connected via group to get updates about club. :-)
>
> More than joining, if you 'like' to like things - then you can join 3767
> Club followers - https://www.facebook.com/WikipediaClubPune
>
>
Thank you.

I'd now like to speak on behalf of Wikipedia Club Pune. We would officially
like to change our language preference to Portuguese, and affirm that Pune
is the second bestest place in India, after Delhi. Also We like Cheese!
Thank you that is all.

Anyway, please look forward to having more brazilian members of your club
than pune ones. Some of those would be underage boys and girls, but you are
from an "older generation" of course. :P

BTW in case you haven't realized, that was not to ask for membership but
point out how important it is to have a resident as a member unless they
start speaking for a country or a city they know nothing about. The 18 is
the age requirement usually set by the law, and when you decide to
officially register your organization as a society, I'll point you to the
age requirement law or why parental supervision becomes necessary in some
cases.

Regards
Theo
Apparently, Wikipedia Pune Club member
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimediaindia-l] How to set up a SIG?

[Theo10011]

D'oh. Wrong list. Apologies.

-Theo

On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 7:25 PM, Theo10011  wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 7:10 PM, Abhishek Suryawanshi <
> i.abhishek.suryawan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> *BTW I'd like to join this "Wikipedia club pune" of yours along with 3
>>> other brazilians, one of them might be under 18 - I'm not sure. I'd like to
>>> join and speak on its behalf please. *
>>>
>>
>> You are welcome to join it. and relax - below 18, above 18 is last thing
>> we care. Special thanks for bringing in diversity to Club.
>>
>>  Call us older generation, but we prefer facebook for communication :
>> https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikipediaClubPune/
>> Stay connected via group to get updates about club. :-)
>>
>> More than joining, if you 'like' to like things - then you can join 3767
>> Club followers - https://www.facebook.com/WikipediaClubPune
>>
>>
> Thank you.
>
> I'd now like to speak on behalf of Wikipedia Club Pune. We would
> officially like to change our language preference to Portuguese, and affirm
> that Pune is the second bestest place in India, after Delhi. Also We like
> Cheese! Thank you that is all.
>
> Anyway, please look forward to having more brazilian members of your club
> than pune ones. Some of those would be underage boys and girls, but you are
> from an "older generation" of course. :P
>
> BTW in case you haven't realized, that was not to ask for membership but
> point out how important it is to have a resident as a member unless they
> start speaking for a country or a city they know nothing about. The 18 is
> the age requirement usually set by the law, and when you decide to
> officially register your organization as a society, I'll point you to the
> age requirement law or why parental supervision becomes necessary in some
> cases.
>
> Regards
> Theo
> Apparently, Wikipedia Pune Club member
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member

[Theo10011]

On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 6:37 PM, Dan Rosenthal  wrote:

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but the WMF has used Oppenheim before for senior
> level hiring (appointed board members and maybe C-suite level staff? I'm
> not sure about that last one, but I'm almost certain I recall the WMF has
> used Oppenheim for executive searches before.) My understanding is that the
> value in the prospect is simply because Oppenheim simply has a wider reach
> and base of contacts than the WMF does. If memory serves, they were the
> ones who found Geoff Brigham, and I believe they also found the replacement
> for Veronique as CFOO. I'm not really sure why this is suddenly a concern
> now, and not before, especially given the quality of success they've had in
> the past.
>

I'd have to agree with Dan here. This is a very visible and important
position, this should require professional consulting and proper vetting
before someone is appointed. A recruiting service will have a wider reach
and better experience with suggesting suitable candidates. I also don't see
how simply appointing a chapter or community person would make this any
more balanced, since they both have separate elections every year.

Since both of you are involved with Chapters and the WCA effort, you
shouldn't be strangers to outside consultation. I think a few of the larger
chapters have approached recruiting agencies for filling vacancies, then
there was the "SG" position that was also going to be filled through a
recruiting agency. I hope also don't need to point out that you have
already consulted outside agencies for an organization that doesn't exist
yet.

BTW Itzik, you answer some of your own concerns pretty well here[1].

Regards
Theo

[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Resolutions/2012_SG_recruitment#Person_before_location.3F
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimania 2013 scholarship now accepting application

[Theo10011]

On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 3:54 PM, Lodewijk wrote:

> As a true Dutch, I should bring potatoes, peanut butter and hagelslag.


Sorry, stroopwafels is the only dutch currency we recognize! (pref. with
hagelslag)

-Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimania 2013 scholarship now accepting application

[Theo10011]

On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 4:01 PM, Lodewijk wrote:

> As a true Dutch, I shouldn't even consider to share... it is only to get
> through the days and survive without having to touch local cuisine...
> (French and Germans will probably be able to confirm this) :P
>

Now, that's just being mean!

If I had my way I would limit entrance for lodewijk from any future events
until he deposits 10 stroopwafels as entrance fees. HK team should set
their own lodewikj stroopwafel rates (LSR) for all dutch attendees, and
blame him for hoarding.

Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member

[Theo10011]

Hi Cyrano

I generally agreed with your underlying sentiment in the earlier email. I
do believe the board or any internal power structure of an organization,
has a self-perpetuating nature that preserves itself from outside
influence, and at times re-affirms its own direction. But what I do
disagree is the trajectory you are taking the argument in now.

On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 2:42 PM, cyrano  wrote:

> Yes, in the best of cases, they are a tiny subset of the user and editor
> community with a strong bias towards political organization, administrative
> responsibilities, decision taking, vote collecting, power assuming. Maybe
> they're needed, I'm not discussing that, but they can't impersonate the
> community as if they were the community.
> Their voice is their own. They won't give up their two seats to the
> community because "they're one with the community". They won't, and it
> means that they're different from the community, no matter how you try to
> think about this fact.
> They have their own agenda, which may coincide or not with the interests
> of the community at large. There's no guaranty of an alliance. There may be
> conflicts.
> Saying that "the community has 5 seats" is thus misleading. It has 3
> seats. Saying that the community has "an absolute majority guaranteed" is
> simply false. Trying to analyze the Board of Trustees and its process with
> the belief that the community's interests are guaranteed is a mistake.


I think its a trivial argument. In practice, appointed trustees have
sometimes defended community interest better than elected ones, there have
been times when the elected community trustees have been at complete odds
with their electorate. If you deduce the underlying argument here, it would
be that the community elects 3 trustees to the board, and a certain subset
within the community elects 2. While the division might not be equally
representative of the size of the electorates or the interests, a stronger
distinctions here is between elected and appointed members.

The fact of the matter is the community itself being as large as it
is, chose to re-elect the incumbents. Some elected trustees have been there
for 5 years at this stage, rivaling the oldest ones. It is a viable
argument to suggest that whatever internal structures or influences at
play, they are the oldest form of the establishment.

On the other side, the chapter elected appointees have gone through a
relatively healthy tenure. It could be argued that a smaller voting pool
ensured that the candidate are well known and researched by their
electorate. I see benefits and risks to both sides.

If I had to argue, I'd say a community elected seat is easier to insure,
and has kept the same power structures in play longer. In large
electorates, incumbents always have the advantage, when you add the
impersonal nature of our elections, this issue is exacerbated further.


>
> Objectively, the Board of Trustees cannot guarantee a majority to the
> community. Its design makes it vulnerable to other influences, and possible
> schemes, alliances, power struggles and political moves. Maybe it's not
> bad, I don't know. I just think that things should be clear to the
> community, since they're the one being tricked by the words.
>
> My claim is that in a context of no majority guaranteed for the community,
> injecting third parties (which are layers of opacity) and money  in the
> process of appointing new board members is a risk for the community.
>

I'm confused as to who is injecting money in this scenario. I am under the
assumption that a service is being sought from a professional firm to help
recruit and vet the candidates. It seems like standard procedure for highly
visible positions to ensure that the opening is advertised as widely as
possible, a large pool of candidate is prepared and they are throughly
vetted before joining.


>
> There is no guaranty that a third party understands or shares the values
> of the community; there is no guaranty that giving it influence over the
> candidatures for five seats will serve the cause of the community. That's a
> risk. I'm not to say if it should be taken or not, but we should be aware
> of that risk. It sounds reasonable to engage the scrutiny of the community
> when such risks are about to be taken.
>

Again, the alternative would be WMF or the board itself appointing someone
without due process. Would that be more agreeable to this alternative?


>
> I would also like to underline that paying someone doesn't necessarily
> make things better done. A professional mercenary has skills, but doesn't
> necessarily share internally the cause of the community, or understand it,
> or even care to know it. In fact, giving money - or any other form of power
> - to someone to execute a task creates money-driven goals, which can be in
> conflict with the ideal-driven goals of the community.
>
> That's why in think that the more you rely on third parties or paid
> professional, the 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member

[Theo10011]

On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 7:49 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:

> Not really, there are many alternatives. One of them is a NomCom which
> works... how? no idea.


So, a one time committee from 2008 made up of largely the same individuals
as the ones who will decide now, in a closed process? Sure, though I think
they might work with some dark conjuring magic and arcane rituals. :P

Even if to assume that this closed unknown process would work again, it
still leaves off half the process of advertising the position, arranging
the actual interviews, logistics and then doing things like background
checks etc.. Also, its better an outside firm approaches a candidate and
corresponds with the board/WMF on their behalf, rather than what might be
future colleagues/board members/boss interviewing and judging them first.

I still think its better to leave those things to a professional firm.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 2:47 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:

>
> As I understand it, the yearly annual Wikimedia Foundation budget is about
> $35 million. It costs about $2.5 million to keep the sites operational for
> a year. So even if an endowment weren't large enough to cover well over
> 130 full-time staff members, it could still keep us up and running for a
> while. Assuming $2.5 million, that's about $125 million, using your
> multiply by 50 formula. That's still a shitload of money, but it's much
> less than $2 billion. :-)
>
> I think we need to decide, as a community, whether this is something we
> want. If it is, we should set up an endowment fund sooner rather than
> later, so that people willing to donate to such an endowment have a place
> to put their money, I think.
>

This used to be my pet project for a while. My first edit to strategy wiki
was about an endowment fund[1], I don't think there was anything on the
subject before that one. Stu and Eugene's edit on the subject came later,
so I'll still take some credit for this one. ;)

I brought this up in person to a few board members, and to the foundation
staff on another mailing list an year or two ago. I believe they are all
aware of the idea and its implication. Eugene suggested at some point that
we should come back to this discussion later. The answers were always
ambiguous from what I recall.

There seems to be absence of a long term sustainable financial vision for
the foundation, or if there is, it doesn't seem to be public. The majority
of it seems to revolve around retaining x months of operational reserves
and putting all the chips on the annual fundraiser. I always thought that's
not a very mature financial strategy for an organization.

I started discussing this on strategy wiki, etc. and the first thought was
separating the core and non-core activities, and then separating the
funding models. The core activities are relatively stable, the non-core
differentiate a lot more year on year - moving the non-core to a variable
model where the revenue would define spending, and core activities to its
self-contained sustainable model would be an ideal strategy. The
bare-minimum operational cost of hosting, and being online, could be
covered with such a fund easily, leaving the annual fundraiser target to be
a variable each year without any target, which in turn can define the
spending. The correct calculation,as thomas started alluding to would be -
operating expenses + projected growth (year on year) + annual inflation
rate + reserve/contingency. I had a lot more worked out somewhere according
to tax laws and specific interest rates. Either way, the first implication
would be that this would nullify to some extent, the majority of the
urgency the fundraiser raises, the success of the fundraiser would be
irrelevant to the long term existence of the projects.

Regards
Theo

[1]http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Wikipedia_Fund
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013, Erik Moeller  wrote:

> Only data-center usage (facilities, bandwidth, power). It does not
> include capital expenditures (servers, storage, network gear, etc.;
> budgeted at $1.9M in 2012-13) nor ops engineering staffing, nor of
> course any software engineering staffing or the basics of an
> organizational support structure (management/administration, legal,
> etc.).
>

I'm not technically inclined, but those numbers sound odd. Maybe I'm
missing something? The traffic ranking didn't go up nearly as substantially
in the last couple of years as the hosting and cap-ex mentioned above. The
total listed revenue for 06/07 is around 2.7 Million, 07/08 is 5 million,
08/09 is 8.6 million from there on it started doubling, but that was the
total revenue at the time, assuming it had to be higher than the actual
hosting cost. I don't think there were any substantial visitor milestones
crossed after that, another argument could be made that the costs
associated with hosting went down in that period. Either way, the two don't
seem to be growing at the same pace.


>
> What's a bare minimum amount? It's a hard question to answer, because
> it depends on what you consider an acceptable bare minimum.
>
> - Is it acceptable for the projects to be without legal defense?
> - Is it acceptable to revert back to a single data center mode of
> operation?
> - Is it acceptable for ops to just barely be able to keep the lights
> on, with minimal effort dedicated to backups/monitoring/maintenance,
> etc.?
> - Is it acceptable for there to be no software engineers to aid with
> reviewing code contributions, and making improvements to the software?
> and so on.


How about door #3. Any idea what amount that would be close to. "Ops
keeping the light on" seems like a good definition of core.


>
> WMF has operated in the past without staffing and with very minimal
> staffing, so clearly it's _possible_ to host a high traffic website on
> an absolute shoestring. But I would argue that an endowment, to
> actually be worthwhile, should aim for a significantly higher base
> level of minimal annual operating expenses, more in the order of
> magnitude of $10M+/year, to ensure not only bare survival, but actual
> sustainability of Wikimedia's mission. The "what's the level required
> for bare survival" question is, IMO, only of marginal interest,
> because it is much more desirable, and should be very much possible,
> to raise funds for sustaining our mission in perpetuity.


In 2011, I calculated that amount to be closer to $6M/year from a
diversified low-to-medium risk portfolio. A fund like that would need to
have a variable yield above a certain set amount to negate any year-on-year
increases. I believe there are companies that can calculate the annual
projected cost over the next 10 years and suggest options.

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013, Lisa Gruwell  wrote:

> We also have to consider what these costs will be in 5 years and beyond to
> know really how big an endowment would need to be.  This will require some
> fairly complicated projects, that will most certainly be wrong at some
> point in time.  :)


Actually, that's the benefit of separating the costs between core and
non-core. The projection for the hosting and bare-minimum operations
already has 10 year of past data to draw from. The cost would also remain
the same for every large internet property, things like bandwidth and
datacenter usage would be fairly the same for everyone.

The non-core expenses however are a different story. They depend on
whatever direction the foundation chooses. Those expenses would be nearly
impossible to predict from what I've seen.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment

[Theo10011]

Hi Michael

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013, Michael Snow  wrote:

> I'm not sure why you would use traffic ranking for financial analysis,
> even the envelope-and-napkin kind of analysis we're engaging in here. I'm
> pretty confident that just because Google has been sitting at #1 for some
> time, it doesn't mean that their core operational costs have remained flat
> over that period.
>

I'm actually not using the traffic for financial analysis. I'm only using
the trend in traffic to compare the hosting costs - I think it would be
fair to assume that both are intrinsically linked. :)

The analysis of 6M/ year wasn't based on traffic at all, it was from the
annual budget and expenditure I saw in the reports, though that was an
envelope-and-napkin kind of analysis, it wasn't entirely based on
conjectures either. I also think its unfair to compare Wikipedia with
google, but if you were to take a top 10 traffic website and separate
their infrastructure and cap-ex, and look at annual operational costs
especially with things like bandwidth cost, it would have to be comparable.
(Maybe not for google but let's say for twitter or linked.in - comparable
bandwidth usage *is* the reason they are in the same league.)


> Aside from that, it's only recently that Wikimedia sites have approached
> having the kind of redundancy and failover capabilities we've talked about
> needing for a long time. That's at least one example of something that can
> add pretty significant costs without having a material impact on traffic
> (except in emergencies, of course).


I wouldn't know about the redundancies or those capabilities, it seems
fairly the same. My location and perspective might have more to do with
that but I just don't see the change as that dramatic. I wouldn't say there
isn't any change, from a performance stand-point, it just seems
incrementally better - outages still happen[1], there
are occasionally things that break, and minor lag issues persist on the
other side of the world. I'm grateful for the improvements but I wouldn't
really know what changed under the surface.

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013, James Alexander  wrote:
>
> Aye, I know for example that our page views have more then doubled in the
> last 5 years (since 2008) and I believe grew even more dramatically in the
> years before that.


They increased a lot, but I don't think they more than doubled, or even
doubled[2]. The rise is pretty steady from Feb 09.

Regards
Theo

[1]http://blog.wikimedia.org/c/technology/operations/outage/
[2]
http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2012_02_detailed.html#fragment-31
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment

[Theo10011]

Thanks James. I guess I stand corrected.

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013, Michael Snow  wrote:
>
> I didn't say you used traffic ranking to support your own estimate, you
> used it to try and rebut the estimates provided by Erik and others. That's
> still a kind of analysis.


I was just providing the figures I saw in context, I thought Erik was doing
the same kind of analysis. ;)

Anyway, I see your point. I get there is a whole lot missing from that
picture.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment

[Theo10011]

Going back to the original discussion. Werespielchequer added a proposal to
the page[1] that is worth looking at.

A good way would be to start small and move the reserve WMF carries already
and invest them, then start transferring the larger donations and
soliciting for the fund to large benefactors. Even with a target of $100M
this could be achieved between 5-10 years depending on how aggressively its
pursued.

A fund like this could easily be established as a charitable trust under
WMF, which would then provide WMF with an annual donation. Donations
directly to the trust would also be tax-deductible. I'm not sure what the
US tax law is on capital gains tax for such trusts but something like this
would have to be established with an indefinite target. The trust should be
expected to exist in perpetuity, and grow with the requirements at the same
time. Even in unforeseen cases, the primary goal of the trust should be to
keep the projects online indefinitely, no 20-30 or even 100 year target -
even if the projects aren't relevant, even if WMF no longer exists - A
trust would ensure there always is a WMF or someone there to run the
projects and carry on the goal.

Regards
Theo

[1]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment#Proposal

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 8:33 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:

> Liam Wyatt, 15/03/2013 02:55:
>
>  On 15 March 2013 01:51, Erik Moeller  wrote:
>>
>>  The "what's the level required
>>> for bare survival" question is, IMO, only of marginal interest,
>>> because it is much more desirable, and should be very much possible,
>>> to raise funds for sustaining our mission in perpetuity.
>>>
>>>
>> Perhaps a more useful measure is to look at the differentiation in the WMF
>> budget between what is considered "core" and what is approved by the FDC.
>>
>
> I seriously doubt so. Let's not abuse measures and definitions for
> purposes other than those they were designed for, please.
>
> Nemo
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] www.wikimedia.org (Re: [Foundation-l] New Project Process)

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Mono  wrote:

> Erik,
>
> This proposal has been circulating for three years. Let's just do it.
>

I didn't know there was a proposal to rename Meta and supersede it, in
favor of another wiki.

As far as merging the dead wikis and utilizing www.wikimedia.org go, I
think it's a great idea. I am however, against renaming and superseding
Meta for this purpose. Meta has its own community. It's used for a lot of
different things, stewards, translations, policy pages. A rename and move,
will have more implications than what are being considered in the proposal.

Regards
Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising Banner?

[Theo10011]

Hey Abbas

It is apparently a fundraising test, by the staff -

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CentralNotice&method=listNoticeDetail¬ice=C12_0411_AfricaTest


It is scheduled to end on 2012/04/21 00:00, if it helps.

Regards
Theo

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 12:42 AM, Abbas Mahmood wrote:

>
> Hi,I just saw a fundraising banner as I opened an article on Wikipedia.
> Could the WMF rectify this?--Abbas
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