Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thinking outside the box

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 05.09.2016 23:41, Asaf Bartov wrote:
You clearly have a strong and abiding interest in movement governance, 
and

have been asking some good questions.  You should have submitted your
candidacy.[1]

To your point, I guess it can be taken as a reminder, but it does not 
seem
to me that the appointments were made *so as to minimize* influence by 
less
well-known figures.  Rather, it seems to me there was a strong emphasis 
on

suitability for the work expected from them (as distinct from other
considerations, such as "representation"); it is, of course, easier to
assess that suitability in people known to the people making the 
decision,
so old hands do have some advantage, but it isn't *because* they've 
been
around or because they are trusted not to disrupt or challenge the 
system.




Asaf, I believe in the announcements prior record of affiliation with 
WMF or one of the chapters was stated as an eligibility requirement. We 
should not be then surprised that only people with prior record of 
affiliation with WMF or one of the chapters were selected.


It is up to a debate whether this is the best strategy, but in the 
situation when out of the three community elected Board members only one 
is currently on the Board it could have been expected that the issue is 
sensitive.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Writing weeks about cultural heritage started

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

Romaine Wiki писал 2016-06-29 16:17:

Hi all,

Today the Dutch minister for education, culture and science opened the
thematic writing week that started with the creation of a first article
about a historic painting.

On 8 Wikipedias already a project pages has been created, and anyone is
free to write in their own language about cultural heritage from 
anywhere

in the world.

More information at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Writing_week/Cultural_Heritage

Tweets can be found here:
English: https://twitter.com/Wikimedia_BE/status/748070516741804033
Dutch: https://twitter.com/MinOCW/status/748057721325367305

Be welcome!

Romaine


Since we seem to have finished writing (with 228 articles in 13 
languages created, and 10 more strongly improved), is anybody going to 
write a blog post or publicize the writing weeks in any other way?


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why are articles being deleted?

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

Brill Lyle писал 2016-06-27 04:24:
That said, it's down to the quality of the first draft. In this 
instance,
the draft, in my opinion, did a disservice to the subject. Although 
there
were good citations, the content of the page was not strong enough or 
well

developed enough to reflect what the entity actually does. And didn't
establish notability or have the basic details needed to be up on
Wikipedia. It was a draft and belonged in a Draft, Sandbox, or user 
space.





Or may be just to emphasize again David's point. Every new editor 
starting an article about a living person or an existing organization 
with a not-so-obvious notability is always suspected of promotional 
(payed of fan-like) editing. Always. And promotional editing is always a 
red tape.


As a new editor, do not start with articles which can be thought of as 
promotional. Write about history, localities, natural history, improve 
existing articles. Establish your name on the project. Become an 
autopatrolled. Then it is much safer to go to the areas attractive for 
promotional editors.


This is not how it should be, but how it is. This is so far our only 
response to promotional editing.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community survey to support the WMF ED search starts right now

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-06-05 23:07, Nikola Kalchev wrote:
Dariusz, thank you for your clarification. I understand that 
translations

take time.

I fear that user groups will be underrepresented again (another notable
example is the number of representatives at the WMCON with chapters 
having

up to four participants and user groups exactly one). There are 59 user
groups and (as well as I could count) only 10 of them will be able to
participate at the survey in their own language. Why was the opinion of 
49

user groups considered less worth that a delay of two months?

Best regards,
User:Lord Bumbury / Nikola Kalchev
Wikimedians of Bulgaria, a Wikimedia CEE Spring International organiser



Whereas I fully understand and partially share the sentiment, may I 
please repeat the question I asked on this list in relation to a similar 
topic some time ago. Could we estimate a number of active community 
members (whom we would reasonably expect to participate in the survey) 
who do not speak any of the languages to which the survey was 
translated, to the point that their ability to fill in the survey would 
depend on the others? If this is a considerable number, or if it is less 
significant but considerably compromises on the representation, which 
languages do these community members speak?


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Museums of 100 masterpieces from Brussels

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-05-25 10:31, Romaine Wiki wrote:

Hello all,


The next step will be talking to the museums to show our interest in 
them

and we hope they want to donate images for usage in these and other
articles.

Thanks!

Romaine


Hi Romaine,

what is the time scale you have in mind?

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Source-o-meter

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-04-22 20:31, George Herbert wrote:

Just saw this in The Atlantic.  A suggestion Wikipedia implement a
source verifiability meter for each article.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/wikipedia-open-access/479364/

George William Herbert
Sent from my iPhone


Interesting reading, thanks. However, do not we already have {{no 
sources}} for this purpose?


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The Case for Federation: Should Parts of WMF Be Spun Off?

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-03-18 07:56, Erik Moeller wrote:

2016-03-17 22:54 GMT-07:00 Pine W :
I agree that these options should be explored. I'm wondering what the 
best

way would be to facilitate this conversation.

Perhaps, Erik, would you be willing to set up a page on Meta for 
discussion?


Hi Pine,

Thanks for the comments! I wanted to start here to get a sense if
people are supportive of the idea(s) in general.


I am not sure about support, but this is a sensible idea to be discussed 
in a format different from the mailing list. Thanks Erik for bringing 
this up.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Access and Participation in the ASBS

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-03-11 18:00, Sydney Poore wrote:

Hello Yaroslav

Thanks for your reply.

My point is that there is no clear strategy or process for prioritizing
which pages get translated. So, perhaps it is easy for some people to 
be

mixed up.

But I'm pretty confident that I understand the issues, and I'm not 
getting

anything mixed up. :-)

<...>

This dynamic in the wikimedia movement needs to change. It is 
exclusionary

and unwelcoming.

We can not reach the people that the wikimedia movement needs to reach 
if

the burden of translation of these important official WMF processes a
completely volunteer process.

Going forward, I would like to see the percentage of pages translated 
as a

metric that is tracked, reported, and discussed regularly.

Warm regards,
Sydney



Thank you, it more clear now.

However, my point is we can not translate everything to all languages. 
we do not have and we will never have resources for that. We need to 
prioritize. I would say in the case of the upcoming elections, it would 
be great to know what languages we need to translate the documents into 
- the languages spoken by the members of boards of the organizations who 
actually intend to vote, and only in the case they do not speak English. 
I asked this already a week ago in this very same topic of the mailing 
list, and got a reply from someone (was it Amir? - sorry, I can not 
easily check it now) that there is a generic list of languages important 
messages get translated into. In this situation, I would say, we need 
first to make a custom list for these elections - hopefully it is more 
narrow than the generic list, and then see what is the best way to 
proceed. I am not sure there is a general solutions - probably different 
documents just need to be translated into different sets of languages.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Access and Participation in the ASBS

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-03-11 15:58, Sydney Poore wrote:
I agree with antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv that broader translation of WMF 
BoT

election pages is important.

To reach the goal where "every single person on the planet is given 
free
access to the sum of all human knowledge" the wikimedia movement needs 
to

prioritize translation as a regular part of key processes.

We are failing at this today. The wikimedia movement lacks a clear 
strategy

to shift the cost (funds and human resources) from non-English speaking
volunteers to the broader wikimedia movement.

I welcome a hearty discussion about how the Affiliate-selected Board of
Trustee election can be made more accessible to more non-English 
speaking

people. And also a larger discussion as part of the WMF Strategic Plan
discussion, and the upcoming WMf Annual Plan.
Warm regards,
Sydney
User:FloNight

Sydney Poore
User:FloNight
Wikipedian in Residence
at Cochrane Collaboration



Hi Sydney,

as I mentioned earlier, I am afraid there are two things mixed up here. 
There a big step between making the candidate statements and answers to 
questions to all individuals who are eligible to vote at the forthcoming 
elections, and providing the sum of human knowledge in all languages.


In practical terms, every person who speaks Dutch and is a member of 
Wikimedia Nederland / Belgium also speaks English and would be able to 
understand the candidate statements. On the other hand, Dutch as a 
language is spoken by 20M people, and we need of course to consider 
support of Dutch Wikipedia / sister projects / Wikidata, Commons, and 
Mediawiki interface with a high priority. As another example, I believe 
we have zero Quechua speakers who are eligible to vote, and translating 
statements into Quechuan languages would be a loss of time. On the other 
hand, these languages have 9 million speakers, and definitely need their 
own projects.


I agree that both should be discussed, but let us separate the things. 
One issue is a global priority of languages in terms of the projects etc 
and whether they need to be supported, another issue is whether there 
are some languages the statements of the candidates should be urgently 
translated to in order to help the voters decide.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation executive transition update

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-03-11 04:28, Pine W wrote:
I think it's a possibility that's worth considering seriously. (: We'll 
see

how things go.

Pine



I am sure Katherine is an excellent choice currently for an interim ED, 
with the first task to rebuild trust between staff, the Board, and the 
community.


However, whether she is an excellent choice for permanent ED, depends on 
the general strategy for the movement (which we still do not have, after 
the previous strategic plan expired in December). For instance, if the 
strategic directions is chosen such that some divisions get cut and, as 
a consequence, a part of staff members have to be fired, she would 
likely not be the best ED to implement these actions.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Access and Participation in the ASBS

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-03-06 09:26, Gnangarra wrote:

You would think though that someone who wanted to represent all of the
affiliates would endeavor to have their statement translated into as 
many
languages as possible to ensure their message got heard by the most 
amount
of people, even if they did it themselves using one of the many 
translation

programs available.

The affiliates if they are transparent will be asking for input from 
their
members as to who they should be supporting, I'd consider it as 
important

but also a courtesy to all communities



Do we have a list of languages into which the statements REALLY need to 
be translated? I would say, with all due respect, that translating it to 
Swedish and Dutch is rather a waste of time, whereas translating for 
example to Spanish and Italian might indeed help.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open and recorded WMF Board meetings

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-03-03 18:17, Nathan wrote:






So instead - why not ask the board to hold quarterly public meetings? 
The
WMF engages with the community through the model of public meetings all 
the
time, and participants have been happy with the opportunity to hear 
staff
work through issues and offer feedback. Can't we extend that template 
to
the board, and ask the board to create some opportunities to engage 
either

with the public or at least in public?


We can just ask them to hold office hours, as everybody in WMF does.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Armenia candidate for the board

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-03-02 20:58, Andreas Kolbe wrote:



Now, why are we bestowing Wikipedian of the Year honours on government
employees of repressive regimes? If we had the US Secretary of Defense
writing Wikipedia articles about the US Army, or had employees of the
German government running Wikimedia Deutschland, I'm sure there'd be an
outcry, even though those are countries with quite favourable records 
on
human rights, press freedom and so on. The idea of an award would not 
even

arise.




Susanna is (or was) a researcher, and every researcher in Armenia is a 
state employee. There are just no non-governmental organizations who 
employ researchers.


I do think there is a problem with a potential Armenian board member 
(that is, Turkish and Azeri Wikimedians would basically consider board 
as not legitimate), but I do not think the fact that she is or was 
employed by the Academy of Sciences is in any way problematic.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What it means to be a *volunteer* organization

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-03-01 11:01, David Emrany wrote:


" .. WIKIMEDIA pornographers who are masquerading as champions of free
speech and free internet to promote their obscenities and lies in
India ... TO IMMEDIATELY PROHIBIT ANY FREE INTERNET ACCESS OVER MOBILE
DEVICES .. " [2]

[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/India_Against_Corruption_sock-meatfarm

[2] 
http://trai.gov.in/Comments_Data/Organisation/India_Against_Corruption.pdf


David


Which likely means you are avoiding the list ban.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Structuring revolution

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-29 16:41, Milos Rancic wrote:

I created the set of pages, starting with [1]. That's the place for
structuring our ideas, thoughts etc. I decomposed the thread "What it
means to be a high-tech organization" and I needed for the whole task
~5 hours.

On the talk page [2] you can find the manual how to help.

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_2016
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Revolution_of_2016


Thanks Milos, looks great.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-28 16:24, Dariusz Jemielniak wrote:
On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 10:18 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter 
<pute...@mccme.ru>

wrote:







A direct consequence would be that one should think again whether San
Francisco is the best location for the WMF office, rather than a place
better known for culture and education and less for proximity to 
Silicon

Valley. Boston was named in the same discussion.



If we were choosing a location from the scratch - definitely. As it is 
now,
I think that relocating would involve really huge intangible costs for 
our
staff, and our staff is our unique asset. I would be cautious to rush 
any

changes in this respect.

dj
___


The relocation does not have to happen overnight. It can easily take 
several years (which is likely longer than the average time a WMF 
employee spends in the organization). But I think discussing this as a 
strategical direction would be beneficial for the movement. The topic 
was raised several times in the past, and I did not get the impression 
that there was any willingness to discuss it from the Board / WMF. (I 
might be wrong though, and pointing out to such discussions will be 
appreciated).


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-28 16:10, Guettarda wrote:

On Sat, Feb 27, 2016 at 8:54 PM, Gnangarra  wrote:



​
technology is our tool not our purpose



This should be printed on a banner and hung on the wall every time the
Board meets.


Actually, in the facebook discussion which was earlier referenced on 
this list someone noticed (unfortunately, without much impact) that WMF 
is not a business company and not a high-tech company, but more like a 
culture/ educational institution. A direct consequence would be that one 
should think again whether San Francisco is the best location for the 
WMF office, rather than a place better known for culture and education 
and less for proximity to Silicon Valley. Boston was named in the same 
discussion.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What should happen next? My 5 ideas

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-26 21:20, Pete Forsyth wrote:

All:

Now that Wikimedia's Executive Director is leaving, a central point of
contention has been resolved. But as many have said, the "real work" of
getting back on track comes next. I have been thinking about what the 
next
specific steps should be, and I have some suggestions here. I present 
these
points very directly, in order to be concise and in the hopes of 
hearing
the perspectives of others. In other words -- I think this is a good 
list,
but I'm open to persuasion -- as I think we all are in this community. 
I

look forward to hearing from others who take a broad view of where this
movement and organization are, and where we need to go. And of course, 
much

of what I say below is inspired by previous messages from people like
Brion, Delphine, Asaf, Milos, etc. Anyhow, on to some specifics 
suggestions:




Hi Pete,

thanks for excellent suggestions, which hopefully will give us all food 
for thought.


I was searching your mail for the keyword "transparency" and did not 
find a single usage. I think this is an important point, which should 
possibly be considered as #6. Many of our troubles from the last year 
arose because people have acted untransparently. Whereas it is clear 
that some issues are privacy sensitive, and full disclosure would not be 
possible, we should agree that for every important decision it should be 
clear who made it, what was the motivation, and preferably important 
stkeholders (including the community) should have been contacted before 
the decision has been made, not after that.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] I am going to San Francisco

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-26 16:23, Risker wrote:

Andreas, I think you are being unfair here.  Whatever anyone's personal
opinion of Jimmy, the bottom line is that WMF staff have expressed that 
the

Board has not been listening to them.  Jimmy is a board member.  He's
directly saying "I'm coming to listen to you".  And he's being 
transparent

about it,  by sharing his plan publicly on this list and perhaps
elsewhere.  That pretty much sounds as though he's being responsive.  
Now,
none of us knows what the outcome will be, and I don't think it would 
be
appropriate for any of us to speculate on how various staff members 
will
choose to interact given this direct opportunity.  Other board members 
live

in the immediate area and maybe they too will attend (and maybe not, we
don't know).  This is a very short notice attendance, and since many 
board

members have responsibilities to their employers, families, and other
activities, they may not be able to drop everything and jump on a 
plane,

even if they want to.

Myself, I'd suggest that staff take advantage of this opportunity, with 
the
hope of having a more responsive interaction than the November meeting. 
 It

is in *everyone's* interest that all of the groups within the Wikimedia
community start moving toward better integration, communication,
transparency, and  carving out a shared vision.  This is a step. It's 
only

a step.



Absolutely. Some people may have battleground mentality and wish the 
whole board to resign immediately, but generally it is a good 
opportunity to get out of the trenches.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The right time is now!

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-26 00:16, Sydney Poore wrote:
The idea of a non-voting seat for a non C-level employee is something 
that

I could support.

Sydney

Sydney Poore
User:FloNight
Wikipedian in Residence
at Cochrane Collaboration



Actually, it could be more observers (non-voting seats) than just one; 
this could also help solving the diversity issue.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-25 03:09, SarahSV wrote:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 4:20 PM, phoebe ayers  
wrote:








The Foundation could pay that number of workers, especially if it found
imaginative ways to do it.

For example, it could set up a department that accepts contracts from
individuals and groups who want certain articles to be written or
rewritten. Instead of paying a PR company, those people would pay the
Foundation. The Foundation would maintain a list of excellent editors 
and
would offer the contract to the most appropriate, taking a percentage 
of

the fee for itself.






I am sure this has been discussed before, but I also think this is a bad 
idea. Whereas I can imagine that as an exceptions some editors can be 
supported by the Foundation via an engagement grant, it should really 
stay an exceptions. The obvious reasons are:


- Different image of the movement, and, as a consequence, less 
donations, as Risker already pointed out.

- Possibly POV will be compromised in paid articles.
- Unhealthy situation within the editing community. In the debates with 
WMF staff when we disagreed, I always felt awkward, because they were 
paid arguing with me, and would do it until they convince me or I give 
up, and I was doing this in my free time, and got tired very quickly. I 
also had very unpleasant experiences interacting with some chapter 
people whose only goal was to keep their position. They did not care 
about the quality, efficiency, anything, only about their personal good. 
And if somebody defends their personal good, you know, thy usually win, 
and the quality loses. Now, imagine there is a content dispute between a 
user who is paid (and is afraid to lose the salary) and a user who is 
unpaid and have to do the same for free - I am sure a paid user will be 
way more persistent.


There should be many other reasons which I am sure have been already 
voiced.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Anybody alive?

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-24 18:47, Milos Rancic wrote:
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:43 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <pute...@mccme.ru> 
wrote:
No, there are other lists which are active. For example, the last 
message on

the wikidata-l by Lydia was several minutes ago.

(May be she is abducted by the aliens though, I do not know).


Good to know that I am not the only not abducted one.

Maybe Lydia is not abducted because she is not subscribed on this list?

We should make the plan now how to search for others. Any idea?


I think she is subscribed, but may be aliens only let her post to the 
other ones.


For the plan, I guess we need to start with a map of regions where every 
single Wikimedian was abducted, and those where some Wikimedians 
survive. This one


https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BlankMap-World6.svg

would be a good start.

(Now I am going to be abducted myself, but I am sure they would let me 
go after half an hour).


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Anybody alive?

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-24 18:39, Milos Rancic wrote:

8 (eight) hours have passed without any email. Am I the last
Wikimedian not abducted by aliens?


No, there are other lists which are active. For example, the last 
message on the wikidata-l by Lydia was several minutes ago.


(May be she is abducted by the aliens though, I do not know).

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-22 10:31, Erik Moeller wrote:

2016-02-22 1:14 GMT-08:00 Yaroslav M. Blanter <pute...@mccme.ru>:
Absolutely. This is absolutely what happened. At some point I had to 
state

that if FLOW gets introduced on all talk pages I would stop using talk
pages. I was replied that they are sorry but this is my choice.


Our early communications approach about Flow was terrible, it is true,
and I take responsibility for not handling it better. I saw some
messages that made me cringe, but I didn't step in to say "This is not
how we want to do things". I'm sorry. As for my own comms style when I
was around the wikis, I think people have often found it arrogant and
thereby offputting. I've learned over the years that folks who are
external to the community are often naturally better at this. It's
tempting as a (formerly very active) community member to draw on your
own expertise and hopes to the point that you're no longer listening,
or seen to be listening.

I believe Flow-related communications improved significantly later on,
but by that time a lot of bridges had already been burned^Wnuked from
orbit. I think this early history significantly impacted perception
especially in the English Wikipedia community, to the point that
raising the name of the project immediately triggers lots of people in
that community. At the same time, the more proactive and careful
approach later fostered some use cases, like the Catalan Wikipedia
converting its entire Village Pump over:

<...>


Hi Erik,

thank for your reply. I also fully agree that communication over FLOW 
was considerably, drastically improved, making it possible to introduce 
trials at other projects, e.g. on Wikidata. This is exactly what I meant 
yesterday when I said that things became much better in 2015 from my 
perspective as a volunteer.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-22 04:42, SarahSV wrote:

So from the start, it felt as though staffers had ruled out the 
community

as people who might know something about what tools are needed to
collaborate on an article (which is not the same as chatting). People 
who

had been doing something for years were not regarded as experts in that
thing by the Foundation.

We would say "we need pages," and they would explain why we didn't. We
would say "we need archives," and they would explain why good search 
was a
better idea. We would say "there's too much white space," and they 
would

explain that people like white space. And so on.

Sarah



Absolutely. This is absolutely what happened. At some point I had to 
state that if FLOW gets introduced on all talk pages I would stop using 
talk pages. I was replied that they are sorry but this is my choice.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-22 04:01, Gergő Tisza wrote:

One example of the shortcomings of emails as a medium for complex
discussions is how this thread about postmortems continues to be 
diverted

into discussions about Facebook, despite Pete's best efforts.

At the end of the day, people will prefer tools that work well over 
tools
that align philosophically. One can sabotage the development of tools 
that

would both work well and uphold Wikimedia's values, but cannot prevent
important discussions from moving to other venues (which will 
necessarily
be a worse match for those values). There is a lesson there, although 
I'm

afraid it will take some more time before we learn it.


Meta rather than the mailing list would be the proper place to discuss 
such things. However, for the last many years meta has been a terrible 
mess, where it is impossible to find anything, and which only 
meta-regulars (mainly people highly involved with WMF) were able to 
follow on a daily basis. The introduction of the global watchlist might 
solve this bit of the problem.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-21 14:03, Dan Andreescu wrote:






Allow me to give one specific limited example that touches on some of 
the
themes you raised here, Yaroslav.  My main point is that from the 
outside,
correlation of what happened during Sue's and Lila's leadership might 
seem

to imply causation, but I think the reality is much more complicated.



Hi Dan,

I am not implying causation. It might (or might not) have been 
reasonable to imply causation if problems started during Sue's tenure 
and ended right after Lila started. This was certainly not the case. The 
situation is clearly more complex than that, and I am not accusing 
anyone, just give my impression (which seem in this part to coincide 
with the others').


I just feel that this part of the story is less visible to those who did 
not participate in it directly and needs to be spelled out.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-21 09:52, Jane Darnell wrote:
Risker thanks for this. I would add that the biggest problem for 
outsiders

is trying to sift through the emails in this thread, looking for valid
concerns and first-hand accounts among the cynical and/or ironic 
comments
only understandable to a few players. As more and more of our 
international

community tries to read and follow along on these developments, let's
please stick to some ground rules: no irony, no cynicism, no rehashing 
old

mistakes if they are irrelevant. Challenging, but necessary if you want
more foreign chapter members to hear or take part in this conversation.



Let me give my perspective, since I believe an important part of the 
puzzle is missing or at least underappreciated on this list. I am not 
going to offer any solutions, I do not pretend I known more than other 
people know, but I do feel that this piece is needed to understand the 
big picture.


To give some background, I am just a volunteer. I am, you know, writing 
articles. I have administrator permissions on four projects (en.wp, 
ru.voy, Commons, and Wikidata), and I have globally about 200K non-bot 
edits from my two accounts, which is probably more than for most posters 
of this thread. I never worked for WMF, I have never been a member of 
any chapter, but I did participate in some committees and juries and 
whatever. I interacted with WMF staff in different roles - as WMF staff 
and also in their roles as volunteers on the projects. I am generally 
interested in Meta-issues and I am on this list since I believe 2007.


Now, I (and from what I know, other people as well) at some point 
started to have problems with WMF staff whose tasks were to facilitate 
our job. Not to say that everything was stellar before and that 
everything was stellar after, but the most difficult period started 
around 2013, definitely when Sue was the ED, and ended (or at least 
things went considerably better) in 2015, long after Lila became the ED. 
For people who were just writing articles there was nothing to change, 
but whenever someone wanted to do smth with requied interaction with WMF 
there was a large amount of red tape. WMF staff members were polite, but 
I did not get an impression that they listened to what we said - there 
were just assigned to do some work and they did not care what volunteers 
thought about it. The first major bell ring for me was when Gayle Karin 
Young removed the admin rights of all non-staff from the WMF wiki, 
without even notifying them - and then for several weeks nobody wanted 
to take responsibility and I believe in the end nobody apologized, and 
the wiki went into a pitiful state where I believe it still remains, so 
that this action was not only rude but also counterproductive. I could 
not easily find when it happened, but definitely before January 2014, 
when Gayle Karin left WMF. (Note that Lila started in May 2014). This is 
not such a big deal - in the end of the day, I never edited this wiki, 
and I am not sure it was needed - but it was a clear sign that you can 
invest quite some time in doing a good maintenance job which nobody 
wanted to do, and one day you just get a message "Hey, we have a change 
of the policy and decided you are no longer welcome here". Other things 
include superprotect, FLOW, VE early rollout on en.wp, toolserver, and a 
lot of lower-profile issues. Things started to improve considerably 
middle of the last year - first we were not just laughed at, and then 
most of the things (not all of them though - and also for example the 
Wikimania screwup happened in the end of the year) were reverted or 
shelved. Now I would define the relations as quasi-normal, with a number 
of really good things happening.


Again, I do not know who is right and who is wrong here, we have 
excellent examples of WMF staff work all the time through (let me name 
Maggie Dennis as an example of someone who is doing excellent work as 
both WMF staffer and a project volunteer, and there are more examples), 
but things definitely went suboptimal in that period. Volunteers can any 
moment, you know, walk away, and without them, WMF projects would die.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-19 23:24, Delphine Ménard wrote:

Here you go SJ,


On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 10:09 PM, Sam Klein  
wrote:



Delphine writes:

  
We freaking built an encyclopedia, of course we can take care of it

without
having to fear everyone and their brother! And while an organisation 
is

not

a wiki, and revert not always an option, I'm pretty sure that



... reverting sometimes *is* a good idea. And maybe the only idea.


Delphine


No way. We do not want to be reverted back to 2008. We are in 2016 now.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

Hi Craig, Amir, and Nat,

On 2016-02-19 00:13, Craig Franklin wrote:

Yaroslav,

You're correct in that most volunteers don't care directly.  The 
problem is

that a lot of the BoT's recent difficulties have crossed the line from
"angry encyclopedia people venting on a mailing list" to "serious and
negative attention from the mainstream press".  If there is too much of 
the
latter, it may create a perception amongst the general public than even 
if

Wikipedia is a useful resource, that it is incompetent with handling
money.  As a result, donations dry up, and difficult and unpleasant 
choices

have to be made around budget.

So yes, this sort of thing can influence rank and file editors most
seriously, albeit indirectly.

Cheers,
Craig




Whereas you are absolutely right, I actually have two very simple 
points.


One is that in the big picture, servers were running ten years ago on a 
budget which is thousand times less than the current WMF budget. And 
unless someone screws up badly they would still be running in ten years 
from now. Most people use the servers to see content, and most of them 
want to look up the English Wikipedia. People who add this content - 
volunteers - are largely independent of the funding, and the vast 
majority of them do not even know that WMF exists. Sure, it would be 
very unfortunate to lose the development momentum, to lose GLAMS and 
similar things, but this is kind of luxury. Volunteers large live not 
because WMF screws up or because funding dries out; they leave because 
they burn out, move to a different period in their life, or, well, die. 
My point is that even if funding is severely reduced, it would be very 
unfortunate, but this is not yet the end of the world.


The second one refers to Leila's statement that she is more afraid for 
volunteers than for the staff. My point is that actually staff 
(including Leila herself) which suffer most from the ongoing disruption, 
and if one needs to protect someone (I am not sure it is needed) it 
should be staff, not volunteers.


For the record, I do not have any opinion on who is right and who is 
wrong here. I do not have enough information, and I do not have a habit 
making uninformed statements. Again, in the big picture this is 
irrelevant; what is relevant is that some disruption is going on, which 
definitely has an impact on the movement.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-18 21:20, Leila Zia wrote:

Hi Dariusz,

I want to share with you the following relatively scattered thoughts 
and
leave it to you to decide how to continue engaging with us. :-) I hope 
you

find them helpful:

* BoT has been too silent, given the state of matters. I'm much more
worried about our volunteers when I say this, than the WMF's staff 
(which

I'm one of).


To be honest, most volunteers do not care. We understand of course that 
if things would go really wrong, for example, servers stop running, or 
money runs out and ads are introduced, or English Wikipedia admins 
continue resigning/being desysopped without proper replacement, so that 
we have ten active admins, then we are in serious trouble. But as far as 
things are running quasi-normal, we just continue. I was making 50 to 
100 edits per day five years ago, I am making 50 to 100 edits per day 
now, I will probably still be making 50 to 100 edits per day in five 
years, unless I die or leave because of a serious demotivation - and 
this demotivation is unlikely to be related to WMF. I think staff are 
way more vulnerable to all kinds of events.




* Because of the lack of clear communications by the BoT, I'm uncertain
whether there is an acknowledgement by the BoT about the issues we are
facing. What can assure me at the moment is to see a list of items the 
BoT

sees as problematic, and a plan for addressing them, and a schedule for
when we should expect seeing them addressed. (Half-jokingly: maybe we 
need
a phabrictor board for the BoT to track specific tasks that can be 
shared

publicly and their prioritization).



This is a cool idea. It is a pity it has zero chances to be realized.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia at 15 & its African language editions

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-01 16:18, Don Osborn wrote:


Am interested in feedback on accuracy, as well as observations or
comments from people active in any of the African language Wikipedias
or other Wikimedia projects about their experience and hopes.

Thanks in advance,

Don Osborn



I was following Hausa Wikipedia a couple of years back for two months. 
(I do not remember why, I do not speak Hausa; probably detected 
vandalism and stuck around to see how regular it is). It was essentially 
dead, not a single native speaker regularly edited. Now checked it back 
- I see a number of edits apparently by a native speaker who has an 
account but not a regular editor (less than 20 edits in total). I am 
afraid it is still dead, which is a pity, since this is one of the 
biggest languages in Africa in terms of the number of speakers.


Let me add an (unsolicited) comment about the general coverage of Africa 
on the English Wikipedia. We just had 15 days contest on African women, 
organized by Florence (that was fun), and I decided to write three 
papers on a Central African first female minister of defense, a Nigerien 
academic and former development minister, and a Malagasy former justice 
minister and the first ever female president of parliament. (To improve 
the links, I also started the article of the National Museum of Niger). 
I knew that in principle, but I was really astonished to learn that even 
the basic subjects are not covered at all or are covered extremely 
superficially. As an anecdote, the national museum of Niger was a 
redirect to the national museum of Nigeria. As a more troubling story, 
we do not have articles on a couple of prime ministers of Madagascar 
(and it has been independent for not that long, since 1960), and we have 
for most of the African countries absolutely zero connections in 
politics - it is very difficult to figure out who followed whom and who 
were the ministers (the Central African government is still listed from 
2005 or smth). Most of the subjects of human and physical geography have 
two-line stubs. We obviuosly have a long way to go.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voting formula was Appointment of María Sefidari to Wikimedia Foundation Board

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

While we're at it...diversity remains a very serious problem for the
Board.  Does the community voting process want to try to take that on?  
How

would we do such a thing?

Risker/Anne



I think here we only have two options:

1) To decide that one (or two) of the community-elected seats is only 
given to a certain group of people, for example, women, or residents of 
the Global South (in which case, obviously, the latter should be defined 
properly - I already indicate previously that currently Russia and 
Moldova are counted as Global North, and Ukraine and Belarus as Global 
South which affects e.g. Wikimania fellowships - nobody seems to care). 
This would probably mean a separate contest for these seats and the 
general contest for the remaining ones.


2) To decide that the diversity should be ensured by appointed and 
possibly by chapter-selected seats. This is pretty much what we are 
doing now.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Appointment of María Sefidari to Wikimedia Foundation Board

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-01-29 17:56, Dariusz Jemielniak wrote:
On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 11:43 AM, Milos Rancic  
wrote:



If I remember well (not willing to check), Maria got the most of the
votes on the elections (more than any of the elected members), which
means that it's fair that she becomes a Board member.


that is correct. Also, if the voting system relied on a net sum 
(support

votes minus oppose votes) she would have been elected.

dj


Whereas this is a correct statement, it is irrelevant. The voters voted 
knowing that only support votes count. If the system were different, 
they could have voted differently.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Meta is apparently down

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-01-26 19:44, Pharos wrote:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/

Thanks,
Pharos


Commons as well.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-01-19 16:58, Jens Best wrote:



I like the idea of Wikidata.
I like the idea of combining Encylopedia with structured data to enable
understanding and easy re-use at the reader-side of Wikiprojects. So 
many

things are imaginable there when the culture of conveying the needed
individual and social skills are done well. Tech is only tool to these
processes. Tools are important, but not the purpose when it comes to
disseminate knowledge.

regards,
Jens



Actually, Wikidata itself is an excellent positive example of community 
involvement. All things, including technical innovations, are discussed 
at the village pump (there, it is called Project Chat); for those who 
are less active in some areas there are weekly digests covering all the 
activities; if there is a technical problem help comes within minutes. 
It is of course much easier for a smaller scale project, but the 
problems in Wikipedia from Wikidata come, I believe, not from negligence 
or from insufficient attention to the community, but from bad 
communication.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-01-15 00:30, Mardetanha wrote:

Dear Fellow Wikimedians
I would like to congratulate you on Wikipedia's 15th birthday, it was
historic moment for all of us, I am glad to let you know we had a
celebration in Tehran and we were the first country to celebrate it.
you can find images here
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_15_in_Iran
Mardetanha
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I feel like today is time for stories, and I guess this thread is 
exactly the place we can share some stories today. I wish everybody 
does, since this is a nice way to celebrate 15y.


It could be in principle anything remotely Wikimedia related. For 
example, the highest real-life rank of a person I ever blocked on 
Wikipedia was a member of the European parliament (or someone 
impersonating him). But these stories mainly reveal human stupidity, and 
today we want to talk more on the human knowledge. Therefore I am going 
to spend my daily quota of wikimedia-l post for smth else.


I was born in 1967 in the Soviet Union and I am coming from a 
pre-internet generation. I first used internet in 1995 or so, past my 
PhD degree. However, I was always interested in learning things, this is 
probably why I later joined the Wikimedia movement. And I was a pretty 
advanced-knowledge teenager, knowing things my peers would normally not 
know anything about, and I was interested in all kinds of stuff: from 
exact sciences to history and languages and to geographical names. It 
was really painful to get any non-mainstream information. Let me give 
you a couple of example of the problems I encountered.


One was languages. Well, for mainstream foreign languages like English 
or German it was relatively easy to find textbooks and dictionaries. 
They were nothing like modern means of language learning, for example 
the Teach Yourself series, not even speaking of online courses. Other 
languages were more difficult. Some languages were impossible. Well, I 
grew up in Moscow, which had a 10M population, and there were couple of 
libraries where I presumably could find dictionaries of even uncommon 
languages, but these were difficult to get in (normally one had to be 18 
yo), they did not let the books out of the building, and for a number of 
practical reasons they were not really an option. On the other hand, I 
was hiking a lot in Central Asia, and I was suffering from inability to 
understand what the local Turkic names (in Kazakh and Kyrghyz mainly) 
mean. Well, you learn soon that Ak-Suu means "White river", meaning "aq" 
is white and "suu" is a river, but this is about it). So what I did I 
searched all available literature at home and around including the 
school library, and came up with a list of about 100 words. This was my 
own, personal, self-made Kyrghyz-Russian dictionary. It was weird, 
since, for example, did not include verbs, and it did not help me to 
speak Kyrghyz in any sense - and I still do not - but it was fine to 
understand the names and to feel kind of like at home. Now we have of 
course professional dictionaries available online. (Kyrghyz is still not 
in a Google translate though).


The second story. For whatever reason, when I was about twelve, I needed 
to have Japanese names. I do not remember why I needed them, but 
Japanese names were notoriously difficult to find. The books I had 
available only mentioned a few individuals. The newspapers rarely wrote 
about Japan, and again only mentioned a few individuals. Then there 
happened the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, and Japanese team 
entered the ice hockey tournament. (They ended up last). There was a 
sports newspaper which I had access to, which published the results of 
the games, and of course ice hockey was at the time a great deal in 
Russia (on that Olympics, the Soviet team lost to the US team in the 
finals, which is still considered to be a major fuckup), but apparently 
they did not publish all the names of the players, only last names of 
those who scored a goal. Japanese rarely scored, and there was my tough 
luck. But them the same newspaper opened a hotline - one could phone a 
certain number, and they would answer any question related to the 
results of the Olympics. I thought this is my chance. I was dead afraid 
calling people I do not know, but I still collected a piece of paper, a 
pen and phoned. A nice female voice answered, and I said I would like to 
have names of the Japanese ice hockey team players. The nice voice 
answered that the team is too big, and their policy is not to give long 
answers. That was the end of it.


You may think by now we are in the free information world, and the 
players of the 1980 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Beyond the Board (was: WMF trustee Arnnon Geshuri and part in anticompetitive agreements in Google)

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-01-13 16:32, Dariusz Jemielniak wrote:
On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 8:33 PM, Milos Rancic  
wrote:





I think it is a good idea to have a sort of community council. To give
credit, Guy Kawasaki just recently proposed something along these lines 
in
internal discussions. My first take is that it would be good to have 
some
representation and governance of our movement, not just WMF. It would 
make
everyone's lives easier, too - it would be easier to consult, seek 
advise,

etc.

I've been also thinking about revitalizing our Advisory Board - the way 
I
would like to see it would be dividing it into (a) community (b) tech 
and
(c) academic subgroups, available for immediate consulting and 
feedback.


This definitely does not collide with the idea of a community council 
in
the form that you're proposing, I think. It is worth further 
discussion.

Should it be continued on meta?

dj


Hi Dariusz,

there have been several discussions over the years, and those which I 
remember (the first one was Lodewijk's proposal in 2008? 2009?) were 
either rejected/not endorsed by the board, or got stalled on meta with 
no consensus. My impression is therefore that some sort of a preparatory 
work is needed to avoid these two traps. Ideally, there would be a 
drafting group with a broad representation (possibly the members of the 
group will be prohibited to sit in the first edition of the elected 
body), and the Board will preliminary express an interest (so that the 
group knows the chances are not zero). Of course we can just agree on 
electing the representative body witout actually asking the Board, but I 
am not sure this would be the right way of doing it.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Strategic planning

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-01-13 06:06, rupert THURNER wrote:


Interesting summary,  what are the three major outcomes of this plan, 
and

one example what should not have gone into the plan?



I do not know. It was six years ago after all, and I was not involved in 
drafting of the final plan. I can of course re-read it and see what in 
the end of the day was a good idea and what was not really a good idea, 
but anybody can do it, I am in no way special. There were over a hundred 
barnstars sent around if I remember correctly, and most of those people 
are still around somewhere in the movement (though not necessarily in 
the same roles as six years ago - me not being an exception).


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Strategic planning

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-01-12 04:21, Pete Forsyth wrote:

All:


And beyond this video -- what do those who participated in the last 
round
(or those who have observed it) think the important lessons are? How 
should

we be moving foward?

-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]



I did not watch the video, but I did participate in the community 
process and still have an iron barnstar sent by Philippe - my children 
are still impressed.


Concerning the process itself:

1) It was good that the process was structured from the very beginning: 
there was a pre-process which helped to shape the task forces.


2) There was little to not at all coordination between different task 
forces. Not sure it was necessary, since it was pure brainstorming, but 
still wanted to mention.


3) It was not clear (at least not to me) what would happen beyond the 
task force round. I tried to ask around but never got a satisfactory 
answer. May be I just asked wrong people.


4) There was a bit too much noise (compared to signal), and organization 
in the task forces was a bit chaotic - for example, in the task force I 
was mainly active at somebody was (or claimed she was) appointed the 
task force coordinator, but she disappeared after a week and never came 
back, so that I took on the coordination myself and delivered some 
summary to the second round - but nobody ever talked to me about this.


5) It is good that Liquid Threads died. They should not be ever used 
again for such process.


6) Despite some deficiencies I listed above it was definitely fun to 
work on the strategic plan, and also I had an impression we are really 
shaping things up, not merely rubber-stumping some pre-determined ideas. 
And that was indeed a community-driven process, and I mean the whole 
community, not just the English Wikipedia.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How To Recover From Having Made A Mistake [a reminder]

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-01-11 19:37, Asaf Bartov wrote:

Hello, everyone.

It occurs to me this might be a good time to recycle this piece of 
advice I

have had some past occasions to offer some newcomers to the movement:



<...>


Q: Are you suggesting this applies to current goings-on?
A: I suggest it applies to every situation involving humans.

Cheers,

A.


That was absolutely fabulous, thanks Asaf.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-01-10 10:49, Lilburne wrote:
Meanwhile one knows that a Google appointed board member objected to 
James,

presence at a meeting where they were most likely to be finalizing the
appointment
of another from the Googleplex, who is a little tarnished.



Would you please remain civil. We do not have a Google appointed board 
member, nor the bylaws provide a possibility for Google to appoint a 
board member. If you mean Denny, he was not Google appointed, but 
community elected, which makes a big difference. I, for one, voted for 
him.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-01-09 13:14, Ilario Valdelli wrote:

Yes but this overlapping generates this kind of misunderstanding.

For people being outside wikimedia community there are several changes 
too

much complicated.
Il 09/Gen/2016 13:08, "Yaroslav M. Blanter" <pute...@mccme.ru> ha 
scritto:




To be honest, I think people outside the Wikimedia community do not 
care.


The problem at this point is the lack of mutual trust between WMF and 
the community, which started to get repaired in the second half of 2015, 
and which was not helped by the recent events.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-01-09 12:54, Steinsplitter Wiki wrote:

That James was replaced with Geshuri, who was involved in a scandal is
yet a other scandal.



James Heilman was never replaced by Arnnon Geshuri. Arnnon replaced Stu 
West, and James will be replaced by a to-be-elected community member 
later this year.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Something

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-01-04 00:50, Theo10011 wrote:
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.



What do you suggest? To amend bylaws and to abolish the Board? Then say 
so.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-01-02 09:37, Peter Southwood wrote:

Just as you say.
No threat to WMF if they don’t care about retaining the editing 
community.

If all else fails thy could just sell advertising
Cheers,
Peter



This is an interesting theoretical discussion, and I criticized WMF in 
the past on a number of occasions, but I feel necessary to emphasize 
that there is not a slightest indication at this time that they do not 
care about retaining the community. At most, we have indications that 
they did not handle some issues in sub-optimal way. The probability that 
Wikipedia and sister projects will collapse in say ten years because 
some novel technical means become available and we do not manage to 
respond properly is in my opinion a billion times higher than that we 
will collapse because BoT or WMF staff function sub-optimally in their 
daily communications with the community. Let us discuss real things and 
not what happens if Martians come to enslave us.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-12-31 14:44, Fæ wrote:

On 31 December 2015 at 13:31, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:



If James can be bothered to run again for election back on the WMF
board of trustees, he'll be getting my vote. As far as I can make out,
being kicked off the board for woolly, secretive or short-term
political reasons this time around is no bar to re-running.

Fae


Indeed, this is a point I would like to understand: Imagine James would 
run at the coming elections and wins - would he be again immediately 
removed from the board? I did not vote for him last time, for a number 
of reasons, but I would seriously consider voting for him this time if 
he runs.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why are we so boring?

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-12-08 17:57, Andreas Kolbe wrote:

I like that post, Milos. :)

The other day someone suggested to me in a chat Wikipedia should have a
function like Skype, or IM, so people could chat about stuff privately. 
I
think it's a great idea. (Obviously you would have to make it so people 
can

only instant-message you after you've accepted their contact request.)

At the same time, I have a feeling such a proposal made on wiki would 
sink

like a lead duck. On Wikipedia, having friends and talking to them
PRIVATELY on a Wikipedia feature where (shock! horror!) others are 
EXCLUDED

and can't see what you're saying elicits dire fears of "canvassing",
"cabal" and other such words (while people still generally accept that 
it
is okay for contributors to have email correspondence, or talk to 
someone

in the pub).

I am not even saying that such fears would be unjustified – the Eastern
European Mailing List arbitration case comes to mind – but it is 
somehow a
weird culture. And as Milos says, all of that tends to evaporate when 
you
are actually standing in a corridor at an event, or having your lunch 
and

chatting.

Andreas



I think as soon as there is no reference to this chat as a 
decision-making venue (like "We have chatted and I unblocked them", or, 
even worse, "blocked them"), it should be ok, and might be even accepted 
as an on-wiki suggestion (we have irc anyway, and many people are there 
24h/24), but then of course someone would need to lobby it, organize 
RfC, closing etc.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why are we so boring?

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-12-08 17:39, Sebastian Moleski wrote:
On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 1:47 PM, Anders Wennersten 


wrote:

Indeed, I would agree with Milos here. I'd like for many of our events 
to
become more approachable by and relatable to the non-nerdy general 
public.
We've built something that hundreds of millions of people are using. 
Yet,
more often than not, we act more like an obscure/niche open source 
project

(nothing wrong with them - but they neither aim nor will every reach a
similar impact).

Cheers,



Actually, I think one can write a popular book about out movement which 
would be fun. Just everybody is lazy.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-12-01 12:27, Andreas Kolbe wrote:

Article by Mark Graham in Slate, Nov. 30, 2015:

Why Does Google Say Jerusalem Is the Capital of Israel?
It has to do with the fact that the Web is now optimized for machines, 
not

people.



Second, because of the stripping away of context, it can be challenging 
to

represent important nuance. In the case of Jerusalem, the issue is less
that particular viewpoints about the city’s status as a capital are 
true or
false, but rather that there can be multiple truths, all of which are 
hard
to fold into a single database entry. Finally, it’s difficult for users 
to
challenge or contest representations that they deem to be unfair. 
Wikidata

is, and Freebase used to be, built on user-generated content, but those
users tend to be a highly specialized group—it’s not easy for lay users 
to
participate in those platforms. And those platforms often aren’t the 
place
in which their data is ultimately displayed, making it hard for some 
users

to find them. Furthermore, because Google’s Knowledge Base is so opaque
about where it pulls its information from, it is often unclear if those
sites are even the origins of data in the first place.

Jerusalem is just one example among many in which knowledge bases are
increasingly distancing (and in some case cutting off) debate about
contested knowledges of places. [followed by more examples]



The story with Jerusalem is very simple. I created the Wikidata item. 
The English description was "city in Israel". Then POV pushers came. 
Some of them wanted "city in Palestine", and others wanted "capital of 
Israel". Then one user, who later was elected to the board of Wikimedia 
Israel, canvassed a number of users in Hebrew Wikipedia. When there were 
too many POV pushers, I just unwatched the page, and it became "capital 
of Israel". Later on, someone managed to change it to smth neutral. 
That's it. There is nothing automatic here.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Just to be sure: this is the location

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-11-25 22:31, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:

On 2015-11-25 13:27, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
I don't remember such a... stately location since Library of Congress 
2012

(though I didn't attend the recent Princess of Asturias event).
בתאריך 25 בנוב׳ 2015 13:28,‏ "Romaine Wiki" <romaine.w...@gmail.com> 
כתב:




The location was nice indeed as expected, the ceremony was great
(kudos to Phoebe, Lodewijk and Adele for the speeches), and it was fun
to see dozens of Wikimedians in suits and ties. I still have no idea
what share of the audience they were.

Cheers
Yaroslav



Working on the suggested article on Baraka, Democratic Republic of the 
Congo on the English Wikipedia (Sj beat me creating in in the morning, 
when I was teaching, but there is a lot of room for improvement), just 
realized it was a pilot city for the Missing Maps project last November.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [GLAM] Video: "Wikipedia, an introduction - Erasmus Prize 2015"

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-11-26 19:48, Jens Best wrote:

Nice try, GerardM,

but I don't think that the Erasmus Prize was given to Wikipedia because
some people in the Foundation made same questionable deals with some 
access
providers in the Global South. Zero-Rating is a clear violation of the 
net
neutrality principle and many NGOs in the Global South do not 
appreciate
that WMF is undermining these principles for pushing the brand 
Wikipedia.


Spreading the free knowledge by undermining the principles on which the 
web

became great is wrong.

And the video is much better without this WP0-propaganda in it.

J


Actually, Wikipedia Zero was explicitly cited in the laudation when the 
prize was awarded. We may like it or not but it was an integral part of 
the prize.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Just to be sure: this is the location

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-11-25 13:27, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
I don't remember such a... stately location since Library of Congress 
2012

(though I didn't attend the recent Princess of Asturias event).
בתאריך 25 בנוב׳ 2015 13:28,‏ "Romaine Wiki"  
כתב:




The location was nice indeed as expected, the ceremony was great (kudos 
to Phoebe, Lodewijk and Adele for the speeches), and it was fun to see 
dozens of Wikimedians in suits and ties. I still have no idea what share 
of the audience they were.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Superprotect is gone

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-11-05 18:35, Quim Gil wrote:
Superprotect [1] was introduced by the Wikimedia Foundation to resolve 
a

product development disagreement. We have not used it for resolving a
dispute since. Consequently, today we are removing Superprotect from
Wikimedia servers.



Great, thank you, it is clearly a step in a good direction.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Biggest disappointment from Wikimania 2017

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-10-06 16:27, Richard Symonds wrote:

Yaroslav,

To be fair to Ellie (and speaking as an outsider), she is extremely 
busy
and usually answers direct emails quite quickly, but doesn't usually 
get
involved in big community discussion threads on mailing lists because 
she

spends a lot of her time travelling (and thus, I suspect,using a mobile
device).

Richard Symonds
Wikimedia UK
0207 065 0992



Hi Richard,

needless to say, I will be happy to be proven wrong.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Biggest disappointment from Wikimania 2017

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-10-06 16:21, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:

To be honest, I can not recollect a single instance WMF people ever
apologized to the community for any decision, even when it was
immediately clear that they screwed up badly (like removing admin
rights on WMF Wiki etc). I do not expect it this time. I do not see
Elly Young in any of the Wikimania threads.

Cheers
Yaroslav



I was off-list provided with such an example, and Aubrey made another 
example off-list, so that I am going to retract my statement. However, I 
certainly would like to see more examples of apologies when people screw 
up, and also thanking volunteers in public never harms. I thank Elly for 
her response, though I do not feel like she addresses the main issue: 
asking Manila and Perth teams to submit a bid at the time when it was 
decided that Montreal gets it. This is not my business anymore though, I 
would not attend Wikimania in either city anyway.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Biggest disappointment from Wikimania 2017

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-10-06 06:25, Gnangarra wrote:
This has been going on for three days, yet not one person involved in 
this
decision has take a moment to reachout personally to the people who 
worked

on bids, They have tabled justifications on list discussions, they have
changed the status of Meta pages but not once have they given anyone 
the
courtesy of owning the mistakes that have caused this, not even the WMF 
has
made any personal attempt to help reconcile the damage at a more 
personal

level..



To be honest, I can not recollect a single instance WMF people ever 
apologized to the community for any decision, even when it was 
immediately clear that they screwed up badly (like removing admin rights 
on WMF Wiki etc). I do not expect it this time. I do not see Elly Young 
in any of the Wikimania threads.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Imminent block of access to Wikipedia in Russia

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

2015-08-24 17:24 GMT+02:00 Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru:


Today, the Russian Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of
Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications instructed 
all

Russian internet providers to block all user access to Wikipedia. All
involved parties are aware of the development. I am not sure whether 
only

ru.wikipedia.org will be blocked, or all WMF projects. In the latter
case, if you are going to travel to Russia, you will need to gen an IP
exempt flag in advance in the projects you are going to edit.

Cheers
Yaroslav



Now after less than a day the access is being restored again. The 
Russian Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, 
Information Technologies and Mass Communications removed the article 
from the list (there are several more Wikipedia articles which are still 
there, but there is no immediate threat for the time being). It is not 
clear why they decided to change their mind.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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[Wikimedia-l] Imminent block of access to Wikipedia in Russia

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

Today, the Russian Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of 
Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications instructed all 
Russian internet providers to block all user access to Wikipedia. All 
involved parties are aware of the development. I am not sure whether 
only ru.wikipedia.org will be blocked, or all WMF projects. In the 
latter case, if you are going to travel to Russia, you will need to gen 
an IP exempt flag in advance in the projects you are going to edit.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Imminent block of access to Wikipedia in Russia

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-08-24 17:46, Gregory Varnum wrote:

Does anyone know more about the article on an illegal drug they are
referring to?

Sounds like it’s just Russian Wikipedia and not the other languages or
projects. Anyone able to verify?

-greg


This is the article: 
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A7%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81_%28%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B5_%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%89%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%BE%29


(it was moved from the origibal location, which is now a dab).

The intention of the agency was to only block access to this page. What 
they will be actually blocking depends on how the https routing works. I 
do not know, it is either only the Russian Wikipedia, or all WMF 
projects.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Future of Wikipedia

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-07-15 06:47, Pine W wrote:
I agree that finding correct, accurate, current, and NPOV information 
can
be a challenging task, and media literacy is an important skill these 
days.

Good research tasks today go beyond the goal of finding just any book,
magazine, journal or webpage that asserts a certain fact.

Pine
___


And actually we are already at the stage where these skills become in 
dispensable for anyone who wants to successfully contribute to 
Wikipedia. With a very few exceptions (recent sporting results etc) all 
low-hanging fruit is gone, and one needs to have access to digitized and 
paper sources, have skills in understanding these sources, and often 
have some language skills since many needed sources are not in English.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thousands of images on Wikipedia and Commons in danger, action needed

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-06-22 19:07, Gergő Tisza wrote:
On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 8:16 AM, Newyorkbrad newyorkb...@gmail.com 
wrote:



Just out of curiosity, if this legislation were to pass in Europe, and
(for example) an American tourist took a photograph of a covered
building in Europe and posted it when he or she arrived back in the
U.S., would it be deleted on the ground that the image was non-free at
the site, or kept on the ground that it was free where it was posted?



No one knows for sure. See
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panorama#Choice_of_law
___


Whereas this is correct in principle, in a situation Brad describes the 
photo most certainly will be deleted. Also, I do not see how the photo 
is free in the US, due to URAA provisions.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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[Wikimedia-l] Global North/South

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

Does anybody happen to know why Russia and Moldova are classified as 
Global North whereas Ukraine and Belarus are classified as Global South, 
from the WMF point of view? There is some discussion (specifically about 
Belarus) at the talk page, but it is too heated and I was not able to 
get the point.


https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Countries_by_Regional_Classification

I notice this in the Chapter-wide Financial Trends Report 2013. I am 
wondering whether this has more serious implications like finance 
distribution etc.


Cheers
Yaroslav


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Global North/South

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-06-11 22:03, Milos Rancic wrote:
I think the reason is more than obvious: Belarus is south of Moldova 
and
Ukraine is in between, so it went south. As Russia is basically on the 
east

of all of three countries, it's logical to put it among the northern
countries.


Not that I object the general reasoning, but Belarus is north of Moldova 
(Ukraine is either way).


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community Assembly

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-06-07 20:43, Milos Rancic wrote:

I suppose that nobody commented my idea about the Assembly because of
two main reasons: it's a different paradigm, as well as it doesn't
seem realistic.



Hi Milos,

I do not think community assembly as a replacement for the Board would 
work. A body of 10 people and a body of say 50 people are different 
bodies and they should have different functions.


I do not think imposing a lot of constraints for the board election 
would work either. In the end of the day, what we got is the opinion of 
the majority of the voters. Most of our voters are white males, and this 
is a fact. We should not really be surprised that we get three white 
males elected. If Denny, James and Dariusz were barred from running by 
constraints, I guess many would just not turn up. I personally voted for 
two of them, and I would be pretty much disappointed if some external 
constraints would prevent them from running. I think we have to live 
with this.


However, someone (I think it was SJ but I might be wrong) came up with 
an idea of an advisory body, which would not be the Board but would have 
members with different backgrounds, elected / partially elected / 
apointed (to be discussed) which would be able to give a quick advice to 
the Board on certain initiatives without creating cross-project drama. I 
guess this is smth which can develop from your ideas in the community 
assembly.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-06-04 20:48, James Alexander wrote:
On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 11:27 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com 
wrote:




Small point -- because this is the first election we've done using SUL
(hooray!!) the wiki listed is whatever someone's home wiki is
according to SUL (I think) and not, as in past years, the wiki where
you actually clicked the vote link from.


Aye, this is right, the wiki listed on SecurePoll is what CentralAuth 
says
is your 'home' wiki. Actually, in most cases, this has been the case 
for a

while. If you look at a voter list for the English Wikipedia Arbcom
Elections
https://vote.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?limit=500title=Special%3ASecurePoll%2Flist%2F392
for example you'll see that there are random examples of people with
Domain of another wiki because that's their home wiki even though the
only place you could vote from was enWiki. Of course in the past not
everyone was global and in those cases it was the Domain the account 
was

coming from.



The point that many editors are active on many wikis, and thus
potentially eligible on many wikis, is certainly true. I would guess
that (again because of SUL) each wiki's voter list represents those
eligible voters who have that wiki as their home wiki, so there's not
duplication. But the election committee can verify that.

best,
Phoebe




Thanks, now I got it. My current account was indeed registered on Meta, 
though currently I am barely active there.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-06-01 11:17, Anders Wennersten wrote:

Just a clarification on numbers
In James (internal)  table enwps share of total number of eligible
votes is 35,4%
Participation rate state from enwp was 8,26% against mean for all
9,5%. If enwp is excluded the participation rate for all of the rest
stands at 10,2%

Enwp users also include users from non-en countries, and user from en
countries will also be found on other wikis like Commons (3,5% of
total eligible voters, with a turnout similar to enwp) but this does
not change the bottom line, participation rate from enwp has been
lower then from the rest of the communities (de, fr, it, ru, es, pl
rates being  a little above mean of rest, zh and pt a little below and
ja much below)

Anders




Hi Anders,

are there significant intersections between the project which can 
distort statistics? I believe I am eligible on at least 10 projects, and 
on a couple of them I might be the only eligible voter (making for them 
100% participation), but my feeling is that this is rather an exception. 
Is let us say a high participation rate from it.wp significally affected 
by users who are also active on en.wp and are eligible there as well?


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-06-03 17:42, Raymond Leonard wrote:

Folks,

At the link, you can find
List votes: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections 2015
https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/512

Yours,
Peaceray
--


Thank you. I am indeed listed as voting from Meta, where I barely 
qualify, and not from for example en.wp or ru.wv where I have tons of 
edits.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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[Wikimedia-l] 25M files on Commons

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

Dear all,

I am not sure why it so far got little publicity, but yesterday the 25 
millionth file was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.


The image itself is a cityscape, a depiction of the courtyard of the 
Mevlid-i Halil Mosque, Şanlıurfa, Turkey


https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mevlid-i_Halil_Mosque_08.jpg

The topic on Commons (which essentially has Multichill's announcement 
and a short discussion what would we do if the 25Mth uploaded image were 
porn).


https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#We_have_a_winner_.2825M.29

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF has lost its path

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-01-20 18:21, Sydney Poore wrote:

Frankly, I'm much more concerned about the large number of  community
indefinite blocks done by a single administrator with no training than
these few bans that are investigated and signed off on by a 
professional

whose work is being evaluated.

Sydney Poore



The problem is that WMF already produced a lot of damage, and foremost, 
damage to their reputation. Russavia at the point he was banned was 
still a Commons administrator, and he recently survived a desysop 
discussion. This means he really was trusted by active part of the 
community (though there was vocal opposition as well). At some point, 
WMF will need to get volunteer support for some of its actions, and it 
will be extremely difficult to achieve on Commons. And this is just one 
of a series of moves they continue to alienate the community with. For 
me personally, the last straw was not the ban of Russavia, but the 
accident of I guess last year, when a number of users (not me, I was 
completely unrelated) were just duly desysopped on WMF internal wiki, 
because a staffer decided she can manage everything herself (she turned 
out to be wrong), and no apologies were ever offered, quite the 
opposite. Community blocks can be (and are sometimes) reversed if 
needed, but trust and reputation are extremely difficult to recover. I 
am sorry to write this, but this is how I see the situation.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] 1000 Little Masters on-line, a Wikimedia CH / Swiss National Library project

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-01-20 18:51, Charles Andrès wrote:

Dear Wikimedians,

please find here an information about one of the outcomes of the
Wikipedian in Residence experience at the Swiss National Library, a
Wikimedia CH initiative.


Charles



Hi Charles,

this is absolutely great, congratulations.

Is there a dedicated Commons cat where the images lie?

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF has lost its path

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-01-20 20:12, Chris Keating wrote:




My point is that reducing the number of anti WMF people in senior
positions on commons by one they might have converted some pro WMF 
people
in senior positions on commons to anti WMF people, producing more 
damage

for themselves than they hoped to create good.



I think if you're looking at this mainly as a way of getting rid of 
someone

the WMF didn't like, then you have the wrong approach to the issue.
___


This is the framework suggested by geni, not by me.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF has lost its path

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-01-20 20:20, Thomas Goldammer wrote:
I really wonder why it's anyone (except Russavia)'s business why 
Russavia
was banned. Or in other words, why don't you guys just ask Russavia 
about
it? If they want to tell you, fine, if not, fine as well... And no, 
that's
not a speech against openness and transparency. The rules are 
transparent.
If the owner of the website banned Russavia from editing it, Russavia 
must

have violated the rules. Or does anyone really suspect WMF of banning
people for fun? I don't and I hope nobody else does, either.

m2c,
Th.



He claims he got only a standard notice that he was banned for TOU 
violation.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF has lost its path

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-01-20 19:10, geni wrote:

The reality is that its recent actions have made no difference in that
respect other than reducing the number of anti WMF people in senior
positions on commons by one. Realistically there was no course of 
action

that the WMF people could take that would bring that anti WMF commons
people onside. Partly because they are pretty set on their current 
position
and partly because in most cases it is an extension of being 
anti-english

wikipedia and that is frankly even less fixable.


My point is that reducing the number of anti WMF people in senior 
positions on commons by one they might have converted some pro WMF 
people in senior positions on commons to anti WMF people, producing more 
damage for themselves than they hoped to create good.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is there some Wikimedia project to host contents based on original research?

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2015-01-05 14:56, Andrea Zanni wrote:



IMHO, this issue will get bigger and bigger over the years, and there 
could

be room for another Wikimedia project that would allow open access,
collaborative peer review and editing of original research. It could be 
a
sort of new environment between academic publishing and Wikipedia 
(which

now are quite distant for several reasons).

Aubrey



Whereas there might be some materials which are best hosted at this (not 
yet in existence) Wikiproject, I am afraid it has a lot of potential to 
attract conspiracy theorists and all king of adepts of marginal views, 
so that I am not sure such project should be created (or at least not 
under the umbrella of WMF).


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to fix Commons

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2014-12-15 10:30, svetlana wrote:

In addition to the fact that the search sucks, and other issues
mentioned here earlier, there are some issues with Commons.

1) Unlike Imgur, it doesn't have a big -- and useable -- upload
button on the homepage. I know about media freedom, yet for sharing of
photos I made, Commons is not the choice. There is a big multi-page
form to fill in, — both the upload wizard and the special:upload page.
I see uploadwizard as the tool with bigger potential for fixing this.



svetlana


Actually, for sharing photos - do we have an html code generator for an 
image or other means to share an existing photo similar to what flickr 
has? Would it be easy to produce if we have none? Or may be there are 
some trivial ways to share it I am not aware of?


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to fix Commons

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2014-12-14 06:49, Bruentrup wrote:

Hi

One of those 6 successful DMCA's of 2014 was filed by us.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/DMCA_India_Against_Corruption_logo



I would suggest to the list moderators that every poster identified as 
IAC would be blocked on sight, due to the high level of disruption 
coming from this sockfarm on this mailing list (and also on the projects 
such as the English Wikipedia).


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to fix Commons

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2014-12-14 14:05, Bruentrup wrote:

And that will magically make all the infringements of IAC's IP at
Commons somehow acceptable and usable ?

If you have reliable hard evidence of disruption and socking by /
against IAC, carried out from India, please share it with us so that
my clients can report it to the law enforcement agencies, as they
regularly do, to identify and prosecute the culprits.



Please report yourself to the law enforcement agency first for spooling 
this mailing list last week and adding people to a google group without 
their consent (and for acting so using the name of a different list 
contributor).


In the English Wikipedia, I personally blocked from editing several 
accounts from your sockfarm.


I do not see why I should be wasting more time for IAC.

Thank you for your attention.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 04.12.2014 02:30, John Mark Vandenberg wrote:
On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 7:46 AM, svetlana svetl...@fastmail.com.au 
wrote:

John Mark Vandenberg wrote:


i.e. specifically asking
previously highly productive volunteers who have stopped 
contributing
whether they feel the increase in funds has not resulted in their 
work

being adequately supported?


Thanks for your great wording, John.


...


Have you looked into the funding situation of your local chapter?
Does it have large cash reserves and large predicable revenue flows?


John, you do realize she is most likely talking about the same chapter 
you belong to, right?


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Loves Earth Brasil - Exhibition

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 15.10.2014 18:33, Rodrigo Padula wrote:

Hello fellows!

Concluding our participation and activities on Wiki Loves Earth, we
organized an exhibition during the event Paraty em Foco in the
historical city of Paraty - Rio de Janeiro.


...

Rodrigo Padula

___


Sounds great, my congratulations.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimania-l] Wikimania 2016 - Jury Announcement and Start of Bidding

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 10.10.2014 18:56, Fæ wrote:



As for transparency, you are not in a strong position to lecture,
considering that your behind-the-scenes actions got me banned from the
English Wikipedia just a couple of days after Phillipe Beadette had a
supposedly personal and private conversation with you and yet you have
failed to ever explain your actions.

Thanks,
Fae


I do not think such gossip has a place on this list. Please consider 
apologizing to Risker and do not repeat it here again.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monument for Wikipedia in Poland

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 10.10.2014 20:33, Michael Peel wrote:

This is very, very cool. :-) I don’t suppose the monument is freely
licensed? Can Creative Commons licenses even be applied to monuments?

Thanks,
Mike




First, yes it can. A sculptor can give a permission, which would mean 
that every photo of a monument can be licensed under CC-BY-SA if the 
photographer wishes. I am sure we had such examples on Commons (they are 
sent via OTRS).


Second, as it was noticed already, Poland has freedom of panorama for 
monuments, and therefore a permission from the sculptor is not even 
needed.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 05.10.2014 14:24, John Mark Vandenberg wrote:

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

Pine,




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

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

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



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


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 11.09.2014 10:53, Peter Southwood wrote:

Exactly what I was thinking.
Doesn’t mean it would necessarily work, but you are not alone...
Cheers,
Peter


Actually, if I get it correctly, Wikinews uses three pages per item 
(news, talk, and smth else).


Cheers
Yaroslav



-Original Message-
From: wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tim
Davenport
Sent: 10 September 2014 11:12 PM
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow

Having listened for the last week or two, here's what I'm getting as
the WMF perspective as the three primary things attempting to be
remedied with
Flow:

1) Newcomers and casual contributors have a very hard time using wiki
markup language and find it difficult to participate in talk pages.
Flow will be more intuitive for them.

2) The rendition of talk page discussion threads on mobile devices is 
bad.

With more people using mobile devices and fewer using laptops, this
problem is only going to become worse over time. Flow will alleviate
this problem.

3) Wikitext becomes a sprawling mess on large talk pages, leading to
vast walls of tl;dr text a morass of unsearchable archives. Flow will
better organize discussions.

Is this a fair representation of the rationale behind Flow? Am I
missing some main (as opposed to utopian and theoretical) rationale
for the change?


=


Now here is a list of the things which talk pages currently do:

1) Mark articles as significant to various work projects and track
the content grade for each.

2) Provides details and links for BLP and other policies related to 
the subject.


3) Records the history of each page with respect to Articles For
Deletion challenges, Good Article peer review histories, etc.

4) Maintains a record of actual and potential Conflict of Interest 
declarations.


5) Registers reader comments about the content.

6) Provides a forum for editor debates over content, sometimes
including large blocks of proposed or removed text and including at
times binding RFCs over content and detailed merger discussions.

7) Accumulates requested edits for protected articles.


In addition, User-talk pages:

8) Gather warning templates and notification messages about editing 
problems.


9) Serves as a de facto email system for communication between 
editors.





My outside the box suggestion is this: it seems likely that at least
some of the vital functions of talk pages are going to be crushed by
Flow and the mass archiving that its adoption will entail. Perhaps it
would be better for a new third page to be generated for each article:

MAINSPACE PAGE (the article itself)

ABOUT THIS PAGE (templates and permanent records including 1, 2, 3, 4 
above)


DISCUSS THIS PAGE (the actual talk page for discussion of content and
requested edits)


Bear in mind that I still have no confidence that Flow will be
superior to wikitext in any but the most superficial ways. I do
suggest, however, that some future permutation of this or some other
new discussion format has a better chance of acceptance by the core
volunteer community if it preserves many essential functions of talk
pages unaltered.


Tim Davenport
Carrite on En-WP /// Randy from Boise on WPO Corvallis, OR  (USA)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 06.09.2014 13:39, Quim Gil wrote:
On Saturday, September 6, 2014, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org 
wrote:



So we think a
support forum like the Teahouse, and its equivalent in other 
languages

may be a good place to start -- provided the hosts agree that there
are no dealbreaker issues for them.



What about setting up some kind of Flow self-service for projects? Let 
play
to those wiling to play, in the way they think it's best for their 
projects.


Potential requirements to join the Flow self-service:

* At least one tech ambassador volunteering to act as contact between 
the
project and the Flow team, summarizing community feedback in the 
channels

agreed (mw:Talk:Flow, etc).
* Community agreement after a public discussion in the project.
* Selection of a first page to try Flow.



Hi Quim,

actually, this is exactly what is happening now and this is what caused 
this turmoil yesterday night.


FLOW was once deployed on two en.wp WikiProjects in the past, 
Wikiroject:Breakfast and another one, i do not remember which on off the 
top of my head. The Wikiproject participants agreed to use their talk 
pages as a testbed, and it was announced reasonably broadly. Volunteers, 
including me, tried installed FLOW and discovered that it is substandard 
and can not be used for any reasonable discussion. The test was 
terminated, some feedback was generated, some of it was taken onboard, 
the rest presumably not.


Yesterday, we discovered that FLOW was installed as a test in the 
Teahouse, a place whose purpose is to welcome newbies. I am not using 
the Teahouse, but the argument which I have heard was that FLOW was 
installed on a page inaccessible from the main Teahouse page and thus 
unlikely to be visited by newbies. Apparently, there was some discussion 
in the Teahouse, and the consensus was that FOW should not be installed. 
Since FLOW was installed clearly against the community will and since it 
is clearly still substandard, we had to act somehow. Danny got a warning 
at his talkage, the FLOW page was protected, and I had to send a message 
here, which in the end of the day started this discussion.


This is not the way FLOW should be deployed.

To me, Wikidata deployment was an example of successful Wikimedia 
project deployment which went relatively easily (even though there are 
still users having a strong opinion against Wkidata). The reasons it 
went so smoothly were that (i) it was clear what the end goal is, what 
should happen at what stage, and what are the needed steps; (ii) there 
were a large amount of volunteers and ambassadors from the first day 
sharing the idea and helping to explain it and to fix the bugs; (iii) 
Support was always and easily available, including Danny and Lydia, and 
they were really willing to listen to us and to help us, not to impose 
their vision.


I am afraid with Flow we are still not even at (i). Whereas after 
Erik's message I understand what he wants in very general terms, the 
implementation is completely open. In these terms, Facebook or PHP are 
both FLOW. I guess we start from the concept, and the next step would be 
for volunteers to instal Flow a their talk pages. If they can survive 
for a couple of months, we can talk about it further.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 06.09.2014 19:18, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

Hoi,
The subject is discussion / talk space not article space editing.. 
Yaroslav
please stay on topic..Surely Marc has more than 13 edits in all kinds 
of

discussion on multiple wikis.
Thanks,
   GerardM


On 6 September 2014 19:14, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru 
wrote:



On 06.09.2014 19:06, Marc A. Pelletier wrote:


 Sadly, there *are* people who get offended that the vast unwashed 
masses
could start contributing to *their* project without having gone 
through

a painful, demanding rite of passage.  Truth is, most people of the
world don't have the time for that, or if they do, (perfectly
reasonably) believe that you shouldn't have to pay to volunteer to 
help.


-- Marc


Marc, with all my due respect, this statement would be more 
convincing if

spelled out by someone with more than 13 edits in the article space
combined in 2013 and 2014.

Cheers
Yaroslav




Sure. However, contributing to *our* project, meaning (I guess) in this 
case the English Wikipedia, is most and foremost contributing content. 
And sadly we have enough users around who try to contribute content 
without having time to go through the rite of passage, and we have to 
spend way too much time reverting and rewriting their contribution to 
make it appropriate for an encyclopedia.


I agree though that this is off-topic in this thread.

Cheers
Yaroslav


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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 06.09.2014 23:14, Romaine Wiki wrote:

Hello all,

I did a couple if simple tests on MediaWiki on Flow pages with often
occurring edits. The tests failed.


...


So, there is flow, and instead of the community can work with it as it
needs to work with, it does not flow but got stuck...

To answer the question, To Flow or not to Flow, it does not flow. I am 
not

able to do simple edits which are done every day.

Romaine


Hi Romaine

thanks for the great post.

May be indeed a good starting point would be to invite the community 
(not only en.wp and large projects, but also non-wikipedia and small 
projects) to list all functionalities of the talk pages they need and 
then discuss whether they are absolutely needed or we can survive 
without them. I am not aware of this discussion ever taken place (at 
least I am fairly active in several Wikimedia projects for a pretty long 
time and I have never heard about it).


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 25.08.2014 06:07, Marc A. Pelletier wrote:

On 08/24/2014 11:19 PM, Pine W wrote:

I have
heard people say don't force an interface change on me that I don't 
think

is an improvement.


I do not recall a recent interface change deployment that wasn't
accompanied with, at the very least, some method of opting out.  Did I
miss one?

-- Marc



FLOW?

Unless you count leaving the project as opt-out.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 21.08.2014 14:26, Risker wrote:

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


...


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

to them.

So - we know there is a definite cost to having all these navigation 
aids
in articles.  We need to justify their use, instead of simply adding 
them
by reflex.  So here is where analytics teams can really be useful:  
tell us

whether or not these navboxes are actually being used to go to other
articles.  If they're widely used to leap to the next article, then we 
need

to find ways to make them more efficient so that they're suitable for
mobile devices.  If they're hardly ever being used, we need to 
reconsider
their existence. Perhaps this becomes some sort of meta data tab 
from

articles.  The current format isn't sustainable, though.

Risker/Anne
___


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


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 21.08.2014 15:24, Risker wrote:

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


On 21.08.2014 14:26, Risker wrote:


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

 ...






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

takes too long to load.

Risker/Anne



Right, and if the feature is not useful for readers (and I do not see 
how it is useful for editors, except for making the pages looking nicer) 
it possibly should not be there at all. But I do not think that just 
ignoring it in the mobile version without any relation to the desktop 
version is a good direction to follow.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 21.08.2014 21:17, Steven Walling wrote:
On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Magnus Manske 
magnusman...@googlemail.com

wrote:


Or, have them filled from Wikidata. Then, {{Infobox}} would be all 
the
wikitext you need. This could also help to abstract infoboxes to 
load a

placeholder/hint on mobile, then loading the box on request (click).

Well, one can dream...



This would be ideal I think, since it would allow for more responsive
styling without resorting to ugly hacks specific to infobox markup.

So far as I can tell though, there is one major blocker to this: 
edibility.
People need to be able to update the infobox data without leaving 
Wikipedia

and being sent to Yet Another Wiki. This is potentially doable in
VisualEditor I think, but is hard or maybe impossible to do with any
elegance in wikitext.
___


Another problem, at least for the time being, is that connection to 
Wikidata is still slow (I feel it even with very good Internet access), 
and eventually will impede slow mobile connections. I hope this is 
curable though.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 13.08.2014 02:48, svetlana wrote:

On Wed, 13 Aug 2014, at 10:46, svetlana wrote:


this community thinks that its power structures allow to tromp onto 
other people


sysops aren't even held accountable
they are elected once for an infinite term
nobody reviews their contribution in position in power ever

this would surely be solved by making them elected on a 2-year term
then re-elect

svetlana



Sounds exactly like an indeffed former contributor to the Russian 
Wikipedia.


I do not think we should discuss the administrator elections on this 
list. Anyway, there are projects where administrators only get elected 
for a finite period.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 13.08.2014 05:57, Pine W wrote:
Two points I have heard off list are that 1. While it may be that 
disabling
MV by default for logged-in users can be done, disabling it for those 
not
logged-in is effectively another major UI change which a study shows 
likely

will make some of them leave and not return; 2. German Wikimedians are
going inactive in protest.

Can someone confirm that both of those points are true?


Point 2 is essentially impossible to confirm. People are coming, 
leaving and sometimes coming back (when I left the Russian Wikipedia in 
2011, most of my opponents just said they are sure I was playing games 
and would be back soon). You never know why they leave, and even if they 
have left a clear message you never know how serious it is. It is quite 
unlikely that on a short term a significant share of active users will 
leave or has left - the German Wikipedia is not the Acehnese Wikipedia, 
and even if a dozen of users would leave at the same time, it can not be 
detected by the editing statistics. The long-time consequences and 
trends can of course be detected but then you would need to reach the 
active users who really have left and asked them why they left - it is 
unlikely anybody would successfully perform such study.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 12.08.2014 02:26, svetlana wrote:


If we accept the policy in principle, I don't care who enforces such
policy, that be community or WMF. Such policy does not go against
community entirely, unless WMF shows a will to reject community
patches related to issues which community finds important. Whether or
not this is the case, I don't care; it's a website in their hands and
they're welcome to shut it off without notice, or to experiment at
leisure.




svetlana



Whoever believes that an administration of a crowdsourcing website can 
do whatever they want just because they are running the website should 
recollect what recently happened to Internet Brands and Wikitravel.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Underwater photos and videos / WMRS Microgrants 2014

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 18.07.2014 22:05, Milos Rancic wrote:
On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 9:53 PM, Jan Ainali jan.ain...@wikimedia.se 
wrote:
I see that the video is marked CC BY-NC-ND. Will all other videos 
also be

under that license?


That's their proprietary, artistic work. We are getting
scientific/educational videos. Something like ten time 3-5 minutes of
one species, 20 times 3-5 minutes of the other one, 30 minutes of rare
species, ~10 minutes of filming one ecosystem etc. Our goal is to
illustrate Wikipedia articles (and articles on other Wikimedia
projects). Their proprietary work is their art.

___


Note that especially if it comes to Antarctic waters we can also use 
screenshots to illustrate geographic features, I am not sure we have the 
whole Antarctic coast covered.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Underwater photos and videos / WMRS Microgrants 2014

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 15.07.2014 06:42, Milos Rancic wrote:

For the last month or so I want to share with you the initial success
of the Microgrants 2014 project of Wikimedia Serbia. However, there
are a number of stories and it was too much to me to write about all
of them at once. So, I am splitting it, which means that you can
expect more stories during the next days.

Inside of this email, first a bit about the project Microgrants, then
about the particular project.

* * *


Hi Milos,

the project sounds really cool.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The tragedy of Commons

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 17.06.2014 16:47, Osmar Valdebenito wrote:
If you take a look at the undeletion requests after the URAA 
discussion,
most of the images restored were deleted afterwards anyway.[1][2] The 
only
exception that I've seen are some German stamps that haven't been 
deleted

(yet).
The problem is that, at this moment, most of the people whose valid 
images

were quickly deleted and re-deleted are tired and have no intention to
start again defending their contributions when they will be deleted no
matter what.



I personally kept several Argentinian flies arguing that the URAA can 
not be the sole reason for deletion.


Accidentally, I have one of these FFD nomination pages on my watchlist. 
Yesterday it was renominated for the THIRD time by the same user (the 
second one was keep as well). And I can not act on it anymore. 
Apparently, at some point the user will get an admin with a stricter 
interpretation of the policies, and the file gets deleted.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The tragedy of Commons

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 17.06.2014 18:13, Jeevan Jose wrote:
Accidentally, I have one of these FFD nomination pages on my 
watchlist.

Yesterday it was renominated for the THIRD time by the same user (the
second one was keep as well). And I can not act on it anymore. 
Apparently,
at some point the user will get an admin with a stricter 
interpretation of

the policies, and the file gets deleted.

Could you give the DR link? We can think about topic ban him from any 
URAA

related DRs.



Sorry, I found the link, and now I see these are two different users, 
not just one. My bad.


https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Portales_Porcel_Olmedo.jpg

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] 10 years of wikimedia-l

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 18.04.2014 00:13, phoebe ayers wrote:

Hello everyone!


...

-- phoebe


Thanks Phoebe for - how should I say - an exciting post? I enjoyed 
reading it a lot.


And, well, yes - happy birthday to all of us.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thanks to the people who made Echo, VisualEditor and Wikidata

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 09.04.2014 21:03, Tomasz W. Kozlowski wrote:

But I want to join you in thanking the people behind Echo; it's a
feature I use virtually everyday, and one without which I cannot
imagine discussing any issue on-wiki; I only wish more people used it
so I wouldn't miss all those interesting debates!

Tomasz


Echo is an absolutely great thing, and I am a heavy echo user, however, 
I am not sure it is scalable. Getting one, two or even ten notifications 
per day is ok, but if I start getting dozens, I am not sure I would be 
able to handle them for example after a day off. So that I am not sure 
it would survive if everybody starts using it heavily.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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